Everything Lost Returns
By The Cincinnati Inquisitor
CI: Describe your experience with Earthshine Soap.
My insides hurt, but all my doctors told me nothing was wrong.
Pain in my stomach, in my pelvis, in my back.
Sometimes I couldn’t breathe from the pain, and I couldn’t cook or eat or take the children to the park.
My periods never returned after nursing my third child.
I’d wake lethargic in the morning and count on my fingers the hours till bedtime. The doctors said it was all in my head.
CI: What happened?
JANE DOE NO. 12: We hired someone to help around the house.
She had this gentle, wide smile, but I could sense it in her, this loneliness, too.
One day, she was rehanging the living room curtains, and I asked her—Do you ever feel just, like, there’s something wrong with you, but you don’t even know how to describe it?
And you wouldn’t know what to do about it, even if you could?
L--- said yes. She told me she suspected the soap.
She told me she’d once stopped using it for a while, and she felt better, but the people she worked for complained that the sinks weren’t white enough, the floors weren’t shiny, so she switched back.
She didn’t want to live like this. Nothing felt real.
She started to cry, and I did, too, and we just held each other right there in that living room, the curtains still down, right there for the neighbors to see.
I didn’t care. It felt so good to hold her.
To be held. That is when I knew my whole life had been a lie.
CI: And you believe Earthshine Soap is responsible?
JANE DOE NO. 12: I know it is.