This is the story I referred to a few day ago in which I again mention my habit of reading in the cabinet... It is not straightforward creative nonfiction, but is a bit experimental.
SURFACE TENSION
(previously published in CRATE, literary journal of the University of California at Riverside, 2008)
And so I have reached the height of self, that is to say, containment without collapse. Mind and body are held together with such tiny tethers, yet I walk and walk to speed the process of decay. Beneath this shiny surface, there are powers stored inside.
(So difficult to spread yourself that way when you are drowning in your skirts.) I wouldn’t say my powers are the strong, recuperative kind. Not kind at all, that kind at all, not kind, and so I fall. Sometimes I struggle.
I would have given you some violets, but much like wilted flowers, all your smiles seemed disengaged. But still, I ask, if a man is suspended from his center of gravity, does he always point true North? That’s for the best, as a man out of control is not an attractive thing, not attractive, not a thing… not a man at all.
*****
I remember developing breasts. (It was about the time the Russians launched Sputnik.) And going with my aunt to buy my first fully-trained bra, and learning from the lady at Tot’s-to-Teens how important it would be someday to bend over at the waist as I put it on… and I remember the first time I bent over.
*****
We lived in a big house with big bookshelves. The cavernous space beneath the cabinets was a long, dark, rectangular land, and every day, even before I could read, I would enter into the cave-like cabinet to devour volumes of candy-colored, leather-covered books filled with nursery rhymes, all decorated in gold. Because I didn’t like the dark, I would take a flashlight. And because I didn’t like to come out once I was settled in with a book, I always took a snack.
Sometimes Mamma would look all over for me, calling my name louder, ever higher in pitch, until suddenly it would occur to her that I was reading in the cupboard. Then she would make me “come out of there this instant” as though I had broken the rules, as though she was angry because I knew she had forgotten where I was again.
When I was five, Mamma decided, even though I was against it, that I needed swimming lessons. It wasn’t that I didn’t like water. I was, in fact, an accomplished bather. Armed with empty dish detergent bottles, discarded sunglasses, and a set of stacked measuring cups, I could languish in a tub for hours, leaving only when Mamma insisted that the wrinkled skin of my fingers and toes would never be the same again if I didn’t dry out.
I could float face down holding my breath with my eyes open for a full minute. And if I filled the tub deep enough, I could float on my back, arms by my sides with my thin body completely suspended. Several times I tried to force my head underwater while stretched out this way because I wanted to see what the surface of the water looked like from below. But just when I was about to catch a glimpse beyond that mysterious barrier, my head would always bob to the surface. Perhaps it was this inability to control myself in the water that cased me to shun the whole idea of swimming lessons. But that was of little consequence, because as usual, I had almost no say in the matter of how I spent my leisure time. So, at ten o’clock on the first Thursday morning in June, I squirmed uncertainly into a turquoise and yellow striped tank suit, wrapped myself defiantly in the security of a thick white towel, and submitted silently to the twenty-minute trip to the community center.
Everyone entering the pool area had to walk through a wide, water-filled pan to wash sand from out feet. Then the foot traffic was routed by way of a concrete path around some sun-washed bleachers. Slapping my feet on the sidewalk to make watery prints, I made a point of pouting as I followed my mother toward the shallow end of the pool. Immediately I liked the way the water’s rocking surface threw bright lights into the clear air. I liked the squeals and squeaks and squishes and the seductively sweet scent of cocoanut suntan lotion. I liked my new swimsuit and had spent most of the morning strolling about the house in swaybacked splendor. But now I felt everyone looking at me. I was afraid… and I was afraid they could see my fear.
I watched from behind my mother as she approached the curved lip of the pool’s edge. Various instructors were stationed about the perimeter, each cut off at the waist by the crystal water and surrounded by a handful of kids. Mamma spoke to one of them briefly, took my towel from me, and told me to stop scowling as the black-suited teacher, a narrow-shouldered woman about Mamma’s age, motioned for me to enter the pool by way of the steps in the corner.
Five or six other kids about my size were already loosely clustered around her, bobbing around in water up to their armpits. She assured me that I would be able to stand, so I forced myself down and in, shivering as the frigid water rose around me.
“Let’s start by putting our faces in the water,” she said.
Without hesitation, the kids, as though preprogrammed, bent simultaneously at the waist like magnetically motivated plastic drinking birds, dunked their faces for a couple of seconds, then came up spluttering and swiping water from their eyes. The teacher also dipped herself, but she did so by squatting down. Then she rose smoothly, fact first, and let the water run naturally away from her face, coaxing her dark hair slickly back.
I have slept at the seam of the sea, marking chances swept ashore by the curl and wondering at the break where swirling inconsistencies have hissed and crossed themselves twist over twist since the ocean first turned. I have counted waves against my hips, held in place by surface tension, hearing moaning spirits seep like oil spilled from the deep. I have ached to feel the motion of emotion, to be hurled to the sand and back into sun-sparked union, ambiguity diffusing into foam.
She motioned for me to join in.
Focused on the breathing earth, I have imagined, far below her wavering surface, a layerless passage, descending in counterpoint to silver round air into a lair where oxygen holds no sway and the past is painted in shades of former tightness. “Again,” she said, and everyone went under, including me. I was down just long enough to see the frantically dancing feet of the kids beside me, then I straightened suddenly, and keeping my arms at my sides, allowed the water to drip from my face back into the pool. Determined that I would not react to the praise that would surely follow this act of bravery, I looked stoically at the teacher as droplets fell from my lashes like tears.
“Well…” she looked back at me. I could hear her breathe in deeply through her nose as she pursed her lips. “Okay then. Let’s try touching our toes.”
For the next hour she put us through our paces, taking us through maneuvers that were increasingly more complicated and required us to spend more and more time underwater. By the end of the session, she had each of us locking our hands together to form a rigid “V” shape with our outstretched arms as one at a time we pushed off the wall of the pool, submerged our faces, and kicked furiously toward her.
Down and down, blue-gray against black shadows, headless statues dance without illumination. Without arms, they reach for me and advance in slow motion, rising whole bodied toward the ceiling. All my points have broken off. I am left unweathered yet indistinct. Around the edges in this deep, blood escapes in feathered streams, smoky black, and winds its way toward the rhythmic shore.
After the first time, the teacher would wait until the swimmer could almost touch her, then she would back up one, then two, then three steps… and since we hadn’t yet discovered that we could raise our heads to gasp for air, we had no choice but to keep kicking, to force ourselves to swim much farther than we thought me could. Learning to swim was like playing a game without knowing the rules. I didn’t like it. And I could tell the teacher didn’t like me. She called the other kids by their names, but when it was my turn to meet her latest challenge, she just said, “Okay. You’re next.”
The second time I arrived for my swimming instruction, we were not allowed to enter the pool gracefully down the steps, but were told instead to jump in from the side. I was swamped by panic. One by one, like synchronized aquatic performers, the other members of the class jumped toward her waiting arms. But not me. I wanted to run to my mother, but I hated her for bringing me here. Since I could not make myself jump, I sat down. I sat down on the coping at the pool’s edge and refused to move.
During the dormant segments of the previous week’s lesson, I had been waiting periodically for my turn to perform each sequence of guided drill and practice, waiting and watching the class across the pool. And it was suddenly clear to me. I would much rather belong to that other class. The teacher was young and pretty. Her nose and cheeks glowed pink from the sun’s touch, and she wore a red bikini trimmed in white. It even had a little pretend white belt held close to her hips with a series of pretend belt-loops. Her class seemed to be having much more fun than mine and I was sure I could become a much better swimmer under her tutelage.
I had surely been sitting out for a full minute, and though my teacher (it was hard for me to think of her that way so intensely did I imagine myself into the other group) had given me a raised eyebrow look of curiosity, she hadn’t said anything to me about my lack of participation.
“What are you doing out here?” But my mother had noticed and assuming that I was in trouble had flounced over to straighten things out.
“I want to be in that class,” I said flatly, and without looking up pointed across the pool’s dancing surface.
I have danced with the sun. I have danced with the moon. I have slept through my life…
“You’re in thissssssss classsssssss,” Mamma hissed for emphasis and jabbed her finger toward the nervous water nearby.
“I want to be in that class,” I repeated with resolve, aware all at once that while I was intently studying the floor of the pool directly in front of me everyone nearby was listening to our exchange.
I will sleep in the sea
“You can’t…” Mamma began but was cut off by the teacher.
“If she wants to be in that class, I’ll take her over there,” the teacher said.
*****
Later that day Mamma took me with her to do her errands. It wasn’t often that we hung out like that, just the two of us. I was usually left in the care of the housekeeper, or else my brother was with us.
Even though I had taken a quick bath when I got home, anyone who looked at me closely could tell I had been swimming. My face and shoulders were a little pink, my hair was damp, and my eyes had that particularly gleam that pale eyes get when they’ve been exposed to chlorine.
I remember going to the beauty shop a couple of times to get my hair trimmed, but the place we went that day was different. It was long and narrow with lots of mirrors and plants. There was no expected row of square plastic chairs topped with round domed dryer heads. And instead of the stereotypically faded pink interior, this salon had sleek silver and black furniture that was all connected together. I chose a tufted section and pretended to read a Harper’s Bazaar as I waited for Mamma to get a haircut.
I was used to her getting a lot of attention. But the man who cut her hair hardly talked to her at all. Between the flipping of his comb and the snipping of his flashing shears, “Jules of Europe” punctuated his actions with the briefest clips of conversation.
“So what have you ladies been up to today?”
Mamma could tell he wasn’t really interested and she really didn’t care for people who weren’t interested in her. “Not too much. Swim lessons. Summer things.”
“So.” Jules glanced briefly in my direction. Snip. Comb. Flip. Snip. “Are you a good swimmer?”
“Not really.” Mamma assumed he was talking to her. “I never saw the need.”
Jules continued cutting. How about if we cut this a little shorter for the summer?”
*****
I remember learning that there were men in the world who wanted to teach me about the men in the world, and how the faint strong smell of bleach tinted my sheets last week after I washed the colors with the whites and left them on the line to dry bleeding happily all together.
*****
When the water drips from my hair, I would be a streambed.
Mamma looked at her nails. “Whatever you think.”
When I look at the mirror, I would have a silver back.
Then, probably because she suddenly remembered that Jules didn’t cut just anyone’s hair, she flashed him a smile in that special way she had that told him without words just how incredible he was. And even though he knew that look for what it was, Jules bobbled just a bit as he flipped his comb.
After blowing her hair dry briefly into the feathery look that was fiendishly fashionable because beautiful women like Mamma said it was, Jules, with a flourish, swished away her black plastic cape and released her into the capable hands of the manicurist.
When steam rises from my legs, I would be the cool above the tub.
As she ducked behind a gossamer curtain into another mysterious room, Mamma was snagged by an afterthought and paused to give me a questioning look that demanded reassurance. I glanced back an answer that promised, “Of course I won’t run out into the street or throw up on anything or tear the upholstery or go home with a stranger,” so she proceeded to get her nails done.
When you smile at me, I shine beauty above the waterline.
Having mentally made up names like “Rocket Red” and “Bewitching Black” for the haute couture fashions showcased in my magazine, I had grown tired of looking at the paper doll pages. So, I tucked my hands, palm down, under my thighs and rocked back and forth. Jules had cleaned up his station after Mamma’s haircut and stopped suddenly with wispy broom in hand to look at me.
He tilted his head back toward his right shoulder in a “come here” gesture and patted the back cushion of the pedestal chair. I felt a quick shudder of rebellion, based, I realized as instantly as it cleared my system, on my response earlier that day to the cold summons of the swim instructor. But just as quickly, I knew Jules was not like her. So I gave him a look that said I didn’t care that he didn’t care that I didn’t care, and I nonchalantly put my magazine back in the rack and seated myself, legs dangling, in his gunmetal squeaky gray chair.
But if you touch me, I will shatter into a million shining droplets of deception…
*****
Mamma was in a hurry as we made our way through the grocery store without a buggy “just to grab a handful of things.”
“I can’t believe you let him cut your hair like that!”
I was in heaven.
“Ugh,” she grunted in disgust. “I guess it will grow out.”
The grocery store was my favorite place. Usually, when I went there, it was on Saturday morning with my grandmother, so there was something wonderfully foreign and almost forbidden about venturing up and down rows of red and yellow pyramided products in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week. Several times as we foraged for the items on Mamma’s list, she grew impatient with me and nudged me to move a little faster.
“Stop looking at people that way,” she snapped.”
“Like what?”
“Like you are trying to see into them!”
“But… I am.”
“I know. But you don’t have to let them see that.”
Mamma still had to go to the dry cleaners and the post office, and I guess she was nearing meltdown, because when we stopped by the house just long enough to stash the groceries, she left me in the car with it running. Just long enough for me to sample all of the buttons on the radio.
Don’t you want somebody to love…?
One of my earliest memories is set in the bathroom where there was a mirror on our linen closet door parallel to the mirror above the sink, and if I positioned myself just so, my reflection was effectively reflected in my reflection in my reflection in my reflection, and so on, almost endlessly.
Wouldn’t you love somebody to…
I just knew if I could focus my concentration ever inwardly toward that distant smallest silver self-depiction, I would spiral down into a parallel place where surely there would be one just like me endeavoring to do the same from the other-mirror side. But I was somehow hesitant… to dive wholeheartedly into that shimmering lake, and I couldn’t shake off the silver menace coating earlier memories. I remembered holding a green juice cup decorated with a picture of a yellow bear who was holding a green juice cup decorated with a picture of a yellow bear who was so on and so on almost endlessly.
And I remember being glad I wasn’t a bear.
Troubles seemed so far away…
Because I wanted more out of life than to be a decoration.
Place to hide away…
I needed to know on which pale green plane I could exist.
*****
“I want to be in that class.”
The next week I was moved to the pretty teacher’s class. I spent the rest of the summer learning that she was no nicer than the other one and that her red swimsuit looked black from a long distance underwater.
At least that’s what I think happened. But I have learned that memories are not always as accurate as we would like to believe. Most of us create screen memories to shield ourselves from the things we won’t let ourselves recall. Or we adopt as truth the things we’ve heard and then we make them our own.
I don’t remember learning I would die, but it must have been like stepping casually into a freshly laundered dream, like stepping into a white tulip skirt trimmed ‘round the hem with crimson quatrefoils and tears. I wonder if I cried and when the flowers will start to bleed.
I don’t really remember learning to swim. But I remember learning how light and colors behave in water, and being fascinated by surface tension and its effects on small animals. I remember learning that how we look is greatly influenced by how we think we look, that some people are more transparent than others, and that when I was underwater, I was unmolested by the constant tirade that ruffled the surface.
I remember learning to blow all of the air from my lungs so I could sit on the bottom of the pool without floating up, and that the sky, as seen through the wobbling silver surface of the water, often promises more blue than it delivers.
Have you ever noticed that in advertisements for watches the hands are almost always set at ten past ten? Check out a few ads and you will see. Anyway, this just proves that inspiration for a poem can come from anywhere.
