This is My Body, This is My Blood

Out of the Blue

I was sitting on the sofa rereading the stack of form rejection letters when the phone rang.

Is this Ellie?

Yes.

This is P calling from the C agency in New York. I just read your query and I must say I'm completely charmed.

You are?  I was really hoping to charm someone. I'm glad it was you! (fuck fuck fuck could I sound any more inarticulate and goofy?)

It's an intriguing idea. Are you be able to send the first three chapters and synopsis? I love the second chance at love thing. But I need to see if I connect with your writing style.

Of course. I'll send it right out.

Great.

Thanks for calling.

I bounced the receiver off the sofa, did a touchdown dance all the way to the bathroom lest I wet myself with excitement.

An hour later, B met me at the UPS store where I blessed the envelope with a kiss before the cashier dropped it into a pile of mail on the floor. Then we drove to Morro Bay where the Pacific boiled like primordial soup, slopping over the jetty as it dragged the tail of yesterday's storm kicking and screaming to land. Camera-laden watchers lined the shore, oohing and ahhing each time the ocean curled her lips then spewed rabid foam, dotting our lenses with spray as she hissed a retreat over knuckled rocks.

Waves are difficult to photograph. You have to be ready, guess which way the current will take them. Chances are you'll get it wrong 99 percent of the time, so you study the water, follow it with your instincts instead of your eyes until finally she rewards you with a wink of sunlight in her crest. You click the shutter and in that second you are naked, filled with the rush of her attention knowing she has the power to douse your blistered ego with her salt.

You stand there anyway. And you'll do it again, and again because you are part of her and she knows it. This is all just a test. Only those willing to risk being flung against the rocks of rejection, drowned in the depths of criticism will survive. I, for one, have fastened myself to the mother of all rocks and I'm not budging. Because the words are my lifesaver, not the pages they are published on, and it is you, dear reader, who keeps my head above water.

Tuesday's Child

A couple of weeks ago a pink-lettered envelope hidden between credit card offers and an overdue support check lay on the floor beneath the mail slot. When I tipped it over, paper shapes, stamped tags, candy hearts fell into my palm. Come dance, they wrote. We love you. I carried the contents like a little bird in my hand to the kitchen where I traced their words with my finger, arranged the contents on the table, drank my coffee, felt the need to move throb in my listless body. I'm not ready, I said.

Tuesday is the day we dance. At least it used to be. It's been months since I joined the circle of women who move across a wooden floor, their bodies singing stories we all ache to witness. Every Monday night I tell myself, tomorrow I'll go, and every Tuesday morning I find reasons to stay home. I need to write. It's raining. I'm too tired.

Two more weeks rolled past before yesterday cracked its light like a whip across my warm bed, flushing me out from under feathers and flannel to participate in the glory of a perfect morning. I threw on a black cami and pink velvet pants then drove to town with an apple in my hand and a quiet excitement building beneath my flesh.

Climbing the three sets of stairs to the gymnasium was proof enough that it had been too long since I'd moved my body. I stood at the final landing and peeked through the gymnasium doors where A was rolling out the music cart. She greeted me with a long hug before I helped her carry a basket of teacups to the circle of pillows in the corner.

One by one, the women arrived, each one draping me in the warmth of their welcomes. When there were eight of us, we gathered in the center of the room holding hands, whispering the names of those we wished to bless with our voices. Then J, to my right, began a hushed low note, followed by T's middle C, joined by a blend of four more. I coughed, fully expecting my voice to creak from lack of use but when I opened my mouth something long and hollow rushed into the middle of their voices and for a moment it was as if there were 40 of us. We sang full and clear until the notes drifted back inside where we carried them into our dance.

C led us in long stretches and then for an hour or more we moved together and apart, around and in. At times I wandered off into a quiet place of my own, closed my eyes, feeling the private quality of one woman's dance before letting myself be sucked back into the circle of whirling wild bodies. Someone brought out a veil of linen and we danced with it, draping each other in its movement as the air rushed past. Tangling, untangling. Hiding, being found.

When the music ended we sat on pillows, drinking tea and telling stories. J said she felt drunk, in love, high. L tried on sparkly satin slippers, a gift from A. J touched my arm, said I'm glad you're here. Sitting there I heard myself laugh, felt sweat raining between my breasts, tasted the sweetness of a thing forgotten until you bite into it again after a long fast.

I hadn't realized how was badly I was starving.

hay paula

sometimes when our mother was
sick, we went to other
houses
places with different smells
in the rooms, different
food on wooden tables
that weren't shiny
like ours

i can still see
the pitcher of milk, cream
floating on top
feel a one-eyed cat weaving between
legs
that dangled from the creaky bench
at paula's house

who turned bales of hay into
secret hiding places
whose father let us ride atop the
monster wheels of his tractor
when he chased the cows
into the barn at night, then
drank beer from squat bottles
of blatz
i liked saying it, blatz
blatz blatz blatz

and whose mother was barely
as tall as me
though i was only nine
or ten maybe, when she slapped
the ass of that horse so hard
it flew
me on it, her yelling
look at her go!
across the field

and paula
quiet, smiling, freckled
who touched me under pissy sheets
after dark
touched there
while i held still in the wonderful
awfulness of it
never touching back
i'd fall asleep, tangled
in the crackling fire
of her hair

Adam's Ribs

Every Thursday our main street closes to cars and fills with feet for Farmer's Market. Last Thursday M and I braved the cold (note: California cold defined as any temp under 60 as opposed to when I lived in the Midwest and anything above freezing was barefoot weather) to pick up strawberries and enjoy a bite of Chinese food (aka chicken-on-a-stick) and people watching.

On our way between an Anybody But Bush booth and a Republican registration table we passed The Old-Guy-Carrying-The-Sign, warning us all of our hellish demise lest we stop sinning. Costumed Mardi Gras Krewes on stilts handed out parade flyers at an intersection between Aids Support Network and a group of ProLifers. That's always the way it is at Farmer's Market--atheists make room for Christians who make room for PFLAG who make room for Animal Services who make room for veterans who make room for Mothers for Peace who make room for...well, you get the idea. Our Farmer's Market is a shining example of the first amendment. They don't agree with each other's views, but they believe in their neighbor's right to express that belief.

By the time we reached Chorro Street, I was smelling barbeque and getting hungry, but just then I spotted the leather-jacketed dog and his owner, who was obviously trying to imitate his four-legged friend's fashion sense. I yanked on M's sleeve, who just smiled and went along with the crazy girl who talks to strangers.

"Hey, can I take a picture of your cool dog?"

He smiled. "Sure. My name's Adam. This is Lego. C'mon, boy, sit pretty for the lady." Lego preferred to smell M's hand, so Lego's daddy pulled him into his lap.

I snapped a picture, forgetting the flash was on, which sucked the last bit of juice out of the battery so I'm stuck with the red-eye version. "Thanks," I said.

"No problem. Hey, you don't happen to need any yardwork, fences fixed, that sort of thing."

"Sorry. We're do-it-yourselfers."

"That's cool. Enjoy your night. If you happen to have ribs and want to share your bones, we'd sure take 'em."

I patted Lego on the head and smiled before we ambled off and got in line at Golden China. M ordered chicken on a stick for us, and two orders of ribs, which he walked over to Lego and his daddy while I grabbed napkins and chopsticks. M's actions surprised me a bit, not because he's stingy, but because he doesn't usually donate to homeless people.

As we sat on the curb eating our food, I asked him why he'd done it.

"Because he asked for work instead of money.":

Huh. So, M, you got any fences that need fixing? Because it's Thursday, and I've got a  hankering for  one of these--->

Places to Look for a Mother

That's me in my father's arms, the fifth daughter of a country preacher and his lovely young wife. When I look at my mother in this photograph, I can't help but wonder what she's thinking. Does she know that her belly will swell three more times before she's done, that one of those babies will never take a breath, and that loss will change her more than all the live ones did? And why did she choose a red necklace that day? What is she trying to say?

One of my favorite reads last year was a book titled Places to Look for a Mother by Nicole Stansbury. It's a coming of age story narrated by the daughter of a narcissistic mother. I liked the book and loved the title. It got me to thinking about the places I'd look for my mother:

On the back steps, hugging a coffee mug with soggy bits of donut floating in it.

On the sofa, where she lay on Sunday afternoons until the pattern of the fabric left its design on her cheek.

On a ladder, washing windows, her flowered housedress inflated with an April breeze. If you stand next to the ladder you'll see bulging varicose veins, the kind you can follow like Braille with your eyes closed. Keep them closed. Her skin is so soft and it smells like warm oatmeal.

In the hospital, down shiny-floored corridors where they don't allow small children, so you wave to her from the parking lot when she comes to the window. She looks so small and sad from down here. I wonder if she thought the same thing about us?

In the back pew, handing out peppermints, shushing us, pinching our arms if we got too noisy. If you sit next to her, you can play with her hands, slide her wedding ring round and round her finger, smell the White Shoulders on her wrist, pull the skin up and let it stay there until it floats back down over her bones.

In the center of laughter. Hers always stood out, loud and full, the kind that pushed fat tears out of the corner of her eyes she'd wipe with the dish towel.

In the notes of a song. My God is Real. Holy, Holy, Holy. The Old Rugged Cross. How Great Though Art. And that terribly sad song about two little orphans that her mother used to sing to her.

On a lawn chair, slathered in Coppertone. There's a little bottle of Benedryl in the kitchen in case she gets stung by a bee, in which case she could die, but her tan was worth the risk I guess.

At the dining room table, studying, after she went back to college. After she'd the surgery to fix her back. Before she realized she didn't want to be a preacher's wife anymore.

In her car, after she was raped, before she drove home and took a shower, blaming herself, believing God was punishing her.

Under her car, when it rolled backwards and knocked her over, with a bucket of KFC in her hand, where she lay until the neighbor's headlights shone one her and he called an ambulance.

On her hind end, backing up the stairs to see the second story room I remodeled in spite of the cast on her leg.

On the porch, surrounded by wicker furniture, reading the paper, pretending she doesn't have bone cancer.

In the chair before she died, after the nurse came and said she'd whispered my name. I sang Amazing Grace, lightly stroked her swollen belly, and watched as her lips moved along with the familiar words even though she could no longer speak.

In the yarn of the afghan that sits on the chair that she sat in, the one she crocheted with those hands that washed windows, held seven live babies and one dead one, wrote poems, made a gazillion meals, and wiped away both kinds of tears.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think I know why she chose those read beads. I think she's trying to say she is more than her womb, more than a preacher's wife, more than a faded housedress. And she was.

Chasing the Sun

It's February in California. A few days ago my plum tree gave birth to tiny white blossoms like the ones above, heralding the coming of Spring. When I walked to the store the other day I felt myself unfold under rays of sun that were warmer than just a few days earlier. Like a canary who has survived another winter in the mine, I sensed a change in the texture of the air, felt it lift me as if I were cupped in the arms of an unseen airstream. My pupils shrunk, my lungs expanded, and my pace quickened.

This is what I've been waiting for-- biding my time behind closed curtains, beneath a down comforter, inside a layer of skin stretched over sad bones.  Though the date may change, the signposts are always the same: longer days, warmer nights, and tiny white flowers with pink centers whispering to the first butterflies. Here, over here...

It won't be long before my toes find their way back to flip flops and my body to a blanket by the ocean, face tilted toward the sun as the waves reach for the sand. Oh joy. Oh rapture. Oh yeah.

Phearts and Phlowers

Thirty-five years ago I sat at my desk, staring at the lopsided lunch sack hanging on the back wall of our classroom. I measured it against others, lined up in order by our last names. Mine fell short. Way short. My bag--which I had colored with four broken crayons found in the bottom of my desk--looked like Cinderella's apron between two beautiful stepsister gowns. On the right, Connie's white bag bore a perfectly-shaped red lace heart in the center and curly ribbons that dangled from the opening. On the other side of my pathetic sack, Suzie's bag was covered in candy hearts that had been carefully glued to its surface (except for the places where I'd picked a few off when nobody was looking). My bag drooped sadly between those well- fed mailboxes--both bulging with hand-written Valentines from every single fourth grader in the room. Probably a few fifth graders as well.

Connie and Suzie were popular, not just because they were cute. They gave out fancy store-bought valentines rather than homemade ones. Both of them had every Barbie made, took ballet and tap together, and owned their own roller skates with pink puff-balls on the toes. They wore bows in their perfectly coiffed hair, went to the same church, lived on the right side of the highway--the one that cut our tiny town in economical halves. Or haves, in this case, as in they had sidewalks and wall-to-wall carpet whereas we had linoleum floors and gravel driveways.

Oh how I envied my alphabetical neighbors! I wanted to look like them, be as popular, have as many dolls, be chosen for couple's skate at Nick's Skaterina on Saturday afternoon instead of scrubbing a nine-body ring from our claw foot tub. While they skated to organ music under colored lights, I pushed a phosphorous pile of Comet Cleanser around the bottom of our cast iron boat and dreamed of tumbling in the Olympics, dancing on pointe in pink-ribboned silk shoes, sailing across glistening ice wearing a sparkly leotard that shuddered with every turn. Beautiful, graceful, loved.

Later that Spring, Connie and Suzie performed a ballet and tumbling act on blue mats at a mother-daughter banquet. In the midst of their final double somersault, the unthinkable happened. Suzie farted. Loud. When they took they're bows, Suzie's face was as red as the ribbons tied to her pigtails. My whole body shook with pleasure as any ten-year-old pixie-faced girl's would.

Then it was my turn. I walked up to the microphone and read a poem I'd written about mothers and daughters. People laughed in all the right places. I didn't fart. And when I looked up from my wrinkled paper, the moms were all crying. It was in that moment I first realized my body was more than its bones and skin. There was power in my words. More power than what I knew to do with at the time, but I owned it, I knew that.

It took a while to stop wanting a closet full of Barbies. Even longer to stop wanting to look like Barbie. But through my words, I could be a ballerina, an Olympic skater, a black blues singer, or even a pretty little girl who farts in front of an audience of her laughing peers, knowing the whole school will replay that story over and over on the playground for weeks to come. And just when she thinks it's neatly tucked away, like the Easy-Bake oven she only played with once before storing it in the back of her closet, one of those kids will reach into the darkness, polish it off, and tell it again thirty-five years later.

Hurricane Child

I don't  usually use this space to wax gushing flattery on my musical interests, but as I opened my laptop this morning, lori b ripped the white dress frm my muse and kicked her off the bed. She's sitting there barefoot, smiling at me from behind a mane of wild red hair, leapard bra straps showing through torn white cotten, head resting on freckled knees.

I found her CD at a garage sale last summer and it soon became one of my most-played albums. With lyrics like this, you may understand why:

Welcome To My Planet

Just because I smile at you today
Doesn't mean I want to blow you
And just because I say hello
Doesn't mean I want to take you home

There's so many hungry people...

Millions of bodies circle the sun
And earth has become
Such a dangerous one
Alien life forms
Look down from above
They're wondering when we will
Learn how to love

Just because I wear a dress today
Doesn't mean I want to sit on your face
And just because I let my breasts fly free
Doesn't mean I want you to ogle me

There's so many hungry people...

I giggle every time it plays. And this song, from the album title, feels like my own (even though I was born in March):

Hurricane Child

Born on the tailwinds of a hurricane
They say I began in an October rain
And my mama she swore
That them winds made me wild
The storm quickened the blood of her Hurricane Child

These lyrics--from the song Body Mine--make me cry:

I'm a veteran of this endless
Siege against myself
Don't know how this war got started
I just fought like hell

Sweet vessel, bodyMine
Won't you be my home?
We've been separated too long

The melodies are as lyrical and haunting as her prose. Do yourself a big favor and order this CD. You'll thank me later.  Okay, okay, Lori. You win.

Let's dance...

(Lyrics published with permission from lori b, who writes: i adore stories about people receiving my music in unusual ways. The music ALWAYS finds its mark though the path may be unpredictable. YES, of course, please quote, i'm honored, indeed. My NEW baby, SHADOWS OF LOVE, will be finished and ready to fly at the end of february.)

Bursting the Bubble

After a full day showing her art at a prestigious Denver gallery, my friend B returned to her hotel room and slipped out of her black dress--stopping by the bathroom to relieve herself before ordering Chinese take-out. Although unable to conceive after years of trying, she and her husband had never completely given up on the idea of a family, so she was always a little disappointed to discover another period showing up right on time. But as she reached for the handle on the toilet, B noticed a tiny, perfectly-formed fetus in the bottom of the bowl. Unaware that she'd been pregnant, she collapsed on the bed in grief over having miscarried this little pink life inside of her that was now gone forever. B sobbed for an hour or more, imagining the life of this child, what might have been, and for the loss of that potential life. Eventually she fell asleep, only to wake with a start as she remembered throwing a wad of gum into the toilet just before leaving for the gallery earlier that morning.

Sometimes when I listen to a certain song or look through old photographs, I am overcome with a sense of loss. What if I'd hung on to that relationship, raised that child differently, gone back to school, taken another path...the list goes on and on. But then I remind myself of B's gumball baby, and how easy it is for my thoughts to take on a life of their own, giving my power over to inflated memories. Why blow my wad on short-lived moments of the past? I've decided I'd rather put in another penny, turn the crank, and chew on this moment right here.

California Dreaming

The plane hadn’t even touched down, yet as I pressed my face against the smeared Plexiglas, I saw red-roofed buildings tucked between oak-spotted hills and it felt familiar.  Like home.

Seven years ago I stood on the airport balcony and watched the America West crew open the airplane hatch where our most precious belongings were cradled in its belly.  The dark hole gave birth to suitcases, golf clubs, a guitar, and finally, mismatched bags containing the things we most could not live without.  Because the moving truck from Michigan wouldn’t arrive for another ten days, I had chosen carefully-- every centimeter of space was filled to the limit with necessity.

J amused himself by placing toys on the luggage carousel then grabbing them off as they came around full circle while I loaded our things into a rental car.  He seemed unfazed by the fact that we had just stepped out onto the tarmac over a new land. When we finally pulled up in front of our home on Meadow Street, I sighed as if I’d been holding that breath for thirty-eight years. 

On that first morning, J and I dropped our bags at the house and shed the rental car for a walk downtown to greet our new city.  We popped in and out of cafes’, bookstores, and shops with names like Umboko and Amnesia.  We sucked down a latte’ and a hot chocolate at Linnaea’s Cafe, a place that would soon become my second home.  We shed our socks and shoes, then hopped from rock to sun-warmed rock across the creek in Mission Plaza while a folk singer crooned on the deck overhead.  Meanwhile my friends back in Michigan were still praying for their tulip bulbs not to freeze.

Eventually we wandered back home, and since there was still time, drove to the dreaded DMV.  On the way there, I noticed something interesting.  When stopped at an intersection, other drivers would look over and smile at me.  Of course I smiled back, that’s what I do, but it was all so new to me. It’s not that Michiganders aren’t friendly--most of them are--but they’re too cold to smile all the time and quite frankly, it’s a waste of precious energy.  Energy that could be used for things like wiggling your toes to keep them from falling off.  Michiganders drive with their faces forward, shoulders hunched, their minds on the moment when they can sit inside the house with the furnace on high, a pot of tea brewing, feet cupped in polartec slippers.

When we arrived at the DMV that day, I gave J a book to read while I got in the first of many lines.  Much to my surprise, the people in line were happily chatting with one another to pass the time.  When I reached the counter, the clerk was friendly.  He was polite.  He was, nice.  Within half an hour I had filled out  forms, taken the written test, and had my picture snapped.

As I stepped up to the final window to retrieve my temporary license, I felt something burst wide open deep inside of me.  I liken it to the moment when The Grinch hears all the Whoos in Whooville singing and his heart grows ten times bigger. Only for me, I think it was the moment my core thawed out after living all those years in the North.  I looked at my name on the paper that certified my residence in California and was overcome with joy.  So much joy that I grabbed that clerk’s cheeks in both my hands and planted a big fat kiss on her face.  Holding my papers over my head I turned to the rest of people in the room and announced, “I’m a Californian!”

At which point J calmly walked up, took my hand, and led me out of the building. “It’s a good thing, Mom,” he said.  “There are more crazy people here.  Like you.”

On the way home a purple Volkswagen Bus moseyed up beside us at the last light before Meadow Street.  I looked over at the driver, a middle-aged woman with wild gray hair, and we smiled at each other.  It was then that I suddenly understood the secret code, the knowing smile.  What they’re actually saying is, “We live here.” 

And now I do, too.  If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you my driver’s license. The one with the picture where I look like I could hold a sled full of gifts high over my head.

(Photo courtesy of B--see more of his beautiful photos Here.)