“I’ve been in the world three weeks and a half, I still never know what’s going to hurt.”
I don’t see many people crying out loud in public spaces and it sort of stresses me out. It means they are looking at me some kind of way as I let big silent ocean drops fall..
.. here in line at the bagel shop (where I started this sentence one week ago),
.. and here in the theatre lobby (where I re-read it on Saturday),
.. and here counter-side at a downtown haunt (where I yesterday attempted to sculpt my ease of public vulnerability into even one finished sentence),
.. and there, once in a lobby on the brink of whatever we’re calling that place where arrival greets departure,
.. and there, once in a chapel across the globe,
& here, today, off + on in coffee shops and school libraries as I finish stitching this together.
You’d think I’d be used to it by now.
I first found Room in the wet dark of New Orleans winter, a season I came to know too well and inside out.
Swamps are 100% humidity 100% of the time, and I learned this sleeping with a chef from work in his sub-zero apartment beneath nearly damp blankets my first December in the city. The chef had a walnut tree in the backyard nearly 100 years old and shells fell by the thousands to greet the fall. I liked lounging in the backyard; nighttimes were mediocre, and he was a passing phase in real-time.
I biked daily to work, a routine I miss and regularly write on my long list of ‘lovely days,’ books weighing down the totes that weighed down the handlebars beneath my own weight — of body, of time, of promise. Somewhere in there, I flipped through the pages of Donogue’s work before returning it to a bookshelf, unpurchased.
That was before. This is after.
“The world is always changing brightness and hotness and soundness, I never know how it's going to be the next minute.”
Polarities produce irreconcilable contradictions that necessitate agitation: man/woman, beginnings/endings, north/south — hinges upon which delineation rests. The electric boundaries of their edges intrigue the child in me; I like to see how close two things can get until bam! A demand for some third thing! A word, a sound, a surge inside, but a specific, exact shade of awareness. A tone comprised of two whole elements colliding, duplicating completeness.
Brazilian artist Lygia Clark’s markings untied some language in ‘54. In her investigations of the canvas, the canvas edge, the frame, the wall, there appeared a line — found, not made, through composition. This undrawn and contingent space was dependent and ephemeral and recurring, “the organic line.” The scholar Irene V. Small suggests this is a conversation of thickness, degrees, and not edge.
“I thought humans were or weren't, I didn't know someone could be a bit human. Then what are his other bits?”
My driving teacher was a short German woman whose name I’ve forgotten because I don’t choose to remember those kinds of details.
Indeed, I recall very little about her besides a thick accent and dark wavy hair, and circular spectacles that never seemed to need adjusting, and her aged, veiny hands on her thighs, unflinching; she was very particular about shoes, that I remember. She would make students (me) change from sandals as they were not appropriate footwear for the car despite the lazy heat of May in Virginia. I often wondered if she kept a pair of driving shoes like I’d read characters would do with gloves.
I was homeschooled then, private driving lessons a luxurious chore. My sessions were with unremarkable kids my age who had failed the course at school or who, like me, were avoiding taking it in the summer. I practiced on Saturdays with my father as my mother is too skittish a passenger. (Once while living in Mexico with her first husband, after a day of sunning and swimming, they drove back home over a steep mountain. She fell asleep in the passenger seat, and he fell asleep at the wheel. She awoke to them falling off the edge, and they were only caught by a tree, its branches like arms spread wide to cradle their fall. Needless to say, the memory stuck with her, and she struggled to trust the driving capabilities of others.)
I think of this woman once, annually. Like the image that pops each morning into my mind as I’m brushing my teeth, or how I remember that I owe Nancy Shaver an email each morning at the first stoplight after dropping sweet Pea — distinct instances of awareness, recurring, fleeting. I don’t have habits, but I have rituals, and in January every year since 2015, I think of my driving teacher, just as I did that January morning in 2015, arriving at the hotel in house shoes and half-work clothed, random tote bags haphazardly packed, when it occurred to me that I hadn’t worn appropriate driving shoes.
It’s hard to know how to dress for escape; Barbie never came with that outfit.
The valet opened my door with formality, and if concerned by my appearance, he didn’t let on. The silly luggage cart with one wobbly wheel inched ever closer to the curb as he loaded my belongings. I hadn’t packed much but clothes for the next day and a few loved toys, but I had been sure to grab her favorite blanket and a two-pocket folder containing our important documents that I had tucked in a drawer after her birth, steadily filling with the evidence of rearing. Nearly everything else lived in the car, piling up the hatchback over months of silent, secret runs to Target.
It was rather natural, really. Unnoticeable to the untrained eye, thank god. A thousand infinitesimal steps, and in the end, the more interesting question than “why didn’t you leave?” is, and how might you never return?
I gently pulled the handle, easing open the backseat door, and watched as the neon lights cut a streak of red across her pouty lips. New Orleans is humid every day of the year, and on this winter night the wet, cold air shocked my bones and froze the tears pooling under my chin. I’d prepared for fallout since I first learned of the life growing beneath my heart, since I began unconsciously storing dish towels and new bedding beneath the bed and stocking up on courage.
It was happening; I’d been present for, if not the architect of, this reality, and yet, I had no memory of its construction. Like arriving home on autopilot, or doing that thing that makes them finish fast so you can get back to your thought or self or distraction.
Is that what they mean by the time had come?
Does time get here or do we arrive at it?
What’s the temperature between deciding to and did?
I was sure the bellhops and concierge were embarrassed for me. I excused myself — well trained to shrink. ‘I’m moving out of my house,’ I mumbled feebly, shaking my head, shuffling the pieces in my brain, assembling new strings of thought. ‘My lease starts in two days.’ I made jokes about Anna Mae, I hoped they got the punchline, I begged myself Tina’s tomorrow. ‘My father arrives tomorrow. The concierge handed me a small card. Please enjoy a complimentary breakfast. He knew. Opening a cabinet from beneath the concierge stand, the hotel agent flipped the tab on a cold can of beer and passed it my way. (He most certainly knew.)
Nothing seemed to fit anymore but the truth; I needed to get clean.
The baby sat on the floor of the shower and even then I knew the precious blessing of secret shower tears. I wasn’t sad. A t f u c k i n g a l l — my self-conceived and self-attained prayers answered. I wasn’t hurting (I can say now), I was exhausted (that was clear).
I think marathoners must weep in the car ride home.
Priests must collapse once the congregation clears.
I know actors burrow after the last curtain call.
I bawled the instant Pearl hit my chest. I overflowed with sheer enormity of feeling — my whole insides a cavern! I had never known my immensity until her breath! My god, the possibility! I was a fugitive before I escaped, for I spoke only, however secretly (sis, I truly oozed), of my planned elopement. Once done, potential shifted: no more wonder, just the simplicity of being with self in the awaited new.
We have no home.
We are on our own.
It’s just us.
Words practiced a thousand times. Words tickling my breath. Words I planted, yearning to reap. Words until then, unspoken.
I sat in the small purple room on a fluffy bed gazing out the window into the night. Bright city lights glowed white and blue and green along the horizon, and it seemed like a dream — neither bad nor beautiful, simply blurred around the edges and filmy on top, even in its midst.
I don’t know.
The entire world is perfect. The entire world is a delightful masterpiece of synchronicity. The entire world is a choreographed dance until the moment an ankle turns, or a clock falters. Everything is divine until the instant it is not. This ordinary thought passes in and out each time the world stops. Like the pause in a baby’s breath — the held instant when before they pull in deeply and your gasp fills your dry lungs. The world goes forward like this, catching air, taking flight, staging getaways, and breathing it again.
“When I was four I didn't know about the world, or I thought it was only stories. Then Ma told me about it for real and I thought I knowed everything. But now I'm in the world all the time, I actually don't know much, I'm always confused.”
I do not know when a moment begins or ends, or a love, or a night, or a work, or a body, or a hope, or what distinguishes private from public, and I am not wallowed by this; I seek only to build my own glossary.
My favorite shape is the wind.
My favorite direction is around.
My favorite flavor is the tang where arrivals and departures collide, where they are one thing, a third name, a particular scent, a shade of feeling entirely their own. maybe this is what we call epiphany: thunderbolts of duality searing time, welding a kiss of before and after — the ultimate paradox.
& so I cry in line at grocery stores because there are no boxes and no truths and no separation between I & I & you & them and the fleeting nature of it all demands a buoyant, resounding yes because the alternative is violence untold.
I am saying: there are escapes forthcoming and vanishings abound, and our tomorrows promise flight, but each moment bears forward a before and after, so it’s always now, always here.
Remember — help is available. National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7. Speak with someone today at 800-799-7233 or text START to 88788.
I've been saving this one until I had a moment to really read it and it was worth the wait. I'm a fellow big fan of crying in public. I'll be mulling over "how might you never return" for a long time. Thank you for sharing. ♡