Anchor

A fog fell over Alabama on a dirty Sunday morning. 

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    It was bound to happen. Its oppressive gray permeates my thoughts, the trees around my home, and slips under a crack in my door. Time itself chokes on the smog, the way humanity twists and turns trying to accommodate for all of its burdens- natural and man-made. An eldritch. An abomination. 

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    It gave someone I love a headache. I imagine that the smoke can become solid, like cement, settling in their frontal sinuses and temples and wind ponds, slowly trudging through their system. They squint for the rest of the day, and I wave. The fog doesn’t move- or maybe it does, but it’s so quickly replaced that my eyes can’t process it in time to get it to my brain. The smoke is getting to my brain. 

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    Maui is on fire. I’ve seen the pictures; houses turned to cinder block patches on ash, the blue of the water rushing up on dull, hard land, and the flames. The flames lick just below the earth, like food on an expensive burner. Maui is burning. The world is burning, and I’m writing about the way a fog fell over my home. 

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    Wind Song arrives in yellow, a stinking perfume in an oval-shaped bottle. Along with it comes a baby blue bottle of powder with the watercolor birds and branches and leaves pressed over it. The slogan is what charms me; “I can’t seem to forget you. Your Wind Song stays on my mind.” I remembered it differently -“Though you’re gone, I can’t seem to forget you.”

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    The perfume was a gift. One from my great aunt-one that I loved, even though it smelled like a headache. I thought it smelled like love.It smelled like flowering femininity, full of grace, elegance, class. Gentleness, intelligence, pure and devious. Ever heard the term "Yamato Nadeshiko?” It means “Ideal woman." Yamato Nadeshiko scent, with hints of discomfort and fear. It smelled the way my great aunt felt - cultured and tasteful. Everything that I was not, bottled up for my convenience. 

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     I smelled like a bleach factory when I walked into my first formal. It was on my wrists, behind my ears, against my neck and deep in the lace on my back. The dress was maroon, and the scars on my legs were delicately covered by black pantyhose. 

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    You girls are all dolled up, my friend’s grandfather said. Camila Cabello’s voice blasted from the car’s speakers, talking about the half of her heart she left in Havana. I pulled Wind Song from my bag, dark and sparkly and covered in sequins, and spritzed again.  “Now, if any boys try and mess with you, don’t let ‘em, alright?” So simple. Keeping boys from “messing with you” isn’t that simple- it’s seldom those boys take no for an answer, and it’s seldom that the blame is placed on them- the burden was placed on us, so we must have just let them. That’s what I nicknamed my perfume: boy-repellent. 

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    The night ran away in a whirl of floral dresses, sparkling soda and less-than-sparkling conversation. I spent a half-hour in the washroom rubbing my red feet back to brown, cursing the broken kitten heel on the waste basket. We cut through the night like savage animals, flashes of blue and red and purple skirts, shoes in our hands, dancing under the moon. Beauty. 

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 An old picture. My braces peek through the lip-liner I smeared all over my mouth. Gray eyeshadow over amateur eyeliner. A long strand of fluffy, flat hair falls in front of my eye. I remember laughing, telling everyone what I was going for with my look. “Goth Jessica Rabbit,” I said, later revising it into “Goth, ugly, Jessica Rabbit.

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Nursery rhymes are surprisingly macabre.

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    It’s an iceberg. There are ones that are easy to find and know, like Ring-Around-The-Rosey being a timeline of the Bubonic Plague and They never said Humpty Dumpty was an egg (he wasn’t. He was a cannon, atop a wall. It fell over the side, and all the king’s horses and all the king's men couldn’t hoist Humpty up the wall again.) Mary Mary, Quite Contrary- Bloody Mary Tudor, english torture methods, The Maiden.  Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater killed his wife. Georgie Porgie was killed in a bar fight.

I used to get down on my knees and pray when I felt anxious. Time would creep up on me, how I had spent my day and how I would spend my life.. I prayed, and it helped at first; until I remembered what I was so afraid of. Aging. Dying. Hell.  I was not good enough by my standards, and would never be good enough by His.

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    But hell, hell was only the half of it. I’ve heard it said that hell is other people, and not at all do I disagree with this sentiment. But hell is broader. Hell is living- hell, heaven, and everything in-between is living just to die. It’s futile, all will rot within a box when all is said and done.

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    I was only seven, maybe eight, when I heard the eerie flute notes that opened The Hearse Song. It wasn’t either of the cult classics- Rusty Cage and Harley Poe were not involved. I didn’t know any Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Just the song, in it’s first from- a nursery rhyme.  I stopped thinking about the hidden meanings, I stopped singing the songs. I cut the hearse song off like a split end, hoping I would never hear it again. 

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    The modern versions are weird and entertaining. The lines change. We challenge death by describing it in gratuitous detail. I feel proud to know the truth; It began in the nursery. This is how you warded a child off of mocking the dead. 

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The Old Grey Hearse goes rolling by,
You don't know whether to laugh or cry;
For you know some day it'll get you too,
And the hearse's next load may consist of—you.

They'll take you out and they'll lower you down,
While men with shovels stand all a-round;
They'll throw in dirt and they'll throw in rocks,
And they won't give a dam-m-n if they break the box.

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The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out,
They crawl all over your chin and mouth.
They invite their friends and their friends' friends too,
And you look like hell when they're—through—with you.

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Cage’s rendition of the song includes the soul of the decaying body burning in hell, as though heaven is not an option- something that would’ve given my young mind an aneurysm. The flames rise up, to drag you down, he sings, voice husky, almost as though he understands, into the fire where you will drown. Poe’s rendition ends in eccentricity, musing in a voice that ebbs and flows in cracks, bubbly and sliding over the words he sings. Cage asks if anyone will truly care if you die. Poe responds- and that is the end of a perfect day.  Through every era, only one line persists. The worms crawl in, and the worms crawl out. 

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    Before bathing,  I used to make sure I was more cold than usual. I run cool, constantly bundling up in blankets and sweaters and warm water all through the seasons. But I wouldn’t allow myself to touch the water, even to check that it was at a comfortable temperature, as it filled the tub. Those days, I would deprive myself of that comfort so I could appreciate it when I had it. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. And those days, the water was always scalding.

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    Warmth is a natural comfort, as is water. A need. But water is, in the same way, a sanctuary. Humans are naturally attracted to all that glimmers because of an intrinsic code to search for shining rivers full of clear, drinkable water. Water is not a renewable resource. Water, as we want it, is clean and cleansing. It washes through the filth that pollutes you, body and soul. A stubborn spot of grime on your calf, the memory of a person you couldn't save in the end- we wash it out. Water shines white in the sun. 

    Steam pours into the room as m y body reverts back to its purest, simplest form. My hair tie falls into the water as I force my head up, limbs leaning over the sides. Rips and scabs run along my arms and legs, and sting as they’re exposed to the water.  I am a force of light and love in the water. I am home, and I am free. 

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    People too can be a sanctuary to other people. I remember seeing you dance along a calm shoreline as the waves called your name. The water washes away your footprints from the sand, but not from our hearts. We watched as Venus burned from afar, and I leaned my head upon your shoulder. You are a sanctuary to me- and I only hope I can be a sanctuary to you. 

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    I use your shower when I stay at your house. There’s no real difference between showers- the water is just as warm, the floor just as slippery, the soap just as clean. But, in principle, on an emotional plane, it makes all the difference. You make a point to set aside a towel for me,  to show me your soaps, to offer me a spare toothbrush when I’m scatterbrained enough to forget my own. You say my drenched hair is pretty when I fight with it in front of you. Your shower curtain has constellations on it. 

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You are kind enough to share your sanctuary with me. 
I’d let you into mine anytime. 

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It’s smooth, rich, serious. It coats the throat with it’s warmth and taste and smell, and burns its way through the gullet. 

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    I’ll always remember the first time I drank coffee. Not just a thimbleful to prove that I would hate in anyways, or a second sip to prove the first point wrong, but my own cup. I was on a trip with my church choir, dressed in a shapeless,white box of a dress - perfect. I drank a warm cup of  creamer on my way to the veteran’s home, barely managing a dose of caffeine through its sweetness.(The veterans shielded their eyes from the sun when we sang. Only once the music came to a close did I realize they were saluting. This choir was the wrong thing to salute.) 

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    I remember long, fall nights spent hunched over the french press on the kitchen floor, fighting sleep for its bitter taste. It was a welcome sort of insomnia- one where I was in control of my surroundings, of the night that filtered in through the window. 

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    Caffeine isn’t hard to come by. It comes in glass bottles, plastic bottles, cans too large and cans too small. Chalk-tasting pills and rich-tasting candy bars, sparkling sodas and flat teas. It’s far too easy to become dependent- become intoxicated. But there’s something elegant about the dark liquid against a white cup, steam rolling out like a furnace. I figured that this is what it meant to be an adult- my insides always dancing and jittering to the beat of my quickened heart.  I wanted to be an adult.

 

    Other forms went down like cough medicine. Sickly sweet imitations of fruit with lingering aftertastes, taking spoonful after spoonful because it was meant to be good for you. Rest is considered of too much value- drain your energy, break your bones, spill your blood. That’s what it means to be an adult.  

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“Be careful, honey. The creamer is-” 
“ I know where the creamer is-” 
“You know where the creamer is. You’ve been doing this for a while now, haven’t you?” 
“Yeah.” 
“Ah-” 
“Since I was eleven, I think.” 
“There’s no need to broadcast to the world that you’ve been drinking coffee since you were eleven.” 

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I have skirts. Short skirts, long skirts, dresses and ones with shorts beneath them. Ones that stay stuck to my thigh and ones that come billowing out. I try them on, sometimes- I try them on when I dance, modeling for myself, singing. I love you. I love me. I love us. I love everybody. Skirts are beautiful, whether draped elegantly over the chair onto which I threw them, or packed tightly against one another in my dresser. But, will I be wearing the skirt, or will it be wearing me? 

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I’ve seen them dance. The fabric flaps and flounces when they twirl, a storm of color and culture. They’re wearing the skirts for sure, their hips and legs move to the rhythm as though they were born to do so. The music is deep in their bones, demanding that they move. Formal, informal, cultural and fun- it’s all dancing. It’s not meant to be, it’s unnatural in movement, it’s painful and exhausting. Beautiful. 

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My legs and arms are covered in scars, and I spill out of my clothing in ways that I shouldn’t, in ways they’ll all hate me for. My feet are too flat to dance, my muscles too tight and broken down. My lips are chapped from biting and twisting and pulling, making them stick up at strange peaks, and my brain fumbles over the steps. I never claimed I was good at being what I am. 
But I love this song. 

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Care to Dance?