The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [38]
I AM EIGHT.
My sister my adoration my sister my awe my sister’s room world of art world of music world of poetry and dried flowers and watercolor covers and long auburn hair.
I AM 10.
Vacationing at Salishan. My father calm, cigarette smoke curling around his head as he gazes out at the Oregon ocean. My mother humming. My sister and I swimming in the pool of a resort, laughing, like other peoples’ children.
I AM 11.
I play clarinet with my friend Brody and we tap our feet three-quarter time our mouths around the instruments our fingers between the struggle of learning and the dance of music our knees our lives nearly touching.
I AM 13.
The family of my friend Christie my best friend my world miraculously take me on their camping trips with them in their big Winnebago at night in the little Winnebago attic where we slept in our sleeping bags I stare at her while she sleeps my skin hot and itching I have to pee I put my hands between my legs like an anxious little monkey I go to sleep I pee my pants hide my PJ’s in one of the stow cupboards in the Winnebago and listen to her parents all day wonder “What smells like fish?” and Christie smiles and we run and play with frogs in the weeds knee-deep in the water of our lives.
I AM 15.
In the women’s locker room after swim practice and skin and wet. Little girls holding in youth in V-shaped torsos. Almost women shaving their legs. The bodies of women and girls safe in a room with heat and steam and let loose hair. My head swimming, swimming. I want to stay. I want to belong to something besides family.
Illness as Metaphor
KISSED A GIRL AND MADE ME CRY.
When I kissed Annie Van Leewan and got mononucleosis I was 11 years old. My skin took on a yellowish pale color and the blue veins in my own hands looked as if I’d colored them with one of my father’s architectural felt tipped markers. I lost 10 pounds the first week and a half. My eyesight became slightly blurry. I had none of my swimmer strength - I remember wondering where it went - why couldn’t I lift my own arms? What had happened to my legs? I could not get out of bed or stand without fainting. I could not eat, or walk, or go to the bathroom, or dress, undress, on my own. I could not bathe. I could not reach water.
My mother at that time was in the prime of her real estate glory. My father at that time had chosen to try his luck as a freelance architect. His office the bedroom next to mine -the room that had been my sister’s. Before she left. In other words, it was my father who was home with me. For four weeks.
I’m trying to think how to tell you how four weeks can be years. It isn’t possible, I know. But it happened. It’s language that’s letting me say that the days elongated, as if the very sun and moon had forsaken me. It’s narrative that makes things open up so I can tell this. It’s the yielding expanse of a white page.
In my sickbed my father removed my sweat soaked clothing. My father redressed me in underwear and pretty nightgowns. My father stroked my hair. Kissed my skin. My father carried me to the bathtub and laid me down and washed me. Everywhere. My father dried me off in his arms and redressed me and carried me back to the bed. His skin the smell of cigarettes and Old Spice cologne. His yellowed fingers. The mountainous callous on his middle finger from all the years of holding a pen or pencil. His steel blue eyes. Twinning mine. The word “Baby.”
Late at night, my mother would come home from selling beautiful homes to other people. She would come into