The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch [39]
There is only one other time in my life that I have experienced the delirium I entered during those weeks. Because there are times when a soul has to leave a body, times that are not death. Some people know this like a hymn. I knew she - my body - was still there, but I left her lifeless in the arms of a father.
I went into a white. Inside the white, there were sunflowers. And lapis colored glass. And deep aqua pools. There were beautiful rocks everywhere - but you had to find them. Small and exquisite journeys that took all day. Like in a very good dream. Inside the white too there were stories. As if written on the walls or floors or sky of the white. The words. You could see them. Reach out and touch them. Just like the rocks. You could pick up the rocks or words and carry them. Sometimes the wordrocks sang. After a while I believed in them more than my own life. I thought, it would be possible, even beautiful, to die.
But even girls whose strength has abandoned them are made to come back. And so I began to eat again. Taking the fork or spoon from my father’s hand. I began to get up out of my bed and walk - wondering, is this what my mother felt like after all those months as a girl in a body cast, finally touching the floor and moving her legs, breathing in something called will? And mercifully. I again entered the water. To swim. Away from my father’s house, every day I swam a tiny piece of self returned. And the strength of … the strength of a girl.
Everything about him was in his hands.
A Burning
WHEN I WAS 13 I CONFESSED MY FATHER SECRETS IN the black box of catholic to another father in the house of our father who told me I should not tell lies.
Honor thy father.
Say seven Hail Marys.
It’s wicked to make up stories.
For three days and three nights I prayed to the thing called god so hard I choked on the spit in my mouth. I clenched my hands until they went red. I dug my fingernails into flesh so hard little scarlet moons appeared. I shut my eyes so tight I thought my forehead would bleed. My head, my heart, everything on the inside was burning.
No matter how many times I entered the cool waters of the pool, I left the wet with a fire in me.
Mercy did not come from god the father. Mercy came from a book. That was the year I read Saint Joan of Arc by Vita Sackville-West. My sister gave me the book when she left our father’s house.
At 13, I found most of the book terrifying. And I had to skip many words and pages that I did not understand. But I already knew who Joan of Arc was, because my sister had explained it to me. Girl woman with a war in her. Voice of a father in her head. And so I knew if I kept reading I would come to her burning. I didn’t want to and I couldn’t not.
Joan of Arc’s burning scene is on page 341. Instead of a crown of thorns they placed a tall paper cap on her head. She did not die until the fire reached her head. People saw all kinds of things - one person saw a dove leaving her skull. Despite the oil, sulphur and fuel used, her entrails and heart would not go to ash. The executioner had to throw them in the Seine.
I could see her. How it looked. How it smelled. How her hair went to flame. How the bone form of her skull appeared, until her jaw and teeth shown, a terrible smile or a scream, before she burned to crap.
I’m 13 reading that. Honor thy father. It is wicked to make up stories.
I’m the rest of my life a burning girl.
That image of Joan of Arc burning up in a fire burned inside me like a new religion. Her face skyward. Her faith muscled up like a holy war. And always the voice of a father in her head. Like me. Jesus. What is a thin man pinned to wood next to the image of a burning woman warrior ablaze? I took the image of a burning woman into my heart and left belief to the house of father forever.
I didn’t hate the fire. I hated the people who did not believe her. And I hated the father that let her burn.