Every Womb with a View
Every Womb with a View
Once upon a time, my dad had a truck–an ugly truck. I didn’t like it when he took me to school in it. The body was painted more than one shade of blue. This unfortunate fact didn’t do much but further illuminate the rust that gnawed on its edges. A horn, attached to the top, looked like it was meant for the Jolly Green Giant’s bike. It whined in squawks, like the nose of a clown. The only time I sort of liked the truck was when we drove on Route 10. On the way home from my mamaw’s, my dad would whichever sibling sat in the middle control the clutch. If my sisters and I, crammed as potted meat in the front seat, asked nicely, our dad would drive real fast. If you think 100 mph is fast. It is, if you are a girl in middle school who could hardly run the mile, who had only driven go-karts in Pigeon Forge during our week-long family vacations. Outside the windows, the world at such a speed began to reveal its strokes, like some greater hand had something to do with it. If green goes fast enough, it goes back to blue. The way the creeks here do.
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Sometimes, my sister Kerrigan sat there in there with me. It was easier that way. For mom, for everyone. Realistically, for us, it was more fun. Shampoo bottles masqueraded as dolls. A wash rag became a hat, an ascot, a seashell bralette. We liked to lay on our stomachs in the bathtub and kick off the side, see how high we could crest the water, matching in our laughter and bowlcuts. After such tomfoolery and tile-soaking, mom would dry us off while she sang our favorite. You’ll never know dear, how much I love you. When near water, there comes an ease, a rhythm, a reason to sing. My mom chose to sing hymns while she fixed her hair. I listened to a distorted version from where I lay in the tub with waterlogged ears. Though inanimate, many things still possess faces. The burls of trees. Purpled-cheeked orchids. The bathroom ceiling. There were many faces there. I liked to find the ones that were kissing.
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I would say that is how my first baptism felt. Like a kiss. Like a backwards one, at least. I had wanted a creek baptism, but you can’t really time the emotion of these things. I did not have to go down alone. My friend Makayla, two years younger, put on the silk robe with me in the supply closet next to the pulpit. I wore nothing save for my panties, still vibrant despite memory: frilled pink, rainbow polka dots. Or perhaps, this detail is the clearest because after I came out of the water, all was on display: my dumb twelve-year-old boobs, the gut that papaw said a girl shouldn’t have, and those panties, which should have been a sight for only me. I realized then that there might have been a reason why Makayla had chosen to keep her church clothes beneath the robe. The world after baptism is cold and bright, with impish green carpets. That was before the church had all the work done. A woman stood at the edge of the pool, with a towel opened wide to swaddle me, as if she were my mother. I wish she had been my mother.
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It is possible I did not receive a creek baptism because of atrocities I committed in smaller streams. When I attended a Freewill Baptist church up Striker, I’d have to wait at the bottom of my driveway for a church van to whisk me away, alongside other kids whose parents could’ve cared less, as long as they were in church and stayed in it. The guy who drove the van was named Ronnie. He could drive with his elbows, and I would tell him about how I didn’t like being called fat by my family. Ronnie told me he could relate and about his day job loading vending machines. Before the service began, we played games in the parking lot like red-rover, basketball, or wall-ball. You throw a ball against the side of the church, someone catches it. When there was no ball, we played in the ditch behind the church, searching for frogs but usually only finding swarms of tadpoles in shallow water. This is where I was awful. This is where I would squeeze tadpoles between my fingers; where I bred so many small deaths.
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Like the companies. You know the ones. Who moved in, enjoyed the resources that West Virginia offered, who high-tailed it out of here and left the run-off in water. I used to swim in it–up Decker’s Creek. At twenty something, I had way more gut. I’d skimp around happily, letting it all hang out, take a few steps back before leaping over the edge. You had to jump in a certain spot to avoid injury or death. Atop the creek water floated these sherbet clouds, the color of the push pops my mom would pick up for us from Speedway. I paid no mind to these patches of curdling, instead, swam alongside my friends but never too close to it. The next morning, I woke up with noticeably soft skin, like grazing one’s hand along dinner rolls or velvet. When I mentioned this to my coworker, she said oh, you were swimming in the mine run-off. My skin had never been so soft.
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The creek has this way of moving me. Once, it made me shit myself. I must have been six or below, give or take. I think we were looking for crawdads. Crayfish. My uncle’s first wife held my hand to keep me from falling on the stones rubbed raw by the water. I liked being in the creek, liked the way minnows swam close but ultimately away in brief shimmering. Liked too the sounds: rushing but sometimes gurgling. Like a stomach. And as one does, I felt that warmth inside my own. And my feet felt fifty degrees too cold. Luckily, my uncle’s wife was a mother. And she hosed me off in the shower, only filled the tub up halfway with warm water, and washed me only with VO5 shampoo. I liked taking baths at my mamaw’s house because she had a plastic sliding door on her tub. When shut, the world appeared iridescent and distorted. Became shrouded in steam and mystery. I came to prefer things this way; I came to prefer water as the lens through which I saw everything.
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I am far from those creeks now. Or criks, however you want to pronounce it. I do not mind the primadonna of mountain speech, the intrusive r that butts its head into everything. Like when my mom says I’m gonna warsh up those dishes or it’s time to warsh some laundry. Or when walking along the creekline you stumble upon something that shouldn’t be; look what warshed up. Yes, indeed. Beyond seeing those creeks, their ambling and muddy, I can taste them. Metallic like the split of a finger tip. A soft grit to the tongue like dogging a plate of wet dirt. Let me confess something to you, when I swallowed too much, it tasted just fine, though I know my body would say otherwise. But I was lucky. I had a mother who did not sing of moderation. She sang of trees who needed to stay planted by the water.
First published in Cordella Magazine
