The Ground and the River
As a child, my mother blamed my failures on my apparent inability to stay aware of the world. “Get your head out of the clouds!” she said over and over, certain that the reason I lost lunch money, forgot to turn out lights, dropped and broke dishes, misplaced homework, or neglected to relay phone messages had nothing to do with being a kid. Rather, these occurrences were the result of my being a particular kind of kid - one without a handle on reality.
At twenty four, over meatloaf and potatoes, we discussed my lack of career options, my unfinished philosophy degree, my unfinished history degree, and my recently failed engagement. I told her it was all ok, that no one really wants to marry a man named Brad anyway and that philosophy majors were pompous. She scowled. “Ellen, you‘re just not grounded. You need to keep yourself in place long enough to finish something.” I thought about her comments when I got home. Then I nailed my feet to the ground.
I decided the bathroom was the best place for my venture, though honestly, I didn’t think about it nearly as much as I should have. After I did it, I threw the hammer out the window. I prepared with one 30lb bag of cat food, a poorly stocked mini fridge that had been abandoned by the previous tenants, and a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude. I thought it best to begin my grounding and finishing things experiment simply, by reading the longest book I owned. Well, it was the longest book Brad had left behind in a milk crate of miscellany: a belt, socks, a box of tiny screw drivers and strawberry hard candies that used to make his break musky and sweet, copies of the sort of books you read to prove your literary prowess to un-literary listeners. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Catcher in the Rye, Slaughterhouse Five, Ender’s Game, and for good measure, The Bell Jar. And stamps. The stamps irritated me. We’d always been racing out at the last minute to drop our bills in drop boxes or wait in long lines, all for perpetual want of stamps that he’d apparently kept all along. I took those with me too, hoping that the letter carrier might pick up my rent checks strewn about the front yard, or that if things got really desperate and I’d done something terrible like drop my phone in the toilet, I could mail a letter to someone asking them for help.
...
Rita is my neighbor. She is a portly woman, intense in her religious devotion, but in a way that feels friendly and reassuring. She is from Arkansas which, coupled with her particular fervency, convinces me that she is Baptist, but then because I am worried about stereotyping I try to think that maybe she is Calvinist, Methodist, whatever those snake charmers are called, but I know that none of these faiths are expansive enough to fit Rita. Six days into my grounding adventure, I have finished the book. I loved it, but I can’t read it again; the ending was too hard. Instead, I have been sitting for three days, and I think I am going crazy because I can’t stop thinking about ants and babies and even my cat won’t come in here. It occurs to me that I did not change the litter box before I grounded myself, nor did I bring it within reach. Suddenly I am sure that Sam the Cat is pissing all over everything I own, having a fantastic territorial party in absence of his waste manager.
I started to pull off the wallpaper, but I can’t reach it all so now the bathroom looks sad and terrorized rather than cheerful but dated. I tried to exercise my legs, but when I move them, the nails push back against my feet and it hurts. The holes look pretty rough and I am studying them, wondering when I had my last tetanus shot, curious if a shiny, new, non-rusty nail can still give you tetanus, when I hear someone downstairs. At first I think I am being robbed, and I think this is ok. I can’t use any of the stuff downstairs anyway. I remember that I think everything is covered in cat pee and decide that no one wants it. Then I hear Rita calling, “Honey? You in here?”
“Yeah, Rita. I’m upstairs.”
“Shit, Honey, you know I hate them damn stairs.” As she is working her way up to the bathroom, she keeps talking, short of breath. “I seen your car ain’t moved for a whole week, an’ I know that man o’ yours done took off. Since you ain’t said nothing’ ‘bout goin’ nowheres I got worried.” When she gets to the bathroom door, she freezes. “Oh shit, child.” Her eyes are wide and I can’t seem to do anything but look at her sheepishly, a little embarrassed. I am wishing that I could pick my feet up and rub the sole of one on top of the other, hiding at least one of the holes, but there are obvious restrictions on that particular nervous twitch. She sits down in the doorway, studying my feet, silent for a solid eternity before she looks to my face again, bewildered and says, “Baby, is you tryna find the Lawd? ‘Cause you can’t just go decidin’ to be no stigwhatsitcalled.” I love how she says “Lord.” I want to curl up in her mouth and let pieces of me get lost with all those letters Rita does not say. I want to let my arm fall down her throat holding on to ‘G,’ hide under her tongue with ‘R’, tuck my legs behind her bottom front teeth with ‘D.’
“I’m trying… Well… my mom says I’m not grounded. So I’m trying to, uh, be more grounded. I guess.”
“Sho’ took that one literal, now, didn‘t you?” she says, raising one eyebrow and hefting her weight up to peruse my barren mini-fridge. Shaking her head and tisk-tisking, she turns to look through my medicine cabinet. “I ain’t gonna pretend to understand all the things young folks try an’ do these days to find theyselves, but I ain’t gonna let you sit here an’ go hungry neither. And those feet is dirty.” She pulls out the peroxide. I would usually delight at the prospect of watching those little miracle bubbles fizz away the dirt from my sores, but now I am nervous. This is no sore. This is a fucking hole all the way through my foot and I can’t imagine peroxide is supposed to go inside and touch my tendons, mix into my bloodstream. Before I can protest, Rita is gingerly wiping my feet with a warm, wet, washcloth, then swabbing the holes with peroxide and cotton balls. I feel like Jesus.
When she is done, my feet feel immensely better. There is no more burning, no tearing sensation and I wonder if Rita is magic, if she is connected to “The Lawd.” She goes into my bedroom and I am anxious again, hoping she doesn’t find my vibrator, or notice Brad’s dirty T-shirt draped over my pillow. Although, it wouldn’t matter since Rita is not one for passing judgment, “Tha’s The Lawd’s job, not mine.” She comes back with a clean dress. “Up!” she demands, and we are nose to chin (Rita is shorter than me). She removes my dress and replaces it with no notice of my nakedness. The intimacy is lost on her. I suspect she has mothered more children than my family has birthed.
“I got to get to the store. I’ll be back in a hour or so with some dinner for you. You want me to call anybody, Baby?” I show her my phone and she raises her arms, palms out in a hands-off motion. While she is gone, I attempt to finish cleaning up. I stretch to reach the strips of wallpaper hanging off the wall and throw them into the trash. I wash my face, brush my teeth, roll the top of the bag of cat food neatly and tuck it under the sink, I give myself a little birdbath from the sink. I feel like I am waiting for a date.
Rita brings me a plate, hot and fragrant, full of buttery sweet potatoes, slices of rotisserie chicken and her own luscious tomatoes, salted. I disappear into a private world that is all taste buds, closing my eyes, mashing those soft potatoes with my happy tongue; fork perched in midair- expectant. Rita laughs at me and teases, rightly, that my own mother must not be much of a cook. Before she leaves, she brings a fan, a light blanket and a pillow into the bathroom, she touches my cheek and looks at me quizzically.
Two weeks later, my feet have mostly healed over with skin so now there are twin peepholes all the way through and it allows me much more mobility. I swivel around the nails and think, “This feels like freedom.” I am happier than I have ever been. Lacking any physical demonstrations, it wouldn’t seem to be the case, but I’ve never felt so productive or lively. Rita comes over every day with food, and on Wednesdays after the market where she sells her magical tomatoes, snap dragons, gladiolas, and sweet peas, she brings me the flowers no one wanted to buy. Today we are going to paint the bathroom. Blue. Like a robin’s egg. Rita puts colors into my life. I feel confident that I have talked more in the past two weeks than in all the other cumulative weeks of my life.
While we paint, Rita tells me about her family, Jesus, and her bad knees. I tell her about my mom and Brad. She says that when I’m good and grounded and ready to pull out the nails, she will take me to the stream with her church so I can be baptized. I have a hard time telling her I am not at all concerned with the security of my soul, that in fact, I’m not sure I believe souls exist. She says that her husband died three years ago, her children moved away, she has two grandchildren she has never met. The loneliness of her life strikes me and I feel guilty for having never stopped by with muffins or soup, for not getting to know her until I needed her. I comfort myself by thinking that the need is mutual. Before she leaves, she sets a hammer on the windowsill. “When you’re ready, baby. I’ll be by in the evenin’ tomorrow to finish up.”
She arrives jubilant to finish painting, suspiciously eyes the hammer, but doesn’t say anything about it. Rita reaches into her massive, canvas purse and pulls out a bottle of bourbon, pours two glasses which she tops off with water from the tap, and hands me one. We drink and sweat and I laugh harder than I maybe ever have.
“Rita, it’s like the ocean! I love it!” I am talking too loudly because I am drunk. We giggle and trade off telling a story about our imaginary trip to the Caribbean. Rita fakes a Jamaican accent and makes cat calls at imaginary muscular brown men, sweating in the imaginary sun. I think about swimming, about how free it would feel to wade out into salty blue water.
I don’t remember falling asleep, but it is daytime now and Rita is gone. My head and shoulder are wet and everything is so bright blue and sweltering hot, I think for a moment that I am back on that Jamaican beach. The pounding in my skull brings me back to the bathroom. I wonder if this is what it feels like when football players get hit in the head, right before their brains hemorrhage and they die, suddenly, too young, in the middle of the field. I get a glass of water, but my only cup is from the previous evening and it smells faintly of bourbon which catches unpleasantly in my throat. I resign to sucking straight from the faucet and waiting for Rita. I lay on my back, a cool rag across my forehead and daydream about Rita. I can’t stop looking at the hammer. I feel terrified at the prospect of touching it and turn my back to the window.
It is 4:00 and Rita hasn’t come yet. I have an intense sinking feeling but reassure myself that she is preoccupied doing something more important or more fun than taking care of my sorry ass. But I know this isn’t true. Something is horribly wrong. I reach for the hammer, trembling and welling up with tears, and I can’t say whether it’s fear of leaving or fear of what I’ll find. But I do it, I pull those nails out, and they slide out so easy and slow, like cutting clay with a string. It takes me some time to stand up – I can’t stop staring at those holes, the way my skin pours through them smooth and infinite. Sitting on the toilet I slide my feet around the tiles, reach down and touch the tops of them, letting the pads of my fingers sink into the holes.
Standing up is not difficult, walking is another story. My feet are confused, my muscles amnesiac. I take the stairs one at a time. It crosses my mind to fall down them.
I am finally in front of Rita’s house and it strikes me now that the best solution is just to collapse right here and really never move again because maybe the only place I’ll ever be grounded is back in that bathroom with Rita at my side. “Rita, I’m not ready.” I whisper to her door, looming large and sturdy. I hold that handle, thumbing its scroll for too long before I let myself inside. It smells like yeast and an herb garden. Rita is limp in an ornate yellow parlor chair. The only thing that looks out of place is the glass of water spilled under her hand, draped gracefully over the arm of the chair. My insides are liquefying right now. I am distracting myself wondering if this is how ebola victims feel right before they vomit up their livers, when the sound of the mail carrier closing the box on the front of the house startles me into awareness. I call 9-1-1.
It has been two weeks now since Rita died. I’ve been looking after her garden and trying to find her family with one of her church friends, Marie. I’ve been going to her church so I can talk about her with them. The devotees of Rita are many. They don’t ask any questions about why I know Rita, or why I am trying so hard to find her family, to fit into the parts of her life I never knew. They just ask if I’ve been saved.
...
As I walk up the embankment, I startle at the buzz of the event. I didn’t expect this, but then, I’m not the only one here to be saved. Everyone looks dreamy, especially the newcomers. I am standing awkwardly in a white dress that feels scratchy and translucent as tissue. I tug at the hem and feel like a fake. I wonder if Rita can tell that for me, this isn‘t about making any promises to the Lawd. Conjuring her in my daze, I think about how different we were. I am all angles. Too many corners and too little melanin. Rita hadn’t a corner on her anywhere. A man standing out a ways in the water calls someone’s name; we edge closer to him in a haphazardly assembled line. I am close now, standing right at the edge of water and land. Spectators clap. I am absorbed in the feeling of thick, dark, bottom of the river seeping through my feet, twin swirls of mud through twin holes. Maybe, I think, when he leans me back into the water, I will swim away, slippery and lithe, and I’ll come up for air in Arkansas.
At twenty four, over meatloaf and potatoes, we discussed my lack of career options, my unfinished philosophy degree, my unfinished history degree, and my recently failed engagement. I told her it was all ok, that no one really wants to marry a man named Brad anyway and that philosophy majors were pompous. She scowled. “Ellen, you‘re just not grounded. You need to keep yourself in place long enough to finish something.” I thought about her comments when I got home. Then I nailed my feet to the ground.
I decided the bathroom was the best place for my venture, though honestly, I didn’t think about it nearly as much as I should have. After I did it, I threw the hammer out the window. I prepared with one 30lb bag of cat food, a poorly stocked mini fridge that had been abandoned by the previous tenants, and a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude. I thought it best to begin my grounding and finishing things experiment simply, by reading the longest book I owned. Well, it was the longest book Brad had left behind in a milk crate of miscellany: a belt, socks, a box of tiny screw drivers and strawberry hard candies that used to make his break musky and sweet, copies of the sort of books you read to prove your literary prowess to un-literary listeners. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Catcher in the Rye, Slaughterhouse Five, Ender’s Game, and for good measure, The Bell Jar. And stamps. The stamps irritated me. We’d always been racing out at the last minute to drop our bills in drop boxes or wait in long lines, all for perpetual want of stamps that he’d apparently kept all along. I took those with me too, hoping that the letter carrier might pick up my rent checks strewn about the front yard, or that if things got really desperate and I’d done something terrible like drop my phone in the toilet, I could mail a letter to someone asking them for help.
...
Rita is my neighbor. She is a portly woman, intense in her religious devotion, but in a way that feels friendly and reassuring. She is from Arkansas which, coupled with her particular fervency, convinces me that she is Baptist, but then because I am worried about stereotyping I try to think that maybe she is Calvinist, Methodist, whatever those snake charmers are called, but I know that none of these faiths are expansive enough to fit Rita. Six days into my grounding adventure, I have finished the book. I loved it, but I can’t read it again; the ending was too hard. Instead, I have been sitting for three days, and I think I am going crazy because I can’t stop thinking about ants and babies and even my cat won’t come in here. It occurs to me that I did not change the litter box before I grounded myself, nor did I bring it within reach. Suddenly I am sure that Sam the Cat is pissing all over everything I own, having a fantastic territorial party in absence of his waste manager.
I started to pull off the wallpaper, but I can’t reach it all so now the bathroom looks sad and terrorized rather than cheerful but dated. I tried to exercise my legs, but when I move them, the nails push back against my feet and it hurts. The holes look pretty rough and I am studying them, wondering when I had my last tetanus shot, curious if a shiny, new, non-rusty nail can still give you tetanus, when I hear someone downstairs. At first I think I am being robbed, and I think this is ok. I can’t use any of the stuff downstairs anyway. I remember that I think everything is covered in cat pee and decide that no one wants it. Then I hear Rita calling, “Honey? You in here?”
“Yeah, Rita. I’m upstairs.”
“Shit, Honey, you know I hate them damn stairs.” As she is working her way up to the bathroom, she keeps talking, short of breath. “I seen your car ain’t moved for a whole week, an’ I know that man o’ yours done took off. Since you ain’t said nothing’ ‘bout goin’ nowheres I got worried.” When she gets to the bathroom door, she freezes. “Oh shit, child.” Her eyes are wide and I can’t seem to do anything but look at her sheepishly, a little embarrassed. I am wishing that I could pick my feet up and rub the sole of one on top of the other, hiding at least one of the holes, but there are obvious restrictions on that particular nervous twitch. She sits down in the doorway, studying my feet, silent for a solid eternity before she looks to my face again, bewildered and says, “Baby, is you tryna find the Lawd? ‘Cause you can’t just go decidin’ to be no stigwhatsitcalled.” I love how she says “Lord.” I want to curl up in her mouth and let pieces of me get lost with all those letters Rita does not say. I want to let my arm fall down her throat holding on to ‘G,’ hide under her tongue with ‘R’, tuck my legs behind her bottom front teeth with ‘D.’
“I’m trying… Well… my mom says I’m not grounded. So I’m trying to, uh, be more grounded. I guess.”
“Sho’ took that one literal, now, didn‘t you?” she says, raising one eyebrow and hefting her weight up to peruse my barren mini-fridge. Shaking her head and tisk-tisking, she turns to look through my medicine cabinet. “I ain’t gonna pretend to understand all the things young folks try an’ do these days to find theyselves, but I ain’t gonna let you sit here an’ go hungry neither. And those feet is dirty.” She pulls out the peroxide. I would usually delight at the prospect of watching those little miracle bubbles fizz away the dirt from my sores, but now I am nervous. This is no sore. This is a fucking hole all the way through my foot and I can’t imagine peroxide is supposed to go inside and touch my tendons, mix into my bloodstream. Before I can protest, Rita is gingerly wiping my feet with a warm, wet, washcloth, then swabbing the holes with peroxide and cotton balls. I feel like Jesus.
When she is done, my feet feel immensely better. There is no more burning, no tearing sensation and I wonder if Rita is magic, if she is connected to “The Lawd.” She goes into my bedroom and I am anxious again, hoping she doesn’t find my vibrator, or notice Brad’s dirty T-shirt draped over my pillow. Although, it wouldn’t matter since Rita is not one for passing judgment, “Tha’s The Lawd’s job, not mine.” She comes back with a clean dress. “Up!” she demands, and we are nose to chin (Rita is shorter than me). She removes my dress and replaces it with no notice of my nakedness. The intimacy is lost on her. I suspect she has mothered more children than my family has birthed.
“I got to get to the store. I’ll be back in a hour or so with some dinner for you. You want me to call anybody, Baby?” I show her my phone and she raises her arms, palms out in a hands-off motion. While she is gone, I attempt to finish cleaning up. I stretch to reach the strips of wallpaper hanging off the wall and throw them into the trash. I wash my face, brush my teeth, roll the top of the bag of cat food neatly and tuck it under the sink, I give myself a little birdbath from the sink. I feel like I am waiting for a date.
Rita brings me a plate, hot and fragrant, full of buttery sweet potatoes, slices of rotisserie chicken and her own luscious tomatoes, salted. I disappear into a private world that is all taste buds, closing my eyes, mashing those soft potatoes with my happy tongue; fork perched in midair- expectant. Rita laughs at me and teases, rightly, that my own mother must not be much of a cook. Before she leaves, she brings a fan, a light blanket and a pillow into the bathroom, she touches my cheek and looks at me quizzically.
Two weeks later, my feet have mostly healed over with skin so now there are twin peepholes all the way through and it allows me much more mobility. I swivel around the nails and think, “This feels like freedom.” I am happier than I have ever been. Lacking any physical demonstrations, it wouldn’t seem to be the case, but I’ve never felt so productive or lively. Rita comes over every day with food, and on Wednesdays after the market where she sells her magical tomatoes, snap dragons, gladiolas, and sweet peas, she brings me the flowers no one wanted to buy. Today we are going to paint the bathroom. Blue. Like a robin’s egg. Rita puts colors into my life. I feel confident that I have talked more in the past two weeks than in all the other cumulative weeks of my life.
While we paint, Rita tells me about her family, Jesus, and her bad knees. I tell her about my mom and Brad. She says that when I’m good and grounded and ready to pull out the nails, she will take me to the stream with her church so I can be baptized. I have a hard time telling her I am not at all concerned with the security of my soul, that in fact, I’m not sure I believe souls exist. She says that her husband died three years ago, her children moved away, she has two grandchildren she has never met. The loneliness of her life strikes me and I feel guilty for having never stopped by with muffins or soup, for not getting to know her until I needed her. I comfort myself by thinking that the need is mutual. Before she leaves, she sets a hammer on the windowsill. “When you’re ready, baby. I’ll be by in the evenin’ tomorrow to finish up.”
She arrives jubilant to finish painting, suspiciously eyes the hammer, but doesn’t say anything about it. Rita reaches into her massive, canvas purse and pulls out a bottle of bourbon, pours two glasses which she tops off with water from the tap, and hands me one. We drink and sweat and I laugh harder than I maybe ever have.
“Rita, it’s like the ocean! I love it!” I am talking too loudly because I am drunk. We giggle and trade off telling a story about our imaginary trip to the Caribbean. Rita fakes a Jamaican accent and makes cat calls at imaginary muscular brown men, sweating in the imaginary sun. I think about swimming, about how free it would feel to wade out into salty blue water.
I don’t remember falling asleep, but it is daytime now and Rita is gone. My head and shoulder are wet and everything is so bright blue and sweltering hot, I think for a moment that I am back on that Jamaican beach. The pounding in my skull brings me back to the bathroom. I wonder if this is what it feels like when football players get hit in the head, right before their brains hemorrhage and they die, suddenly, too young, in the middle of the field. I get a glass of water, but my only cup is from the previous evening and it smells faintly of bourbon which catches unpleasantly in my throat. I resign to sucking straight from the faucet and waiting for Rita. I lay on my back, a cool rag across my forehead and daydream about Rita. I can’t stop looking at the hammer. I feel terrified at the prospect of touching it and turn my back to the window.
It is 4:00 and Rita hasn’t come yet. I have an intense sinking feeling but reassure myself that she is preoccupied doing something more important or more fun than taking care of my sorry ass. But I know this isn’t true. Something is horribly wrong. I reach for the hammer, trembling and welling up with tears, and I can’t say whether it’s fear of leaving or fear of what I’ll find. But I do it, I pull those nails out, and they slide out so easy and slow, like cutting clay with a string. It takes me some time to stand up – I can’t stop staring at those holes, the way my skin pours through them smooth and infinite. Sitting on the toilet I slide my feet around the tiles, reach down and touch the tops of them, letting the pads of my fingers sink into the holes.
Standing up is not difficult, walking is another story. My feet are confused, my muscles amnesiac. I take the stairs one at a time. It crosses my mind to fall down them.
I am finally in front of Rita’s house and it strikes me now that the best solution is just to collapse right here and really never move again because maybe the only place I’ll ever be grounded is back in that bathroom with Rita at my side. “Rita, I’m not ready.” I whisper to her door, looming large and sturdy. I hold that handle, thumbing its scroll for too long before I let myself inside. It smells like yeast and an herb garden. Rita is limp in an ornate yellow parlor chair. The only thing that looks out of place is the glass of water spilled under her hand, draped gracefully over the arm of the chair. My insides are liquefying right now. I am distracting myself wondering if this is how ebola victims feel right before they vomit up their livers, when the sound of the mail carrier closing the box on the front of the house startles me into awareness. I call 9-1-1.
It has been two weeks now since Rita died. I’ve been looking after her garden and trying to find her family with one of her church friends, Marie. I’ve been going to her church so I can talk about her with them. The devotees of Rita are many. They don’t ask any questions about why I know Rita, or why I am trying so hard to find her family, to fit into the parts of her life I never knew. They just ask if I’ve been saved.
...
As I walk up the embankment, I startle at the buzz of the event. I didn’t expect this, but then, I’m not the only one here to be saved. Everyone looks dreamy, especially the newcomers. I am standing awkwardly in a white dress that feels scratchy and translucent as tissue. I tug at the hem and feel like a fake. I wonder if Rita can tell that for me, this isn‘t about making any promises to the Lawd. Conjuring her in my daze, I think about how different we were. I am all angles. Too many corners and too little melanin. Rita hadn’t a corner on her anywhere. A man standing out a ways in the water calls someone’s name; we edge closer to him in a haphazardly assembled line. I am close now, standing right at the edge of water and land. Spectators clap. I am absorbed in the feeling of thick, dark, bottom of the river seeping through my feet, twin swirls of mud through twin holes. Maybe, I think, when he leans me back into the water, I will swim away, slippery and lithe, and I’ll come up for air in Arkansas.