I’ve always liked taking showers that feel like a thunderstorm against my bare back.
It could be a sign I’m spoiled somehow, and I probably am, but I relish the pressure, which is so much like a hurricane, the drops of water hot as shocks. Hot enough to flood the bathroom with opaque clouds of white steam, hot enough to leave my skin red and raw. I’ve always liked leaving the shower knowing my fingers look like grapes left to wrinkle in an August sun.
The shower broke earlier this year in a Goldberg machine night of misfortune. For weeks, it had been leaking, the water dripping over the walls of the tub, soaking the floor, and then pouring through the ceiling below. Considering plumbing didn’t come cheap and didn’t come often, my family took to using the spare shower and told ourselves we’d fix the shower when we could.
I am the one who hears the crashes when the bathroom ceiling collapses. I think I’ve dreamt it. I’ve done that before—woken myself up with the bangs and rattlings of my own subconscious. Parched and bleary-eyed, I head to the bathroom thinking I’ll get a glass of water, wash my face. The hallway ground is painted by layers of sawdust, thick enough to be soft beneath my slippers. The doorway is littered with debris. Chipped wood and white paint and the pile of cluttered material on the tiled floor is out of place. The gaping, toothless hole above my head revealing the slats of the attic floor above is out of place.
So I go back to sleep.
I am the one who greets the alcoholic plumber when he comes to repair the bathroom. He leaves the breaded smell of beer lingering behind doors and in the drywall cracks for days. My father says he will go buy air freshener this weekend.
I am the one he tells about his wife, a tarot card reader, whom he talks about with constellations in his eyes. He shakes my hand before he leaves and smiles. His teeth have been bleached. “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” he says. “Here’s my card—give that to your mom—and here’s my wife’s. She’s by the ice cream place on Island Street, you know the one? Check her out.”
The card has a printed image of a seraphim and the words “what does it feel like to be turned inside out” printed in purple. I decide I’ll forget this plumber and his wife the moment he steps out the door.
But he’s repaired the shower, after all, and I’ve only been in the new tub long enough to wash my hair. The steam will cover the glass soon enough, turning my reflection into monotone fog. For now, I can wash my face with a bar of soap new enough to remain heavy in my hands and meet my own eyes.
I can wait for that sudden revulsion to emerge, the way it always does, at the sight of myself. I can remind myself to admire the curve of my shoulders—am I getting stronger?—the green of my eyes—they look bluer than usual—the flat of the skin between my ribs—I think I’m getting skinnier.
My hair has grown out. When it’s wet, it’s almost black, saturated by the water, and it’s gotten very long.
I run my hands over the bones of my ribcage, counting line after line. That habit started back in middle school, when I was still counting calories, still skipping meals. The lessons I taught myself have proved the hardest to unlearn. I graze my arms. When will the hours of swim team emerge in the mirror? When will my body begin to belong alongside the wrestlers and boxers and football players I am longing for?
I push at my chin and touch my cheek. I wrap my hand around my neck as if I’m trying to strangle something. I may not be done growing. I might hit 5’7” someday, 5’8” or 5’9” if I practice good posture. Fifteen isn’t too old. I could be six feet tall. I could look like a body builder. I’d have to shave my head.
The soap bar slipped out of my hands some minutes ago. I didn’t hear it when it hit the floor. I was a witch for Halloween in second grade. I pinned my hair into a black wig we got for some five dollars off Amazon Prime and wriggled my body into a black dress with puffs at the elbows. I was little, then, still taller than average, still a seven-year-old who hadn’t yet grown into her own body. Everyone looks the same in second grade. Everyone’s no feet tall and shooting up without shooting in any other direction.
I still managed to become unrecognizable. I had a plastic green nose, the kind you could buy from Party City, with a wart at the tip. I painted every visible inch of skin green. My face, my hands, my neck. I ran across Jackson Avenue, where the neighborhood went trick-or-treating, and was seen by everyone as a stranger. I said hello to the people I knew and they recoiled. I got intoxicated on my own camouflage, injecting each reaction of unfamiliarity into my blood until I was euphoric.
I think I’d do it again. I think I would paint my hands green and I would plaster warts all over my body and I’d say my name was something else and no one would know me. I would train in opera houses, like a baritone, until my voice was low enough to scrape the underground. I would draw on a mustache. I would buy fake glasses. I would wear gloves to make my hands look bigger and wrap my chest in bandages and wear oversized clothes. I’d become a joke disguise. I think I’d go by Adam and poke through my throat from the inside out in order to make it bob. Or I’d get drunk every night and become a plumber and marry a psychic.
Does the eye of a seraphim, sitting in a spiderweb of wings, see past the human body? Does it see past an impermanent skin to whatever tarot cards can be found, buried in blood?
I let the water run past my body and gush into the drain. The drops pile onto me, covering me, like a hug, like the heat of a blanket keeping me awake, keeping me from sleeping, keeping me rolling back and forth and turning my pillow, searching for an unfindable cold. I waste the water. I breathe in the steam and it smells like beer. My body is soaked. I want to peel it off and bury it. I want my bones to become fossils of the girl I once was.
I’m still looking at the mirror, with the water off and a towel around my stomach. It looks like a dress. I throw it off and melt onto the bathroom floor. I am already dry. I look ridiculous. I look like I’m about to cry, with red eyes and trembling hands and hair so long and wet and when it’s wet it looks so dark I could call it black.
What would I look like if I really did buzz my hair and fold my breasts against the hard bones of my chest? What would the name “Adam” sound like if spoken out loud?
What does it feel like to be turned inside out?
My hair is leaking down my bare back. It’s long. It’s so long. And the pressure is so much like a hurricane, the drops of water, cold as shocks.
