no thirst
|
I wore a green cardigan to my first communion. The pews were filled with little girls wearing veils and puffy white dresses, their chubby arms flushed in the afternoon heat. I sweated beneath my tightly-buttoned collar, the wool stuffy and scratchy. Before the Mass I had fought bitterly with my mother about the garment, ashamed to stand out but unwilling to take it off. I would ruin the pictures, she said, and–I did. Even now my eyes skip past the portrait of my sister and I, dark and light mirrors of one another, taffeta and tulle, unsmiling, which hangs in our hall.
I dragged my feet, pinched in their new patent shoes, up the aisle to the waiting priest. He held up a wafer and looked at me like I was no longer a child. The body, then the blood, the chalice golden and heavy in my hands, in his. My tongue knotted in my mouth. I forced a swallow as my lips met the rim of the cup, metal still warm from the congregation’s gulping mouths. At the party afterwards, hands still sticky with the remnants of sun-warmed frosting, I walked into the bathroom and locked the door. Stripping off my cardigan I pressed my body in its star-covered gown against the tiles, letting the cold bite at my wrists and ankles. Pink roses sprouted across the floor, a perfect match for the vibrant rash that blossomed along my forearms. The sweater has hidden my arms all day, something I, an ontologically-changed first grader, am glad of. I dreaded people looking too closely, peeling back my sleeves, staring at those rosy welts, itchy and swollen. I was willing to be warm. I knew what was wrong and couldn’t explain why I wouldn't fix it. Step four of chronic dehydration: skin damage. Water dripped from the tap, clinking against the porcelain. For a moment I imagined the water pooling in my hands, running down my inflamed wrists, filling my aching throat. My stomach turned. |
CLARE FRANCES
is a doctoral student in the history of art at an American university. She is afraid of broken friendships, individualism, landlocked places, and the end of the world. |
***
As a child I illustrated the water-cycle with rhinestone rain and cotton-ball clouds, magical and real. Evaporation, condensation, precipitation. Fog rolling down the mountains like a blanket of down; hail clattering against the gravel of the parking lot, stones rolling into gutters. My bowl of holy water left too long on a radiator, sacred saturated air. Cool and clean and harmless. When my throat dried, my dreams were full of storms, and in them I stood with a fish’s gasping mouth, drinking from the sky.
Waterless girls come from this world of dreams and myths and fairytales, as much as they do from medicine. I looked into Narcissus’ pool (and Echo’s isolation) and stared, wide-eyed, at myself; waded through Tantalus’ pool, grasping at oranges. The stories were full of curses, wasting and wanting. A woman spoke and diamonds and roses fell from her mouth, cruel crystals and thorns tearing at her cheeks. A girl with a broken heart drifting as foam on the sea.
Waterless girls come from this world of dreams and myths and fairytales, as much as they do from medicine. I looked into Narcissus’ pool (and Echo’s isolation) and stared, wide-eyed, at myself; waded through Tantalus’ pool, grasping at oranges. The stories were full of curses, wasting and wanting. A woman spoke and diamonds and roses fell from her mouth, cruel crystals and thorns tearing at her cheeks. A girl with a broken heart drifting as foam on the sea.
***
By thirteen my mother learned from hundreds of untouched glasses at the dinner table that something troubled me, though she did not understand it. (I did not understand it). Each morning, she placed a plastic bottle of water and orange juice in my lunchbox; she presumed it was a problem of taste.
Before walking home, I would run to the locker rooms and choke down the fluids in the clanging metallic dark. This way I could hold the bottle up to her and say, look, it’s empty. She’d smile. I spent many rushed afternoons gagging on lukewarm orange water in that stinking room, surrounded by the scent of floral body spray and soccer socks. When I couldn’t manage to drink it, I hid it, for as long as I could, in the cavern beneath my bed.
One July afternoon I unscrewed the cap on the playground, and my hands filled with the crawling black bodies of a thousand ants.
Orange juice, kept too long in the dank lightlessness of a teenager’s room, ferments. I discovered this when, in a desperate night thirst, I took a swig from a hidden bottle. Perhaps the best way to understand this fear is to say that, coughing up bile before the rising sun, I felt no different than if it had been water.
Before walking home, I would run to the locker rooms and choke down the fluids in the clanging metallic dark. This way I could hold the bottle up to her and say, look, it’s empty. She’d smile. I spent many rushed afternoons gagging on lukewarm orange water in that stinking room, surrounded by the scent of floral body spray and soccer socks. When I couldn’t manage to drink it, I hid it, for as long as I could, in the cavern beneath my bed.
One July afternoon I unscrewed the cap on the playground, and my hands filled with the crawling black bodies of a thousand ants.
Orange juice, kept too long in the dank lightlessness of a teenager’s room, ferments. I discovered this when, in a desperate night thirst, I took a swig from a hidden bottle. Perhaps the best way to understand this fear is to say that, coughing up bile before the rising sun, I felt no different than if it had been water.
***
The Arthurian legend of the Fisher King has several titles–the Wounded King, the Maimed Knight–but in all versions the story is essentially the same. There is always a castle, and always a king, always an ailment, and always a cup.
Perceval, a knight of the Round Table, traveling in a misty corner of Wales, discovers a strange castle, shrouded in darkness in the middle of a bright day. The building appears abandoned, except for a single figure: a man, sitting in a small boat in the center of the castle’s moat. He dips his net in and out of the murky water, fishing. When the knight rides up to greet him and seek shelter for the night, the man makes no move to greet him in return: he cannot stand. He calls a greeting from his boat, voice lost in the lapping of waves.
Perceval, a knight of the Round Table, traveling in a misty corner of Wales, discovers a strange castle, shrouded in darkness in the middle of a bright day. The building appears abandoned, except for a single figure: a man, sitting in a small boat in the center of the castle’s moat. He dips his net in and out of the murky water, fishing. When the knight rides up to greet him and seek shelter for the night, the man makes no move to greet him in return: he cannot stand. He calls a greeting from his boat, voice lost in the lapping of waves.
***
The symptoms of dehydration include drowsiness, confusion, and dizziness, which could in a child be mistaken for strangeness; infrequent urination, which I could mistake for convenience; and a dry mouth, which can be easily remedied with balm. The rash that plagued my childhood has yet to reappear. Now I notice only the racing of my rabbit-heart, and can often be found sitting quietly, two fingers pressed gentle-firm against my pulse.
***
In the fairy stories, the curse lifts in adulthood, or it kills you. A kiss, a spell, a drink of just the right water–and the girl is just a girl, a princess, a bride, something to somebody. If she dies, her body becomes the story. Modernity embraces medicine; reprieve over salvation. The bodies are just bodies, and all of them are dying.
When the nurse went to draw my blood she scarcely could: it left my body as a gel, thick and red and wrong. I laid there as an IV turned my blood to liquid again, feeling cold flowing through my veins, heart rushing it from my arm to my skull and down through my feet. My new lover Laurel held one of my toes, hand burning through my cotton sock. This was the only place I could stand to be touched. We did not speak of water, or fear, or thirst.
The only room available was in the psych ward, so all night I reclined on a linen-less bed in a metal-sided room, being slowly re-animated by saline. The halls echoed with strange sounds while I laid there as if changing states: solid into liquid. Veins into rivers. Husk into girl. The world of the living is a wet one; dry it out and everything dies.
And that day, I felt so good. Whole and real and clean. My hair matted, clothed in yesterday’s pajamas and indignity: clean. When I left the hospital I looked up, shaking on my reliquefied legs, at a sky deep gray with February’s snow. The day was warm, warm enough that falling flakes were broad and wet and soft, gentle where they speckled my face and dampened my hair. I felt only the clear perfection of a body rebuilt. Sated and unashamed. No thirst.
When the nurse went to draw my blood she scarcely could: it left my body as a gel, thick and red and wrong. I laid there as an IV turned my blood to liquid again, feeling cold flowing through my veins, heart rushing it from my arm to my skull and down through my feet. My new lover Laurel held one of my toes, hand burning through my cotton sock. This was the only place I could stand to be touched. We did not speak of water, or fear, or thirst.
The only room available was in the psych ward, so all night I reclined on a linen-less bed in a metal-sided room, being slowly re-animated by saline. The halls echoed with strange sounds while I laid there as if changing states: solid into liquid. Veins into rivers. Husk into girl. The world of the living is a wet one; dry it out and everything dies.
And that day, I felt so good. Whole and real and clean. My hair matted, clothed in yesterday’s pajamas and indignity: clean. When I left the hospital I looked up, shaking on my reliquefied legs, at a sky deep gray with February’s snow. The day was warm, warm enough that falling flakes were broad and wet and soft, gentle where they speckled my face and dampened my hair. I felt only the clear perfection of a body rebuilt. Sated and unashamed. No thirst.
***
The fisherman, who is also a king, is wounded. Depending on the source of the legend, the form and reason of the wound varies. In some versions of the terrible tear in his thigh is given by his own spear, the lance of the Cross; in others, the wound is a thinly-veiled symbol for his own ethical failures. In many, it is both.
There he sits, skin chilled by the mist and blood dripping into his boat, while Perceval is welcomed as a guest inside. A guest who watches and wonders at the weird and lonely life of the castle, at the man’s isolation, at his unhealing injury. As the wound remains open, weakness binding the king to his boat, the lands around the castle dry to dust.
There he sits, skin chilled by the mist and blood dripping into his boat, while Perceval is welcomed as a guest inside. A guest who watches and wonders at the weird and lonely life of the castle, at the man’s isolation, at his unhealing injury. As the wound remains open, weakness binding the king to his boat, the lands around the castle dry to dust.
***
A question on an internet forum read: why do patients fear drinking water? The author was not me, and they couldn’t know me, because no-one knew this about me. Both the question and its anonymity gave me comfort. I was not alone; I was very alone. Questions, like quests, aid the cursed, ushering them from secrecy into possibility.
It had taken me until adulthood to ask this question, to articulate this oddity of mine as a fear, as a danger, not a quirk. Not a curse or a myth, a compulsion. And I found that there were no clear answers: my fear slipped between the cracks of language. Aquaphobic described only an “irrational fear of water”, and would prevent swimming, bathing, and diving (activities I cautiously enjoyed). Eating disorders were usually constrained to the consumption of food, or at least calories; this odd terror, which feared neither bite nor fat, had a different heart. It was at best some opaque compulsion with no evident remedy.
I seemed to share it only with the very old, drawing near to death, who in hospice began to refuse all fluids with a committed paranoia. My sister-in-law’s father, two weeks before his death, announced that he was ready to go: from then on he subsisted only on Diet Coke. Fluids will keep you alive far after you’ve given up interest, even as your mind slips away from you and your body decays. Blood will flow through the most desiccated of veins, given a little water. Cease to drink and the descent is swift.
The solutions offered eased the suffering without treating the cause; they prolonged. They were not suitable for a woman, once a child, able, in all other respects, to live.
It had taken me until adulthood to ask this question, to articulate this oddity of mine as a fear, as a danger, not a quirk. Not a curse or a myth, a compulsion. And I found that there were no clear answers: my fear slipped between the cracks of language. Aquaphobic described only an “irrational fear of water”, and would prevent swimming, bathing, and diving (activities I cautiously enjoyed). Eating disorders were usually constrained to the consumption of food, or at least calories; this odd terror, which feared neither bite nor fat, had a different heart. It was at best some opaque compulsion with no evident remedy.
I seemed to share it only with the very old, drawing near to death, who in hospice began to refuse all fluids with a committed paranoia. My sister-in-law’s father, two weeks before his death, announced that he was ready to go: from then on he subsisted only on Diet Coke. Fluids will keep you alive far after you’ve given up interest, even as your mind slips away from you and your body decays. Blood will flow through the most desiccated of veins, given a little water. Cease to drink and the descent is swift.
The solutions offered eased the suffering without treating the cause; they prolonged. They were not suitable for a woman, once a child, able, in all other respects, to live.
***
The king, the wounded man, is the keeper of the Holy Grail, the source of the water of life. Keeping the secret leaves his wounds open and his lands in famine, but he cannot be released from his burden of care until someone asks him a question–the question.
In most editions: Whom does the Grail serve?
In my favorite: What ails you?
In most editions: Whom does the Grail serve?
In my favorite: What ails you?
***
Our water glasses live on the second shelf within our wooden cupboard, to the left of the sink. I take one down, examine it. For calcium spots, finger-print smudges, the dried pulp of leftover orange juice that the dishwasher hasn’t fully removed. And then, the indiscernible: who was it who last touched this cup–with their hands, their mouth? Was it washed in a dishwasher, or in a sink? Did someone remember to rinse it under the tap after it left the dishwasher, and air dry it in the rack, all with clean hands? Ridged glass is more challenging than smooth. Plastic is an impossibility. I learn how to make myself do all the things I don’t want to do.
I keep a short list of “safe cups” and fear them breaking. Laurel gives me one: it is small and green and covered in alligators, and it makes me laugh. She doesn’t understand, but it is a good cup.
The list of “safes” is a murky delta of yes-es, no-s, if done in just this way, maybe-s. Crystal and glass and porcelain, shining after a vinegar bath. My favorite chore as a child: polishing silver. Smooth circles with the cloth until the surfaces shine. Safe.
Evening routine: take down glass, examine. Fill (only filtered, chilled will do). Pause, worry, drink, choke.
I keep a short list of “safe cups” and fear them breaking. Laurel gives me one: it is small and green and covered in alligators, and it makes me laugh. She doesn’t understand, but it is a good cup.
The list of “safes” is a murky delta of yes-es, no-s, if done in just this way, maybe-s. Crystal and glass and porcelain, shining after a vinegar bath. My favorite chore as a child: polishing silver. Smooth circles with the cloth until the surfaces shine. Safe.
Evening routine: take down glass, examine. Fill (only filtered, chilled will do). Pause, worry, drink, choke.
***
Perceval misses his moment in every story. The question goes unasked. Grail lost, wound open, earth blowing like ash in the wind.
***
How very wet all those fairy stories are, drenched with sentimentality, dripping sincerity. Reality rolls on like chalk in the mouth, stealing the spit, stilling tongue. This is a myth without a moral, a well without a bucket, a curse without a cure. In it the girl does not die and is never saved. She dries into dust. But this is the fate of every man.