by DC Alexander
Carl said “I can’t hear you, you want some water?”
I wasn’t putting up with this shit, I was getting a bad mood, and I was sick, and I was just pissed off. This wasn’t me. I wasn’t helpless like this, so anybody that came along could take advantage of me. I lifted up my head and looked at Carl “water, outside. Damn bag.” It took all I had to get that out, I let my head fall back down, I couldn’t breathe good like that with my throat bent back but I couldn’t help it.
“I got that, hang on and we get it done.” He noticed my head lolling back and tried to get it up, wound up with my head on his shoulder as he toted me to the back door and pulled it open and squeezed us by it. He set me down on the steps, made sure I wasn’t going to fall over, and said “I be right back.” He went back in the kitchen and got another cupful of water and brought it out to me.
I managed a swallow, I needed the water but all I could think was if I could just get on the ground it might fix me up. I leaned over to get up and just kept going, I tensed for the impact of my face hitting that lowest step, but Carl caught me and stopped my fall.
“On the dirt” I was begging. Could he not see what I needed, what I was trying to do?
Carl eased me awkwardly down, he moved so he could support me and half drug me down the steps. “I’m sorry about draggin you but if I try to get another grip you gone fall down and get hurt.”
He got me out on the grass, I felt it poking me in the legs, then I got my hands on the ground and tried to stick them down in it, but they didn’t go in.
I thought ‘Pain, Sick, hurt, help me’ as hard as I could, I needed whatever it was I had talked with before. I got a little, faint, sensation of somebody or something there but it couldn’t get through. Get through what? I wondered,’ I ought to be clean, I been soaked and oiled and wiped, there ought not be anything left on me.’
‘Barrier. Weakens.’’ I can spend an hour or two sitting here, maybe I’d get some strength back.
‘Clean water’
‘Water is what I need? I can get back in the tub if it will fix this.’
‘Natural, running water.’
“Carl. You there?” I couldn’t see him anywhere, it was dark out there.
Carl was standing on the steps. I didn’t know how I missed him. “I’m right here, you ok?”
“Water hose. Squirt me?”
“You sure that’s what you want? I don’t feel good about squirting you with the hose, that aint right.”
“Yeah, damn, yes please wash me off.”
He ran to the side of the house and got the water hose and turned it on. He ran a little water on my legs.
“Squirt hard, wash it off. Shit man, hose me down!”
He backed off and sprayed me good and I could feel the difference, it latched me down so I wasn’t drifting so.
I was aware and alert. The shock knocked me wide awake for the first time in days it felt like. “Get me to the creek.” I had to talk fast; I could feel that sleepy shit comin back on me, the water hose helped but it wasn’t enough and it was losing, I guess I was getting used to the cool.
“Let’s get you in the car and I’ll take you.” He was trying to help me but he didn’t know where to put his hands. I put my arm over his shoulders and he reached around my waist, I leaned on him as he pulled me up. We made it to the car and he opened the door and shoved me in mostly, he worked with the door to get me the rest of the way in the car. I helped what I could but it wasn’t much, I was starting to drift again. The car was wet inside from the water dripping off me.
My head fell over to the side. It was too heavy to hold up. I could hardly breathe due to the way my neck was bent.
Carl said “I be right back, I gotta turn the water off” and went running off.
I hollered “Fuck the water” but it come out like a moan. He came back and jumped in the car and slammed the door.
He had the door open and was pulling on me, “Miz Rosalee, come on, you gotta help me, we here.” I fell out of the car and he caught me, picked me up and carried me over to the boat ramp.
“I’m sorry as I can be for handling you like this.” He grabbed me like he meant it though and that was what it needed.
We made it to the edge of the water and he put me down. It felt amazingly good. I cleared up and came back to myself, mostly awake. I dragged myself in a little deeper, the ramp’s rough, sharp edges cut into my legs and knees and hands where I pushed. The pain made me cringe but at the same time I came in focus. At the back of my mind I felt a questioning nudge, maybe this was working and the voice could get through. It felt strange; not really weak, but not the solid, unflappable presence I knew. This was as heavy but cooler, more of a slipping, sliding sensation than the ‘thud’ that seemed to represent the presence I was familiar with. I went further down the ramp, deep enough to duck my head under. I was weak but I could think. The water was cool. I knew it was a bad idea but I was so thirsty I couldn’t resist, I opened my mouth and took a mouthful of Chickasabogue creek. God only knew what I might catch, but it was so good I didn’t care. The cool water traced a path down my throat and hit my stomach as an explosion of cool. The water spread through my dry, desiccated body, my cells sucked it up eagerly, they’d been too dry for too long. The presence brushed me, stronger, more insistent, questioning, pressing me, I could almost understand it.
I spoke quickly in case I puked the water back up “I had a fetish bag like Stephanie’s, it made me sick.”
He was in the water holding onto me. His clothes were soaked, “I saw that in the sink at the house, you put it in a plastic bag.”
“I put energy into Stephanie but I can’t get connected so I can fix me. I got to contact the earth but something from the bag is blocking it. Maybe the water will wash it off.”
“How you connect to the earth? You mean standin on the ground like when you sunk down that time?”
“Yeah, that.” I felt for the contact, it was near, I could almost get it, I strained muscles that didn’t exist reaching in a direction that wasn’t there, like sliding my hand up my back to catch my head; I couldn’t reach it.
“You standin on the ground now, is it workin?” He was very matter of fact about it and didn’t even call me a name.
Ouch. I was a dumbass. Where I was standing was the concrete ramp but if I moved over a little I would be on the creek bed, it doesn’t get more natural than that.
I scooted over a little at a time till I hit the edge of the ramp. I scrootched over it. A hole had washed out there, sharp edges of the concrete ramp cut at me, I couldn’t care . I went in over my head and sank like a rock.
My mouth was open to take another drink as the water closed over my head. Suddenly the presence was there, strong and insistent. It was welcoming, happy, and FAST, and it wasn’t anything like the presence I’d sensed before. This was new but familiar, I seemed to have all the time in the world, breathing wasn’t important. I thought ‘need strength/sick/poisoned!’
Suddenly Carl had me by the arm pulling me back up. He lifted my head out of the water and I sputtered “Carl, let me go, it’s workin!”
He turned loose and I drifted. The connection was still in place
‘It’s about time/It’s been a while/long time no see/what up?’ A fleeting, zipping, darting set of emotions, feelings and visions ran into my mind and filled me to bursting. This was Water! A riptide of emotion washed over me, I remembered: ‘The little girl, skinny, so small, holding her hand out in the rain, soaked, she played. It was me! I played with the rain and the wind, and I spoke to Earth and Wind and Water and they heard! Water danced, standing tall in a tube on the palm of my outstretched hand, Wind circled the water and formed it, and Earth held me securely and helped support the impossible height of the column of water. I laughed with delight and tossed the water up, it shivered into fragments and cascaded over my body as I spun and danced. Tired, I walked up the old back steps. Water ran off my naked body in a sheet and I was dry, the warm wind care
ssed me as I reached over my head to open the door.
Grammaw, dismayed, no, angry! “Girl, you get yourself in here, I swear, naked in the rain, you just a little heathen. They gonna take you away from me and lock you up forever they see you acting like you crazy!” She swatted me on the rear as she rushed me off to dress me. Shocked at the impact and the sting and the threat I said nothing. The shock was sudden and immediate and in stark contrast to the joy of a moment earlier.
Lost in long suppressed memories, unwell, I tried to compress everything down to get it across fast, before I ran out of air, before I lost sanity and focus. I sent ‘hurry/ need to breathe/help/ healing/ strength/ dying ’
‘??breathe??’
Darting, massive and weightless, it didn’t comprehend a need to breathe. I thought, I moved, I was water. The skin that covered me constrained me and contained me. It was a pointless trap, water penetrated me and the boundaries grew less meaningful as I to dissolved and expanded. I felt the lives in the water, the edges, the mix, Carl hovering anxiously over me trying to see what was happening.
Carl. That was important. He was waiting, he’d helped and he worried. I should speak with him and reassure him. I moved higher till I faced him, my torso effortlessly emerging from the sheltering water.
All the while changes took place inside me, following a blueprint contained in each smallest part of me. Corrupted cells reformed to the correct shape and size and sloughed off the coating that had choked them.
The toxins pushed out and water carried them away and dispersed them. Cells melted and shrank.
I panned out mentally and viewed what looked like an infinite number of organisms, cubic miles of territory deep as well as broad, a vast, intimate knowledge of how everything fit together, and an eternity of time that was a single pinpoint of NOW.
My mind was tracking, although in a strange way. Discomforts I hadn’t noticed were gone as I noticed them. The fingernail pushed out of the bed and a new one formed. My skinned and gutted knee skin didn’t seem to exist, somehow.
I came out of the creek, supported by water, it parted before me and pushed behind and below, gravity didn’t apply. Carl backed away fast before me with his eyes wide, hands out to ward me off, surprised and dismayed. My feet touched the sandy bottom and I walked onto the grass at the edge of the water.
I tried to speak but my lungs were empty. I gasped in surprise and choked, I went to my knees trying to catch my breath and he lost his reserve and caught me and beat me in the back. The blanket was gone in the creek. The warmth of his body felt amazingly good. I caught my breath but I didn’t know what I was trying to say, I managed a heartfelt “Thanks!” He couldn’t know the thanks were for giving me a reason to halt my dissolution in the water.
Carl pulled off his shirt and helped wrap me in it. The shirt was huge, and it draped me like a dress halfway to my knees.
I was in a strange head space, comfortable, relaxed, not tired but tired somehow, maybe it was the memory of tired. Sad….the freedom of the water called to me, no worries, no time. I felt refreshed and clean and whole in a strange way, like I had been crippled and had grown new arms and legs….but not exactly. I wanted to go home. I told Carl, I walked easily to the car and got in with Carl hovering in case I collapsed. I smiled at him. “I’m fine now, come on and relax, it’s pretty much over. “
The ride back to the house was silent, I was going over what had happened, how close it had been, how easy it would be to just let go and become one with the water. I got out and walked inside. I could feel the air but I didn’t have the strength to resist it, I feared I would dissolve if I spoke to it. I needed to be rooted, firmer in myself or I’d spread out too far and lose my identity.
Carl ran around the car to help me out and followed me anxiously up onto the porch. I realized I didn’t have underwear on and the shirt was soaked and clinging to me like a second skin. I didn’t let it bother me. Carl stared at me with quick little glances, like it hurt his eyes or he was embarrassed. He seemed to want to say something but he didn’t know how to begin. It was inconsequential. I was above any minor considerations. I just wanted to chill out and think a while.
I said “Carl, I got this now, you go on home and I’ll deal with it. I appreciate you helpin me, you and Wanda saved me, and I owe you for that.”
“Are you sure? I can hang out with you if you need me.” He’d had enough. He was wet and scared and tired. His expression wouldn’t settle, it was grim then almost happy, he kept shooting quick glances my way. Maybe embarrassed at my semi nude state but still enjoying it. I couldn’t have cared less, it didn’t bother me.
“I’m sure. You go on now and close the door if you will. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He left me setting there at the table with the bag in the sink wrapped in the plastic bag. There was information available to me, things I had absorbed while communing in the water I hadn’t noticed at the time. It was hard not bouncing when I walked. I ran a mental inventory over myself; I was missing the irritating ingrown hair, I didn’t have an itch anywhere, no pains.
I picked up the fetish, bag and all from the sink, and took it to the back yard. I set the fetish down and aimed my palm at it and willed/requested that it sink. It sank into the ground and I expressed curiosity about how it worked and what it was.
I got a mass of information, some of it obvious, some of it not so much; I got the assurance it would stay there until I wanted or needed it. That was good enough for me.
I hadn’t eaten in days, I had to be starving, but I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t sick or weak but I knew I had to eat something so I fixed a few cans of chicken soup.
The soup came to a boil and I turned it off and got my first cup. It didn’t taste right, it was metallic tasting, super salty and just nasty. I spat it out in the sink, washed the sink out and went to bed. I tossed the wet shirt in the tub to deal with it later and decided tonight was a sleeping naked night.
The morning light came dimly in the bedroom window and my eyes popped open. No slow transition, stretching and groaning to get my blood pumping. I was asleep then I was awake. I rolled out of bed and fell into the wall. I leaned on it to support myself. Sometimes I was unsteady first thing in the morning. I pushed off the wall and made my way to the kitchen. I glanced at the clock and it was way too early, hadn’t made it to six o’clock yet. I normally didn’t get up before seven or eight, it made the day too long if I got up too early. I couldn’t imagine getting back in bed though.
The cold soup was congealed with a film covering the top of it. I got some ham out and it smelled so bad I examined it to see if it were discolored. Everything I tried to eat tasted off. I peeled an apple and I could eat it. During all those days I was out of it everything must have spoiled. Carl said a week. It was hard to believe I had lost seven days.
My hand on my coffee cup looked strange. I didn’t recognize my own fingers. I couldn’t place what the difference was, but something wasn’t right, it was a little puzzling, I looked at my wrist and arm as I sat there. It didn’t look like me. It looked like some little kid’s arm, thin and spindly. I suddenly noticed I wasn’t sitting the same as usual, the house didn’t fit right, I felt like an intruder. The things in the kitchen, the dingy walls, the window, and the dishes all looked familiar, in the right place, but it felt foreign as though I saw it for the first time after having seen pictures of it. All that time and what I had gone through must have driven me crazy. I didn’t get out much. I hoped I wouldn’t get out of control and start acting out in public. They’d lock me up somewhere. I’d seen it happen before when someone went Alzheimer’s, they’d put them in a nursing home and that was the end of them.
I went into the bathroom, turned on the water to let it warm up, grabbed the toothpaste and tore my new electric toothbrush out of the package. The way things were packaged, they were impossible to open with your hands. I kept a pair of scissors to open plastic packaging with. I usually wasted at least a couple futile attempts to ope
n them before I gave up and got the scissors. This package was the worst kind, the plastic fit the toothbrush exactly, it was molded tight to the toothbrush and charging unit and flattened around the outside with no way to start it coming apart.
I made the useless gesture of catching the edge with both hands and trying to tear it as I went to get the scissors. It ripped in two like a piece of paper. I stopped and looked at it. The edges of the plastic were white where they had stretched and torn wide open. It would be easier to tear a New York City phone book in half than to tear that plastic. I have thrown stuff away before when I destroyed it trying to get it open. The packages are designed to be impossible to open without tools. I stood there and fished the stuff out of it. I guess once in a while the impossible happens.
I plugged in the charger and sat it on the sink, put the brush under the water and hit the button, amazingly the brush came on. Score two impossible things already, the day was looking up. Who’d ever opened anything that used batteries and it worked out of the box? I just shook my head.
I put the toothpaste on the brush and reached up to put it in my mouth as I looked in the mirror and somebody else looked back at me.
When I unexpectedly put my hand in something hot I don’t think about it, my hand snatches away. It doesn’t have to ask my brain about it, my parts had a meeting and agreed about things such as this a long time ago. I’d never planned consciously what to do if a stranger looked back at me out of the mirror. Obviously my body had it on a list. With no hesitation, in one continuous motion I jumped back, slammed the toothbrush into the strange face freeing my hands up, and raised my foot to kick. That last detail was just silly; I couldn’t reach that high with my foot.
I looked at the person and she glared back at me with her lips pulled back in a snarl, her eyes drawn almost closed beneath lowered brows, her hands up and ready to hit. I recognized the housedress she was wearing. It was mine.