Latin@ Rising

by Matthew Goodwin

  She did not know him. He was a stranger.

  Anahita’s shower was the one place where she escaped all the oppressive forces in her life that dammed her: her boss, coworkers, family, friends, and her hard exterior, which, she knew, was really fake. She had to fit in and fit herself in to all these other worlds that were not her own.

  How she envied the water. Anahita wished she could flow freely outside of her bathroom, outside her skin even.

  She sweated in the shower, cried in the shower, bled in the shower. The water cascaded all over her glistening brown body, releasing, cleansing, and healing her. Anahita emerged from the baptismal steam — reborn. Profanely accessible, yet immaculately sacred, inside the temple of her shower she was water. The steam of her authentic self rose all around her, opening her pores, her body becoming a pulsing, singular breath, inhaling every molecule of hydration and clarity.

  Anahita wanted to cry, sweat, and make love all the time. But she had to hold it in. Her desires had a way of slipping through, though. In bashful little doses, but still. Always these slips were immediately sanctioned. Sneezes were sanitized by excuse-me’s and dismissed by God bless you’s. Pure sweat was contaminated by icky-sweet, perfumey anti-perspirants. Tears were censored by tissue, quarantined to poking corners. No, NOT in public Anahita. Ana, don’t make a scene! Or, Oh my God, are you crying?

  How she resented those nagging voices! Especially the voice inside of her that took the shape of the others, echoing them.

  Sometimes Anahita stared at herself in the mirror and saw a complete stranger glaring back at her.

  Every morning she dressed for work, pinching her voluptuous curves into too tight slacks that weren’t much for breathing, and applied Ivory Beige face powder to her chocolate skin. She straightened her hair with an iron that sizzled and spat while it tamed her unruly curls. Anahita’s grandfather, true to the Latin American colonial legacy of caste based on skin color, always told her: Ay mija eres muy quemada. Cover yourself when you go out in the sun or you’ll get negra. He stretched out the word negra, like saying it produced a bad taste his mouth really wanted to spit out. He blamed Anahita’s cocoa skin and kinky hair on her love of going to the beach, saying the salt in the air and water gave her hair its dense curls. Anahita was the only one in her family who was dark skinned. Most of her tias and tios were European looking, proudly flaunting milky skin and straight hair. Anahita was like a silent reminder of some dark sin, some taboo that no one liked to talk about unless to negate what she truly was, blaming her darkness on the harsh, unforgiving forces of nature: the saline air and water, the blistering sun.

  Every 6:00 AM Anahita offered her beautiful bronze body: its undulating peaks and curves, resilient arms, giving hands, high breasts, dipping navel valleys, small triangle of pubic hair, ample, round bottom, abundant thighs, and strong legs to the water. As she stood under her personal waterfall, naked and elemental, all of her cells breathed as if for the first time. Her abundant lips, rising broad nose, and crown of spiral ringlets — all reminding of the universal laws of physics — became vibrant with life. Anahita’s hour of beauty in her shower was only a drop of sacrament to appease the daylong massacre of her senses.

  Anahita made her decision.

  She stared at the muck in her shower, took a deep breath, holding it tight in her chest, and went in.

  She winced when her feet sloshed through the scum that looked like a swamp of sour milk turned ecru. She turned the circular metal knob slowly, unsure of herself. It shined brightly in the light of her bathroom, revealing Anahita’s reflection in its silvery gaze. She looked distorted: elongated at her head, neck, and face and morphed and globular at her ass, tummy and thighs. Anahita squeezed her eyes shut, raising her chin to the clear water. The showerhead squirted out unevenly, in bursts of hot and cold. It spat at her, then slobbered like a messy kisser. The muck at her feet rose, filling the tub. Warm and slimy, it curled around her calves, clinging to her skin. Anahita felt a strong pulling sensation grip her legs.

  She started to panic, unable to catch her breath. She tried to jerk her feet away but couldn’t budge. The thick sludge was like quicksand, clamping onto her knees. Each time she tried to move the scum slithered higher up her thighs.

  Anahita suddenly knew, she was stuck.

  She gripped the shower curtain, screaming. Then realized, who would hear her?

  She was totally alone.

  The clear water at the top of the tub overflowed, spilling onto the floor. It had escaped the scum that now stuck to her skin. She tried to wipe the scum away but it solidified, plastering to her skin as she scrubbed and scratched to get it off. In desperation she bent down, feeling for the drain.

  The water near the drain was hot on her fingertips. She felt a whirling force that instantly froze her. Ripples of fear numbed Anahita’s hand, weighing her down deeper in the bath. The fluid spun furiously, building momentum.

  Anahita felt the liquid grip her arm. It pulled her and she slipped, losing her balance, forcing her head to plunge into the vortex of hot water. She squeezed her eyes shut, thrashing her hands wildly, flinging chunks of hardened mush to dislodge the muck and clear the drain.

  As her cheek hit the bottom of the tub, she felt heat emanating from the tiny cave of the drain. It burned the tips of her fingers and eyelids as she blinked hard and struggled to the surface for air, spitting out pieces of grit that lodged between her lips.

  Suddenly, there was a flash of light.

  All the untainted water in the tub rushed down the drain, as if sucked in one incredible gush by an invisible, cyclonic vacuum.

  With the force of the drain eddying like a maelstrom, the water tripped her over, sending her whole body crashing against the tub.

  She landed with a hard thud. The last sound Anahita heard before her head hit the porcelain, slipping into unconsciousness, was her own voice cursing her shower — her sanctuary.

  She awoke to the sound of a muffled voice yelling, “This is Caesar, where the hell are you?! Anahita?” It was her boss. It sounded so far away.

  Then Vincent’s voice. “Baby girl? Everyone’s looking for you. I spoke to your boss, he says you haven’t been to work in three days. Where are you, mija? Ana? Are you there? Ana? … who are you with? What the fuck are you doing? Answer me! I’m coming over.”

  Vincent’s voice sent chills piercing down Anahita’s spine, leaving a tattoo of cold sweat in its wake.

  She tried to move.

  Nothing.

  Anahita was covered head to toe in something like a body cast. She couldn’t even move her head to see what it was. Each second the clay-like material covering her body tightened, hardened, choking her insides. Pain impaled her whenever she tried to move. Her thoughts hazed and jumbled together, nailed to the far sides of her brain. Somewhere her mind was there. Anahita searched desperately, but her reason was like a stack of neglected mail sealed in a corner of a very dark, windowless room. Her thoughts were unreadable, unreachable, eclipsed by drilling pain.

  Anahita closed her eyes and gave up understanding what she was doing there — naked in her bath covered in a substance quickly hardening to cement — or why.

  She slipped in and out of sleep and consciousness. Dream and reality whirled together. Yes … wait, no … swirled. Yes … swirled together like water — water — yes. Like water going, going … down. Down the drain. The drain? The drain! Oh, NOOOO! Anahita tried to scream. No sound came. It felt as though an unseen hand held her fast, suffocating her. She couldn’t fight; she could not see her enemy.

  Someone was knocking on her bathroom door. Or was it the front door? Someone was calling her name.

  Vincent.

  Anahita felt the old fear rise in her throat, throttling her. She did not want it to be him. He was not her knight in shining armor—as if there were such a thing. She tried to yell, Leave me alone! but had no voice.

  Again she tried to move. Nothing. Now Vincent’s voice was pleading. The side of his mo
uth and cheek sounded pushed against the door. She heard him thrust his body against the wood. He was banging hard on the door with his shoulder, kicking it with his feet. The barricade didn’t give, not even a crack. His pounding was loud, making Anahita’s head feel like jagged glass hammered into it. With each of Vincent’s thrusts her head clamored. She threw up and felt warm vomit dribble down her chin.

  “Ana, hold on baby girl. I’m coming back. With a locksmith.” She heard heavy footsteps rush down the stairs.

  Shivers of fear trembled in her gut, burning her skin. She felt needles of perspiration all over her.

  Then they came.

  Not Vincent. Not a locksmith.

  Anahita could feel them running all over her like millions of tiny ants. They were in her hair, crawling up her nose, in her ears and eyes. They crawled between her legs. They squirmed, spontaneously multiplying, swarming like maggots. Depositing themselves into her pores, they burst open, exploding. Connecting to one another, they created a fault line of burning that throbbed beneath her skin. Filled with puss they sucked from her vital fluids, they grew. Reemerging as huge boils, they cracked her skin, bursting the cast that covered her.

  Anahita realized with crystal clarity: the cast was the substance that had invaded her shower and contaminated her bathwater.

  Anahita gasped and panted but her lungs did not fill with air. Unable to breathe through her nose or mouth, Anahita wheezed in heaves as her whole body struggled to respire through the sores on her skin. Her chest surged; her legs quaked.

  Anahita saw her belly swell, becoming a humongous balloon of brown flesh. Pain tore at her in places she’d never known existed. Her womb dilated; her insides pulled apart. She saw clumps of her bright red blood unfurl into the clear water.

  One by one, the abscesses on Anahita’s body burst — and life emerged.

  “We have reversed the process!” the voices declared in high-pitched, singing unison. They shone brilliantly. Tiny orbs of white, blue, and pink light swirled before her.

  Anahita thought they were the visions she’d had as a small child. But no, she thought, that could not be. The daydreams she’d had in her mother’s garden of shimmering, diaphanous creatures as tiny as ants and voluminous as nematodes that spoke to her in other languages, telling her stories of ancient times, calling her by another name were not real. No, of course not.

  They were glaring at her. One screamed, “REVOLUTION!!” Her skin prickled and itched as they retched all over her. She felt stinging pinches everywhere, as the holes on her body from where the abscesses had burst seemed to suck in the vomit.

  “More! More!” they screamed.

  “Yes! We must rid ourselves of this sickness!”

  “Yes! Back to the Source!”

  The Source? Sickness? What are these things? What the hell is happening to me?

  The beings glistened before Anahita’s eyes and swayed on her body in a unified hum, reverberating a singularity that could only come from one corpus, yet they were millions. They seemed endless.

  She heard a loud, piercing drip wrench at her insides, clamoring in her ears. It seemed as if she were … melting. Melting? Yes that was it! Her bodily fluid was being drained with a vicious suction. She felt weaker and weaker with each dripdrip dripdrip dripdrip down the drain. She realized with a horrifying lucidity — and tried with the entire logical, safe reasoning she could muster to fight it — that she was going down the drain!

  Dripdrip. Dripdrip. Dripdrip.

  With each dripdrip dripdrip all her safehouse doors — the doors to her repression, the doors to her fear, the doors to her obsessive control were unhinged wildly with the force of an island typhoon. All the rusty nails that held those doors in place were ripped from her body, exposing gaping holes, releasing all her pain and fluids in gushing torrents.

  Anahita’s doors could not hold the obesity of one single idea that bulged behind them: She was going down the drain!

  Melting, melting, melting. Dissolving like a plastic doll in a blazing pyre.

  NO! NO! NO! This is not possible! ‘You lost it baby girl. I always knew that would happen. You are fucking crazy!’ What? Nooo!! This is MY voice! Not yours, Vincent! Get the fuck out of my head, you ASSHOLE!! YOU are the one who is crazy!!!

  No, she told herself. No. The last real thing that happened was Vincent trying to get in the door. She was sure of it.

  Yes. He was trying to get in the minute just a door ago. Wait — what? Oh no! This is happening! This is real! Wait. Wait! Wait! Hold on to Vincent. Hold on to him! Any minute he’ll be back. Any minute … Oh! Why didn’t I just give him my keys?

  She had never given Vincent her key. No matter how he assumed and asserted her space as his own. No matter how many of his grey suits were hanging in her closet, or how he slept stretching himself across her bed, as if by some wizardry shrinking her bed and blankets to fit only him. No, she had never given him the key. Not to the front door nor to her bathroom, which had a keyed lock also. She’d made sure of it. The bathroom was hers only. And she had never regretted her decision. Until now.

  She tried to will herself to lose consciousness.

  But she could not shut herself down any longer. Anahita’s ignorance refused to bounce her safely in place like an inflatable, plastic punching doll. That doll had already melted down the drain.

  She pinched her eyes closed. Then, without her brain willing her eye muscle to open, she saw. A thick, mucousy film slid down her eyeball, past her cheek, dribbling down the sides of her face. She tried to blink and with that came immense, stabbing pain that seemed to shoot through her head and out of her, bouncing into the light all around. She felt as though a piece of her consciousness had been excavated out of her brain.

  Anahita did not experience the lapse of vision or flash of light to dark that accompanies blinking. There was no abrupt phosphine, no rustling of eyelash to skin. Anahita realized with certain horror that she had not opened her eyes at all.

  Her eyelids had melted away!

  Anahita awoke in a vast darkness. Tiny spheres of light shimmered and trembled like a million pearls, moving in a thrum of glowing whites, blues, soft pinks, and yellows set against an immense void. The lights appeared to move together, in and out of each other seamlessly — like an ocean of radiance, glimmering in a womb of blackness.

  She did not feel her body. She did not remember her body.

  She did not remember the glossy, tight curls of her childhood when boys tugged at her hair, marveling at how it bounced back. Boing-boing curls, they called them.

  She did not remember the swoon of moist warmth between her smooth, pubescent thighs at twelve, when she slow danced with a boy for the first time.

  She did not remember the implosion of electricity rise from her belly into her throat when he pressed against her and she felt his hot, pink tongue flicker at hers.

  She did not remember the blossom of friendship as a young woman, talking with her girlfriends, sipping hot coffee swirled with cinnamon and cream, or chilled champagne splashed with orange juice. She did not remember the bursts of their shared laughter. She did not hear the clink of crystal glasses, toasting a birthday, a graduation, a job offer, a proposal.

  She did not remember the brine of tears choked in her mouth, the salted swallow of betrayal, or the vinegared knot of loss that had lain lead-weighted in her stomach for so many years.

  All of that was gone now.

  She did not remember her image in her full-length mirror; how she squeezed and pinched her body, frowning when it didn’t fit into some elusive, unnamed — already reserved — space of beauty. Even when so many poured praise onto her she couldn’t figure out why — why couldn’t she accept the compliments? Why couldn’t she breathe under the weight of them? Why wasn’t she satisfied with herself? Why was she never enough? Always too dark, too curvy, too smart even? Of course, she knew why intellectually — she had gone to college, developed an analysis, read bell hooks, This Bridge Called My Back, knew v
ery well the self-hate women of color have mastered.

  Although Anahita longed for self-love, she could not change the emotion that became a jagged stone in the pit of her womb.

  She did not see herself frowning at herself, while her own reflection stared back at her, some stranger in her mirror, asking: Why? Why do you hate me so? She did not see herself dismissing in a red-cheeked flutter the compliments of: You are beautiful, that no matter how many times she heard, she could not find a home for.

  All of that was gone now.

  She did not remember the blood caked on her cracked lips after she opened the car door and let Vincent in. She did not judge herself, asking like so many other times, why the hell had she done that? She did not blame or punish herself for what happened later, which was so much worse than the parking lot.

  She did not even remember the cold porcelain tub against her skin. Or the immense pain that wracked her body just moments before.

  She did not remember any of it.

  Unafraid for the first time in all of her existence, Anahita let go.

  No longer perpetually clenching, no longer holding back — she felt liquid. Anahita was finally herself. Unconditionally, unapologetically, perfectly, imperfectly herself.

  She moved with the seamlessness of water and the quickness of light. No longer hiding, She was hers. And she was completely free.

  She heard chanting.

  Iba se Yeye! Iba se Yeye! Iba se Yeye! Iba se Yeye! Iba se Yeye!

  Somehow she knew the language, although it seemed ancient. But still, she knew it — she remembered it.

  Voices thrummed out of the blackness, warbling over and over, Iba se Yeye! Iba se Yeye! Iba se Yeye! creating a vibration that welled inside of her, rising, entering her essence, filling her with infinite prisms of joy. She began to weep in ecstasy.

  Suddenly, the cacophony of voices stopped and a single voice spoke to her from the darkness: