The Chronology of Water

by Lidia Yuknavitch

  I turned to look at Kesey watching Neal Cassady. The look on his face. Sitting there in the dark with the last ditch disciples. His smile was crooked - an inside joke kind of smile. His eyes narrowed. He chuckled once or twice. Then I saw him rub his forehead - no doubt a migraine - but in the glow of Neal Cassady it looked to me more like a man trying to rub out time.

  The whole experience made me feel like Alice in Wonderland. How was it again I was in a room with Ken Kesey watching a video of Neal Cassady with a group of people who were “writers?” Who were we? After the video Ken talked a little and we asked him a few questions. Then he had to go to bed. It was 4:30 p.m. I felt like we’d failed at something but I had no idea what.

  The end of the year of Kesey culminated in a reading and reception for the book in Gerlinger Lounge at U of O. We all wore 1930s vintage clothing to mimic the characters in the book. We drank peppermint schnapps one at a time from Kesey’s flask, which sat up at the podium like a flag of his disposition. We’d been interviewed by People. We’d had a photo in Rolling Stone. There were a few parties after that. I barely remember them.

  My father actually flew up to Eugene from Florida to attend the reading. He sat in the audience in a $400 grey twill suit. He looked proud. Of something. In Kesey’s presence. When I was born, we lived in a house in the hills over Stinson Beach. 1963. Close enough to ride a bike to La Honda, where Kesey began his parties and acid tests the same year.

  When it was my turn to read I drank from the flask and looked out at the audience. My father’s steely architectural gaze. His unforgettable hands. Then I looked at Kesey. He pinched his own nipples and smiled and made me laugh. At the end of the reading my father shook Kesey’s hand and said “I’m a great admirer of yours.” I knew it was true. I watched their hands press together.

  When he met Kesey, my father’s voice tremored. In parting, Kesey said to my father, “You know, Lidia can hit it out of the park.” Having gotten as far as a tryout with the Cleveland Indians, that meant something to my father. The phrase, I mean.

  The relatively crappy novel that came out of us, Caverns, was inspired by an actual news clipping, an Associated Press story on October 31, 1964 entitled “Charles Oswald Loach, Doctor of Theosophy and discoverer of so-called ‘SECRET CAVE OF AMERICAN ANCIENTS,’ which stirred archaeological controversy in 1928.” Set in the 1930s, Loach is imagined as a convicted murderer who is released from San Quentin Prison, in the custody of a priest, to lead an expedition to rediscover the cave.

  It isn’t a very good novel. Whatever it was we entered, it wasn’t a novel. And if we followed an ex-con priest into a cave, all we found was sea lion excrement.

  I don’t know if the posse would agree with me on this, but it seemed to me like what we’d entered that year was an ending. The most extreme part or point of something. Or a small piece of something that is left after it has been used. Or perhaps it was simply Kesey’s last act - to further his own end.

  Every Oregon writer has a Kesey story. I’m serious - go to literary readings in Oregon and 85 percent of the time his name will rise, whether or not whoever is speaking knew him. Sometimes it’s about his house in Pleasant Hill. Sometimes it’s about the bus. Sometimes it’s about writing. Sometimes it’s about his “wild spirit.” Often, if I’m in the audience, it gives me a stomachache to hear his name used in such … soft and impotent ways.

  I think that everyone that knew Kesey knew him differ - ently. Maybe that’s true about all larger than life people, or it may be that no one really ever knows them at all - we just have exper - iences near them and claim them as our own. We say their names and wish that something intimate is coming out of our mouths. But intimacy isn’t like in books or movies.

  It wasn’t until the following year, the year that was not the collaborative writing class, the year after the book we wrote that was not very good came out that made me feel like we’d utterly failed Kesey, the year after he’d ended up in the Mayo clinic for his affair with his lover, vodka, we met once at his coast house by ourselves.

  That night he boiled water and cooked pasta and dumped a jar of Ragu on it and we ate it with bent old forks. We drank whiskey out of tin cups. He told life stories. That’s what he was best at. Me? I didn’t have any stories. Did I? When it got dark he lit some crappy looking ancient candles. We sat in two wooden chairs next to each other looking out at the moonlit water. I distinctly remember trying to sit in the chair older and like I had been part of history. Which amounted to extending my legs out and crossing one ankle over the other and crossing my arms over my chest. I looked like Abe Lincoln.

  Then he said, “What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you in your life?”

  I sat there like a lump trying to conjure up the best thing that had ever happened to me. We both already knew what the worst thing was. Nothing best had happened to me. Had it? I could only answer worst. I looked out at the ocean.

  Finally I said, “Swimming.”

  “ Why swimming?” he said, turning to look at me.

  “Because it’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at,” came out of my mouth.

  “That’s not the only thing you are good at.” And he put his huge wrestler writer arm around me.

  Fuck. This is it. Here it comes. His skin smelled … well it smelled like somebody’s father’s skin. Aftershave and sweat and whiskey and Ragu. He’s going to tell me I’m good at fucking. He’s going to tell me I’m a “tootsie” - the nickname he’d used on me the year of the class. And then I’m going to spread my legs for Ken Kesey, because that’s what blond clueless idiots do. I closed my eyes and waited for the hands of a man to do what they did to women like me.

  But he didn’t say any of those things. He said, “ I’ve seen a lot of writers come and go. You’ve got the stuff. It’s in your hands. What are you going to do next?”

  I opened my eyes and looked at my hands. They looked extremely dumb. “Next?” I said.

  “You know, in your life. What’s next?”

  I didn’t have a plan. I had grief. I had rage. I had my sexuality. I liked books more than people. I liked to be drunk and high and fuck so I didn’t have to answer questions like this.

  As I’m telling this I realize there is another way to tell it. Tenderly. Quiet and small. The question he asked me. It’s what a loving father should ask.

  Or I could lie. I could render an epic psychedelic love affair. Or hot older man younger woman sexcapades. I could write anything. Maybe there are a million ways to tell it.

  Kesey was the best liar I ever met in my life.

  When I got home I cut all the hair off on the left side of my head, leaving two different women looking at me in the mirror. One with a long trail of blond halfway down her back. The other, a woman with hair cropped close to her head and with the bone structure of a beautiful man in her face.

  Who.

  Am.

  I.

  Back at U of O I went to classes. Once in the creative writing department a man big as a wrestler walked by me staring at my uneven head hair and kinda banged into my shoulder. Must be a writer. Who gives a shit about writers. Not me. Keep walking. But my heart nearly beat itself up in my chest.

  I never saw Kesey again. His liver failed and he got Hepatitis C. In 1997 he had a stroke. Later he got cancer and died. But I’m of the opinion he drowned.

  There are many ways to drown.

  III. The Wet

  A Happy Childhood

  I AM SIX.

  My friend Katie in the water my friend Christie in the water Phantom Lake Bath and Tennis Club and summer is every day every single day in the water we swim in the morning we swim in the daytime we swim in the afternoon we swim at night we swim every day we eat rainbow popsicles we eat fudgesicles creamsicles we go and go underwater laps hold your breath back and forth and back again three times no boys we stay under - water swim goggles look at each other blow your air out sit on the bottom we dive from the low dive we dive from the high dive we
find pennies at the bottom of the deep end we laugh and laugh we race at swim meets in evening we race we win and win little gold medals beautiful blue ribbons we dive off of starting blocks we fly in the air we enter the water with the glee of girl splashing.

  I AM EIGHT.

  My sister my adoration my sister my awe my sister’s room world of art world of music world of poetry and dried flowers and watercolor covers and long auburn hair.

  I AM 10.

  Vacationing at Salishan. My father calm, cigarette smoke curling around his head as he gazes out at the Oregon ocean. My mother humming. My sister and I swimming in the pool of a resort, laughing, like other peoples’ children.

  I AM 11.

  I play clarinet with my friend Brody and we tap our feet three-quarter time our mouths around the instruments our fingers between the struggle of learning and the dance of music our knees our lives nearly touching.

  I AM 13.

  The family of my friend Christie my best friend my world miraculously take me on their camping trips with them in their big Winnebago at night in the little Winnebago attic where we slept in our sleeping bags I stare at her while she sleeps my skin hot and itching I have to pee I put my hands between my legs like an anxious little monkey I go to sleep I pee my pants hide my PJ’s in one of the stow cupboards in the Winnebago and listen to her parents all day wonder “What smells like fish?” and Christie smiles and we run and play with frogs in the weeds knee-deep in the water of our lives.

  I AM 15.

  In the women’s locker room after swim practice and skin and wet. Little girls holding in youth in V-shaped torsos. Almost women shaving their legs. The bodies of women and girls safe in a room with heat and steam and let loose hair. My head swimming, swimming. I want to stay. I want to belong to something besides family.

  Illness as Metaphor

  KISSED A GIRL AND MADE ME CRY.

  When I kissed Annie Van Leewan and got mononucleosis I was 11 years old. My skin took on a yellowish pale color and the blue veins in my own hands looked as if I’d colored them with one of my father’s architectural felt tipped markers. I lost 10 pounds the first week and a half. My eyesight became slightly blurry. I had none of my swimmer strength - I remember wondering where it went - why couldn’t I lift my own arms? What had happened to my legs? I could not get out of bed or stand without fainting. I could not eat, or walk, or go to the bathroom, or dress, undress, on my own. I could not bathe. I could not reach water.

  My mother at that time was in the prime of her real estate glory. My father at that time had chosen to try his luck as a freelance architect. His office the bedroom next to mine -the room that had been my sister’s. Before she left. In other words, it was my father who was home with me. For four weeks.

  I’m trying to think how to tell you how four weeks can be years. It isn’t possible, I know. But it happened. It’s language that’s letting me say that the days elongated, as if the very sun and moon had forsaken me. It’s narrative that makes things open up so I can tell this. It’s the yielding expanse of a white page.

  In my sickbed my father removed my sweat soaked clothing. My father redressed me in underwear and pretty nightgowns. My father stroked my hair. Kissed my skin. My father carried me to the bathtub and laid me down and washed me. Everywhere. My father dried me off in his arms and redressed me and carried me back to the bed. His skin the smell of cigarettes and Old Spice cologne. His yellowed fingers. The mountainous callous on his middle finger from all the years of holding a pen or pencil. His steel blue eyes. Twinning mine. The word “Baby.”

  Late at night, my mother would come home from selling beautiful homes to other people. She would come into my room and sing I see the moon. And kiss me. And say, “Don’t you cry, Belle, everything’s gonna get better. You’ll see.” And leave early the next morning.

  There is only one other time in my life that I have experienced the delirium I entered during those weeks. Because there are times when a soul has to leave a body, times that are not death. Some people know this like a hymn. I knew she - my body - was still there, but I left her lifeless in the arms of a father.

  I went into a white. Inside the white, there were sunflowers. And lapis colored glass. And deep aqua pools. There were beautiful rocks everywhere - but you had to find them. Small and exquisite journeys that took all day. Like in a very good dream. Inside the white too there were stories. As if written on the walls or floors or sky of the white. The words. You could see them. Reach out and touch them. Just like the rocks. You could pick up the rocks or words and carry them. Sometimes the wordrocks sang. After a while I believed in them more than my own life. I thought, it would be possible, even beautiful, to die.

  But even girls whose strength has abandoned them are made to come back. And so I began to eat again. Taking the fork or spoon from my father’s hand. I began to get up out of my bed and walk - wondering, is this what my mother felt like after all those months as a girl in a body cast, finally touching the floor and moving her legs, breathing in something called will? And mercifully. I again entered the water. To swim. Away from my father’s house, every day I swam a tiny piece of self returned. And the strength of … the strength of a girl.

  Everything about him was in his hands.

  A Burning

  WHEN I WAS 13 I CONFESSED MY FATHER SECRETS IN the black box of catholic to another father in the house of our father who told me I should not tell lies.

  Honor thy father.

  Say seven Hail Marys.

  It’s wicked to make up stories.

  For three days and three nights I prayed to the thing called god so hard I choked on the spit in my mouth. I clenched my hands until they went red. I dug my fingernails into flesh so hard little scarlet moons appeared. I shut my eyes so tight I thought my forehead would bleed. My head, my heart, everything on the inside was burning.

  No matter how many times I entered the cool waters of the pool, I left the wet with a fire in me.

  Mercy did not come from god the father. Mercy came from a book. That was the year I read Saint Joan of Arc by Vita Sackville-West. My sister gave me the book when she left our father’s house.

  At 13, I found most of the book terrifying. And I had to skip many words and pages that I did not understand. But I already knew who Joan of Arc was, because my sister had explained it to me. Girl woman with a war in her. Voice of a father in her head. And so I knew if I kept reading I would come to her burning. I didn’t want to and I couldn’t not.

  Joan of Arc’s burning scene is on page 341. Instead of a crown of thorns they placed a tall paper cap on her head. She did not die until the fire reached her head. People saw all kinds of things - one person saw a dove leaving her skull. Despite the oil, sulphur and fuel used, her entrails and heart would not go to ash. The executioner had to throw them in the Seine.

  I could see her. How it looked. How it smelled. How her hair went to flame. How the bone form of her skull appeared, until her jaw and teeth shown, a terrible smile or a scream, before she burned to crap.

  I’m 13 reading that. Honor thy father. It is wicked to make up stories.

  I’m the rest of my life a burning girl.

  That image of Joan of Arc burning up in a fire burned inside me like a new religion. Her face skyward. Her faith muscled up like a holy war. And always the voice of a father in her head. Like me. Jesus. What is a thin man pinned to wood next to the image of a burning woman warrior ablaze? I took the image of a burning woman into my heart and left belief to the house of father forever.

  I didn’t hate the fire. I hated the people who did not believe her. And I hated the father that let her burn. And I hated the men who… I think I hated men. The more I was around them, the more I came close to spontaneously combusting. Drawing them dangerously close to the flame.

  The Hairy Girls

  GIRL SWIMMERS ARE HAIRY.

  I don’t know how much you know about these things, but competition swimmers don’t shave their legs unless they ar
e preparing for the big meet, Regionals, State, Senior Nationals, for instance. So when I was a girl who barely had any hairs looking up at the towering corpus of Nancy Hogshead from the puny viewpoint of the pool, their leg hair was downright scary. And they had pube hair sticking out of their suits up at the top of their thighs and going into their business. Boy. Talk about terrifying.

  OK that’s a lie. It wasn’t terrifying. It was mesmerizing. I couldn’t stop staring. It made me into a mouth breather.

  When Jo Harshbarger showered in the locker rooms, all I saw was her legs as something I longed to pet, and her stuff as a little furry special place, especially since as a girl I was afraid to look at tits or twats or even faces.

  That’s a lie too. I stared at tits and coochie as hard as a drunk eyeballing a fifth of vodka.

  These hairy women - they were - they were mythic. As a kid, I had no idea what they were in real life - students, girlfriends of something, females who used hand-held hairdryers, people who shopped at the mall with purses and drove cars around - but at the pool and in the locker rooms they were mythic. I think that’s why I remember so many of their names, these larger than life to a kid women - Jo Harshbarger and Evie Kosenkranius and Karen Moe and Shirley Babashoff.

  Lynn Collella Bell.

  I used to walk around the locker rooms and toddle dreamily out to my mom’s car looking up at the sky with LynnCollellaBellLynnCollelaBellLynnCollellaBell making song loops in my skull. LynnColllelaBell with the broadest shoulders and teeniest hips I’d ever seen. Making me hippoventate.