Deluge

by Leila Chatti

  of a miracle: The many pills. The pain.

  The duvet slinking from the mattress

  like spume receding, revealing blue

  thighs, white wrappings.

  In my one-bedroom apartment,

  colorless and closed in

  as a dream, I receive at last

  the word: benign—

  did you hear me?

  ANNUNCIATION

  My body now

  a chamber

  I have

  closed off

  to you. Sealed

  my mouth, my hands

  above the fiery

  wound. Dark

  the dark of

  heaven, bleeding

  in. So

  quiet

  I am sure

  you do not

  address me.

  In my room,

  the sudden

  coruscation

  only white

  blades

  of headlights

  slicing through

  the blinds. Still,

  I looked toward

  that brief

  brightness. Injured

  though

  I was

  by you,

  for a moment

  lifted

  my gaze,

  hoped—

  STORM

  The summer after, a storm

  split the sky over Hergla and I wanted to be in it.

  I climbed the rickety ladder to the roof where the night was

  purple and vast and you could see

  the whole bruise of the ocean. I was still

  in pain, I thought I would always be in pain,

  but it had receded like a tide and so

  was bearable, almost welcome,

  made me feel more acutely

  alive. The clouds swelled violet,

  violent. The gales battered me with sand.

  For a moment, this seemed all

  there was—as far as I could see the world

  desert and ocean and heaven

  shattering along its bright scars—

  and I thought the creeping thought

  of someone who has just made it through

  her worst imaginable thing, that I must begin

  imagining again for surely

  a worse calamity awaits

  to take its place, wondered if

  I would spend the rest of my God-given-

  back life bracing for the next

  inescapable disaster, the earth or my body

  cleaved right under me, the sky

  falling in black drops like stones,

  and though I felt this real fear the storm didn’t subside

  as it might in a movie of my life, suddenly

  waning to prove a point—no, it kept on

  in its wild terror, me there stunned

  at the center, fixed as the ocean broke and broke

  against the shore’s skin, as the desert

  raged on, barren and hissing.

  EXEGESIS

  I bled. God didn’t

  want to hear about it. He said unclean

  and so it was. He said it is

  harm, and so it was.

  Want to hear about it? He said unclean.

  Once a woman wanted, so he did

  her harm. And so it was

  first conceived: a woman suffering

  because a woman wanted. So he said

  cursed. And then he said blessed—

  the woman chose to suffer, conceived

  a god, though she never knew a man.

  And God knows best. If He calls a curse a blessing

  then so it is. And he said she was

  clean—she never knew a man. I’ve known men but never a god

  that bled and lived. But I did.

  QUESTIONS DIRECTED TOWARD THE IDEA OF MARY

  Was it the voice you feared, or its shadow?

  Did you long for His touch or was suffering enough for you

  to know He was there?

  Do you resent me my juvenile hungers?

  Do you wish for me the freedom of a vast, barren plain?

  What would you have done with your body if your body obliged?

  Did it please you, your son risen at the end like a question?

  Do you pity the angels their ancillary lives?

  Did your worship falter once you were sure you were good?

  How long did you live before yielding to your inevitable shame?

  And how long before you realized (did you realize?) shame was a blade

  you turned against yourself

  and once you knew it

  you could use it—

  AWRAH

  (Arabic) nakedness, taboo; that which is prohibited from public view.

  From the root meaning defectiveness, weakness, imperfection, blemish.

  The word has evolved, in multiple languages, to mean woman.

  A man who does not know my favorite song opens me like a fig.

  He has the proper credentials.

  I have a paper sheet

  hiked up and my legs spread wide as a wish.

  *

  My father called it fig. Because of this, I avoid eating them for many years, until after I am sick, at which point I begin to seek out any sanguine fruit like kin (as a child, upon first identifying herself in a mirror, begins looking hungrily in any bright pane)—feast on pomegranates, blood oranges, raspberries, cherries, plums. The first time I split the skin to reveal its carmine interior, I blush, I feel I am partaking in something vulgar. Assume implicitly my father meant shame but never make certain. But then I taste it. Its red meat on my tongue. Its ineffable sweetness.

  *

  In the dark, I search an Arabic dictionary for vagina by the glow of my phone—touch and touch to keep it from dimming. But it’s irrelevant: the word’s missing.

  Find instead, where it should be: diamond, suffering, to make a god.

  *

  (From the Latin, sheath.)

  Sheath

  implies weapon—(whose

  weapon?)—

  implies a weapon

  subdued.

  *

  It could be cancer, the doctor says, but you are very young.

  Does young mean less

  likely, in this circumstance? I ask.

  The doctor is exasperated.

  The doctor is an expert

  in his field. He sighs

  so that I’m aware. I am bare

  under paper, a bright bulb. I look down.

  My feet touch at the toes like a child’s.

  *

  We’re children, we’re easily

  convinced. Sundays,

  Sister teaches us

  we are sweet, are sweets,

  bonbons, good goods

  unless we’re unwrapped—

  or (heaven

  forbid) kissed

  —who wants a sucker

  that’s already been licked?

  *

  pudendum:

  A person’s external genital organs, especially

  the external genitalia of a woman.

  Latin, translated literally as thing to be ashamed of.

  From the root meaning to punish.

  *

  The idea of disease as punishment yielded the idea that a disease could be

  a particularly appropriate and just punishment.

  The idea of the disease yielded.

  The idea the disease.

  *

  To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain; in pain, your desire will rule over you.” Or this is how I remember it. Some things get damaged when handed down. Some things get damaged when handled. I am handled by so many men I begin to believe myself a thing, myself some thing damaged. When men tell me things, I listen. It’s polite, and I am a woman, and this a part of the terms. You learn. When the word of God came down it came down to a man. I will not accuse God of lacking imagination, but I will
set the accusation down where He can see it. Nevertheless, I take great care to respect the Word, and words generally, the only place I have ever encountered God, thus something of a sanctuary. (Like a child teasing, He refuses to show Himself to me, and so I must keep calling, keep seeking.) I am good, or at least I follow rules. Because I am bleeding, for two years I do not touch the word of God, do not enter His house, do not sing His favorite songs, by which I mean pray. I understand the blood as exile and cry out from the island it makes of me. I cry out in the way I am allowed, which is in puling, plaintive sounds. Why, O Lord, have you punished me—et cetera, et cetera. I also distract myself with language, as though I might find God in the lacunae between letters, in the ink of the letters themselves. Pain does not have a language, but God is where, in language, pain grew from punishment like a woman from a rib. What else can you call it but divine, the way ill stems from evil’s root, patient from suffering, blessing and blood on the same dark vine—

  *

  Sister says God

  sees all, says God

  sees all of us, in every room in every house in every hour we enter, says even in darkness God

  sees, in darkness He is the light that illumes, so cover yourself, even when alone, for God

  is with you, God

  who knows what your own self whispers to you, God

  closer than your jugular vein.

  *

  In Arabic, blood becomes dam, so with my two tongues I conjure both flood and its obstacle.

  *

  A poet says Repent

  means “the pain again.”

  Sister says once you touch

  He knows and your hands can never

  be clean.

  So what do I do with this ache, my filth, and my hands,

  stained as they are—my hands

  rising instinctive in the morning like birds

  wild with impertinent praise?

  *

  My hair awrah, so I covered it.

  My skin awrah, so I covered it.

  The sound of my voice awrah, so I swallowed it.

  The sound of my feet awrah, so I stood so still I vanished, just to be sure.

  *

  What purpose now, if I was made to worship You and You forbid me worship? I’m anxious as the moon gnawing through a day’s haze to be seen. My effort confuses. Praying as a child, I moved as my father moved, my lips contorting into the suggestion of words with nothing said, while in my head, a terrible boredom. As I was taught, tapped my finger against my knee, believed this sanctioned impatience. Now, chastened. Now I ablute and am never clean. I prostrate to pain and think it You. Is it true Maryam stood in worship each day until her ankles swelled as if with pride and her feet festered and wept with blood? I don’t understand your distinctions. I’ve learned the words. Let me put them to use.

  *

  The doctor speaks to me

  as I am told one day a husband might—

  I am always supine, undressed,

  he is always standing

  across the room, impatiently

  explaining something. It’s a certain kind

  of intimacy. We talk briefly

  about the usual things—

  how I feel,

  what he thinks

  about his work, which is,

  of course, my body. My body the crux

  of the relationship.

  *

  Women, being socialized to attend more to their physical appearance, are more likely than men to have healthcare providers assume they are not in pain if they look more physically attractive.

  *

  And what of looking? If a man looks long enough, a woman becomes something else. A novelty. A gimcrack. And God looks, and His angels, a canary on each shoulder. But this is true of anyone. And the sunbreak searing the clouds is not God’s eye. And the rustle outside my bedroom window at dusk is not God peering in. Yet, God watches, unfailing. What does He learn by watching that He does not already know? And what of the doctors’ looking? Having looked so long, I think them gods. And anyway, I can’t demand they avert their gaze—the looking’s what will save me.

  *

  Pressed, the belly resists.

  The doctor pushes again

  two fingers—tender. Holds

  a golf ball, says, one’s this

  size. Won’t say the other.

  *

  A man saying, once inside, tell me if

  it hurts.   A man saying just

  a little

  pressure.

  *

  Having a tumor generally arouses some feelings of shame… Far from revealing anything spiritual, it reveals that the body is, all too woefully, just the body.

  *

  A boy pressing me. A boy pressing me into the mattress like his shadow. I his shadow. My body irrelevant. My body the whole point. My body between us like an argument, but I uttered no argument. My limbs shadows, resistless. When he moved, I moved with him. Shadow of a shadow of a boy. Pressing my head. A boy pressing my hands above my head. A boy pressing Come on. A boy pressing just a little bit. Pressing just a little bit on my body, my hands, my head. Just a little bit of pressure until met with resistance. Just a little bit and a little bit and a little bit more.

  *

  The disease is often experienced as a form of demonic possession—tumors are “malignant” or “benign,” like forces.

  *

  A little pressure.

  A little pressure.

  A little pressure.

  A little pressure.

  A little pressure.

  A little pressure.

  A little pressure.

  A little pressure.

  *

  A woman writes Cancer is a demonic pregnancy. Because life is grotesque and absurd, the doctor uses a fetal chart to track my tumor’s growth; thus the produce aisle engenders dread. I yield a kumquat within me, a Meyer lemon, an heirloom purple as a fist. 10 weeks. 13. 20. Your baby is just beginning to kick. Your baby pandiculating. Your baby, if a girl, has now eggs and a womb of her own. I know something grows within me without eyes, without fingers, a beast without intention or a mouth to speak it, a creature with no breath blown in. In Arabic, to say fetus, ineluctably, you summon jinn.

  *

  And you, flower of pain, offer me other possibilities, become motherhood.

  *

  In the Qur’an, when Mary gives

  birth, it is not clinical. The sun bearing down on

  her like an animal, a thousand

  puny suns running

  like yolks in globules of sweat.

  Beneath her, her bared,

  milky thighs and clots

  of black sand. This what I cannot

  look away from—the One Who Is Most Clean

  unclean, her incarmined

  hellward crown slicked

  as if with lust, her mouth opening to howl

  that curse, and a moment where she is

  a wretched two-headed creature,

  then, after, the offal of God’s

  will sloughed as if onto an abattoir’s floor—

  and I stare not to humiliate her but for reassurance

  that one can truly suffer, can bleed

  and bleed as if gutted

  by the blade of God’s command,

  and still be loved by God

  and, more importantly, love Him back.

  *

  When trying to ascertain a name for my condition—not the illness but

  the subsequent obsession with the Mother of Sorrows, Sanctissima, Star

  of the Sea—I collect words like pearls, roll them over my tongue, relish

  the sounds they make, knowing they do not

  serve me. Mariolatry, parthenolatry: worship of the Virgin Mary, of virgins

  collectively. (It’s not worship that I feel, wanting to slip into a new skin like slipping

  into a bed with fresh, cool sheets.) Hyperdulia: veneration of t
he Virgin

  Mary as the holiest of creatures. Broken down, becomes something like heavenly

  slave. But what I like best is not her adolescent acquiescence

  or established chastity, not her being plucked by God’s hand

  like a daisy from all others in the field, but her overlooked

  humanness, her womanness. I probe the image of the Blessed

  Mother as often I have dissected pictures of my own, parsing her

  as if to possess her, deciding what of hers is

  mine. This what interests me: the body, her body

  obscured. Emissary

  of the feminine, flanked by gods like men and men of God, covered

  like a wound. Of her flesh, only her heart, burning,

  within view. Cynosure, nonesuch—in the Book

  the only woman named, and to be named is to be

  defined, corporeal, a beast of worth; she the one bodied

  amid a featureless female haze. My adoration

  preordained. In the beginning, as a child,

  I didn’t know she herself was a child, a sister

  I would eternally be placed beside—favored girl, exemplar

  of the lesser sex—and found lacking. And now a woman, all my life

  eclipsed, I cannot bring myself to resent her, ingénue who yielded

  to God’s impossible request—how could she have uttered anything but yes?

  *

  woman:

  *

  Black bag / of desire. Sweet weight / singing like a school girl. Chalice. / Teacup. Vessel. Animal within / an animal. She-ram. / Bed / of death. Womb, black. Blackening, / as a snake you coil, / and as a serpent / you hiss, and as a lion you / roar, / and as a lamb, lie / down.

  *

  Two years draped in black trail behind me like a cortege. Suited for a death that didn’t come. My prolonged, equivocal mourning. It takes time to be convinced, when I am well, that I am well. I dress in umbrage, as if still under the shadow of a very tall tree. But then I emerge, vernal, into the world of brightness, tentatively allow myself my favorite, imbruable hues—coquelicot, goldenrod, cornflower, lilac… And, despite knowing what it’s known, my body resumes its efforts toward blooming. When the blood comes, it drops lightly on my gusset like a petal. It is the season of strawberries.