Reforming
One summer, I took a bath each day. I was not sure who I was, or how to be me. Some days I was in the bath multiple times. I ran the water hot. I lowered myself slowly and breathed to relax despite my skin burning. My flesh turned red with heat. The water enveloped my body.
A former boyfriend–who had a habit of becoming an ex during our two-year relationship–told me during our most recent breakup that I was not a good person. I’d prayed for that conversation, if praying is calling repeatedly until the hello? of redemption. He was late to our agreed meeting time; he’d been sleeping. I waited for him to arrive. I was wearing a spring dress. I’d left early from a friend’s wedding. My breath was ragged, and my heart pounded both for fear of abandonment, and hope for healing.
We sat at my kitchen table like we had many times before. “You are not a good person,” he said. He walked out the door, got into his car, and drove away, as he had weeks before when he said, “I can’t do this anymore.” That time, he left in the middle of dinner. Two plates of fish tacos were untouched on the table. After I ate my plate of food, I couldn’t cry for the suddenness of it all. Eventually, when the tears came, I sought refuge in the bathroom.
There is no time in a bathroom. The flow of water is perpetual. Like a river, each moment is the same but new. We perform a ritual of repetition, a rite of water: place your hands in a stream of water, empty the contents of your body into a small pool, stand beneath a gentle rain, and submerge your body in a cistern. The multiplicity of moments flow together. Usually, there is no clock in a bathroom, but even if there is, this chamber is outside of time and place. The windows are covered with frosty adhesive sheets, or shrouded with curtains.
Entering a bathroom signals a necessary solitude, sanctuary. People only open the door of an occupied bathroom when they think the person inside will not, or cannot, get out ever again.
I grew up a Christian of the Baptists who taught me that I was born un-good. The story goes like this: you are born a sinner, flawed, unworthy. The only way to remedy this is through acceptance, baptism and sacrament. You must accept the savior into your heart in order to be publicly baptized. Submerging the flesh in water is a symbol of spiritual rebirth. Finally, you take communion, the holy sacrament of Christ’s blood and body. Then you are absolved of your sins; your goodness is restored. Years ago, I’d stopped believing in my inherent flaws or the need to be saved. I’d come to believe that I came into the world unblemished.
In the sanctum of my bathroom, there were no signifiers of the past (the kitchen table, a book he lent me), nor signs that life was progressing without me (cars driving by, people walking dogs, shadows shifting in the sunlight). In a bathroom, water flows, and we sit or stand. Time seems suspended–it could be, and we would still know what to do, how to perform the ritual.
During the summer of the baths, the hot water made me woozy. When I left the tub, I was unsteady, sweaty, and unfocused. I felt like hot, wet, red clay oozing into a formless blob. Sometimes, I lay on my bed until the ambient temperature reconstituted my flesh.
“You’re not a good person,” he said carefully, either for fear of retribution or perhaps because he thought it was evident to everyone but me. When two people enter a pact, their goodness and evils hang overhead like the dark space beyond the firmament. Bound together beneath the heavens, we believe that the other can see us better than we can see ourselves. When he spoke, I felt a schism in my chest.
I found new scripture. Zora Neale Hurston narrates another version of redemption: God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. But, she continues; the angels got jealous. They beat Man down to millions of pieces that still shone and hummed, beat Man down to nothing but sparks, yet each one still had a shine and a song. So, the angels covered each one with mud. The lonesomeness of Hurston’s sparks made them search for one another despite their muddied shine.
A Greek myth illustrates the same desired reunion. Plato says humans were born with four appendages and two heads. Zeus feared their power and split them into two. In this case, our search for our ‘other half’ is literal. But our search is perhaps thwarted; Hurston’s myth closes with a provision: but the mud is deaf and dumb.
Are we doomed to be incomplete, flawed, and covered in mud? I submerged myself in water because my spark had darkened and there was silence instead of song. Did the angels, or his words, cover me with mud? What power does God have compared to the invectives we hurl at one another?
I no longer have a bathtub. I shower after writing. The water will be hot. I’ll stand until I cannot follow my thoughts or hear anything besides the hum of water. The water will fall from above, seemingly forever. Then, before I step out of the flow, I’ll turn the handle to the right, to a blue strip on the faucet. The water will shift to a biting cold, my breath will catch, and I will feel myself, like clay, reforming.
