Body of Water
Rachel C.C. Matteri
Something is wrong with my body. In my body. Outside of my body. Just all over. I’m sitting in class. The band of my plaid jumper is pushing into my swollen child-stomach. Something is in there that pushes against this band. I look around. I look for other bodies in this dress I wear. I look at their faces to see if they too are full of dirt and filth that pushes this skin, this blue and green band away, away, away.
They look calm. They look curious about learning cursive and multiplication. The only thing I want is out of this dress.
They look calm. They look curious about learning cursive and multiplication. The only thing I want is out of this dress.
Trauma
It is held in the body
Like a glass of water
It holds, it holds
It pours, it pours
It spills
I clean it up.
It is held in the body
Like a glass of water
It holds, it holds
It pours, it pours
It spills
I clean it up.
When I was a kid, I went to a tiny, private Catholic school that was run by a few teachers, a group of nuns, and a priest. I was in third grade or so. One day I was sick, but not sick enough to stay home. My mom could be a stickler about missing school unless I had a fever. She helped me into my ugly dress uniform and out the door.
I had diarrhea. Not in my dress but in the girl’s bathroom. I was late to lunch and lunch was a strict time at this school. The nun yelled at me in front of the whole school, which was fifty people at most. She made me sit-the-bench for the entire recess period. I clenched and tried not to shit my dress. I didn’t. I watched my classmates pretend to be dinosaurs and swing upside down by their knees on the high bars.
My parents weren’t happy about this story that night, even though they also felt a little responsible for sending me to school unwell. The nun felt some type of guilt or at least an obligation. I got a nervous apology the next day paired with a “Why didn’t you say something?” Diarrhea isn’t always something you want to announce to the world.
There was an atlas painted on the ground in the courtyard where we had lunch when it wasn’t raining. Twenty-five years ago, Humboldt was full of rain. Wet socks in soggy sneakers were part of my somatic childhood experience. Humboldt was so wet back then, there was a moat around the school yard. Not like a fortress, but a divot in the farmland soil that caught water. It followed the lot line that was only separated from cow fields by a barbed wire fence. The moat traced this fence in a straight line across the far end of the school yard. We called this little river the Mississippi.
Kids would fall in periodically. It was such a common occurrence that there was a school protocol. Little boys with drenched navy blue pants and “We’ve Got Spirit” Catholic school shirts and little girls in plaid jumpers with tightly tucked white blouses would stagger as if wearing a full diaper, across the giant cement courtyard, into the lunch yard, past the flat painted atlas and into the principal’s office. The secretary would open a trunk that was filled with lost and found clothing items. There was shame and excitement about the contents of this box. Even though we were all tiny, somehow everything that ended up in the box was about four sizes too big for whoever met their watery fate that day.
Sometimes we would walk into the water on purpose when no one was looking just to experience the box. Just to get out of the cloth we wrapped ourselves in for class. It was one of the only times girls were permitted to wear boys’ clothes or baggy clothes.
In the transitions of our daily rituals, we formed lines. Parallel.
To enter the classroom.
To walk to confession.
This was sometimes difficult because we were all fluid. We were all water in a glass on an uneven desk. We went everywhere. They tried to give us something solid to capture ourselves with, but we always spilled over.
There is too much water inside
not for this school, not
just not, just no
just jumpers just skirts
just boys like this
and girls like this
just separate like this
just the same
like a glass of water
Like a river
In a classroom
I sit in my bind of pleats and collars
and I learn to hold my breath here
Move all the water up through my body
above me and to the sides.
I see my water outside and everywhere else but in
I am sometimes scared here and
my mouth is dry
The boys called Jessi and I “lesbians” once for holding hands in line. We looked at each other. In unison we chanted: “No we aren’t.” We kept holding hands. I didn’t know what a lesbian was, but I figured that it was something bad and that I probably didn’t want to be one.
We liked to play too close to the edge, skipping, making up our songs, and telling the stories of our future. We planned our caravan life of animal rescue where Jessi and I would pick up stray animals and bring them back to health with no veterinary training. Miracles. Like the ones we learned about in church. She and I would live together with our pets.
We learned to live in fantasy. We learned that the only way to be free was to submerge yourself in the muddy waters that were pushed to the periphery of the atlas-painted courtyard. We learned that we could briefly move our bodies freely in shameful spaces. We learned that our bodies were upsetting to adults and that these ironed uniforms protected them, for seven hours a day, from everything inside us. We learned to lie in graceful webs to others and to speak to each other with our eyes, in coded songs and inside jokes.
Jessi and I held hands and edged each other closer to the water. We christened our small black sneakers and the tips of our pleats. This blessing was for us. Our folded fingers touched the Mississippi. It was stagnant and iridescent with swirls of cow pies and tractor diesel. This is where we came to feel clean. This is where we came to feel holy.
I had diarrhea. Not in my dress but in the girl’s bathroom. I was late to lunch and lunch was a strict time at this school. The nun yelled at me in front of the whole school, which was fifty people at most. She made me sit-the-bench for the entire recess period. I clenched and tried not to shit my dress. I didn’t. I watched my classmates pretend to be dinosaurs and swing upside down by their knees on the high bars.
My parents weren’t happy about this story that night, even though they also felt a little responsible for sending me to school unwell. The nun felt some type of guilt or at least an obligation. I got a nervous apology the next day paired with a “Why didn’t you say something?” Diarrhea isn’t always something you want to announce to the world.
There was an atlas painted on the ground in the courtyard where we had lunch when it wasn’t raining. Twenty-five years ago, Humboldt was full of rain. Wet socks in soggy sneakers were part of my somatic childhood experience. Humboldt was so wet back then, there was a moat around the school yard. Not like a fortress, but a divot in the farmland soil that caught water. It followed the lot line that was only separated from cow fields by a barbed wire fence. The moat traced this fence in a straight line across the far end of the school yard. We called this little river the Mississippi.
Kids would fall in periodically. It was such a common occurrence that there was a school protocol. Little boys with drenched navy blue pants and “We’ve Got Spirit” Catholic school shirts and little girls in plaid jumpers with tightly tucked white blouses would stagger as if wearing a full diaper, across the giant cement courtyard, into the lunch yard, past the flat painted atlas and into the principal’s office. The secretary would open a trunk that was filled with lost and found clothing items. There was shame and excitement about the contents of this box. Even though we were all tiny, somehow everything that ended up in the box was about four sizes too big for whoever met their watery fate that day.
Sometimes we would walk into the water on purpose when no one was looking just to experience the box. Just to get out of the cloth we wrapped ourselves in for class. It was one of the only times girls were permitted to wear boys’ clothes or baggy clothes.
In the transitions of our daily rituals, we formed lines. Parallel.
To enter the classroom.
To walk to confession.
This was sometimes difficult because we were all fluid. We were all water in a glass on an uneven desk. We went everywhere. They tried to give us something solid to capture ourselves with, but we always spilled over.
There is too much water inside
not for this school, not
just not, just no
just jumpers just skirts
just boys like this
and girls like this
just separate like this
just the same
like a glass of water
Like a river
In a classroom
I sit in my bind of pleats and collars
and I learn to hold my breath here
Move all the water up through my body
above me and to the sides.
I see my water outside and everywhere else but in
I am sometimes scared here and
my mouth is dry
The boys called Jessi and I “lesbians” once for holding hands in line. We looked at each other. In unison we chanted: “No we aren’t.” We kept holding hands. I didn’t know what a lesbian was, but I figured that it was something bad and that I probably didn’t want to be one.
We liked to play too close to the edge, skipping, making up our songs, and telling the stories of our future. We planned our caravan life of animal rescue where Jessi and I would pick up stray animals and bring them back to health with no veterinary training. Miracles. Like the ones we learned about in church. She and I would live together with our pets.
We learned to live in fantasy. We learned that the only way to be free was to submerge yourself in the muddy waters that were pushed to the periphery of the atlas-painted courtyard. We learned that we could briefly move our bodies freely in shameful spaces. We learned that our bodies were upsetting to adults and that these ironed uniforms protected them, for seven hours a day, from everything inside us. We learned to lie in graceful webs to others and to speak to each other with our eyes, in coded songs and inside jokes.
Jessi and I held hands and edged each other closer to the water. We christened our small black sneakers and the tips of our pleats. This blessing was for us. Our folded fingers touched the Mississippi. It was stagnant and iridescent with swirls of cow pies and tractor diesel. This is where we came to feel clean. This is where we came to feel holy.
Rachel Matteri is a writer who grew up in Humboldt County and has lived her adult life in coastal cities of California. Like many of us, she began writing poetry as an adolescent. She eventually found herself happiest as a nonfiction essayist who dabbles in fiction with short stories. She is currently working towards a MA in Applied English at Cal Poly Humboldt. She hopes that her work, both her writing and her other pursuits can facilitate people feeling seen, heard, and feeling connected to themselves and to others.
