Center of the Circle

Ring around the rosy a pocket full of posies. Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down! It is fun to fall when I am a little girl in my grandmother’s backyard believing posies will fly into the air, though I have no idea what posies are. All my stuffed animals and imaginary friends are holding hands in a circle surrounding me because I am the shake-it-senorita-shake-it-like-you-can-girl in the middle of the circle. They have all chosen me to be her. When it is finally time for us to ring around the rosy I run behind them instead of holding their hands because invisible hands and stuffed bear fur hold onto each other much better than my human flesh with all its limitations.

When it is time to fall down, however, I am not afraid because my time with these friends has made me believe I am one of them. I can even hear them giggling back at me. I am imaginary. Part stuffed bear, part invisible, and all these parts are a part of my flesh. We play together so often and for so long I feel as though my smile is an extension of theirs. I am convinced that I am made of the material of my imaginary friends. Once it is time for all of us to fall down my flesh will absorb into cotton and cotton into the invisible and the invisible will make me into the air that breathes inside of the ground.

It is only when we have to fall down when we play that I believe I become unreal like them. Falling never feels like it should because in my circle our invisible flesh and our cotton flesh keep us from ever having to feel the end of the fall. It is almost as if falling were like flying to us who are unreal since we cannot feel the ground to stop us. In my circle, when it is time to fall that is when I’m the happiest. It is when the ride from real to unreal begins. When I go from believing the fall will hurt to believing the fall will make me disappear. In the back of my grandmother’s yard my pocket full of posies will turn inside out and while they are landing on the weeds I am supposed to pull every Saturday morning and over the gold fish I have buried I will be inside of the earth. Invisible. Imaginary.
****
My mother places herself inside of our bathtub in the afternoons a few hours before she is due to be at work. She is a press operator from 9-6AM and the ink marks on her skin stay there through the morning hours until she gets into the tub. The bathroom window is shadowed by tree branches and leaves that cover its pane from any interaction with outside light so my mommy’s baths are always dark even in the midday. She makes it darker by having only one candle lit. This is her time to feel her sadness. Sometimes she has sunken so deeply into her sadness that she has moved beyond weeping. Awhile after in the water when her fingers are turning pruny, she finds a bellowing deep below her sadness that makes her sorrow sound like an opera. It is as if her pain lay on top of her voice and forced a song to release out of it. She has the power to be able to feel all her sadness every afternoon and weigh in on it to until it turns into a song.

When I enter the bathroom she quickly places one small wash cloth overtop of her vagina. It is always the perfect size wash cloth because it covers the pieces of hairs that even sprout to the sides. This is the only part of her body that she leaves unseen. Every other part moves underneath the water, her wrinkles and folds unfolding and folding back, the extra skin on her belly floating to the surface of her bath like stretched puddy, her breasts cupping the sides of her ribs and spreading so far down they almost fall into her armpits. She does not mind everything else on her body swimming around and being seen, but she keeps the wash cloth over her vagina.

Steam covers the bathroom mirror that I want to write my name in when I pass it with her glass of water in my hand. The water must be room temperature and it must be in a glass not a plastic cup, and you must hold the glass with your fingers proper distance away from the lip of the glass because it is disgusting to put your hands where someone else’s lips will be. A part of me thinks that my fingers touching where her lips will go is beautiful. I have to press my thumb and index finger right underneath the brim and carry the glass carefully. When I place it down on the ledge of the tub she will pick it up and bring it to her lips just as carefully as I was carrying it, and the very thin lines of her lips will correspond with the lines my fingertips have made on her glass. She will kiss my impressions and we will come together out of gentle touch. I keep forgetting to not touch the brim so she reminds me that this is nasty and disgusting to her, and that I am making it more and more impossible for her to have any peace of mind.

When she tells me that this is nasty and disgusting it seems that maybe I, and not what I am doing, am the nasty and disgusting one. All the skin on her face collects around her nose and in between her brows, turning her face into small bulges where the candlelight rests on top of shaking and waving. “I’m so sick of ya’ll not listening to me. You understand me? I’m sick of having to repeat myself! Dammit it’s just me! Can’t you see that? Can’t you make it a little easier on me, for Christ’s sake?!” She takes her sip of water, exhales, and reclines back against the tub. “You know you are Mommy’s pumpkin, right?” She waits for me to nod my head. “You are so special. You are very, very special to Mommy you know that?” I do. “The most special. You understand?” I have to nod my head again but I know this means that I am agreeing to be more special than my brother and my sister whom she never asks to bring her a glass of water. I am also agreeing to be on top of the pedal stool she has for me.

This is where I begin to understand the word “special”. It is also where I begin to understand that if you are the one in the center of the circle you can say who is special and who is not.
****
At church I hope to be chosen as the senorita in the center of everyone, but I won’t be chosen if I have nothing to offer. Everyone is surrounding the center of the circle where the leader of our ministry calls out to us.

“Who is ready with some good news?!” Eyes dart and shift, but every pair are sprinkled with tinsy broken pieces of light that are so itsy bitsy they look like they could be apart of the molecular fabric of the air around us.

Fourteen through seventeen years olds are filling a high school hallway on a Sunday afternoon, scattering through their memories of the past week hoping to find a moment in which they pleased the Lord God. The leader turns around on one heel, slowly. She is making her rotation in the circle with just enough speed to see into each pair of eyes. I have been pillaging through my memories of my past week since we all stood up for the last song before service finished. I have not found one moment worthy enough to share: unworthy memories here: because I am in search for thee moment. The one that will show I have removed all of the clothing of my life before Christ and am walking the streets bare pronouncing my utter nakedness for God.
Last week Mougando, a first generation Nigerian-American son, whose parents were converted three months ago, got the loudest round of applause when he shared. He said then that he felt it was time his entire class to know who he was and where they could find him. So he stood up on the cafeteria table one day during senior’s lunch.
“I know the way, the truth, and the light.” He had told his cafeteria. “From 330-430pm on Wednesdays I’m in rm. 318 every week so you can know too.” After he shared the moment with us in the circle he smiled an archaeologist discovery smile, as if artifacts he had set out for years to find were now in his hand. He then pointed to the three visitors who stood behind him whom he had started teaching the way to that Wednesday.
“No one has anything they can share this week?” She is getting disappointed and the wings I always find on her back are lowering and closing into her spine. We are all still searching. The sprinkled light in our eyes has gone delirious. Some of us have lifted up our faces to the fluorescents above and it has made our eyes appear as transporters. The tiny itsy bitsy pieces of light have turned our eyes into keepers of all that is unseen in the room, all that is keeping this circle together. If someone doesn’t share soon the circle we have formed could lose all its energy and dissipate. To not have a moment to share is not as worse as to not even hear of one. To hear of one is to be told in not so many words that the mission to baptize the world is real, that others believe in it and are making their Monday through Friday lives instruments of that mission, that you should be doing the same. Silence could discourage. Silence could make us think we are not worthy to be in this circle, to even have formed this circle in the first place. It could make us spiritless.
She turns around on one heel slowly, making time to find each pair of eyes, again.
“Is no one ready to share? No one?”

I am not ready, today. I will make it my life to one day be ready, just wait and watch. Please, everybody, someone, watch me.