At any point during the past month have you felt pleasure in your body? Pleasure, that rambunctious barking dog weaving round your feet, leaping and toppling you, paws on your shoulders, while you stare up at stars.
Or has pleasure appeared more quietly lately? That same dog, now a muted khaki animal, licking your hand instead of knocking you over or humping your leg.
Can you locate any happy sensations in your body? Perhaps an activation in your chest like a motor revving. Or a tickling, an opaline gas bubble rising through your digestive track, escaping your mouth, floating across a blue sky to China. Landing in a busy plaza lit with red lanterns, then ordering a noodle bowl.
Do you remember your dad after his father died, weeping into a dishrag in the kitchen? Pouring three more jiggers of Jack. Ordering you, “Out. Get your ass to bed.”
Remember how he used to spank you? That time you spun a baseball like a meteor over the crabgrass, accidentally breaking the kitchen window. His furious hands.
Remember deciding you’re not allowed to make any mistakes.
Remember how that was not possible.
Remember grownups laughing at you?
Remember Mrs. Watson, your second grade teacher, smacking each of your knuckles with a wooden ruler, repeating, “You are going to hell.” Her chin, pointy like a demon’s. Feel that in your body now. Like an elevator dropping in your mid section. Or, is it like one cold raindrop on your skin?
How often have you had thoughts of self-harm this month? Pausing in the steam while you held the razor, marveling at its shine, its ability to cut. Or, more passive images, while speeding over the overpass, fluttery with the thought that your hands could quick-turn the wheel, ramming you and your car up and over the guardrail like a plummeting steel bird.
Any thoughts of hurting others? An urge to slap a rude clerk? Some teenaged schmuck who wouldn’t make eye contact while handling—dropping—your credit card. Or a teller, passing you your cash, green bills turned upside down every which way.
Remember Grandma, her rouged face centering a cloud of Jungle Gardenia perfume. She managed a Baskin Robbins, brought you rocky road ice cream pints, taught you to make change. “Stack bills neatly in descending order.” Saying, “And smile, chest out! Make ‘em like you, Honey.”
Remember tinsel. Remember Christmas ending. Remember not getting what you wanted.
Remember popsicles melting when you dropped them on the Texas cement. Fat ones called “Bullets”. Dreamsicles were the best. Brown Dog licking your Dreamsicles off the pavement, before you could grab it.
Remember the dogs, always dying. Remember Bernhardt, your favorite German shepherd, attacking, bloodying, the neighbor boy’s forearms and throat. Dad grabbing his 22, shooting the dog in his massive chest.
Remember cutting paper chains with scissors, making simple people who held hands when you unfurled the paper fan. Could you create a string of people now?
Remember the first time a boy told you he loved you. Kissing in a chinaberry tree. A few days later, he said, “I don’t love you.” This kept happening for a while. Different boys.
When was the last time you kissed someone on the lips? Held someone’s whole warm body? Inhaling.
Remember your mother smelling like Palm’s cold cream. Her soft cheeks. Remember her face melting, mouth turning downward when she was sad. Your father never seemed to notice. You vowed you’d never be as sad as her, never wear navy and grey. Instead you’d dress like a flower, when you were a lady. You’d eat pie for dessert, lemon meringue like sunshine in your mouth.
Remember realizing you would never be famous?
Remember summer downpours filling the creek? You and your best brother, in blue jeans, sliding down the muddy sides of the gulch—Whoops!—over and over. Chasing crawdads from their holes with sticks. Good days.
Don’t think about later. Finding him slumped, needle in his arm, over a toilet.
Remember storms—inside the house, outside the house. Remember the tumultuous hurricane, rainwater rising in the flat yard, septic tank flooding, oozing under the door, into the brick house. Lizards, mice, roaches, kids, scurrying. All trapped inside, meat and milk rotting in the dark fridge.
Remember the thick snake dangling from the living room light fixture. Your father, completely out of alcohol, writhing in fear.
Remember pleasure spreading through your hands and feet like electricity as you realized your father was afraid of something.
How many nights a week do you sleep deeply? When did you last have that nightmare? The one where you’re sliding down a cliff, sanding the skin off your hands, unable to get a grip. Feel that now?
Remember swimming pools. Coconut-scented sunscreen, and sunburns anyway. Remember sunflowers. And marigolds.
During the past month, have you eaten any pie? Slowly, with no thoughts of death, spoonful after sticky yellow spoonful.
