the habit of being

My goal for today was to clean the bathroom. To really clean it, enough so that I could take a real bath in there and not come out of it feeling dirtier than when I got in, enough so that the sides of the tub would not be slippery with scum, and that thin opaque film would not develop on the surface of the water, enough that I might feel like staying in there long enough to read a book, to shave my legs.

But maybe that’s not the best thing I could be doing with my time. Maybe I’m not even really the kind of person who can’t be content in a filthy room. Maybe I just use that as an excuse not to be content, like how I can’t write when my boyfriend’s home.

. . .

I’d go months without bathing, wearing the same clothes every day. These weeks were spent mostly outdoors, sitting on dirt, sleeping on dirt, standing next to roads, where dirt flew out from under wheels onto my face. When I’d cry, which was often, the tears would leave streaks down my cheeks and my neck, tracks through the dirt, and it would be very ugly. The same would happen to my arms and legs when I’d sweat, which was also often, in the summer, in the Southwest. It would get so bad, sometimes, that I’d roll up my jeans leg, put my foot in a public bathroom sink and try to wash my calf, and the sink would get really nasty and I was so scared someone would walk in, and I never did that great of a job. I didn’t want anyone to see me, even though what I did for a living was stand at the busy intersection down the street and get stared at by strangers who sometimes gave me money or something to eat.

When someone would offer to take us home with them for the night, it wasn’t so much the heat, the AC, the food, or even the bed that was exciting - it was the shower. We’d head for the bathroom as soon as possible.

I’d undress, and look in the mirror, and it would be the first time I’d seen myself naked in weeks, and I’d always look different from the last time. Stronger tan lines, pointier clavicles, more muscle. After I got pregnant, I could’ve stared wide-eyed into those infrequent mirrors for hours. My breasts and stomach were completely new. Round. My edges had shifted. I never got far enough along that you could tell when I was dressed, but in the mirror, I was astounded, I was someone’s mother.

We always showered together, when we could, to save time, to save water, to feign intimacy we had lost. Mostly though, we showered together because we needed help. We were too dirty to get clean on our own. At that point, lathering up your hands and rubbing them on your body doesn’t do any good. You could go over your entire body twice that way and then scrape your fingernails down yours arm to find them full of dirt. There are layers upon layers to get through, and you need a washcloth, and you need to scrub. You must really really scrub, so that it’s painful, because if your skin is not bright reb and stinging, then there is no chance it is clean. The dirt peels off, like those little white price tag stickers that won’t ever come off unless you soak them in hot water and scrub at them until they disintegrate and you can scrap them off into little white balls. After you’d scrub your skin pink there would be little brown and black balls of dirt still on you, like fuzz on a blanket.

We took turns scrubbing each other. I’d unfold the washcloth and lay it out on the top of his back, then use both hands to press on it as I forced it all the way down to his ass. We touched one another; we giggled. It was warm wet fantasy; it was completely foreign to our day-to-day life. I loved it. I hopped on one foot, I balanced like a bird, trying to clean my ankles and feet, which were often quite black. The water pooling at my feet was invariably brown. It took two shampoos before my hair would even lather.

I wore a scarf on my head, everyday, to cover my hair. After a while, I could take the scarf off and my hair would not move. When hair reaches a certain level of oiliness, it ceases to exist in individual strands. Instead, it is a big sticky dirty mass that can be molded. Brushing it serves only to prevent dreadlocks from forming of their own accord, and often stirs up huge scary flakes of drandruff from the depth to which no fingers could ever run. I’d get huge tangle-complexes that could literally take hours to undo, often including leaves and twigs from the trees masking our campsite. The scarf helped to ward off these sorts of disasters, but it never looked good on me. It eventually got so dirty itself that after being washed twice it still doesn’t look clean.

I’d wash my hair four or five times, until the water ran clear, and condition it until I could run my fingers through with mimimum effort. I’d help James wash his hair, which was twice as long as mine, and darker, so it showed dandruff so much easier. He shampooed his beard, too.

. . .

I’ve never in my life felt as beautiful as I felt when I looked in the mirror after one of those showers. My eyes seemed so much brighter, so much clearer, more alive. My skin was tan and completely free of blemishes. It was like I was a whole new person, and awake. It was like I was myself again, finally. My hair would dry and curl, and it was so soft, and I couldn’t stop looking at myself, a person I could barely recognize anymore. I was so pretty.

I would smile, flop myself down on some stranger’s couch with such a sigh of relief, such gratitude. I was free.

Now that I think about it, those showers were probably my favorite part of the entire trip, and maybe the only time I was ever really happy.