Lilacs
I wet the bed until seven years old. Still of sleep abandoned to the shove of my back, Get up, Felicia. You peed again. I shimmied the wet shorts off my lanky frame, sniffed the edges of my T-shirt before pulling damp cotton overhead. My naked shoulders parallel to the rim of the sink, only the top of my hair visible in the mirror—what invisibility means to flesh, to a bare ass of a child waiting to be brought dry underwear & knowing only empty hands & sleeping sighs exist beyond the bathroom door.
The Mayo Clinic says not to be alarmed for bed-wetting before age seven. Development of nighttime bladder control. Reduce bed- wetting. Treat the problem. Treat the problem. Treat the problem. Treat the problem. Did someone write patience next to problem? Did someone write understanding next to problem? Moisture alarm. Cost? Medication. Cost? Treat the problem. Roots versus symptoms. Emotional & psychological. Did someone say stress leads to a child acting differently? Nighttime wetting a symptom. Which am I?
I never told anyone what made me stop urinating in my sleep. I let my family believe in the miracle, the by-the-grace-of-god-prayers-answered or the she-just-grew-out-of-it hypotheses. Night existed in a gap of throat where silence dwells. Silence about the washer running at 2 a.m. Silence on my brother’s back & sister’s back turned from the light under the bathroom door. Silence on how bedtime went from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. to midnight & my how body ached for sleep outside the night. Silence in the absence of. A family of four who sleeps in one room, washes dishes in an old shower with a hose as a faucet, doesn’t utter waterproof mattress pad or therapy or how do you feel about this, Felicia. A family of four learns to shut three brown bodies out from the world. Ugly. Little girls just don’t do that, Grandma’s blue eyes stabbed into my brown. To be born a problem was to swallow silence: medicine meant to erase. To be groomed into falsities that a word like beauty held space for only other words: blue, green, hazel, white, blonde, ivory, white, white. A definition depends on who speaks & who remains silent.
I never took a photo of the floor of the motel. Not checkered like other 50s-style diners at the time. No, this floor resembles tiny speckled stars on concrete coated with epoxy. Same flooring meanders into the bathroom. Night after night, my feet on the cold speckled stars. If a vault in heaven exists, would angels know me only by the patterns on the soles of my feet?
In the dream, the dream during the first night the wetting stopped, I smelt lilacs. Lilacs grew all around the motel. Wild. Amid the lilac bushes and mulberry trees and sheep’s wool caught in the iron thorns of barbed wire, I dug on my haunches in wet soil behind the motel, down the hill from the clothesline, in the overgrowth of forest. Once a city dump, this forest held trinkets & objects broken & scarred—the discarded found home here. I learned to hear the voices of the damaged. Half a bone china teacup my most prized companion. In my mind, the woman who drank tea lived in a stone cottage by a lake; the woman who drank tea tended sheep but never shaved them; the woman who drank tea dressed her bed in linens the smell of sky & storm clouds rocked her to sleep at night. This was not the dream.
Thirty years later, my sister tells me she also wet the bed until eight. I don’t remember why I stopped, I hear the question sit in her mouth & scurry back up to her brain. Capped memories exist; thresholds in a body; survival tactics. You were the first, Mel; the first manifests differently. I listen for her breath. Remember Joe, he sleepwalked, peeing all over the house, yelling “fire” in Spanish? We both search the silence for a nostalgic chuckle. Heavy silence until, I remember.
In the dream, the dream during the first night the wetting stopped, lips kissed my forehead while my eyes remained shut. The hand belonging to the lips took mine inside theirs, Time to get up, Felicia. I scooched my body off the bed & looked at the dark silhouette: a blurred face & unfamiliar frame. How can more comfort exist in the unknown? We went, hand-in-hand, into the bathroom. Light? asked the voice. No, just hold my hand, & I slid the rightside of my shorts down, then the left. Urine hit the surface of water & I began to cry. Why? asked the voice. Between heaves & sobs, No, each nightmare begins with me here, thinking I’m safe, thinking it’s OK, & I buried my face in my knees. Do you smell the lilacs, Felicia? the voice asked. Between sobs, I sniffed. I do. How? The silhouette reached toward my chest & placed one shaded finger on my breastbone. You’re not my father are you? I asked. Did you need me to be? I shook my head. & the light flicked on. Felicia. My mom’s tired eyes went wide. You’re ... you’re on the toilet.
Do you know the etymology of “ugly?” I ask the therapist. No, actually I don’t, she stops writing & holds her pen alert. Comes from Old Norse, “uggligr,” or dreadful, from “ugga,” meaning fear. She puts down her pad of paper, & are you, Felicia, are you? I look out the window as the rain turns to snow. The sun no longer visible from cover of clouds. I smell them, I drift. Smell what? I get up from the chair & move toward the door.