Body Full of Stars by Molly Caro May

Author:Molly Caro May
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoir
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2017-01-09T05:00:00+00:00

Float

____________________________________

The water splashes up and over.

Eula wants to splash all the water out of the bathtub and onto my mom’s wooden floor. We want to rock our small boat.

“Come here, you goose,” I say, and sway her body through the water toward me. This is the third place we’ve lived since Eula was born just over a year ago now. We take many baths together in this large claw-foot tub, now that we are back at my parents’ place. Early June and we have found shelter again in our yurt.

It has canvas walls. It is a tent.

Temperature cannot be regulated.

I’ve tried to maintain the rhythm for Eula, by keeping her in her crib. But the yurt becomes a sauna during the day. I rock her to sleep in a room so hot she sweats through her pajamas. When night comes, cold brings her back out and into our bed. I’ve learned not to freak out about this. I’ve learned nothing stays the same: ebb and flow. We sleep on a mattress on the floor with Bru’s nose pressed on our foreheads and Eula’s dough love body in the middle. In the morning, we snuggle and then I load my girl into a red wagon, along with any laundry and items for the day, and we walk along the creek, under magical trees, birdsong, toward my parents’ cabin. They have agreed to let us use their bathroom, as long as we move into our own house, down the field, by end of summer.

Our home is currently a shed structure covered in wood. We are all waiting for the windows to go in—usually they go in before this stage, but for a thousand reasons it had to happen in this order. My father walks down the driveway every day, can barely contain his enthusiasm, stands beneath fluttering cottonwoods, waiting. Chris is so saturated by the building process. Eighteen apertures hold no glimmer for him. He laughs at us, reminds us that windows don’t mean the house is done.

For the rest of us, windows are everything.

I hover with anticipation. Once we move into our house, surely, then, I will become a steady woman, though I’m less and less sure she’s a possibility in anyone. Pots and pans in one place; clothes in a dresser; a corner for a writing desk; space to be a family. I am aware of the trouble with expecting the changing circumstances of my life to change me. Doesn’t prevent me from doing it anyway.

Eula glances up at me and then holds still in the bath. A few air bubbles rise and with them a little poop. I watch her with neutrality.

“Oh, there’s your poop,” I say.

We look together, then stand up and step out.

~

We make our way home from a Sunday barbecue, along dirt roads, the air warm and green, slow, pleasant. Alfalfa quivers in the breeze. My uterus feels heavy, a day or so away from bleeding. My peaked hormones put me on an edge. I drive through scenery people dream of and Chris and I whisper about nothing and everything as Eula sleeps.

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