the pearlmakers
There’s a hundred things I’ve made religions out of. I could spin a whole sermon out of the hows and whys of my fixation on fixating, about what the combination of Catholic idolatry and a lack of idols does to a child's beliefs, but that’s another story to be told another time. At the center of every told story, though, lies a firm truth— I am a religious person without a religion. I have the mothers in classical plays who were always dearer to me than the protagonists, I have the angels I see in everything, I have the rain that speaks to me in whispers about the blood of the universe. This is my way of life. This is my design. I am the pearlmaker.
It’s hardly ever a grain of sand, you know. The typical pearl base is usually a wayward food particle that the mollusk senses. From there, it coats the particle in aragonite and conchiolin, turning it into a pearl. Sometimes they’re nacreous, meaning they contain mother-of-pearl, and that nacre lets them reflect light in a unique way, giving the pearl a lustrous sheen. A few of them aren’t nacreous and shine more like porcelain, but it’s a pearl nonetheless.
The world stops being gone to the dogs and starts being gone to the pearls. The tides. The rolling hills of water that make up 70% of the planet. This is the way of life— everything begins with an agitator and continues with layers folded around it like pastry and ends with a pearl. It begins and ends and something begins again, jewelry and cosmetics and combs, all the things that we make of the pearls.
It ripples outwards. Like water.
I am the pearlmaker, and this is my agitator.
I only feel like a real girl when I’m sick as a dog. I know why— you know why. We’ve both seen all the skinny girls with eating disorders and we’ve both seen the centuries-old drawings depicting beautiful and pale women wasting away in bed. We know about delicacy and fragility and being taken care of and how even in death Ophelia was singing sweetly. And I’m sick all the time, but I’m only a real sort of girl when I’m a real sort of sick.
Nobody believes you about the war unless you’ve got battle scars. Nobody believes me until they look me in the eyes.
As a child, I learned two separate ways to make butter. The first was discovered from one of the only times a girl from school invited me to a sleepover. It happened like this— the father went to work in a pressed shirt and tie, doing a bad job of bemoaning his boss working him on weekends. The mother kissed him on the cheek and sent him out the door. It left a lipstick mark. A silent claim.
7:30 a.m. and she was already wearing makeup. I remember being surprised by it. My exposure to makeup was from a collection of vintage photos a friend owned that featured women with crisp eyebrows and sudden lipstick, and the makeup from costumes— the ballet, circuses, Halloween, etcetera. Makeup was for werewolves, but here stood this innocuous woman in the faint morning light, putting cream in a mixer so me and all the girls who hadn’t woken up yet could have fresh butter for the pancakes. It was as mechanical and fast and lonely as a one night stand, layering tragedies like onion skins. This was, it occurred to me, the life of a normal family. It was a bee sting in my heart. That is a way of saying it was a small poison.
The second time I learned to make butter was in the same way many of my childhood lessons were— in a game. Saintalia, who became Auntie Tal in the mouths of children due to her massive stature, would make butter by pouring cream into a jar and giving it to the kids to play with. It was our soccer ball as long as we were gentle and played on the grass and not the concrete, but if that wasn’t an option, we would play a very careful game of catch with it. She would put a bead in the jar, a different color for whatever day of the week the butter was made on, sometimes jewels. We called them agitators. Eating the butter was a game, too. Whoever found the bead inside the lump of butter got a piece of candy.
I still have a few of the butter beads I found— they sit in a dish like quiet beetles, waiting to be shaken again. Blue Monday. The candy is long gone. See how the means extend far beyond the ends?
I am the pearlmaker, and this is my agitator.
This is not my body. My mind is here with me, never lost, but my body is gone and it’s at everyone else’s house but my own. My body is in the bar bathroom with a boy. My body is on a leash. My body is my mother’s body and she carefully tends to it while my mind watches on, ignored for the sake of a dress up doll. My body is the prism that the light shines through. My body is a song for other people to sing. This is not my beautiful house, I am telling you. How do I work this?
It’s not a matter of mind-body dualism— I know it sounds like it, but it’s not. It’s something different. It’s awareness. I am controlling of my body but I am not in control of it. How long was I thinking that cutting my own hair was a substitute for autonomy? Why did I think that any of those people who wanted to possess me were my friends? I am only my own when I am alone. Where do I go?
Don’t you dare try and calm me down.
There’s certain places where you do and don’t kill snakes. In southern Colorado, you could spend hours out in the prairies as long as you have a permit, cutting off the heads of rattlesnakes with a shovel. The game managers let you kill three a day from mid-June to mid-August for recreational purposes to keep the population down. There’s not nearly enough birds of prey these days— that’s our fault, though, so we might as well clean up our mess.
British Columbia is a different story. Different climate, too. A man I knew called it a reverse desert— lush green scenery with slashes of prairie and desert across the maps like stretch marks, sand pits in an oasis. Snakes are needed there to keep the sizable rodent population down. Killing one is a cardinal sin, but when you’re sleeping on the ground, you don’t always have a choice.
But you do. You always do, even when you think you don’t. We got quicker with our hands and stronger in the arms from baling hay in exchange for a meal, and we learned to throw them. Snakes don’t come near humans all that often, but if one was coming towards you, picking it up behind the head so it can’t bite and throwing it is an essential skill. My older sibling used to draw comics about it— kids with superpowers who defeated snake people from Antarctica.
Then they tried to kill themself. It didn’t work, but the echo is still singing sweetly to me. Into the willow tree. Into the river.
I am the pearlmaker, and this is my agitator.
You are missing from me.
It’s officially spring— April is well on its sordid way. Everything is pregnant and I can never breathe. The sky glistens with whiplash. Outside my window, the buds of the lilac tree are swollen and impossibly small, cradled gently by violent green baby leaves. The sun rises and sets with the gusto of an ant carrying a breadcrumb out the window. Simultaneous phenomena keep happening, the punch and the recoil, the event and the grief. I plastered my entire wall in music and faces and ripped off prints, and the room still feels empty.
I talk in short sentences now. A few words. One, two. Simultaneous phenomena. Here is the spring and here is the storm, here is the lighting and here is the thunder. I lack an attention span for everything important— school, higher investigation into the universe, leaving the house. I am unshackled and I continue to face the wall, scared of the fire. I talk in short sentences now. I have nothing to say. I don’t know what to do with my hands.
I am the pearlmaker, and this is my agitator.
I pray to Gertrude, mother to Hamlet and saint to myself, patron of the undefined, the despised, the self-serving. Bless me with the ability to square my jaw and do the work that must be done. Bless me with the knowledge of a hard choice chosen and the wisdom that comes with the aftermath. I want a hurricane without destruction— I want a rainstorm to water the flowers. Bless me. Bless me. I reject the vacant white gown that they’ve imposed upon me. Give me a crown and the poison, Gertrude. I know it’s hard work that never gets easier. Bless me with the strength to do it anyways.
I think it’s okay now. I think I’m safe from the storm.
Of course the bad things happened— of course the car crash and the sobering up and the experimental medication that had me hiding under the dining room table, unable to move. Of course the spinning out. Of course the hospital visits. Of course the needles. Of course the friend I held while they shook and cried, drowning under withdrawal. Of course the bad things.
Even hurricanes are ouroboric, though. I stared at the way my computer screen held the image of a weather pattern for hours upon end, long into the night, watching it curl like draining bathwater. Since then, I have learned that I am the drain. It comes unto me. It’s inevitable, like so many of the things we wish were avoidable, but letting it kill you isn’t. I’m sorry for forgetting that. I’m sorry I forgot what my grandmother told me when I was a child— I’m sorry I forgot that the only way to stay dry in the rain is to become air. I thought the emptiness was in God, but it was in me. I’m sorry I forgot that you can be hungry without starving.
Heaven is here and I can hold it with both hands. Heaven burnt me like a hot stove and now I have holy burns on my palms. I carry that fire with me- I carry it in my heart.
I am the pearlmaker, and this is my agitator.
I was supposed to be born on Christmas. An old flame of mine called that a miracle. Instead, I was born on the Twelfth Day, a minute past midnight. I find that the last day before the arrival of Epiphany suits me much better than the birthday of Jesus, thematically speaking. I was always more of the visiting than the visited. Almost a miracle, forever an omen. A cartoon caricature of a martyr. Get off the cross, girl, they canceled your program. Nevermind the bleeding. They’ll edit that out in the final cut.
Life is beautiful. God is good. I am a wretched and pointless beast on a soft and temporary planet, waiting to be taffy stretched into light so my atoms can be recycled. My head falls off the pillows in bed and I lay on the mattress with my eyes rolling. Twin scleras. One day, I’ll be someone who can look into a mirror in an unlit room. One day, I’ll get my bones back. Learn how to move. I will pick myself up when my strings are cut and I will carry on into the uncertain dark. Onwards forever. Right foot, left foot, one, two. Simultaneous phenomena. They ripple out into the dark, too. I put myself into a transient state and I do not drown when the willow bough breaks— the water goes through me. I am the ripple. Onwards forever.
I am the pearlmaker, and I am my agitator.
I’ll fold myself into something beautiful someday. You just have to wait and see. Turn around to face me— I’m right behind you, blooming in the dark. I’m right there.
Can’t you see me?
!!! 🌼🍂🐍 ! ☆🌫️
shivers to the bone, this is definitely one of the reads that is imprinted on me now