The Undressing
They don’t call you the other words, the ones reserved for therapists and doctors. Your family refers to you as nervous, a neat and kind word, an umbrella term to summarize the many things you are and are not. They mean well. They want good things to happen for you. They want you to believe you are better; they need you to tell them so. You move to the country, where the children won’t know sidewalks or fences. When quiet moments are hijacked by a crippling sense of dread and sadness, nervous is a word accessible enough to everyone. A bland word to which they can draw their own conclusion. Conclusions they can digest and will be satisfied by. Nervous is a projection.
You sprawl in unlikely places, spend long hours grooming and distracting yourself. Everything disinterests you. You live the life of a house cat. You have a house. You have a cat. Or rather, the cat came with the farmhouse, an unmentioned feature. A handsome calico with topaz eyes. She leaves rooms once you enter, drops decapitated chipmunks on the pillows. She hates you, and you hate her, but you don’t know why.
For years you worked in an office. You can still hear the keyboards, their ceaseless clatter. Here you are a transplant. There is a weightlessness to your body. Nothing touches you and you can’t seem to touch anything either. Your body aches. You float between rooms, a living ghost. Sadness is as plain a term as nervous, but sad is how you feel. Through snow and rain and sun there is no weather. All this time and space is yours now, your husband says, yours to fill, as though being here is a reward, but it feels as though you are a child holding a shovel in a sandbox they forgot to fill with sand. It would be easier with cancer, some terminal disease; at least then, you could expect for it to end. Instead, you have been sentenced to life. An immaculate, exemplary life.
He still works in the city. A ninety-minute drive both ways. His contract doesn’t expire for another three months, so he commutes daily. He asked if this would be a sustainable arrangement for you. You said yes. You weren’t lying. Time alone is what you want. He wants to believe he is making the right decision. He has been a very patient man. Your full-time job now consists of waking up, making breakfast for the children, a lunch that you arrange like Jenga blocks inside their lunch bags. You make a game of it: red apple, yellow banana, blue berries, until you zone out, make a mess on the counter and the children say what are you doing?, bewildered with excitement at your ability to leave them while your body remains in the room, holding their breath in anticipation for what might happen next. The principal calls to ask why you only send fruit; you lie and tell him they must be throwing it out, and that you will have a talk with them when they get home from school. The truth is, there are no knives in the kitchen to halve the sandwiches or carve the chicken breast with. The knives are locked away. Your husband has the key. You are only allowed to use knives under his supervision, and even then, on most nights he does the cooking.
*
The first order of business upon moving into this new farmhouse was to hang a wind chime on an eave that sparkled with icicles. It was a talisman of sorts, an injunction to previous spirits that the house now belonged to you. You enjoy its strange, far-off jangle, which sounds eerie when you are home alone; a private soundtrack to the horror movie in which you unwittingly star.
Your birthday was several weeks ago, and the presents remain in a pile, unwrapped and stashed in the shallows of your closet.
Make friends with the other moms, your husband tells you.
And so you have attended countless birthday parties, a series of Stepford Wives scenarios, except with mothers.
You recognize the look, the practiced sincerity on the face of a mother when she receives a macaroni shell necklace or a blouse she will never wear. Somewhere along the line mothers learn to adapt to the tastes their children and spouses assign to them. To withstand them and maybe even learn to like them. They chameleonize into the visions these people hold. You realize that your favorite television show is his favorite television show. That your favorite restaurant is their favorite restaurant; that you don’t even order for yourself anymore. A plate will appear regardless, while you’re busy wiping their noses, telling them to keep their voices down.
Do you like it, Mommy? Do you like it?
You no longer own clothing in your favorite color. You have become a projection of what they desire. For your birthday you received flamingo print gardening gloves, a magnetic ten-piece screwdriver set, and an electric pink angora turtleneck. Your children were very happy with themselves for selecting the turtleneck during a weekend trip back to the city with their father. You noted the label, how much your husband must have spent. Later, in the privacy of your bathroom you destroy the turtleneck with your tired bare hands, reduce it to a tangle of fabric. You bury it deep in the garden, then in the middle of the night you dream that you have planted a seed. You wake up panicked, imagining a row of ten pink angora turtlenecks that will bloom like dahlias come spring.
You cannot escape, so instead you choose to surrender. The fact that there is a choice—the very concept of choice—is exhausting. The opposite of excess is what you have been searching for, or at least this is what you tell yourself. No more extravagant emotions. You will neither eat nor drink nor allow yourself to think to excess. You have always been an organized person. You dislike chaos. The ritual of undressing comes easily to you. It begins one day after the children board their school bus. The windows of the bus are cloudy with condensation. They palm the glass and press their faces against the windows to say goodbye. Sometimes they draw a happy face in the moisture. You wave, counting the seconds until the bus pulls away. The happy face will quickly distort into something sinister, heat from the children’s bodies melting its features. You live far from any town and have no immediate neighbors. The bus takes the children across winding country roads, up hills, past livestock and silos. All of this is new to them. It is early March; the world is still mostly dead. The bus becomes a slip of yellow as it cruises down the gravel road and around the bend, disappearing into the morning fog.
Your legs are unshaven. Your wool socks itch. Absolute silence is a brand-new luxury for you. You hated the city. The constant noise. People sneezing, coughing, laughing, talking. Voices of any kind filled you with a fierce anger. You longed for silence, but there was always something: horns honking, sirens, car alarms, the steady stream of traffic. Your nervousness has awarded you true silence. The perfect quiet of the countryside inspires the eroticism of possibility. It feels pure. Wind dances through the withered arms of orchard trees who have known many summers. You like that they are old, that they have their own secrets. Their creaking prompts you to imagine ancient doors opening, doors that lead to nowhere. You want to arrive at that nowhere. Goldenrod and milkweed stalks are thawing from winter’s rigor mortis. A crow flies overhead and it sounds like it’s laughing at you, its rhythmic ha ha, ha ha echoing through the sky. By now you’re in the quiescent period that is deep winter; farmers won’t be passing by in their old beaten pick-ups, and none of the retired neighbors will feel like going for leisurely drives in gloomy weather. You slip an arm from your coat as you walk back toward the farmhouse. The temperature isn’t particularly inviting, but the clock is ticking.
It’s time to undress.
You let the empty coat arm dangle as you walk. The prolepsis of day entices you. The coat is old and its tufts of mohair collect burs when you are not paying attention. You tuck it under your arm and close your eyes, relishing the wind on your face and bare neck, the highland region of your chest. The windchimes sing, bruising the quiet. You can breathe again.
When you open the door, the cat runs out. She comes and goes as she pleases, hunting and in heat, returning in the violet hours of dawn like a wild college roommate you are always doing favors for.
Go then, you think bitterly, go live your life.
You sit on the pew in the mudroom. The pew you and your husband fastened to the top of your SUV and ferried along the cursive country roads. You have heard people refer to their second-hand furniture as “rescued”, as if to lend an air of superiority to remedy their reservations about owning somebody else’s things. You suppose that the pew from the antique store was indeed salvaged but refuse to acknowledge it as such, finding the connotation, in this regard, pompous. As a girl you were forced by your parents to attend church, though you never paid any attention to the hymns or prayers. As an adult, you can appreciate that they tried, that you at least have a vague understanding of the institution. Your children have never attended a church service. To them, the pew is simply a bench. They tie and untie their laces on it when they come home from school. You toss your coat on the pew and go back outside. How many hands, blazing with prayer, have rested against its wood? The coat falls short and tumbles to the unswept floor.
Your nipple is an alp which pierces the crisp air. You turn your back to the house. You could never do this in the city.
False.
You could do this in the city, but it is because of situations like this that you no longer live there. You think back two autumns ago, when it seemed to begin, the nervousness. You refuse to let the word cross your mind in anything other than italics, quotations, implying that the condition is both unwelcome and was assigned to you by others. The term is so archaic, so very diminishing. The word itself is entombed by a safeguard, a sheath protecting the real blade.
As though it had a voice and called to you, you were summoned toward a regal honey locust, its brilliant marigold crown burning brightly beneath the noon sun. It wanted to love you, take care of you.
Come here, it said.
The tree knew your name. You wrapped your arms around its trunk. It was breathing, you could feel its lungs heaving.
Kiss me, it urged.
Its lips found yours, and you massaged its rough trunk with your tongue. Time passed—you and the honey locust in an embrace so profound it made you weep. Your child wept too. Without you noticing she had somehow climbed out of her stroller and wandered away, unable to discern your body from the shape you had become with the tree. A woman asked if you needed help. If the child was yours. What you were doing. You cried and cried. She called the police. The first of many dominos.
You love the world most when it is green, but right now it is sugared with melting snow and slush. The ground is pocked with mud. In a few weeks the world will come alive again, but for now you can find the beauty in its chrysalis. You hang your shirt on the car’s side mirror. Your husband, caring man that he is, insisted on buying another vehicle—a preowned Honda—in case there was an emergency when he wasn’t home. You doubt, even if there was an emergency, that you would drive it. You have driven it only once, when you disappeared for several hours, returning with a bag of cold cheeseburgers for your family. Driving alone scared you. Something took over that you didn’t like. The cashier at the burger joint complimented your sunglasses, which you wore inside, even though the sun had long set.
*
The first time you undressed you folded the shirt over your forearm as though you were maître d’ of the orchard. Your head twisted nervously at every little sound. What if one of the children fell ill and were chauffeured home by a parent volunteer? What if you missed their call? Your paranoia sprung from your city life, where everyone knew your business. In the city, you were riddled with anxiety merely watering the front garden. The idea of eyes on you, crafting storylines about your life, charting your arrivals and departures, was paralyzing. You imagined them keeping tallies of the ambulance visits when a gurney was necessary, the squad cars who understood not to use their siren on your suburban street, instead letting their red and blue lights strobe silently into living room windows, alerting neighbors to another episode.
In the country the closest neighbor was over a mile away but what excuse would you have for yourself if stumbled upon? You anticipate how people might rationalize your actions—a drug trip, exhibitionism, possession, even.
Nervousness.
How could they possibly understand? What would they see if they were to find you?
A flesh-colored illusion, an expanse of country behind you.
What would they think?
The blasphemy of a woman nude, enjoying the solitude of nature.
*
There is a hill on the edge of the property that slopes toward a babbling creek. No human sound exists out there aside from the ones initiated by you; a twig snapping underfoot, the parting of the ragweed. Beyond the creek is a field that stretches for as far as the eye can see, acres belonging to who knows who. There is a gnarled old poplar tree, an obelisk on the hill, that you lean against as you untie your boots. This tree does not speak to you or love you, nor is it some wise old sage; this tree is merely tree.
Your laces are white from the salt that the snowplow butters the roads with. You untie them. The unpaved roads surrounding your new home are so treacherous that no one except locals venture them during wintertime. You can smell the artificiality of the salt on your fingers. You lick them, just to see what it tastes like. One of the first things your husband did when you moved in was place a salt block in the meadow, in sight of the kitchen window. It had been a rite for him, the way hanging the wind chime was for you. During breakfast, he watches the deer. He wraps both hands around his coffee mug and studies them with monk-like rumination.
You kick off your hundred-dollar boots. You bought them at an outlet store in an industrial wasteland on the outskirts of the city, a day trip with your mother-in-law nine months following the honey locust incident. It was a year of many such trips, different women pretending as though they weren’t babysitting you, except that was precisely what they were doing. It had been a good deal, the boots, considering the brand. You carried them proudly to the register, expecting some congratulatory remark from the cashier, who upon closer regard, looked nervous to be working there. You noted her coffee cup beside the register, the glob of lip-gloss over the rim. The vacant look in her bullet-colored eyes. How, from across the store, you had seen her vape smoke rising from behind the counter. Instead of witty banter about what a good deal the boots were, the cashier asked if you had a points card.
No, you said.
I don’t collect points.
The ground is taffied with muck. Your socks press into the soft mesh of earth, a spot where snow forgot to land. The socks are hand-knit. They cost thirty-three dollars from the local hundred-mile shop. You agreed that they looked cozy and your husband waited until you left the store to buy them. He likes to do things to make you smile. You never carry a credit card of your own anymore, not after a woman in a fluorescent yellow vest stopped you on the sidewalk in the city and asked if you had ever heard of the Koala Bear Protection Society. She informed you that koalas are being killed off due to overpopulation. She showed you pictures, sad and gory, the koalas like beheaded teddy bears. It was a very convincing, heart-wrenching spiel. You pledged everything on your credit card, thirty thousand dollars, to save the koalas. Your husband found out about the charge weeks later, when a thank-you package was delivered for their gold star member: a eucalyptus plant and koala-shaped knapsack, which the children still use, much to his chagrin.
What were you thinking? he asked.
But you remember nothing from that afternoon. A cold space, white as snow, where a memory ought to be.
The mud beneath your socks feels nice. That is what else feels nice: destroying your clothes. You walk further down the incline, clutching a branch from the poplar for support. The tree’s shoulders groove deeply, its trunk fissured from years of wind. It is the only tree on the hill and it acts as a lightning rod, collecting the brunt of the weather that sweeps through the valley. Locals huff about the weather as though it is a curse. They refer to it as an event—We’re having weather today.
You remember when the nurse marched into the hospital room, your firstborn nestled in the crook of her arm.
Take off your shirt, mama.
A command she must have issued a thousand different times to a thousand different women. How many women out there possessed the same memory? It sounded like something a drunk frat boy might say, and even so, you conceded without hesitation. Despite feeling like a freak doll whose stuffing had been torn out, its seams stitched back up, your shirt came off because your newborn’s need for milk and skin was primal, immediate. You could still feel things then; you could feel the urgency in the sterile hospital air. The absence of sensation came after. And then—a shift. It was a shift for you, the undressing. After that it continued by fluke—the unravelling of a scarf, the removal of a coat during a hot flash—before becoming routine.
The undressing was a liberation. An indulgence. A compulsion. A pleasure.
You unzip your jeans and empty the pockets of their contents: car keys to the Honda you’re afraid to drive, a pop can tab one of the kids gave as a good luck charm, a few quarters for the laundromat since the machines at home aren’t working. The breeze is sweet on your pelvis. Sprouts of hair climb the trellis of your stomach. It has been weeks since the last time you shaved, your crotch hectic with pubic hair. The skin on your legs is so dry it feels reptilian. The denim chafes as you lower your jeans. Once they are removed, reduced to a sad looking denim plant against the khaki-colored field, you pull your underwear down to your ankles. You have never ventured this far, not with the underwear completely off. You kick them into the breeze and watch as the blue lace rides on the wind for several feet, before plummeting by the creek. You will fetch them later, unless they swim away. But first. You recline on the cold ground, spread your legs open, and let the breeze enter you. A smile erupts. You watch a grackle forage upon the expanse of field, feeling like a voyeur regarding the bird’s lust for seed, last year’s kernel of something. The bird, you remind yourself, is also nude.
*
Each morning after the bus collects the children for school, you are overcome with the anticipation to remove your clothing. It becomes a secret routine, one you find yourself dreaming about at night, entering strange territory that seems to superimpose itself over the world you know. Once the blossoms bud and the green world reemerges, you imagine your routine will alter. The season’s revival will birth camouflage, provide more possibility. Once the bus disappears around the corner, so will your clothes—flung onto branches that will shudder with magnolia. Your heel will crush spring’s first ladies, the daffodils. You will murder the freesias with the weight of a denim jacket. When no one is home you will nail mirrors to the walnut trees and when your husband returns from work he will think it is preternatural, beautiful. The mirrors will toss the sun, your own funhouse. During your hours alone you will lie nude in the grass and its lushness will feel mattress soft. You will open your legs wide and feel the air tunneling inside you, something entering to replace what has left—an exchange. In the reflection of the mirror you will watch your body simply exist. You will see it everywhere—in the trees, in the greenness, in the sky. The resplendent sight of yourself completely bare upon the blades of grass will provide a divine release. You will overcome the nervousness.
Your husband leaves at six each morning and doesn’t return until six each night. The sun rises earlier now, a globe in the grapefruit sky. There is one week until the children are dismissed for summer break. They don’t sit on the pew and tie their boots anymore and there is no need to shovel a path to the end of the driveway. The children dress in t-shirts and baseball hats and sandals, which they slip into and out of with ease. You rub sunscreen thick as molasses across their noses, work it into the length of their arms until they look like little ghosts. Once the bus departs, you gallop toward the field, an animal liberated from her corral. Some days you wait only until you hear the bus door close to begin undressing; a flip-flop, your shawl, your sunglasses. There is less to remove in the summer. Time is of the essence. Soon you will have to share your hours. Soon, there will be nothing left for you at all.
The cat has formed a habit of following you everywhere. You wish it wouldn’t. It glares at you from its post in the shoulder of the poplar tree, the only witness to your ritual. It poses a threat through its incessant, blood curdling meows; someone could follow its voice and find you there. You have invented a theory that the cat is jealous that you can remove your attire; it can’t.
The cat hisses and you hiss back.
Are you going to tell on me?
You know it won’t, otherwise you will quit setting out bowls of kibble. It will be cast away. It will starve. In this relationship, you have the upper hand.
Goosebumps ripple across your navel. The wind stirs the leaves, a choir overhead. A curtain of modesty lifts. This is the process you have come to love. In the soft green afternoon, you lace your fingers behind your head, tilt skyward and thrust your breasts up to god. Back at the house, you can hear tires crunching the gravel.
They are home.
