Bloody. I am four years old. Between screams, I stare at a bloody footprint on the ground. It’s bedazzled with shards of glass. The footprint is mine; so are the screams.
Papa is doing his best to balance me on his thighs. They look like human-sized tootsie rolls. His best is pretty great.
We are seated on a curb, in the parking lot of Payless Foods, next to my family’s golden brown, two-door, Toyota Celica. Our car is ugly. I hate our car. Mama and Auntie are standing next to us. They are talking with their mouths, and their arms, at each other and at me. They are arguing in Patois. Papa can’t understand them. I can.
I start to suck on my bottom lip. Not soft, like before I fall asleep at night next to Auntie. But hard, like when I think I’m not going to like what may happen next.
The left side of my face is stuck to Papa’s warm chest. His shirt is wet. My tiny right foot is in the palm of his large right hand.
“Try and be still, Nyansarora,” Papa whispers. He likes to call me by my Kenyan name.
But I can’t be still. My foot hurts a lot. I am rocking my body. Papa begins rocking too. We’re rocking together.
Blood – my blood – is dripping from my foot onto Papa’s hand, his t-shirt, and his jeans. He’s picking at pieces of glass stuck in my tiny foot.
I’d made a misstep – landing into a mess that somehow became mine to bear.
Earlier, during the four-minute ride from our home to Payless Foods, I lost my sandals. It wasn’t my fault. It’s because of our car’s seating arrangements.
Papa was in the driver’s seat. Mama, in the passenger seat next to Papa. Auntie was in the back next to me. Auntie and I were basically in the booty of our car, squeezed in between mounds of hospital supplies. Mama’s a nurse.
Mama said she would buy me a mini apple pie today – the one covered with large sugar crystals – but only if I behaved. Behaving means doing exactly as I am told, and doing it quietly, with no backtalk. I’m not very good at behaving.
I spent the ride wriggling my tiny body in that backseat. They were silent wriggles. I was hot and caged back there – smushed against boxes of latex gloves and alcohol wipes.
Left Foot Shoe fell off on its own and rolled somewhere under Papa’s seat. I wanted my other foot to feel free too, so I kicked off Right Foot Shoe. It felt like the right thing to do.
When we finally arrived at Payless Foods, I’d long forgotten about Left Foot Shoe and Right Foot Shoe. Papa put down his seat and held the seatbelt off to the side. It was my turn to release my entire body from our car. I leaped – out the stuffy backseat, into the breezy outside. I landed; barefoot onto the sharpest pieces of a broken bottle. I collapsed onto the hot ground.
First came the blood, next came the pain, then came the wails. They were all mine. I was the only one devastated that my favorite foot was ruined.
“Look at this mess!” I hear Mama yell through the ear that isn’t pressing into Papa’s chest.
I don’t know if she’s talking about me, or my blood, or the glass, or the iodine that’s now dripping down my right leg and staining my clothes.
I didn’t see Mama pass Papa a bottle of iodine and a package of gauze from the backseat. But Papa is squeezing the brownish-orangey liquid over my little bloody foot and wrapping it up. I worry I will have a limp for the rest of my life.
“She has to learn!” Mama yells to Auntie in English.
Mama wants Papa to understand her now. Mama has decided my misstep is deserving of a whooping, which she will give me once we return home. Her decision is final. Auntie lost their argument.
“You should have kept your shoes on!” Mama booms at me, “Why didn’t you look where you were going?” she goes on, “This is why you don’t play around when I tell you not to play around!”
Mama keeps going. Her words enter my ear and stay in my head. The inside of my tummy starts burning. I bury the front of my whole face into Papa’s wet chest. He rocks me for a bit more, then stands up with me in his arms and places me back in the booty of our ugly car.
I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to! I don’t need any more lessons! I already have a limp! These are things I want to say to Mama. Instead, I suck on my bottom lip even harder and try my best not to bring any more of my mess into the backseat. My best isn’t good enough.
No mini apple pie for me today.
-
Orange. It’s a Friday morning in March 2023. I’m 36. I am staring into my open fridge counting its many crevices. It is a horror scene.
Thirty-two ounces of freshly squeezed orange juice is pouring out of the bottom of a cracked mason jar. The juice is falling from shelf-to-shelf, into the crisper bins, and into the shelf channel. I am deciding whether I’ll give myself permission to spiral over spilled juice.
Minutes earlier I was excited – chipper, even – about the day ahead. I’d just washed, cut, and juiced half a bag of seeded Valencia oranges. My mother gave them to me during my most recent weekly visit to my childhood home, where she now lives by herself. I mixed the orange juice with squeezes of key lime juice, dollops of turmeric and cayenne powders, and dashes of black pepper and salt. I poured the juice into a mason jar, closed it tightly, and placed the jar in the fridge to cool while I began to prepare ingredients for a smoothie. As soon as I closed the fridge doors, I heard a crackle.
“Look at this fucking mess!” I yelled into my open fridge. And it would be mine to clean up – all mine.
There’s a burning pain from my chest down into my stomach. Familiar phrases of, “You should have…” and, “Why didn’t you…” and, “This is why…” flood my head. I try to ignore them.
I feel brittle, like at any moment I too will snap or pop. This spill feels like an affront to my personhood. Like some spiritual source decided to send me a visual reminder of how things are constantly breaking down around me.
Maybe this is a sign I should put my condo on the market and use the funds to move to a different country, far away from the mess of my life. Maybe I should cut off all my hair
“I decided I needed a fresh start, after orange juice flooded the inside of my fridge,” I imagine telling my mother enroute to Bali with my bald head. I dismiss both considerations immediately.
I want to ignore the mess, climb back into bed, and go back to sleep with the intention to wake up in a different timeline. A timeline where things go as planned. I remind myself I already tried that yesterday – and probably the day before – and yet…here I am. I’m in this same timeline where things don’t go as planned and, sometimes, they even go terribly.
I also live alone. I have no one’s chest to cry into when things go awry. No one to rock with, to help dull my pain. I’ve learned that although some of my life’s messes aren’t entirely of my doing (or undoing), I alone am responsible for the clean-up and the aftercare.
I’m exhausted.
Instead of falling onto the kitchen floor and spending the day pulling at my rug runner, and wailing “Why me!” into my black and white tea towels, I remove the empty mason jar from the fridge and throw in away.
I stick my head into the fridge tongue first and lick up the orange juice from a pool left behind on one shelf. I suck the juice from the glass. I lap up my loss. It feels like the right thing to do. The day’s misery of spilled juice drips from my mouth, my nose, and my chin.
I will not allow spilled orange juice to be the nadir of my suffering, I decide.
I remove my head from the inside of my fridge. Before I wipe my face clean with a wet tea towel, I lick my lips. I savor the sweetness of my misery.
-
Mess. I am eight months old; I think.
I have no cerebral memory of this, but a somatic recollection lingers.
I am still fed by Mama’s breasts. But, I’m going to learn how to eat food like big people, Auntie tells me.
She is holding me on her hip as she collects a worn sheet and old towels and spreads them on the kitchen floor next to the stove. Auntie sits me down in the middle of the arrangement and puts an eating plate at my little feet. I have thick socks on my little feet. Auntie makes sure to keep my feet covered.
The eating plate is white and has colorful drawings of funny animals I see on TV.
“Chicken! Green banana! Avocado!” Auntie says these words to me as she points at each section on the eating plate.
“Mah-jey!” Auntie tells me to eat. She is smiling at me. I look at Mama and Papa across from me around the eating table. They are smiling too.
I place my small hands in the food. I wave my hands in the grey mush in the green banana section. I mix it with the shredded meat in the chicken section to see what color I can create. I get the mixture on my cloth diaper Auntie put on me before she sat me down to eat like big people. I put my fingers in my mouth. They taste different. I like the different taste. I make a handprint in the green banana mash. It feels like the right thing to do.
I grab a tiny fist of green in the avocado section, open my mouth like an “O” and smash it at my face. Some of it gets into my mouth. I chew. I open my mouth and some of the green falls out. I make a lot of mess with my tiny hands and feet.
Papa and Mama laugh; Auntie claps. I giggle and swallow.
-
Last month I turned 37. A few weeks prior to my birthday, I found myself in the middle of a Whole Foods parking lot lane holding a torn brown paper bag and staring down at my exposed feet covered in broken pieces of green glass. It was a full circle moment, brought about by another full circle moment.
Earlier that same day, I awoke feeling fine. Fine turned to shit when I noticed the date on my phone. I spent the next two hours in bed lamenting the fact I’ll soon be the same age my mother was when she gave birth to me. To help me forget I’m turning into my mother, I decided to go on a sparkling water and dry fruit run. The run ended in a big mess completely of my own making.
“Do you need any help?” asks a nice white man putting away groceries into his trunk nearby my spillage.
I shake the carbonated water off my French tip pedicure and black Havaianas. I step away from the shattered bottles of Mountain Valley Sparkling Water and check my feet. Thankfully, there’s no blood to clean up.
I ignore the burning in my chest and stomach and the voice in my head that’s chastising me. I begin to clean up my mess. I pick up the packages of mango-passion fruit bites strewn around the broken green glass. Parked a few spots ahead is my white, A-Class, sedan. I open my trunk and walk over to my car.
“Yea, I’d like some,” I tell the man.
“I’ll pick up the big pieces,” he replies.
I regret not telling this stranger the truth. I need a lot of help. I don’t want to pick up the tiny shards, or any shards, really. It’s 11:00 a.m., and I’m already exhausted by the day. I want him to pick up all the broken pieces. But this mess isn’t his responsibility.
I thank the stranger for picking up the largest pieces of green glass, and throwing them away, before he gets in his car and drives off.
I want to sit down in the middle of the parking lot and cry over spilled Mountain Valley Sparkling water. The broken bag is still in my right hand. I decide to use it to pick up the rest of the glass. I look at the large puddle of fizzing water and the tiny pieces of green glass. I try to count the number of shards but settle on “too many.”
Just leave it, says a voice in my body that sounds like me, there will be others.
I’ve been feeling this voice more and more lately and am trying hard to listen to it – to listen to myself. I believe it’s trying to remind me of my autonomy. The burning that comes up in my chest and stomach, which I often ignore, is my self in protest. This self stands in resistance to the illusion of being I bought into long ago.
The lesson I learned when I was four years old is that there is a more careful version of being that can save me from things going wrong. I’m now learning this lesson is a lie. The chastising voice in my head pushes me to become a person who banks on being able to save myself from the mess of life. It convinced me I could ascend into a being above life’s messy bits. But being a bank woman hasn’t saved me. It has only created more mess.
I’m starting to believe I’m not exhausted from the mess of my life. I’m exhausted by my many failed attempts to levitate through life – and hover over its broken pieces – with the hope I may save myself from spilling blood.
But I’m not Jesus. (If he could walk on water, for sure he could fly over broken glass.) And I don’t want to be. (Even Jesus couldn’t prevent his blood from being spilled.)
My life is a big mess – or, perhaps, a series of many messes – littered with bloody missteps. And, perhaps, that’s the point of this living-as-a-human-being shit.
Perhaps this new voice is baby Sheila who thrived amidst mess. Perhaps things may feel easier, even a bit lighter, if I learn to accept and love life for the mess it is and myself for the mess I am. Perhaps it’s an inevitability that, eventually, all things break. Perhaps I don’t have to be a clean-up person. Perhaps I don’t need to be saved from anything or anyone. Perhaps I can choose to revel in life’s sticky sweetness. After all, it’s still mine to savor – all mine.
Fuck this mess!
I throw the broken bag into my trunk, next to a box of latex gloves and a bag of KN95 masks, before closing it. I decide this mess isn’t going to be my responsibility either. I flip-flop my wet feet over to the driver’s side and get into my car. I pop a few balls of mango-passionfruit bites into my mouth. I crush the balls with my teeth and let the tangy sweetness wash over my tongue.
Let someone else deal with it. I start my car and drive off. It feels like the right thing to do.
“there is a more careful version of being that can save me from things going wrong. I’m now learning this lesson is a lie.” I felt this deeply. Love the way you write.
Baby Sheila 🥹💜