Self-Portrait in Cacophony

Part of me is 14, the only grandchild invited into the mortuary, being commanded to say goodbye. My maternal grandma rests on a metal table the color of the moon. She wears only a white sheet. She is empty. Instead of words, I give her a kiss which her body returns with ice.Part of me is scream-singing “Amazing Grace” inside my orange nylon tent while three bears catch the scent of sweat and oatmeal—a group of Girl Scouts playing at Katniss Everdeen. The bears scare at the sound of our song.Part of me is smelling my lover's t-shirt while he sleeps, the first time he ever made his chest my pillow. He smells somehow like dew and the crease of my own elbow. Fresh. Familiar. I've never known a soft smell to carry voltage.Part of me is hiding under my paternal grandma's wicker dining table, studying for my seventh-grade earth and space science exam, falling in love with the words wax and wane, the way they contain different magnitudes of light.Part of me is standing at the front of my longest friend's life celebration, trying not to look at her urn—slate gray. They don't make urns in the colors she liked—fuschia, lavender. Nobody considers what contains the body of a dead nineteen-year-old, until you know one. My old classmates watch me white-knuckle the podium. They are wondering which metaphor I will press her into, all of them unfit containers.Part of me is holding my two-year-old cousin's tiny hands, so he has the support needed to toddle. I wish he was mine. I wish I had made him.Part of me is not listening to myself recite confirmation vows, “I renounce Satan and all his work and ways, and surrender myself to You.” Instead, I am brushing poppy seeds off my dress. It had to be pure white. Not the kind of white offered by American department stores. So, my mom ordered mine online. She did not take into account my hunger, my exposure to the fellowship hall before my vows.Part of me asks my new second-grade teacher to stay behind for a chat before lunch. “You said to tell you first if we ever thought something could get us in trouble,” I start. Then, I dump out my backpack full of shell casings. They make a crystal sound hitting the tile, and Mrs. Reddinger gapes. I explain quickly: “I was at my poppop's hunting cabin this summer. And my dad said I had too much energy. So, Aunt Lori suggested I make a craft. I made daisy shapes out of these. I can show you as proof if you want.” Mrs. Reddinger sighs. “You know, most kids just use macaroni.”Part of me is sitting on my dad's shoulders at the Philadelphia zoo, seeing flamingos for the first time, a whole flamboyance. I ask him, “Something can be pink and alive?” He pinches my perpetually flushed cheeks. An answer.Part of me is not that girl in a lightless dorm room, soaked in October rain, waiting until enough minutes have passed, so she can check her pregnancy test. The white square, a kind of bitter oracle. She has a paper on Emily Dickinson due tomorrow. She has cross country championships next weekend. She has feelings for someone else.Part of me is washing dishes in the house where I nanny. The mom comes in and tells me to stop running on the greenway alone. She just remembered a woman was murdered there last fall. It was very random. She was on her lunch break. People were around. The man was having an episode. He just kept stabbing. The mom offers me a peach scone. “They're in season,” she says.Part of me is knotting my fingers in my mom's gold hair. I am still small enough to carry.Part of me is observing the first flecks of mold on the plate of leftovers in the fridge, one week after my aunt died in a car accident while traveling to my poppop's cabin, where we waited with spaghetti. I realize I am now a superstitious person. I realize I will tell my children and my children's children, “Never set aside a plate of food for someone making a long journey.” I realize we are not promised our destinations.Part of me is 22, waking with wet eyes from a dream where I broke up with my partner of four years. I begged him, “Let me be stupid.”Part of me relishes my power as the only girl in the first-grade bug club. My fingers lack the dexterity needed to craft dandelion crowns with the other girls, so instead I point the boys in the direction of winged things.Part of me is not the whiskey-saturated body being undressed by a coworker in the Michigan woods. His pressure forces intimacy with the dirt and coniferous debris. There are moans. When they return to the party, a friend pulls a pine needle from her hair. “I know what you did,” he whispers.Part of me is driving through cornfields with my mom at dusk when she alerts me to the presence of a ghost in our car. Sometimes, she sees things I cannot, but I believe her anyway. I believe a ghost would choose our sturdy light over the dark.Part of me is 16, sitting in algebra, etching X over and over, wondering whether life will ever feel improvised.Part of me is almost dead. Purple. Yanking at my dad's wrist to try to stop him from retrieving the magnet lodged in my throat—a last ditch effort after the Heimlich failed. His enormous hand pivots near my trachea, with a speed that both threatens and clutches my lifeline, and all I can think is that my seams are splitting.Part of me is five, tying all the winter scarves we own around my sister's neck. I want her to be warm. She looks frightened.Part of me is sipping elderberry tea on a rocking chair on my boss's screened-in porch. She has been the director of the educational camp for 13 years. She assures me that the other teachers can't see us through the screen and feels confident that whatever I am about to share she has heard before. I say, “I hope that's not true,” and tell her my story, what I remember of it. When I'm finished, she puts her hand to her mouth and asks through frail fingers, “Were you raped?” Somewhere inside, a daisy turns into a gash. I ponder whether this pain is a credible source.Part of me is sitting among sixth graders on a pond boardwalk, at the camp in Michigan where I just moved to teach. This is my first time conducting a living data collection. The students thrust their slimy hands toward me, awed by the squirming life. “Snails. Larvae. Leeches,” I classify for them. They are competing for my attention. Everyone wants to find the rarest creatures. My co-teacher stands to the side, watching, listening. After pond class, he helps me gather the insect nets and says, “You always look so cute and curious.” I smile. These are the same two adjectives my dad used to describe my infant self to my mom after her C-section. “How do you make people love you so fast?” he asks.Part of me is in the last stretch of Eastern Pennsylvania's DIII cross country championships. I am running so hard my lungs feel like they are flickering more than inflating. I am desperate, looking for my coach's face and voice amid the hundreds of spectators. When I see him, I realize he is shouting the same thing over and over: “FIND SOMETHING INSIDE OF YOU.”Part of me is alone on a Jersey beach, half-reading the final chapter of my book, half-watching a nearby baby weep when suddenly I notice my stomach is cold. Everything is wet. The tide had come in, and I did not notice.