In Search of Baubo

It is the most charming moment in Greek mythology. After a devastating, months-long search for her beloved daughter, Demeter hears a dirty joke. Actually, she hears several. Dazed and slumped against a village well, Demeter watches a mysterious, headless woman emerge from the woods and dance toward her. She has eyes for nipples and a soft, wicked grin for a vulva where she regales tragic Demeter with obscene jokes. Demeter watches the woman dance and sing, her little feet stomping through the yellow-green puddles where Demeter had puked and wept in the snow. We learn the woman is not a woman at all but the little belly goddess Baubo who's been jesting with hurt women for centuries. Demeter stares vacantly at the belly goddess. She stares and stares until something about the combination of Baubo's movements and lewd jokes awakens the carefree girl buried within her. Slowly, a smile appears on Demeter's lips, growing and growing until the earth goddess, despite herself, erupts in laughter.Because Baubo only frequents lonely, hurting women, it's no surprise that I first encountered her in my early twenties. I found her one summer in the back of the Austin Public Library in a little section on women's spirituality and folktales. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés's iconic Women Who Run with The Wolves glowed in my hands. Inside were stories of power and levity. Some pulsed with the heart of a dragon. Others were raw like bleeding gums or early drafts. In this book, sly and powerful goddesses used their bodies and minds to find love, save the planet, and exact revenge on bad boyfriends. Or, in Baubo's case, make a grieving mother laugh.I plopped onto the adult-sized beanbag chair and read about the bold little belly goddess, a smile slowly spreading across my face. That summer I'd graduated from college and was diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or C-PTSD. The diagnosis relieved and disoriented me. There was a name for why I grappled with daily bouts of rage and disassociations. I'd spent years in therapy sifting through old diaries and correspondence in hopes of understanding my past. Finally, I had an advantage in my long-standing personal hunt for an answer and a solution. Yet each day I slowed down. Days flew by as I waded through the symptoms. That's the paradox of acknowledgment: The jettison lever is right there and somehow, you're still reluctant to pull it.I was surprised I loved Baubo as much as I did. How could someone so bold, so embodied resonate with me? My difficult emotions were not unlike the ferrous metals: chilling and hard and dangerously magnetic. Baubo was bubbly and winsome, her emotions an epic fish-scale effect reflecting every color of the rainbow. She bore her drooping flesh to the world. I wore no makeup and hid my curves behind long, flowy dresses two sizes too large. I would've never thought to have joked with a grieving friend, not even lovingly so.Yet I was moved by this notion that women in pain can benefit from the obscene. We can heal knowing that life is short and often uncertain of its own genre: Are we living a tragedy or a comedy? Baubo shows us that a woman better know how to dance through both, how to love and care for the body when the soul garlics and the guts are in the snow. I thought of Baubo lending her hand to Demeter and of Demeter rising to her feet. I wanted to know if more stories like Baubo and Demeter's existed. Surely there were women who suffered and succeeded on their own terms. I longed for women-driven stories that used the obscene to both illuminate despair and steer women away from it. So I began my search for the belly goddess where women, fictional or not, face their deepest turmoil, fall to pieces, and thrive anyway.I wasn't sure where to begin. Were there glimpses of Baubo in art and daily life? When did I first encounter such spirited obscenity? I thought of mistakes and absurdities and unsealable wounds. I thought of high school. My freshman year a distinct friendship whittled my manners down to rightful pieces of porcelain. This friend lured my inner goofball from its cage with bad movies, cheap wine, and satirical novels authored by LGBTQ writers and punk feminists. She got women and she got me. Possessing a kind of feminist x-ray vision, she saw the crippling doubt and self-hatred in my heart, the entire organ shriveling like a used piece of gum. She blamed men for a woman's perceived lack of worth and she blamed them often. No sexist joke in the hall went unchallenged, no elitist prep left unscathed. She hated the rich boys voraciously, picked their confidence clean as if it were a delicious Sunday roast. Still, the boys liked and wanted her badly. She was gorgeous and sloppy—red lipstick shining across a heart-shaped face, chubby calves bound in fishnets. In class she was the outlier and the clown. Like Baubo, she possessed this effortless way of challenging life's absurdities through crude feminist humor that left others stunned and amused. Her name was Sally Sanders—a cloying alliteration she mocked before anyone else could—and we were inseparable our freshman year.One could find us Saturday afternoons in the back room of a coffee shop two blocks from Sally's home in Houston's Heights district. That summer after Baubo, I'd think about the many days we talked in the back sunlit room of the coffee shop. There we sat atop a leopard print couch in our skimpy floral dresses drinking Italian cream sodas as we discussed the strange and powerful workings of our bodies, our blond heads turning platinum in the sunlight. We cracked inappropriate jokes. Loudly. We joked about our farts and our periods and our breasts. On the couch we were kind and ruthless with ourselves, the pleasure hitched to our raunchiness so strong, one girl keeled over with laughter while the other pulled her up. We'd carry on in this way for longer than I'd care to admit now, swaying and swearing in the sunlight like two belching peonies.Sally thought a woman's body powerful, a constant source of radical pleasure. I saw the body as a constant source of confusion and betrayal. All my body's pangs and distortions and unsolicited attention devastated me, whether I was present in my body or not. And I often wasn't. When you can't accept who you are, you watch who you are. My freshman year of high school I experienced this exquisite sense of separation. I watched myself move through the motions of adolescence, the true self hovering above me like a shadow in flight. Until those afternoons with Sally when her humor and Bauboesque sensibility sashayed toward my discomfort and shook me awake. She did so unconsciously of course. Sally was just being Sally. Still, my friend excited and mystified me, her influence intoxicating and inevitable. I hadn't come to realize that we impact others in slow, indeliberate ways, our own growth dependent on the innate genius of other personalities. It wasn't that I wanted to be Sally. I wanted to know what it would feel like to live and act like her for a change. To view my body and all bodies as a multiverse of pleasure at once divine and unglamorous.“Hey,” Sally said, gently poking me in the side. “Did I ever tell you what happened to my cousin last week?”I put down my cream soda and batted her finger away.“No,” I said.“Well, remember how I told you that one of my worst fears is getting a tampon stuck way up inside my vag?”“Yeah?”“Well, my cousin was on her period and she, uh . . . ”“No!”“Yup.”We groaned and snickered until our eyes sprung with tears. Mascara ran in slow rivulets down Sally's face.“What happened?” I said. “What'd she do?”“Her best friend had to help her pull it out. Can you imagine?”“Jesus.”“I mean, that's true friendship right there.”“I guess.”“Girl, of course it is. If you ever got a tampon so high up your vag, I'd drop everything and drive across town to help you pull it out. That's how much I love you. Seriously, just call and say the word. Keys in hand, girl. Keys in hand.”Sally took her keys from her purse and clutched them in her fist. I didn't bother reminding her that I didn't use tampons or that neither one of us was old enough to have a driver's license. I was too happy. My other female friendships were neither so bold nor courageously loving. Such friendships covered the cracks of my life like dainty wallpaper. Sally's friendship axed through all decorum and turned old cracks into doors. Sally was different and I was different around her. It moved me to have a friend who knew when propriety and physical boundaries had to dissolve, traffic laws be damned. She beamed at me on the couch, the edge of her keys seeping through her fingers.I looked from Sally to the keys. I imagined myself alone in the bathroom back home, curled up in the empty bathtub with my hands folded over my womb, my body writhing in pain. In this fantasy, I call out Sally's name in laughter and fear, my cheek stuck to the purple bathmat slowly tearing my skin. The bathmat was a gift from my estranged grandfather. He'd given it to my mother as a housewarming gift shortly after we moved. But in the fantasy I don't think about him or the bathmat or how both have protected and torn my body in some way. Instead, I call and call until Sally swoops into the bathroom with latex gloves and a box of donuts. Comfort food for later, she explains, ’cause trust me this is gonna suck for both of us! I laugh and thank her as she steps into the tub. Slowly, I unfurl and the pain lessens. But as my friend nears, I pull away. Suddenly, I'm afraid. I don't want her close, don't want her to see the secret thing inside me. Don't, I tell her. It's too far up, it's too hurtful. She kneels to hug me and says everything's going to be okay. But it won't come out, I say. Yeah it will, she says. Everything does. I lie back down and let her help me. She reaches inside the part of me I've been conditioned to resent and fear, removes the thing that brought nothing but pain and limitation. See? she says when it's all over. That's how much I love you. Keys in hand, girl. Keys in hand.In my mid-twenties I read another version of Baubo's tale which goes like this:After Hades abducts Persephone, Demeter forgoes her duties of fertility and reinvigoration and wanders the earth disheartened. She disguises herself as an old woman and takes refuge in the home of King Celeus of Eleuisis. The king and his men want to help this strange, depressed woman, but nothing works. Not until Baubo, King Celeus's servant, arrives. She takes Demeter aside and the two start talking. After a handful of risqué, off-color remarks from the servant, Demeter begins to smile. Then, at the end of their visit, Baubo lifts her skirt to Demeter, who, in turn, erupts in a deep, uncontrollable belly laugh. Her spirits restored, Demeter then summons the strength to demand Zeus use his power to bring Persephone home. Zeus heeds the earth goddess and orders Hades to let Persephone go.Several versions of this story report differently on what Demeter saw beneath Baubo's skirt. Whether it be wholesome, funny, or obscene, Baubo's revelation unearths something extraordinary about obscenity and women's experiences. When women embrace obscenity over repression, connection over isolation, we can demand things that patriarchal structures were not built or upheld to give. Even in the subzero temperatures of despair, we can pick ourselves up and keep going.No women can tell the truth about their bodies and despair, not fully. It's the trying that opens us to new possibilities. When we embrace sorrow or nihilism or insecurity, we close ourselves off from other, arguably more interesting branches of reality: and pleasure and have the power to tragedy into or at an exquisite sense of despite all Women Baubo we those turning ourselves off not like or or like me years and in the while my friend beneath a Sally was and all a of Her pain had this to across her in I'd loved this about Sally. It was for her to keep things I vacantly as she ran a hand through her and and at the boys that That the school were with and and a distinct to The of a girl in our class had been by a or a The story We did not have much To this I don't know how the story The through and and the true story to and We did not know much that the a different high school and the girl in our class had been for two That I a boys in Sally's class had spent the period jokes about the and her I wasn't in the but I that Sally after them with a her so and the told her to the rage did not after the or my to her down in the of the its branches drooping over us like a Sally the or the to How could say those things about Sally said. She is a of Baubo once inside her had Her and beneath those a despair I often but never my body was a in It did not the things that did me that I nothing at I had I myself to Sally's rage not it was too powerful but it was too There were things I longed to tell her but I revelation would too my body I longed to tell her. something bad stuck inside me I can't out. you help me? Can you pull it the I the and pull of the purple bathmat back home. It was given to us by a I never a I'd my to keep far away from me. I thought it that my mother the bathmat at an one not see and I hated the way the of that cheap bathmat and to my at my and me from away. But I never talked about it. I never talked about most I never out I a to my or Sally or every at school. That I my hand on Sally's and told her we home. She and The shook the from the and in our We did not have the strength to smile or them Baubo a we can onto of and She in those where we can't see who we are or where we are In my I found her She in the of a that me for I was and had out of school and the school was not the I'd it I was and by my own That summer I moved from to a town of On the I sat with my to my and watched the Everything I was inside two I to the I'd for the away and I a new that my I watched in the The at a and I my on a with from branches and sunlight their I too was about to a much one with and obscene remember the a beloved The There was little little of is the of the of We care of through the one women to and and as for men and like women wore wanted and so you could them from the of the women did not to care that their or that their and laughter was and When my first with I was I was and and like me of that to The women took me in as one of their me in their and me a We while and at the of our when our on the It was like no I'd ever had I was in love with those women and all in their The of the present the and I was the I'd ever was the I'd ever been until I wasn't. long, I'd from the women and to at my at the My to I did not trust all this love, all this The from the women's bodies and not like the of my I my to the and until all I could see were of hand at my back pulled me from my I turned and saw my friend with the other women to with me. her and her eyes were with She if I was all right and I in Her was and a of she said. She as if about me as if I wasn't So much in her but so much left the and took a through the to my My heart was in my I hated what my friend in the what she It was then I a part of me was of Baubo and the women who her. I was of just as I'd in of Sally all those years I with women for many years but not It's difficult to accept the you the It's difficult to admit you them at The I goes for To know her is to the to embrace all that's and are women who their into this and women who, for from all the all its I was a and for most of my I was not only for Baubo but for my own I longed to the of women of their own I stories about women and to with the so could of it. Even I wanted women to be the way Baubo all women, to be loved and and I got I for Baubo in art and others and for her to in me. my I extraordinary and moved all over the were in and the more and the out. Baubo, I true and would me. I wanted Baubo to me into the of my life but she would never Not in me, She in the and fictional women I but I did not sense her in my own in my a and obscene me. Baubo had me I when she I didn't see her at I was too in my too present to We not to or connection before we We our way into didn't Baubo the summer I home from my first year of college when my and I took a to the My had spent the living in after the of and into But the best of my were the days we to the and into the the and purple in the right like and I in a by a We off our then into If it for the we would've never it in that In we old that had been turned into or or with and and and of and with over their a I a with a with my as I into its I I said. I this be to the and atop a My from a purple When she was she me the but I The color was too too much like the purple bathmat back home. I my in my and let myself She ran her through my like when I was we never when I was a for she in and I never got to see her for those my me we were in our own In a and the I'd ever my said, I think you are After everything that did and how alone you were through it I don't know how you did it. I feel like our you. And I did I'm I was so far away and be there for my eyes and for the pain to the rage and I toward my was and to When a is by her and her nothing to she never living in She never her she their and were than their love for their She up her as if were to hurt her. Even at that part of her for her to her into her face, to her into the there was and We inside the and our onto the We watched and delicious We to and talked about our And through that of or or I this old it wasn't but a I could no longer I myself against the and my hand over my I let the I and until I could I to tell my that I was that this had hurt me. I told her I the pain. I still can't many of it's not the that still you all years It's the that it happened to you or anyone at That's to live me in her and I into her She me as if I were a told me I was and I wanted to tell her I loved her but I say it. In that all I could say me what was and I told her to about steps I over and my hands over my I told my not can't this This was and a little My and I at each There was and then there was I until the a long, something that could have the or the over my my was We and and each other I know that Baubo was us strange and that way.