The Clearing

I first noticed the clearing of my skin not halfway through my second pregnancy. It did not bring with it the magical properties one might associate with such an event: a bright, dewy complexion; the freedom of mind and spirit from vanity’s previous deceit; the lightening of one’s makeup bag, now saved from the added weight of concealers and creamy, skin-like concoctions. No, the clarity of my skin was just that: see-through, transparent, clear in the way that water is clear. I was becoming transparent before my eyes (or rather, not before my eyes), and the only certainty about it was that the feeling of my body remained despite its disturbing proximity to complete disappearance. 

In the beginning of The Clearing, I was able to continue my daily activity without disruption. As the mother of one, my day-to-day tasks were, by and large, physical ones, and so it is worth noting that a disappearing life can continue to be a productive one. With invisible hands I could still wash the dishes, allowing the soapsuds to build up in towers on my wrists. I could fold the laundry, if a little clumsily, and put away the linens in neat stacks in the bedroom, hallway closet, and basement. I could apply ointment to an ailing toddler’s rash-riddled skin and do so tenderly, careful to fasten their diaper in place and pat them on the bum to signal the completion of this task. I could scrub the baseboards and the surfaces inlaid with their typical smattering of dirt and stains—thanks, of course, to a little elbow grease.

At this time, in the first few months, it was fine. No one else seemed to notice that I was disappearing but me. When The Clearing began in my feet, I questioned my ability to walk or even to put on socks and shoes. But I was, and I did. I walked to the grocery store with the toddler in tow and even managed to maintain my balance despite the growing distance between how my feet operated in relation to my body and what it meant to see them operate in relation to my body. It was at this time that I was grateful for having purchased a stroller with all-wheel terrain. 

I won’t say it wasn’t a troubling experience. I was not immune to feeling uneasy during this period. I had grown prone to distress since becoming a mother. I often felt constrained, unprepared for the demands of domesticity. Before this, I was not defined by my work in the home. I was a woman in the world, equal if not in pay but in showing up. I had inherent value in the things that comprised my mind. I was not a body fulfilling wakings, feedings, cleanings—demanded of understanding all feelings of all people at all times. I just was, and that was enough.

Perhaps, I thought, my hands and feet had felt overwhelmed, too, but they had the gumption that I did not to say to hell with it and abandon ship. Like them, I felt that this was a ship that I could not right. Still, I had to find it in myself to dive in completely, to sink myself into the sensation of guiding another to grow. But, in the process, I suppose I felt much like soil does to a plant: sodden, rotten, impure if still necessary. 

A few weeks after The Clearing began, I decided to ask my husband if he’d noticed anything different about me. By then, my elbows were nearly gone, and while my mobility persisted, I felt odd, somewhat unable to move as freely as I liked. I’m afraid I wasn’t surprised when he batted the problem away, insisting I was imagining things and that of course, dear,  I was not becoming physically invisible. What a preposterous idea it was—to feel a sensation and to question it. Never mind, I concluded it impossible for him to comprehend, even if it were happening right before his eyes. I mean, how many times had I asked him to pass me something from the fridge, only to have to follow with a prescriptive “It’s in the top left corner near the yogurt”? The man so full of foresight and a preternatural preparedness for things like winter tire replacement and fantasy team-building did not possess the vision required for finding the eggs in the carton in the same place they always were!

By the time my torso started to go, I became increasingly concerned about the status of my womb. The scans all showed a baby ripening in due time and course, steadily growing, with no concerns from the doctors about size or shape. She was breech, which I thought funny because, well, wasn’t inhabiting someone else’s body in breach of some greater human contract? Are we not obliged to the right to our own bodies from birth to death?

How strange it was to cease while another thrived, all under the same house of flesh. And yet, we were two unfinished beings, one on the uptick of existence and the other in a more questionable state. Because while I had not been prodded by doctors for anything save my pregnancy, I continued to experience The Clearing. When I looked in the mirror, I did not see myself reflected at me, but rather something more of a shadow. When I looked at my body beneath me, I encountered much of the same: bits of floating pieces I could only somewhat put together to form a shape, but not one I recognized.

When the toddler, flailing mid-tantrum and inconsolable, needed to be held, I used this newfound form to hold and comfort her. I lived in awe of her fullness, the completeness she embodied, however small her body was in proportion to the body I once had. While there was something paranormal at play for what had come for me, admiring her as she came into being was certainly its own kind of magic. How she grew to know her existence, to use it forcefully and forge her own way, was a testament to the strength of both the human body and its mind. 

Together, a couple of half-formed humans, she, still young enough to be shaped by the world, and I, becoming dimmer by the day, we ventured into different territories with as much self-possession as we could. She was content in her stroller as I hobbled along with too few limbs and any great number of bags and necessities on board. We made our weekly journey to the local deli. She was satiated by a stick of bread and butter, and I, a cheese and turkey sandwich on rye. It was our jovial day when the question of existence was tucked so far back into my mind that I almost remembered what it was like to feel whole again. She did have that power, the toddler. I could forget myself in favour of our togetherness. But on this day, I was crudely reminded of the reality of my wants and needs when I arrived home with a soured child in her soiled seat and, later, welcomed to rest by a turkey sandwich made without its meat. And so, too, even the things that should have filled me disappeared out from under me. Or simply did not exist in the first place.

When the second child finally came knocking at the door of my body, hoping to exit it into the wider world, I was relieved at the sensation of pain that struck me. While I had been experiencing The Clearing, I could not rely on my fullness as a human to guide me through what was required of me as a body in this state. Though technically, my feelings and abilities were still there, the disconnect between my mind and body had become so great that there were no firm truths to which I could cling. Everything around me and inside of me felt like a floating reality that I wished desperately would release me from its grasp.

Now outside of me and visibly separate, the baby wailed and screamed to be held, to be fed, to find a place that felt like somewhere sturdy where she could rest. I looked on as her limbs trembled and spiked in different directions against her will—for, of course, it was a body that she did not understand or even knew was a part of her. Empathy, as a mother, is its own extremity: one that rises within you like a pillar of stone, tearing its way through your gut, bypassing the heart and the throat and stiffening in place, obstructing all other systems housed within the body. 

I instinctively flinched at her cry and brought her close to the only part of me that remained visible since The Clearing. She rested her tiny hand on my chest and brought her mouth to feed. Holding her now, I knew nothing else to be real or true or possible for me hereafter. What I did know for certain was that I could will her to live for as long as my breast was intact and in sight.