A Fist in the Mouth

originally published in my university literary magazine, tempered steel. edited fourth draft

There’s a difference between running from and running to. When I left home, I thought I was running towards. I didn’t think of it as me leaving my parents’ oppressive religious household, though that was a fact that I readily acknowledged as a girl. I only ever thought of it as me, freshly eighteen, running full speed at a future I thought I deserved. A future I knew never would have found me if I’d stayed in that town, in that house, with those people, spending my days on my knees praying to a god that didn’t see me as deserving of anything more than I’d already been given. 

Now, I think all I was doing was running away from every facet of my life. I didn’t feel the same way about God as the rest of my family, was scared to death of them looking at me one day and suddenly seeing all of me. Back then, I felt like I didn’t have any other choice. And I probably didn’t. 

*

I was slouching around Seattle about a year after I left, working as a waitress during the day and going to shows at night, taking pictures with little disposables I would buy when my paycheck allowed for a little recreational leeway. Mostly grunge and riot grrrl, but occasionally I’d throw in some weird hippie stuff for my baby sister back home, send her whatever pictures I took that night hidden in religious pamphlets and early college brochures. It wasn’t exactly what I thought I’d be doing, but it was fun, and I grew to really love it.

I remember how I used to stand in my shower after every show, let water that was only ever too hot or too cold pour over me and blur my vision. I would watch as cheap pink box dye ran down my thighs like the before image of menstruation, my hair so damaged it would come out in clumps and clog my drain so bad that after thirty minutes it was more like I was standing in the middle of a bath seeking baptism from my night of raging sin. Inhaling shower steam thick with heat always resulted in my holding my breath hostage, reaching out a shaking finger and counting the spaces between my ribs. As a kid I had imagined Adam doing this after God gave him Eve, had been horrified by the idea that of a part of my body so vital to my life’s protection could be removed at the whim of my not-father. Letting those held breaths go was always painful, always something that was felt deep inside my chest cavity. Afterwards, I would grieve the expulsion of Adam from my body by scrubbing at my skin, allowing it to slough off and form a cast of the self that I was that night.

I was nineteen and my presence felt both excessive and non-existent. I never once felt full. After my showers I would stand in front of my bathroom sink and look at my face in the fogged-up mirror. My mouth would be this gaping cavern, this monstrous think that didn’t fit on my face. Superimposed in a thirty-year-old looking glass would be this distorted image of my face, inhuman and smiling— trapped there: a gape-toothed girl looking to swallow the whole world if given the chance.

*

On a day when hunger gnawed at me incessantly, a customer told me about a show happening that night. Said it was a riot grrrl and fem punk multi-band event. It was a Thursday, and the customer was a woman about the same age as my mother, graying hair in long braids all the way down her back. There was something about her eyes... when I looked into them, something inside me demanded to go, the hunger needed to be satiated and if I couldn’t fill my mouth with food, I could fill it with screaming and raging and other loud, exacting things. I asked for the address before she could finish the rest of her sentence. Too eager, not eager enough. Her smile was that of a woman who knew too much.

She pulled out a thin card the color of bubblegum and a black pen, flipping the card over and writing out the venue’s address for me in neat cursive. 

“It’ll be a riot, babygirl.” 

When she left, I turned the card over and read what was printed in bold: Magdalene Williams.

*

I got off work around five that night and took a bus to the very last stop on its route, walked the rest of the way to the venue. Some dirt pit on the edge of the woods, full of readily assembled stages and big black tents selling merch and liquor. I remember the feeling that settled in between my ribs when I first got a good look, something between nausea and sick delight. 

It looked like my kind of show with my kind of people. People I could be friends with if there was space for conversation. But something nagged at me, pulled at the edges of my brief body and stayed there, claws sunk in to bruising flesh. My daddy used to say that a woman’s intuition must be finely tuned. Something about the Devil and temptation. Hell-mouth in everclear conditions, the absence of holy water and gold crosses on my person. 

But, if the Devil had been coming to greet me that night, I thought that he would’ve done it as soon as I stepped off the bus. Offered me a clawed hand, nails like what dug around under my skin, smiled with fangs instead of teeth and showed me a mouth of gaping darkness not unlike my own. No, I was sure I’d be okay. And besides, by then my stomach was yawning and sick with need. I had to keep going. Had to see all of everything.

With as much big girl bravado as I could manage at nineteen, I made my way through the venue, weaving around all the different people, and fell into step with a punk butch about my age wearing a bunch of pins and patches to bands that I’d enjoyed and seen live a couple times. That was usually my strategy for things like this, where more than a couple local bands were playing. I’d find someone around my age, about as safe-looking as they could be, and gloam on like some sort of tick or something. Follow them around from show to show, see what was to be seen and consume the rest in small bites.

We didn’t spend more than five minutes walking around, avoiding certain stages and tents entirely in favor of the biggest stage located in the center of the event. I was a little bit disappointed to be honest. In my experience, typically the best shows were the ones located on the fringes of an event, with a band that looked like it had just crawled out of some derelict sewer all the way down in Portland and a crowd that didn’t look much better. If I’d wanted to see the most popular band at the event, I would’ve headed straight for the giant lit up stage the second I got there and camped out. 

I noticed soon enough, though. Something was different. 

The band members were of varying ages, with different styles and personas. It was like a patchwork quilt in broad human-form. Six of them, not old but not young either. And there was the woman from the diner, Magdalene, in the center walking up towards the microphone with a bright look in her eye like matches in the snow.

My stomach rumbled; my knees dangerously close to locking. The feeling from earlier had come back, but different. Everything was different. I noticed a little too late.

The crowd lost it the second they saw her; their screams so loud I covered my ears, raised my shoulders up towards my face. The sheer force of the crowd’s excitement was enough to get my attention. I had never heard of her before, and that made me nervous. I was so immersed in the scene back then that to have never heard of an artist, especially a female punk that was apparently so well-loved, was... strange.

Magdalene wrapped long, bony fingers around the microphone and bowed her left leg sharply inward. Her smile itched across her face, slow and fast and frantic and not there at all after just a blink. The crowd’s screaming came to a roaring climax and was abruptly silenced by the stomping of her foot. They knew the drill, had done this before. 

There was a hypnotic quality to Magdalene, something addictive about her that made it difficult to look away. The way the crowd hung on her every movement, every breath, was something I’d never seen before. Everyone was thoroughly seduced, and I could feel Magdalene’s pull begin to ensnare me, assault my senses in ways I didn’t consent to. My mouth filled with blood; I had bitten my tongue.

I still have the taste of blood in my mouth. I didn’t notice soon enough. Blood stains.

“We are Pushing Up Daisies, and we are so very happy to have you all here with us this evening!”

Women screamed at the tops of their lungs, reaching up, up, up like they could touch Magdalene, be graced with one of her razor-sharp smiles. It was the sort of devotion I saw in people when my father preached, stage lights swelling like the faith and pride of a nation represented in three hundred and fifty people packed into a rent-by-the-hour TV studio. 

I wanted to contribute to the chaos. Scream with them, reach with them, burn with them. But my mouth was still full of blood, and it had taken me so long to notice.

Before I left home, my whole life was like a sepia photograph of a sunny day. Over-exposed, parents with smiling faces and sons with square jaws, daughters with ribbons in their hair. Wooden crosses on the walls, simple and unornate because God doesn’t need to be loved in gold foil. Grass stains on white tights, Sunday kitten heels scuffed from being worn so often, deodorant powder refusing to wash off the baby pink dress Mama thought looked so nice with my brown eyes.

There’s a difference between running from and running to. At eighteen, I was running towards something. I’m sure of that. I don’t think I ever had an idea of what that something was, or what I even wanted it to be, but I did know that I didn’t want to be some televangelist’s golden daughter proffered up to God like Icarus was to the sun.

I noticed things about myself the way my family noticed things about God and religion and theology. Studied myself in mirrors, in the dark, in the depths of my own mind. I noticed everything and remembered nothing. Blood never started to fill my mouth until I surrounded myself with idolatry of a different kind, the screams sounded too much like mine. 

At nineteen, I was running from. That night, hunger attacked every fiber of my being, ate away at my organs, left behind teeth marks and blood. I saw that hunger reflected in Magdalene, her mouth an open wound as she screamed out her lyrics. I wasn’t scared, though. There’s nothing scary about hunger, what’s scary is the response hunger elicits from other people. 

This, I noticed. All in real time. Learned it of myself.

I watched the crowd feed Magdalene, and consequently devour her whole. Sanctify her living and alive, right before my eyes. And I never wanted anything more than I did then. I craved it, would’ve let hordes of women and girls crucify me where I stood just to be in Magdalene’s position. She never could’ve been full, not with the way she sang, but at least she was well fed. Oh how I wanted to be kept in excess.