Anatomy

In medical school, my father had to memorize every part of the body and its development process. Each time my mother was pregnant, he knew of every turn a developing bone could take, every lapse that could cause a blood cell to rupture. He knows of the ways an organ can fail, including the ones that don’t announce themselves before it is too late. He was the one to tell me that the first functional organ to develop in the human embryo is the heart. He simulated its development with his hands, twisting his palms into tubes and chambers before locking them into a teardrop shape. His fingers each formed a vein or artery, pumping imaginary blood into the living room. Back when we lived at the old house, the one with the sloping yard and crabapple tree, my mother used to come home with boxes of seeds. Some of them grew, like the sunflowers. Some of them didn’t, and now I don’t remember their names. One afternoon in early fall, she brought back a mesh bag of what looked like wild onions, oblate spheroids with pointed ends. The familiar teardrop shape, packed with life. Their light brown skin crinkled along the top, formed ridges down the sides, and peeled off at the base, exposing smooth, white flesh. My mother called them bulbs and planted them in the thin plot in the backyard, against the wooden fence. In the kitchen, we had a window overlooking the plot, usually opaque with heat from the oven. I used to glare through the panes, willing something to happen in that little patch of soil, thinking maybe I could coax out a stem or something. I stared at the earth so hard I could have sworn I saw it pulse at least once. My mother told me that the bulbs were making roots, growing away from us. Nutrients from the soil were circulating through the thin, white strands. During the winter, the bulbs quietly rested under frost. My mother knew they might not grow but still checked on them, even before their due dates. That spring, thin green leaves pushed out of the soil and flowered soon after. We had a full row of tulips, pastel pinks and sunset oranges and reds that matched the cardinals who nested in the shed. Petals folded out, like palms opening up to catch a drop of sun. As my mother and I stood together in front of the plot, I could feel the blood pour out of my heart and stream into the capillaries behind my cheeks. Maybe this was what it felt like to bloom, to contract and swell. … When I went to ballet class, the studio was always cold. The other girls and I would gather on the floor to tie our satin slippers, shivering at the contact between our tights and the wooden floor panels. Our instructor led us in stretches, telling us to lay our knees open like butterfly wings and point our toes to form a crescent moon. “Imagine a string is tied to your spine, and someone is pulling upwards on it,” she would say. I think of her words every time I notice myself slouching. According to my father, the spinal cord sends commands from the brain to the body, and vice versa. The spine enacts every pirouette and leap; it carries the pain of every fall. Some nights, when I am thinking about how easily the human body can be created and destroyed and questioning whether I am a whole person, I press my fingers to the ridges of my spine. I think about objects I know are solid and real, forms that have lasted for thousands of years. I feel entire landscapes along my back—summits and valleys of bone, lakes of spinal fluid, stalks of nerves ripe for harvest. If people try to see through me, they will have to crane their necks around my vertebrae. In elementary school, I learned about deciduous and evergreen trees. Deciduous trees lose their leaves in the fall, and my brothers and I used to compete over who could rake the biggest pile. Evergreens keep their needles year-round, providing shelter for deer, squirrels, and migrating birds. There is a giant pine tree outside my bedroom window, and I used to think it touched the stars. In the warmer months, I open my window and sleep in its scent. In the colder months, I watch snow lay safely on its branches, looking back up at the moon. I like the way pine needles jut out into the air like static hairs on end, forcing people to see them even when the tree becomes a silhouette. While the needles burn quickly in a forest fire, the trees themselves are insulated with thick bark. When everything else leaves, pine trees remain, feeling every motion and impulse of the night. I close the blinds thinking I might actually know something about strength, about pulling myself upwards––not by a thread but with my own nerves and tendons. … I used to stand outside when it rained, boots shuffling against the unpaved part of the driveway. I would stand there in a downpour with my hands face-up, waiting for a droplet to splash straight into the center of my palm. When one would hit in exactly the right spot, I could feel it trickle into my bloodstream. There is a bird sanctuary a few miles from my house with a collection of hiking trails and ponds. My family has gone every fall since I can remember, timing it in accordance to college breaks and paid holiday leave. We would forget to bring birdseed almost every time, and finally my mother threw a bag of it into the glove compartment of our car, where it stayed for the other 364 days of the year. Last year, we crept through the trail, holding birdseed out in our palms, looking up at the chickadees. Fluffy and plump, they surveyed us from their perches before fluttering down onto our fingers. I kept my hand as still as I could when one landed and bravely reached its beak out to eat. The creases in my palms, designed for collapsing and entrapping, stayed outstretched for as long as the bird wanted to peck. I wondered if maybe my hands were not as heavy and hard as I always thought they were. If I could be a resting place for fragile things, just for a moment. My mother still loves plants, and I think they’ve started to love her back. She craves a challenge, grabbing the succulents off of sickbay at Lowe’s and somehow nursing them back to health. My favorite of her plants is the orange tree in the office, a gift from my father. Every time I see it, I think of her reaction when he brought it home, the sunshine under her skin. It has since grown from a tiny stem into a lush, flowering tangle of branches and fruits and shiny leaves. My mother handles the tree with a gentle yet protective touch, perhaps the same care with which she held my infant self during a time I can’t remember. The leaves stretch toward her, waiting for her fingertips to flutter down and land on their surfaces. Creases streak across the green, as familiar to my mother as her own palms. They help her plants hold their shapes and carry nutrients for photosynthesis. As the leaves turn their faces upward, they absorb golden rays through the window and release oxygen into our home. I think we do this too, this absorption and processing of light. If I were to interlace my fingers with yours, I would feel the light you have collected seep into me, through my skin, down my spine, and right back into my heart, where it all began.