Aliyah’s hands are covered in shit but she doesn’t care. She’s been at this for twenty-minutes, plunging away, getting more violent with each thrust. The toilet gurgles as she peels the rubber cup away from the orifice it has sealed off. Brown water isn’t supposed to splash. But splash it does, and every time it does, a flock of tiny damp spots appears on Aliyah’s light-wash jeans. Coincidences, each one. 

Sealed off orifices. Aliyah doesn’t care whether her hands are covered in shit because she can’t get dirty. Something about how that one Auntie touched her during family reunions had made her filth resistant. 

Water can’t get wet, and Aliyah is filth itself. 

It’s 1:58pm and it is unclear how someone who eats so little could fuck the toilet up so much. Greek yogurt, spinach smoothie, protein powder, air popped popcorn, vanilla latte shit was dense. It’s 1:59pm and Aliyah has online therapy at 2pm and she has skipped her last two sessions and she hates the word sessions and she still can’t masturbate so she should probably  go. 

She manages a squeaky hi to the shiny, dark-skinned face on her computer screen, even as she becomes fixated—nearly instantly—by her own caramel-colored skin, her own deep brown eyes. 

Hi Aliyah, how have the past few days been? 

Aliyah doesn’t know how the past few days have been; she doesn’t care. In their six months of meeting, Aliyah has never once changed her reply. 

Fine, how about yours?

Good, thank you for asking. 

Aliyah’s therapist smiles, white teeth sparkling, and Aliyah wonders if any of her other clients ever inquire about her week. She wonders whether her therapist’s week really has been good.

Of course. Aliyah sends that word, ‘course,’ soaring, her intonation rising with the ‘ou,’ falling with the ‘r.’ She sounds like a woodland creature. And as Aliyah coos, she wonders who this woman before her actually is, what motivates her, what terrifies her. It bothers Aliyah that she doesn’t know, that she never will. 

I wanted to ask if you had gotten back to the boy, Aliyah’s therapist glances down, her notebook clearly squirreled away off screen, Aidan, who asked you to dinner. I know you were thinking about how to respond the last time we—

Aliyah can no longer hear her therapist, for she is being drowned out by a timid trickle, that telltale sign of an overflow.

Fuck!

Aliyah flies out of her seat and barrels towards the plastic cup she has planted in the bathroom for just such an occasion. 

That’s the loudest I’ve ever heard you say anything.

Oh god, I’m so sorry, I forgot I had you in my ears. My toilet is overflowing, I gotta deal with it. 

I’ve never heard you curse.

Aliyah scoops up a cup full of shit water and pours it gently into the shower drain before turning on the tap and watching the good mix with the bad. Sinking to her knees, as if before an altar, she goes back in for another cup full. 

Well, you haven’t heard me panicking.

I have heard you panicking. 

Not over something that actually matters.

Aliyah is scooping just fast enough to stem the tide , they’ve found a rhythm, the toilet and her.

You think this matters more than the way you feel about your body?

Don’t do that to me. Aliyah is shocked to hear the tenor in her voice, but she only has enough energy to either scoop the poop water or police her disposition—she can’t do both. 

 I just react the way I react. That’s it. 

You’re brilliant. You know your reactions matter. 

It dawns on Aliyah that unless she stops the toilet bowl from refilling, she will be locked into this race against time for the rest of her life. No one dimension of Aliyah’s life—her copy-editing job, her family, her friendships, her health, her home—seems to grasp that is in, in fact, just a dimension. Each demands the whole of her, filling her with the wisdom of five people, with the pain of ten. The former is not worth the latter. 

Aliyah pushes herself up to stand, her hands landing in a puddle before finding themselves being dried against her jeans. Lifting the porcelain cover from the tank, Aliyah peers into the room where it happens. 

I’m not brilliant enough to figure this out. 

I want you to think about last week, when you called me in a panic. 

Aliyah’s saliva is already thickening and the bronze limescale caking the sides of the tank looks like it may be moving, scaling the walls, climbing to freedom.

It was four days ago. Aliyah doesn’t understand why she has to say this out loud—her therapist had been there; she knows what happened. After Aidan texted me about dinner. 

Aliyah reaches for a random lever and finds that it controls the refilling of the tank. She wonders why she doesn’t have any levers. Why she can’t blink once to compartmentalize, twice for emotional numbness, three times for sleep on demand. 

Can you describe what happened when he texted you?

Of course Aliyah could. It had begun not with a text but with a picnic on the Great Lawn—a first-warm-day picnic, when the city’s steely edge softens , and its residents trample half-hearted forest green fences down into the grass that will soon tickle their ankles and dampen their elbows. Aidan had been an unexpected guest. Before his arrival, it had just been Aliyah and Nate and the tiny ladybug who had landed on the blanket beneath them. The Black best friend and the gay best friend, freed at last from their white hero’s orbit. And then Aidan showed up. 

When you said you were in the park, I didn’t think that meant you were coming here, Nate patted the blanket beside him as he spoke, disturbing the ladybug who, after taking a second to consider her options, decided to fly away. 

You bragged about having a blanket, man, these are the consequences. Aidan lowered himself down, careful to avoid the cheese, grapes, and crackers Aliyah had spread out between herself and Nate. 

Aidan, this is Aliyah. Aliyah, Aidan. 

Aliyah had heard a lot about Aidan, about how he and Nate had met in a class on Neruda in college, about how they’d become roommates, about how they’d remained close after graduation, sending each other original poetry in the intellectualized, homosocial way that some men do.  

I’ve heard so much about you, Aliyah! Wow, it’s a little crazy to finally meet you. Thanks for letting me invade your picnic.

Aliyah suspected that Aidan knew about how she and Nate had met in the fourth grade, about how they’d been elementary school troublemakers together, about how they’d remained close after high school graduation, sending each other long, elegiac messages on the piteousness of white tears and the perils of thinking too hard about your gender identity. 

It’s a little crazy for me to meet you too!

Meet they did. And then they met again, at a concert, and again, at a party, and again at a bar—always accompanied by Nate, the glue holding them together. And of course, Aliyah liked Aidan, but she liked Nate too. And no, she didn’t want Nate to hold her head in his forearm and press her tightly against his chest, but that wasn’t relevant. At least, it hadn’t been relevant, until last week, when Aliyah had gotten a text from Aidan asking her to dinner. 

Forgetting their capacity for continuous movement, Aliyah’s deep brown eyes had jumped from word to word to word, and when she got to the word ‘dinner,’ she remembered what she had forgotten. And what she had forgotten was that she couldn’t have sex without crying and trembling and it was increasingly difficult for her to pass those off as the side effects of euphoria.  

When Aidan texted me, I realized that I’m not healthy enough to be in a romantic relationship and I felt like I never will be. 

It is scooping time again. The tank water, Aliyah’s new target, is crystalline compared to the water in the bowl. Funny how perspective can work that way, sweeten the sour like miracle berries. She is tempted to drink some of it but she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to have to explain to her therapist why she is drinking toilet water. 

That’s not how I remember it. 

Then please, enlighten me. Aliyah can’t tell if she loves being a rude bitch or loves being frightened by how much of a rude bitch she can be. 

You told me that you imagined trying to explain why you need to take things slow and you were overwhelmed by that. You said that you didn’t think you could explain, that you didn’t think you could say anything at all, that you would probably just have sex because it would be the easiest option. 

Aliyah grabs the plunger and goes to work.

Sorry if it’s hard to hear me, I’m plunging. 

I can hear you just fine. Did you hear me?

Yeah, I heard you. 

In truth, Aliyah had forgotten that part—the part where she’d admitted she would probably just grin and bear it, slowly growing to resent Aidan for trying to make her feel something, slowly growing to resent herself for feeling Nothing. Nothing, capital ‘N,’ absence. 

So, what do you think about that? 

Aliyah catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the sink. Bent in half over the toilet, her body is doll-like—Bratz, not Barbie. The fun that Georgia O’Keefe could have had with her—her sides the valleys of a great expanse of dry grass, her hips the edge of an icy waterfall. Nothing (Nothing) grows here. The size of Aliyah’s waist is the surest indicator of her state of mind. The skinnier she looks, the less she is seen. It’s a shame, really. She is confident that Aidan could wrap himself around her with just one arm, that he could lift her with ease, that he could love her with ease if she wasn’t so undone. 

I think it’s sad. But it’s not something real to panic about. It’s not an immediate threat. 

And if you go on this date with Aidan, and if it goes well, will it be a threat then? After two dates or three or four? You don’t think you pose a threat to yourself? 

Of course Aliyah poses a threat to herself. She always has. She is tired of these leading questions, and she is tired of plunging the fucking toilet. Setting the plunger down atop the trash bag she has laid out on the ground, she plops to a seat next to the tub. Her knobby sit bones seem to bang against the cool tile, a drum roll for her inevitable collapse. She reaches over and turns on the shower, spinning the dial to its highest temperature. She wants the steam to stick to her She wants it to surround her, fill her lungs, enter her pores, soften her skin, cloud the mirror, cloud everything.

Yeah, I know I’m a threat to my own wellbeing.  I’m not motivated to protect myself. So, what? Should I  never go out with anyone ever again? 

Do you think that’s the answer?

Please, just stop with these questions! 

The toilet is gargling again, and Aliyah thinks she is yelling over it but really, she is just yelling. 

I can stop as soon as you  offer something honest, Aliyah. Her voice is quiet and calm, but it has lost its schoolmarmishness,  a touch of brutality beneath it. Plus, she has been dishonest, offering up impoverished self-analyses rather than her feelings. She’s not sure she knows the difference. All Aliyah knows is that she does not love being a rude bitch. She does not love stonewalling or grandstanding or pussyfooting. She does not love lying and she does not love herself. 

Aliyah takes a breath. Maybe she can say something of consequence.

 I can’t touch me. It’s not just that I think he’ll reject me it’s that I think he should. He’d  be a fucking dumbass not to. The droplets peeling down Aliyah’s face are just condensed steam, or else they are just shit water, which is fine. 

Why are you so determined to fix the toilet? 

I don’t want my roommate to know I clogged it. 

Did you call  maintenance?

No.

Why not?

Aliyah is stumped.  It had been over a year since she was genuinely stumped. She had been sitting in a high school gymnasium, one of a dozen near-strangers who were expected to pour their sick little hearts out onto the court each week. 

Group therapy had been Aliyah’s mother’s idea—something about her getting too skinny, something about her abandoning  therapists out of boredom, something about her trying something new. The group dynamics, the politics of it all, might be enough to pin Aliyah to keep her engaged.  

I don’t like myself that much. 

The group’s resident George Clooney—a salt and pepper haired architect and father of two—raised his hand to reflect on Aliyah’s offering. 

I’m really struck by how someone as thoughtful and kind and intelligent as you could feel that way. If you feel that way, then there can’t be any hope for the rest of us. 

Aliyah tugged her shoulders inwards, her body acting out the modesty she knew was required of her. How could it be Mr. Clooney had seen all those things in her? She was silent for the majority of the 90 minutes they spent together each week, and when she did speak up, it was to say something about somebody else’s life, somebody else’s pain. He had to be wrong about her, about her goodness. 

Of course, a year ago, Aliyah didn’t know what she knows now—though her body most certainly did feel the truth. Her mind, though, hadn’t yet uncovered the rest of that yearly ritual, the one where that Auntie took her inside to Grandma’s vanity to braid her hair.

 In that gymnasium, Aliyah was still just a lovely girl with her wires crossed. She felt ruined, sure, but she didn’t yet know that she was ruined. The knowledge would come later, riding the coattails of an intimacy turned fearsome – and intimacy so honest that it thrust the truth out and died beneath its weight.

How, Aliyah wonders, had her therapist prompted this reverie? Her therapist had wanted to know something, something that might be considered Freudian if it weren’t so very stupid. Right, why hadn’t Aliyah called maintenance? 

I want to know that I can do it myself.

I think that’s probably right.

Aliyah’s therapist smiles, not her usual toothy grin, but a smirk that broadcasts her satisfaction, her satiation.

So what, Aliyah is not satiated, you want me to direct that energy towards myself instead?

Just then, Aliyah feels her phone vibrate in her cargo pant pocket. It reminds her of the fact of sensation, of the fact that sensation exists in the lower half of her body as much as it does in her throat, where it usually settles like dust bunnies before a spring clean. Aliyah pulls the phone out of her pocket and into view.  Hey !  Sure  you’re  super  busy ! Her eyes are doing that thing again, Just  let  me  know  if  this  Saturday  works , excited  to  see  you  and  Nate ! Aliyah throws her head back, as if to laugh, but it bangs sharply against the ceramic wall tiles and then it just stays there, hanging limply at an angle, as though it has been disconnected from its power source.

You cannot do this by yourself. Getting help isn’t privilege. It’s a necessity. 

What if I enjoy this? Aliyah hovers over the ‘oy,’ turning it into an ‘oiy.’ 

Enjoy plumbing into oblivion? Aliyah’s therapist sounds tired.

What if I enjoy the straining and the sweat pooling at my eyebrows?  What if this was my chance to prove that I’m not as fucked up as I think I am?

 Or, Aliyah thinks, to prove that I am as fucked as I think I am. 

Aliyah, getting your poop to flush is not going to prove anything. I know you know the definition of insanity. Aliyah’s therapist doesn’t sound incredulous. She sounds tired.

That I do. Aliyah loosens her shoulders, melting down her spine like ribbons of candle wax, allowing her neck to reveal its true length. There is something stubborn about that neck, about the way it insists on holding Aliyah’s head high. But there is something sweet about the way that her lungs have decided that they are balloons after all. Filling and refilling, filling and refilling.     

Aliyah stands up and peers into the toilet bowl. The water is as shitty as ever. 

Fine, I’ll call the fucking plumber.