Retreat

It rained and then fall arrived. We had to break out the gloves for my son’s commute to school in the morning. I’ve started putting socks on the baby even though baby socks are utterly pointless because it’s cold enough overnight that the house is chilly when we wake in the morning. It is fully and officially my favorite time of year. Welcome back, sweaters! I’ve missed you.

I have a short story that I want to share here. My favorite thing to write is fiction, but it is also the thing that I’ve published the least of. (You can find most of my past publications here if you’re interested. I’m a little behind in updating my website and some of the links are now broken as online journals have changed their sites, but you can find the majority of my publications at least.) It is hard to get stories published—there are fewer outlets for fiction, especially if the piece is over 1000 words and especially, especially if it is more than 3000. But I love longer stories. Somewhere in the 5000 - 7000 word range is my favorite. Stories take up lots of space, though, so there tend to be fewer spots per issue in publications that do accept longer prose, and I’m not convinced that lengthy stories get much traction in online publications. People are busy, there’s so much to read, online reading is full of easy distractions. It can be hard to invest time in reading longer pieces when we are all so pressed for time to begin with. C’est la vie. But it leaves me with the feeling that some of my favorite work goes largely unread. (Maybe all of my work goes largely unread. Don’t tell me if this is true. It’s probably true, but lie to me.)

My favorite story that I’ve published is set in this time of year. It was the first piece of fiction I had accepted for publication, and I remain very proud of it. It was originally published in Capsule Stories in the autumn of 2020. I wrote it for their Burning Up theme. I am including it in full below for anyone who is interested. If you haven’t read it, I hope you will take the time to do so (it’s around 3000 words). But if not—life is busy or fiction isn’t your thing—I also recently had a poem, “What Burns” published in the latest issue of Feral that you can check out instead, or in addition to!

Please note that “What Burns” includes mentions of suicidal ideation, and “Retreat,” included below, is centered on the theme of child loss.

Thank you as always for reading, in whatever capacity and genre you choose to do so.

Retreat

The woman sitting next to Alanna has a jade egg inside her vagina. Alanna knows this because the woman shared that information with the entire group. She shares too much. She is going on about how, sure, the point of the egg is to engage the pelvic floor muscles, help everything tighten back up—not out of a sense of vanity, she assures the group, “I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life peeing a little every time I sneeze,” and she laughs, but in a humorless way. The real benefit comes from releasing the egg, birthing it, she says. Her voice catches on the word, and she starts to cry, again.

It’s cathartic, the woman continues. To squat quietly at the edge of her bed and let the egg drop gently from her body onto the floor. You have to relax every part of you. Your body. Your mind. “It’s like—I get to relive the good part. Before everything went wrong.” Now she is sobbing, her face contorted with the ugliness of her grief, and Alanna cannot help it, she has to look away. The woman to the right of Jade Egg reaches out to rest a comforting hand on her trembling shoulder, and this too leaves Alanna stricken. Everyone here is constantly touching each other, so desperate to help. To connect. It’s disgusting.

You are not alone in your pain, their group leader had said on the first night in the Coming Together Circle. A thin woman, Miranda, tiny and strong. You could see all the individual muscles of her shoulders, the long slender line of her spine. Her hair in a high ponytail, earrings made from wood or perhaps bone. You are not alone in your pain, Miranda said, and it had taken everything in Alanna to keep from immediately getting up from her mat and walking out the door. She couldn’t believe she’d let Ethan talk her into this.

He had sat across from her at the kitchen table and slid the brochure toward her in a way that made it feel like she was about to be downsized. Thank you for your years of dedicated service, but unfortunately, we are going to have to let you go. This retreat was her severance package.

“Mothering The Self.” She read the cover aloud and laughed, baffled. She flipped through the packet, eyes wide, disbelieving. Join us in a community of healing and harmony as we harness the power of the autumnal equinox to restore balance and harvest self-love.

“What is this nonsense?” she asked Ethan. He reached across the table for her hand, but she pulled it away.

“I know you’ll think it’s a bunch of woo-woo bullshit, but I’m asking you to try to be open-minded about this. I think it could really help.” She scoffed. He sighed. “Honestly, Lan, I’m out of ideas. Nothing else has worked.” So this was it? A last resort? A Sad Moms cleanse so she could rebalance her chi or some shit, and they could get on with their lives? Forget it ever happened?

“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it.” He ran a hand over his face, weary. The wrinkles around his eyes had become more pronounced recently. “It’s been over two years, and you’re not getting any better.”

“My bad,” Alanna had replied. “I didn’t realize I was on the clock.”

In the end she had agreed to go, not out of any desire or belief that a collective grieving experience would prove valuable, but because she was too tired to fight Ethan on it. Too tired for everything. She would go, do a little yoga, eat some kombucha (was kombucha something you ate?), listen to a few sob stories, and then come home where they’d both pretend for a while that it had worked, that she was moving beyond the pain, neither of them admitting what they both knew to be true: that she had no intention of letting go of her pain. That her pain was all she had left.

“Lie on your back and get comfortable,” Miranda tells them now. They will close out this group session the way they’ve closed out every session so far: soothing the infant self. “Let the ground rise up to meet you. Allow your body to soften into its support. Remember, the ground is always there to cradle you. The earth is the womb that carries us all.”

Alanna blows out a little exasperated puff of air, but then she relaxes the back of her body, lets it melt into the mat beneath her. Loose. Free. They are instructed to pull their knees into their chests, wrap their arms around their shins and hug their knees in tight. “Hold your child self. The part of you that calls out for comfort, for unconditional acceptance. Gently rock your child self side to side. Soothe her. Love her. Without judgment.”

They are meant to do all things without judgment. There are multiple sharing sessions each day where they are encouraged to speak whatever is on their minds, without judgment. If they do not wish to share, there is no judgment for holding back. In journaling sessions, they are instructed to write down their fears and anxieties. Place their anger and hatred on paper, their darkest desires, deepest secrets, the inner selves they work so hard to keep hidden, release them, without judgment. They will not be asked to share these journal entries, though they are, of course, welcome to do so. Tomorrow they will go on a silent hike through the woods. Collect firewood, collect their thoughts, collect the elemental essence of nature as day and night come into balance on the first day of autumn. In the evening, their last night in their community of healing, they will come together one final time to build a bonfire. They will cast their journals into the flames, cast out their fears, rid themselves of their secrets, let the fire turn their pain to ash, scorch their souls until all that remains is the inner child, newly born, ready to be loved and nurtured, without judgment.

Alanna would prefer judgment. Let her stand before the council and present her case. Spill her secrets. Let them hear what she did and then let them throw her on the pyre, these women who think they know pain. These women who think they are one, united by loss. As if loss could be shared collectively. As if its only universal quality was not that you had to shoulder its burden alone, to allow others to pretend they understood when all along you were thinking: but you were not the mother of this child, you were not the mother of this child, you have no idea how it feels to be me. These women had no clue, with their babies barely known, sometimes barely an idea. Babies unrealized. A hope, a dream, a plan upended. Even Jade Egg, with her tidy little division between the good part and the bad part. Her medical anomaly. Her one in a million chance. The last-ditch efforts, surgeries that didn’t take. Bad luck. That’s all it was with these women, bad luck. Shitty odds.

“I feel so ashamed,” a woman had said in one of the first sharing sessions, “that my body can’t do this thing that is supposed to be so natural.”

You know nothing about shame, Alanna wanted to tell her, wanted to scream. But she kept her mouth shut. The whole weekend, mouth closed, buttoned up. Let these women cut themselves open, bleed themselves dry. Their grief flowing nakedly, perversely. Not Alanna, no way. Her guilt like a felled tree blocking the dam.

“Now tell your child self, I love you. You are safe.” I love you. You are safe, comes the group echo. Alanna drops her feet to the floor, her inner child having grown tired of this game.

***

The leaves crunch beneath her, the rhythm of it bringing the song into her head. She tries to push it away, but it’s there now. Creeping back in like always. A torment. They were asked to take note of the fallen leaves, the ones that are brown and brittle. Take note of the weeds, the twisting vines. The muddied earth. The rotting trees. “Notice how the forest embraces ugliness and turns it into something beautiful,” Miranda advised.

The day is cooler than she had expected. Alanna wishes she’d brought a scarf. A pair of gloves. Her knuckles feel that first ache of chill as she tightens her grip around the handful of sticks she’s collected. How many are they supposed to gather? They were given very little guidance for the day’s activity. “This is your time,” Miranda explained before they set off. “Walk until something inside tells you that you need not walk any farther.” Alanna has been walking for an hour, but only because she cannot figure out which way is the direction from which she came. She has collected seven sticks. One, two, three, four…and there is the song again. Forever pulsing at the back of her mind like a tick latched to the base of her skull. Get your woman on the floor. If not for that song. No. If not for the phone call. The change in plans. If not for her own stupidity, is the truth of it. Her carelessness. Her neglect. If not for her.

Alanna has no trouble embracing the ugliness, but she knows there’s no beauty to be found.

***

The heat of the flames licks her cheeks. She should take a step back, but Alanna can’t get herself to move. They have taken turns reading from parts of their journals, everyone so willing to share. Alanna the sole voyeur in a group of exhibitionists. One woman admits she wants to leave her husband. It’s not that she doesn’t love him anymore, but the sight of him day in, day out reminds her of what they do not have, what they failed to create together. Yes, of course she tried couple’s counseling, she tells them, and they all nod sagely. They have tried everything. None of them would be here if they had not exhausted every other possibility. On that at least even Alanna can agree.

“You’re not one for sharing, huh?” Alanna turns toward the voice, but it takes a moment for her eyes to adjust after staring directly into the fire. It’s Jade Egg. Faith, Alanna remembers her name now. The absurdity of it makes her knees buckle.

“Not so much,” Alanna says with a shrug. Faith’s face is half in light, half in shadow. It makes her look like an oracle. The tight press of her lips. The fire’s reflection, a flicker of light dancing across one eye. Faith opens her mouth to speak, and Alanna straightens, bracing herself for what comes next.

“Miscarriages?” Faith asks. “Infertility?” Alanna shakes her head.

Faith inhales noisily. “Stillbirth? Something medical? Oh god, was it SIDS?” She ticks through the list of motherhood horrors, but Alanna says nothing. “You know,” Faith tells her and reaches out and cups her elbow—again with the touching—“you’ll feel better if you let it out.”

“No, I won’t,” Alanna says, but Faith doesn’t hear her. Faith is on a roll.

“I can only imagine what it’s doing to you, keeping all the pain bottled up. Letting it eat away at you inside. We’re here to listen, you know? To hear your heartache, without judgment.” Faith moves her hand up Alanna’s arm and across the top of her back, so gentle, so soft, too warm from the heat of the fire. “You are not alone in your pain.”

“Don’t fucking touch me!” Alanna screams.

The air around them goes still. Nothing but the hiss and crackle of the fire. The light and heat penetrate Alanna’s body, seeping through her skin, smoking and sparking through her veins. The cold night stretches out behind her. And Faith’s hand, still resting between the triangles of her shoulders. Firm, unmoving. And then Faith’s other arm, reaching out, pulling Alanna toward her, into her. Wrapping Alanna tightly in the lush folds of her body. It’s too much. Alanna feels like she is suffocating, and she can’t stop the image from coming. The baby sleeping peacefully in the back seat of the car. Then the slow, steady rise in body temperature. Perhaps a cry, or a wail. Then nothing. Silence, stretching on and on forever in the garage while inside the house, the song played on a loop in Alanna’s mind. One, two, three, four. She hadn’t heard it since college. Could it really have been that long? “Oh, this is my jam!” she’d said aloud after hanging up the call. Turned the car around, turned the volume up. She was almost done with the report. Had been working on it late the night before. It wasn’t due until Friday, but now the meeting had been moved up. A quick stop back home. Run inside, wrap up the report, print it out. An hour tops. Maybe two. Closer to two. The heat.

The heat of the fire, of Faith pressed up against her. This is what it felt like, Alanna thinks. This is how it happened. And Alanna wonders if she might die. Wills it to be so. Please, she whispers. Please. But Faith steps back, lets go.

“I forgot her,” Alanna says, and it’s already too much to share. She turns from the fire and walks away. The crisp air cutting into the red warmth of her cheeks is a different kind of burn. The smell of wood smoke, wet leaves. Of summer having already surrendered to autumn. Of earth returning to homeostasis.

“The Earth Mother is our greatest guide,” Miranda had told them. “Just think of her cycles. Constantly resetting, rebirthing. Breaking herself down only to begin again, anew.”

Alanna looks back at the bonfire. The bright blue of its center. The orange reflection bouncing off the dark backdrop of night. The red heat of it. The anger. It is massive. Towering. It will smoke and burn all night. Perhaps even into tomorrow. Slowly devouring itself. Ash and ember. Until finally it is gone.

Alanna will return home. She will tell Ethan that she is not the Earth Mother. She has not broken herself down, awaiting rebirth. She is the fire. And there is nothing left to burn.