​The Fissured Tongue Series 

Beholder
by Rebecca Gray Wilder
​

In the summer of 1994, just after my mother decided 90 degree heat was no longer an appropriate reason for a four-year-old to run around the backyard naked, I took a pair of her sewing scissors and cut off the hair of my doll, Molly. After Molly didn’t seem upset with the results (and now that I had a taste for it) I proceeded to cut my own hair. It was the noise that kept me going. I could hear the sound of each individual hair being cut.

As I held a chunk of it in my outstretched hand, it was as if an ensemble of violinists was breaking their strings. The symphony was interrupted by my mother.

A buzz cut was the only remedy to the horror I’d inflicted on myself, and what a buzz it was. My new hairstyle was to my preschool classmates what Nadine Fletcher’s mother’s affair with the electrician was to the group of mothers helping with the class picnic. I found my friend Joey and he stared at me for a few  seconds, his brain processing the me in front of him with the me he last saw on Friday. Before I could greet him, my scalp began tingling, twitching. Before I had time for the impossibility of what I was feeling to set in, Joey’s brain finished processing the new me, and he called me to go play in the sandbox.

When you’re four years old, the line between reality and fantasy is a blurry, shifting thing. You spend most of your time close enough to the boundary that when strange things happen, the memory isn’t stored with a label of strange, odd, or impossible. As you grow, memories get sorted into boxes with those labels, or they are forgotten. We all hold onto a few memories of things we swear are true even though our families tell us otherwise. 

The sandbox was my first memory that would later get sorted into a box labeled Changing.
​

Daisy Patton Untitled (Heart-Shaped Face) Oil on Archival Print on Panel 30 x 24 in

#

​By the time I was ten, I had Changed enough to have a crude understanding of when, and sometimes how, it was likely to happen. I knew that it happened when people looked at me, especially if I was alone with just one person. I also knew that the parts of me that Changed depended on who was looking. Photographs would preserve a hint of the Change induced by the photographer. Each year when I brought home my school picture, my mother would frown and say, “This just doesn’t look like you.”

My best friend at that age was named Brianne. She was beautiful in a way that, even at a young age, affected the behavior of those around her. Boys and girls alike flocked to her like insects to a bright light. I liked to think that she chose to be my friend, as if the sun could choose which parts of the earth to shine upon, but our friendship was one built on pragmatism; she lived next door to me. My mother, less and less likely to leave the house each year since my father left, would often send me there when she needed “alone time.”

That summer, Brianne obtained a subscription to a magazine for young women. Brianne and I would sit on her front porch stairs and eat Popsicles on the fourth day of each month, waiting for the mailman to deliver a new issue. Once it was in our hands, we would climb the stairs to her room and slowly devour it, reading every word on every page. We admired the models with thin, tanned limbs sporting bathing suits that emphasized parts of their bodies we had not yet developed but knew were important. Sometimes we would put on our own bathing suits and mimic their poses, practicing for future summers to be filled with sunshine and slender glamour.

It was through this posing that Brianne began to realize the differences between our bodies. Although my skin was darker than hers, more prone to tanning and hers to burning, her limbs were a clear prelude to those of the models. One day when I was recreating the pose of a young woman laying on her side with one leg bent at the knee, I felt a tingling sensation in my stomach and my inner thigh. The fatty tissue over my stomach suddenly grew, more clearly  succumbing to the influence of gravity. My right leg, bent at a 90 degree angle, began blocking more of the sunlight streaming in through the window behind me than it had just seconds before.

Brianne glanced back and forth between the model and me, subtracting the model’s body from mine, my tingling parts the remaining difference.

“Maybe you can be the photographer, and I’ll be the model,” Brianne suggested. This was our arrangement for the rest of the summer.

I fell into bed when I arrived home that evening, wrapping myself in a blanket despite the heat, comforted by the pressure on the limbs I thought I knew. My stuffed animals stared at me with gem-colored eyes from their position against the wall, arranged in order of how much they needed me, how much I loved them.

I rearranged them in order from fat to skinny, round to narrow, big to small.
​

#

I have always enjoyed working with children because the Changes they induce are innocent. When I feel my face tingle, I assume they are shifting me toward a TV character teacher or their parents. I try impossibly to de-emphasize appearance and gender norms, but they creep in like a vine; each day I cut it back one foot, but each day it grows two.

During my work day I am most likely to Change when my students’ parents pick them up. The way their fathers Change me is predictable. My breasts enlarge, my waist shrinks, and my  buttocks swell. It is rare for a man’s gaze to Change me in a way that feels distinct or memorable. I no longer resent the feeling and, most of the time, I don’t blame the fathers. They are only doing what they’ve been taught.

Mothers are more complicated. This is not to say the way they Change me doesn’t have anything to do with internalized societal body standards — it does. But unlike men, each woman stamps those standards with her own experiences and vulnerabilities. A mother will often hone in on the area of my body that corresponds to the most insecure area of hers. Sometimes she will Change me to look like her, a defense against a harsh reality that she is the only one with such deformities. 

If my upper lip tingles, I can usually find evidence that the woman beholding me has unwanted facial hair (the hair is neglected for weeks after a new baby, followed shortly thereafter by a  smudge of red irritation and shame visible for a few days). Other women Change the same parts of my body that men do, but in comparison to their own. Mothers who have gained weight slowly over the years will Change me to be impossibly thin. Slender women cause my curves to become more pronounced.

Most of the time, I empathize with the mothers. We are, after all, victims of the same stifling standards. But when I do get angry about what is sometimes a constant onslaught of physical unrest, my deep and hungry rage is directed at other women — these other women who remind me of my inability to fight back.

#

​When Pete proposed after years of being together, I didn’t hesitate to say Yes, having fantasized about his proposal enough times that it was already a memory before it happened. My brain had memorized my imagined reaction, so my response was rehearsed, like a practiced orchestra who knows how long a pause in the music will last. But to the audience — to Pete — hearing it for the first time, it didn’t seem like a performance. 

I didn’t Change after saying yes. Just as I imagined his proposal, Pete already envisioned me as his wife.

#

Changing was the most intense and exhausting during puberty. Not only were the Changes themselves severe, but almost every person I interacted with Changed me. No environment other than complete, mirror-less solitude provided a reprieve from the body-altering gazes of my peers, my family, and myself.

My own gaze Changed me depending on how I felt about myself. If I was feeling fat, I could stand naked before a mirror and watch my stomach and thighs bulge, tears pouring from my eyes. Those same eyes, separated by an above average width, could migrate nearly to my temples. If I was feeling good about myself, I would Change to resemble whoever I knew that possessed the zenith of whatever quality I, for a brief second, held as my own. I wondered if I would ever know truly know what I looked like. Sometimes early in the morning, my mind still weighed down by sleep, I would quickly shift between my former narrower, flat girl self and a budding, curved woman, my brain’s tired attempt to reflect the reality that I was somewhere in between. I learned to get ready for school without meeting my own gaze.

I was twelve when a man first caused by body to Change. I was wearing a summer dress, sleeveless and flowered, short because I had grown nearly five inches that year. I saw one of my elementary school teachers with his wife and children at an ice cream shop near a beach. As he saw me, registered me, half listened to one of my friends talk about how our first year of middle school had gone, I felt my breasts tingle and grow. I immediately folded my arms across my chest.

When I bent down to slap a mosquito that started to suck its meal from my body, my dress (too short, my fault?) revealed some of my lacy white underwear. My buttocks twitched, grew, and caused my dress to shorten further. He sensed my discomfort and looked away, cleared his throat, put sunglasses on, then excused himself to use the restroom. Despite the increase in size of my body, I was left with an empty feeling, as if he had taken something away from me.

As I returned home that night, my mind was raw, felt sore after being Changed by my teacher. My mother paused to look at me as I entered the room. The dampness of my bathing suit bled into the cotton of my dress, which clung to by body. Although it usually lasted only a few seconds (we rarely crossed paths and when we did, she never looked at me for long), my mother’s gaze resulted in the fastest Changes. My hips twitched and narrowed. My legs shortened so my dress was a more sensible length. My breasts flattened. I felt my newly bestowed womanhood melting away. Nausea crept into my stomach, my throat. I sat down at the table, laid my head on its hard, cool surface, exhausted by Changing, always the same parts — the ones I was supposed to display or cover up, flaunt or be ashamed of, a true-false question I had no hope of getting right.

#

When men's’ gazes first started to Change me, I was ashamed. I sobbed in the bathroom when a childhood friend of mine Changed me on my first day of ninth grade, and wondered if anyone would ever see me for who I actually was. But over time, as I grew accustomed to Changing, I also grew curious about boy’s interest in my body.

A boy named Josh was assigned the locker next to mine, and rather than resent the Changes he induced, they began to excite me. I looked forward to the tingling of my breasts, the twitching of my buttocks, the tightening of my waist. I could even provoke it, meter its intensity with different outfits, by reaching for a book, by bending to pick up a dropped pen. I realized Josh wasn’t Changing me into what he wanted — I was Changing because I already had what he wanted, Changing into the what he already perceived.

Wondering what would happen if Josh and I were alone together became a frequent distraction. I went with him to an end-of-the-year house party and accepted his offer to meet him upstairs to “talk somewhere quiet.” I gave myself over to the sensation of Changing, which took on a new, erotic quality as he saw my breasts through my shirt, felt them over my shirt, saw them bare, touched them and they swelled into his hands, nipples pointed as his lips grazed them.

I had power. I thought I was invincible.

#

​“You look familiar. Have we met before?” The statement and question are cast on me like a spell. I suspect most people are Changing me into someone I remind them of.

#

There was a space between my mother and me, empty, below room temperature. I only fully realized this in retrospect, once I left home to attend college and saw my friends call their mothers every night. I breathed secondhand love when my roommate’s mother visited, warmth rising from her like steam from fresh-baked bread.

By that year, my own mother confined herself mostly to her room. I saw her two times the summer before I left, met her gaze only once. I felt lighter and the space between my shoulder blades tightened as if I was being lifted by invisible strings. My mother shrunk and shuffled back to her room.

My mother now resides in a living facility, not the most expensive, but not the worst either. If you walked in blindfolded you would immediately guess it was such a place, but as a result of the smell of cleaning products and prepared meals rather than that of human confinement. My mother lives in the locked memory unit. I need to go through an additional set of locked doors to get to her room.

One of the staff members greets me by name, relentlessly cheerful. My nose twitches. I wonder what she looks like without that mask.

“We had a little incident last night, but she’s better now.”

“Incident?”

“Nothing major. She’s just getting more particular about which staff members care for her. She’s okay with me, but we had a brand new attendant start work last week, and your mother isn’t very fond of her. They met for the first time in the dining area last night. When she introduced herself, your mother got really scared all of a sudden and started saying all sorts of crazy things. She ran at the poor girl with a fork and tried to poke her eyes.”

“I’m so sorry about that.”

“No need to apologize, that’s the sort of thing we’re used to dealing with. We just hadn’t seen that sort of behavior from your mother before. We’ll keep a close watch on her.”

“Thanks. What sorts of things was she saying?”

“Oh, all sorts of stuff. ‘Stop looking at me! You’re killing me!’ And she was hallucinating, saying that her skin was shriveling. We had to carry her back to her room.” Hallucinating. Back when I was in the hospital, after I Disappeared, the only time I tried to explain my Changing to another person, that’s what they called it. Hallucinating. Depersonalization. Dissociation.

I went into my mother’s room. She didn’t greet me by name but seemed to recognize me. Her illness had reduced the number of labels she could keep track of, so she sorted people into two categories: familiar and unfamiliar. I was familiar, but she did not know who I was. I brought one of my wedding photos, something the staff said would help keep her oriented. She took it in her hands, studied it, glanced back at me, trying to form connections between the me in front of her and the me in the picture. I didn’t Change. She handed the photo back to me.

“This doesn’t look like you.”

#

You are nineteen years old, a sophomore in college. It’s Friday night. You don’t usually go out, but it’s your best friend’s birthday, you just finished midterms, you broke up with your boyfriend two weeks ago, and you’ve run out of excuses. You let your friends pick your outfit — a tight black skirt, off-the-shoulder pink top — except for the high heels, which you have never worn and don’t plan to start on a night when you will be drinking and walking through the brick streets of your college town.

You have had three drinks by the time you arrive at the house party and take tiny sips of a fourth, mostly for show; you’re already more than a little tipsy. Drinking, whether done by you or the people around you, usually lends a fuzzy quality to Changing. There’s enough people at this house party that you only feel an occasional twinge of your breasts > butt > waist > face.

Your friend Chris is at the party. You’ve known about his romantic interest in you, but have never been excited about him in that way. One night two weeks ago you made out and let him get to second base. You let him sleep in your bed that night, but it just wasn’t working for you. As his hand moved from your back to your stomach, fingers inching below the waist of your shorts, you grunted sleepily and turned away from him. He did not persist.

Tonight, Chris is drunk and greets you as if that night two weeks ago didn’t happen. He’s a very fun drunk, and the two of you dance for almost an hour. The Changes he elicits in your body are sloppy and ridiculous. To get him to leave the party (you are worried about how much he is drinking) you ask him to walk you home. You need to support him several times on the walk back to your apartment. He staggers into your bedroom and falls onto the bed, gropes your ass on the way down, tries to pull you down with him.

“Chris, no,” you say with a laugh. He starts snoring. You change into your pajamas and get into bed next to him.

You are woken up at 3:26am by Chris’s hand moving from your back to your stomach, pushing up under your shirt. You try to sit up but he rolls on top of you, squeezing your breasts too hard.

“Chris, no,” not laughing this time. He slaps you. It stings, but at least you’re fully awake now. You try your hardest to get out from under him but even though he’s still shitfaced, he is large enough to overpower you. He flips you onto your stomach, his hot breath on your neck.

“This was always gonna happen. You want this. I want you.”

False. False. Horribly, terrifyingly true.

More scared of what he might do if you fight him than what he will do regardless, you unclench your legs, and he forces himself into you. It’s now 3:30am. You start to Change, but this time, there is no tingling, no twitching, no swelling.

You fade. It starts with your face, which evaporates, although you can still see (it’s now 3:32am). It moves down into your torso, which blows away when the rotary fan in your room turns toward your bed. It spreads from your shoulders to your hands. Although you can see, you can’t turn your head or cry, so there’s nothing to stop you from watching your fingers disintegrate one by one. The only solace in watching yourself stop existing in the world is that you can no longer feel what is being done to your body. He finishes at 3:41am, groans, falls back asleep.

You lay there — erased.

#

Death and life are two ends of a string tied in an irrevocably twisted knot. When someone reaches one end, there is a shift in those who are left behind. They want to move back, slow down. Start over. Maybe things will be less tangled this time.

#

“I’ve been thinking about whether or not we should think about having a kid” Pete announced over lunch during a June thunderstorm a few years after we were married, two months after my mother died. If we were in a movie, my character would pause, the storm would deliver a boom or the house lights would flicker, then I would look up to meet his eyes. My character would then forget her line. This would be okay if it was the first take, but it’s closer to the fifth.

“There’s no harm in thinking about it.” This is true if we’re talking about the potential harm done to our hypothetical child, but false if we’re talking about me. The thought of a child has been present in my head for several years, sometimes fluttering around like the monarchs who can never appear frantic,  sometimes a raging bull ramming itself into my skull. I can feel it snorting, pawing, ready to run.

“It just seems like a reasonable time. We have plenty of money. We both have jobs. We have this house.” This house. The one with more bedrooms than we need just for the two of us.

“You’re right.”

“You don’t want to.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“If you wanted to, you would’ve said it already.”

“It just feels selfish sometimes — making a new life because we feel like it, because we want to.”

“I don’t disagree, I guess that just doesn’t stop me from wanting it.”

“So you really want to.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“If you didn’t want to, you wouldn’t have brought it up.”

Pete doesn’t know about my Changing. To be fair, I’ve never tried to explain it to him. He is unaware of the true roots of my reservation, but he is familiar with the parts visible above the surface. He knows about my mother, the way she was when I was a child and how she became when the dementia set in, and assumes I am worried about my own trajectory, somewhere between parallel and perpendicular to hers. He knows that I was raped in college, that I tried to kill myself once afterward, that I spent two weeks on an inpatient psychiatric unit, and that I met him two months after that, picking up pieces of myself. I still haven’t completely put them back together, and I do not want to pass them down to a child.

“I’m worried that if we have a child, things will...change.” I’m worried that if I have a child, I will Change her.

“I’m sure they will, but isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?”

These are all things we’ve said before, but not frequently enough that it’s a tired conversation. It doesn’t sound rehearsed, but reminiscent.

#

​I used to think Changing meant that someone thought there was something wrong or bad about me, that the Changing was about me as the subject of their gaze. Now, I understand that Changing reveals more about the beholder than it does about me.

#

​I step out of the shower and dry myself off. My legs, my butt, my breasts — the parts that used to change every day have gotten a break recently. My hair — brown, shoulder length, a few strands of gray — is expected and ordinary. I wipe the mist off the mirror, a barrier that I usually leave in place.

My body stares back at me. I haven’t Changed myself much in the last few years. For the first time my limbs feel familiar. I wonder how long it will last.

Turning sideways, I rub my hand over my flat stomach. I let my abdominal muscles relax and lean back so my stomach protrudes. It’s all voluntary. There’s no twitching, no swelling.

#

About the Author

Rebecca Gray Wilder is a mental health provider and writer. Originally from the northeast, she now lives in Michigan. You can find her on Twitter @graywilder.

About the Work

"The idea for "Beholder" came to me in the midst of the #MeToo movement. It was inspired/influenced by some of the incredible "genre-bending" feminist work that has been published over the past few years. When I read fiction by authors like Carmen Maria Machado and Clare Beams, I learned of the power magic can have on one's understanding and perception of reality; unreality can in fact reveal deep truths about the world. My goal with "Beholder" was to make palpable (literally) the ways in which women face a constant onslaught of expectations and, all too often, violence. Using this one seemingly small bit of magic allowed me to explore things such as the male gaze, sexual trauma, heredity, and the invisibility of mental health issues in a visceral way."