Samuel Jensen

On the train home from her therapist’s office, the woman made of water tries, desperately, not to slosh onto the teenage girl sitting next to her. Outside, it’s winter in Michigan and has been for several years, but in the train it’s warm, too warm, and as they curl around a bend in the icy Huron River, she foams and spills over into the girl’s lap, her navy slacks and crisp white shirt.

“I’m so, so sorry,” apologizes the woman made of water.

The woman made of water is translucent, swimmy with the color of objects seen through her. Having lived a million years or so, drenching a teenage girl’s business casuals shouldn’t feel like such a big deal, but it does, the woman made of water feels so stupid and clumsy she cries, a little. Leo, her therapist, says she’s too hard on herself.

But the real problem is the winter. A few months ago—she remembers this clearly—she was verdant and hungry and laughed easily with strangers in the park, but as the first autumn chill hit the great lakes, she felt a change come over her, the same change as every year. Every year, she loses the ability to have normal conversations at parties. When the talk lulls she panics and brings up subjects that are too heavy—refugees, the distinct possibility of an earthkilling solar flare—or gets going on a three-hundred-year-old story nobody understands. In autumn people drop off her friends lists at an alarming rate, but because of the change she doesn’t care. Well she does and she doesn’t.

Now it’s February, the worst, most ferocious stretch of winter. The nights are long and the days blink painfully by, and the woman made of water has become convinced that the season will never end, that the world will plod along in this grey, coldlocked funk forever. This makes her angry. February is the month she becomes angry, when acting with consideration toward others feels like something she used to know how to do. They still tell the story about how, driving a friend to the hospital for blood poisoning on Valentines Day, she stopped for a burger. And there was the time with Nali’s Egyptian hairless and the bread oven.

One February, in 1876, the woman made of water got into an argument with a drunk cattle driver in a saloon and filled his lungs with her right arm, which made him dead, then alive again, then dead for good. She has done other things in February, not necessarily in anger. Often it’s loneliness, because the woman made of water gets lonely in the winter, and if she is not responsible in the way she reaches out to others it can cause harm, violence. She does have a power. This is why the woman of water has upped her appointments with Leo to once a week, why she’s on the train on a Tuesday, why she was here to soak this poor girl sitting beside her to the bone. She just needs a little extra help to make it to the thaw, when her urge to lash out will subside and everything will be right again.

The woman made of water hurries home from the station so she doesn’t freeze. The process of freezing is uncomfortable for her, though not fatal. She discovered this a few decades ago, back when she was serious about trying to kill herself.

Inside her apartment, she peels off her layers, exchanging them for a space blanket. She owns three. The space blanket, in her opinion, is the best and most beautiful invention humankind has to its name. It’s the one subject she’s ever had the urge to write a poem about, and she’s witnessed the slow births of red canyons. On the kitchen counter lies a wrinkled notepad with a few blurry lines she’s jotted down: the sheen of sarcophagi / but light as your soufflé.

She goes straight for her computer. Keeping busy is the trick to surviving these long winter nights, to keep from giving in to certain habits. Due to the humidity the woman made of water naturally exudes, her computers last six to eight months and then she buys a new one.

She starts by browsing Twitter, Reddit, Youtube. She never posts, just lurks and looks. She watches a video of a father catching a cake as it slides off a tabletop. She learns giraffes are dying out, selects a new desktop wallpaper, and finds out where certain child actors are now. The tightening digital spiral of nothing listicles and videos gets her to about ten p.m. Then, because she’s cozy and little bored because it already feels like she’s seen the entire internet, she spends a few hours in anonymous chat rooms talking to strangers because, in the winter, it’s better than nothing. These days the rooms are mostly overrun with bots, but eventually she connects with 25/M/Denver, who seems human, and is a whitewater rafting guide.

She enjoys the conversation until 25/M/Denver asks her what she’s wearing. The woman made of water has her space blanket, but in her experience people don’t appreciate it like she does. She considers making up string underwear or something. She’s done that before, typed out fantasies with strangers in chatrooms. The woman made of water has had sex in person, but on screens can be easier, and there’s an unspoken comradeship in it that she likes. They are two people on the faceless internet, which means they are at least partly willing to be lied to, which means they share something from the start. Online, the woman made of water pretends to be a normal woman, with skin and hair, not because she’s ashamed but because it would take a wall of text to get the basic idea across, and then the other person would just log off.

No, not tonight; the thought of masturbation depresses her. She doesn’t say goodbye or sorry, not in the mood. No one does that. She just logs off. Her chat is replaced with a big button asking her if she’d like to start another. 15,863 people are online.

Here, the woman made of water should find another video, or look for jobs, or write another line of the poem, motions to keep her mind at bay. Instead, she accidently does the worst thing and turns away from her screen, where she’s confronted by her dark apartment, her dark things. Not only will this winter never end, the woman made of water thinks, this night will never end. The universe is a cold disk that expands. She knows this.

She thinks about 25/M/Denver. Right now, he’s probably showering or loading another chat. Afterward he will sleep. In the walls of his apartment complex run the pipes, and through those flow dangerous gasses tenuously converted to his side. Everyone in his building could go together at any moment in a communal pile of carbon monoxide victims; as a crowd in the same slow, black shuttle. The woman made of water is different. She isn’t allowed on the shuttle.

This thought spikes her with envy, and she can’t help herself: she goes to the website she knows she shouldn’t. She’s been visiting it far too often this winter. She stops. She walks into the den, but across her studio apartment her screen’s glow still beckons. To combat this she closes her eyes, only she can see through her thin, lapping eyelids.

Some nights, she gets on Facebook, or Instagram, and sees the images of a party she wasn’t invited to, people laughing in a crowded, filthy kitchen. To not be invited stings, but on the other hand, thank god. The saga of the woman made of water is: she’s so lonely she bites the jambs of her doors but also, whenever a get-together is cancelled, her relief is thick.

It’s just the winter, she thinks. In the winter, she simply lacks the language to connect, to get over the everyday humiliation of asking someone to ask for your company. People cannot get over her strangeness and it’s her fault. At parties, she has witnessed people arrive to a general cry of joy. They hug down the line of guests but do not hug the woman made of water. They ask her, instead, how she is doing. About these people, the woman made of water thinks such harsh thoughts as: they probably aren’t capable of lasting, authentic love.

But this is a hypocritical position. Leo would say she’s letting her own stakes get too high again. The woman made of water practices her breathing exercises, which make her calm enough to realize the night will end after all, but there are many hours to go. She approaches her computer slowly and sits down. She’ll take one little look.

She discovered the website earlier that year, a fan site dedicated to her. Well, fan site is the wrong term. Its homepage looks like it was last updated in 1998. Across the top, in bold underline on a tan background, reads: the church of the pure chalice. Beneath the heading is a photo of the woman made of water at a bus stop. She’s wearing a big hiking backpack.

Religions constantly start around the woman made of water. It’s always been like this. People see her and make certain assumptions about truths she must hold. Finding the site was an accident; she immediately wiped her browser history. There are violent incidents on the record involving religions she has been a part of. It’s best to stay far away, especially in the winter.

But tonight she needs something to tide her over. It just feels so good to know there are people out there thinking about her.

She clicks to the forums—pretty dead. The only active threads are a fanart contest with her as the subject, and a discussion by one user claiming to have discovered a description of the woman made of water in an ancient Sumerian text. There are six hundred pages of arguments and amateur translation efforts. The woman made of water knows it’s dangerous to feel touched but she feels touched.

On a page labeled CREED, a paragraph designates the woman made of water as the Pure Chalice, a manifestation of the heartwaters of Mother Earth herself. A mystic embodiment of the highest ideals of purity, of cosmic oneness, the Pure Chalice deserves veneration, protection, and love, and these are hereby named the duties of the Church and its members.

That doesn’t sound so bad, thinks the woman made of water.

Under CONTACT INFORMATION, she finds the phone number of the Church’s high priestess, a woman named Sharon Macintosh. But she stops herself from calling. The woman made of water knows the power she can crackle down a phone line, if she wants to. If she called this priestess, it would make the woman’s life. She’d end up on the next flight to Michigan. She wouldn’t be able to help herself. Sharon Macintosh would chant prayers the whole way to her doom.

The woman made of water closes the tab. It isn’t a church it’s a cult and cults go bad. People go bad too and she hates them. She shuts off her computer and huddles until morning.

At Leo’s office the next week, the woman made of water falls heavily into her chair to let him know it’s going to be a bad one and reports her failure to carry out the homework. She was supposed to invite one person to drinks. The therapist rubs his bald head and looks at her dolefully over the decorative basket of pinecones on his office table. Leo has diagnosed her with social inability and latent anger.

“I told you I don’t like to drink,” she tells him. It’s true; she doesn’t. She hates the way it makes her look. A few beers and she goes from spring clear to an awful urine tint. Wine is okay; a decent red gives her a sort of blush, though creeps hitting on her ask if it’s that time of the month.

Of course, if she really binges, the woman made of water can take on breathtaking hues. She’s been mistaken for a creature of blood, of oil. She has a photograph of herself dancing on a roof, the sun coming through her in lances the deep gold of pilfered honey. The person who took it, an old roommate from New York, had killed herself, in part because of a bone-deep and wrongheaded love.

“As we discussed, it didn’t have to be drinks,” says Leo. “I mentioned drinks as a placeholder for any activity you chose.” Leo is normally sunny. He believes that the woman made of water has the same chance as anyone for meaningful connection, even in the winter, even though she is endless. Today, however, the woman made of water detects the bite of impatience in his expression. “You could have gone to a museum, or seen a movie, a play. Don’t let technicalities get in the way of your fulfillment.”

“I think I’ve been your patient for too long,” says the woman made of water. “I’m starting to recognize your catchphrases.”

“How about we just sit. You know, in companionable silence. Just sit with me. Please.”

“You know, your aversion to therapy is probably indicative of how voluntary your anxiety actually is,” Leo says, gently. “You’re in the middle of a process of self-defeat.”

“Then shouldn’t that process be, like, over already?”

Leo runs a hand down his spade beard. “Okay, fine. We can try a little silence.”

The woman made of water sits back, relieved. Leo is good at taking her out of a certain, frightening place in her head, which is why she’s here, but when he starts speaking to her in dictionary definitions she just wants to go home. She looks idly around the mostly barren office. Leo probably shares the space with a few other private practices to save on rent. On the wall hangs a clock in a porcelain housing shaped like a sleeping cat. It is just the kind of thrift store thing Sharon Macintosh might buy, to keep time as her and her congregation ruminates and sways. The fear, the passion.

Eventually Leo can’t stand the quiet and starts talking about a TV show he’s watching about two Russian spies who pretend to be a married couple in America. Then there are only fifteen minutes left in the session, and the woman made of water keeps Leo at bay by telling him one of the stories she’s stocked up about things people have done to her during bad droughts. He perks right up. Smoke comes off his notepad. It’s funny how easy it is to misdirect him. Lately, Leo’s introduced the word trauma into their discussions. Trauma’s the wrong word, but he hasn’t figured that out yet. The old days of being kept in basements, of being led in pitch of night to ashen lakebeds, were in some ways, a lot of ways, preferable to the current days. Once, a young woman famous for swimming the English Channel held her at gunpoint and tried to wear her like a suit. Another time she caused an entire orchard to bloom and fruit and rot over the course of sixteen hours. Though warned, the field hands ate of the fruit.

When his timer finally goes off, Leo sits back. He looks at her seriously. “Are you feeling hopeful about making it to Spring?” he asks.

“It’s been a hard winter,” says the woman made of water, measuredly.

“How are the anger levels? Are you feeling any ill will toward people? Specifically or in general?” Leo is convinced that her winter outbursts are the result of a deep and specific bitterness, born of the trauma he keeps talking about. He’s also convinced this will be the winter without an outburst, but he says that every year. Outbursts is his word for what happens, though the thing she can do to people is in reality slow and silent and devastating.

“Not ill will,” clarifies the woman made of water.

As they pull on coats to leave, she catches Leo smiling at his phone. On the screen is a picture of an infant, asleep and bulbous in a white knit hat. The resemblance is clear, and she bristles with that same sudden, lockjaw envy she had that night a week ago. When Leo catches her looking, he sleeps his phone. He shudders.

Once, the woman made of water saved the life of a hibachi cook. He’d caught fire lighting his grill for a hooting bachelorette party, and she saw the flash of him ignite across the restaurant. She’d extinguished him by running straight through him, and he was so, so grateful. His sister worked at the restaurant too, and she’d cried she was so thankful.

Only, sometime afterward, the cook went crazy. He somehow got the woman made of water’s address and paced the sidewalk in front of her building, retching and sobbing and calling to her window about waves, the deep ocean he could not stop hearing. It was in him, he cried, the crash and the drip drip drip. It was in him mercilessly. He cried well into the night until someone got fed up and called the cops, who drove the cook away in a cruiser with smoked windows.

This is the episode the woman made of water reminds herself of so she doesn’t do anything stupid, like call the number listed on the Church of the Pure Chalice’s website. She just has to stave off the despair one week until her next session.

The temperature outside stalls below zero, so she doesn’t leave her apartment. To fill the time, she listens to conversations through the walls and checks her mailbox three times a day. She also manages her email inbox, bursting with spam. She gets one non-spam email from a subsidiary of Heckler & Koch, the firearms manufacturer. They have a unique part-time opportunity for her.

Leo has been telling her to get a job for years. It’s a chance to get out of the house, to meet people. Coworkers are just friends waiting to happen, he liked to say. He liked to say, sharing a goal in a workplace can incubate a wonderful intimacy. For a moment the woman made of water is interested, but then she remembers she’ll have to fill out forms, that she’ll soak through copy after copy, the secretary clicking her pen and rolling her eyes.

The sun creeps into her apartment, crawls across the floor in a glowing radiation square, and leaves again. Her popcorn ceiling reverberates with the deep vowels of Russian TV, and she listens to the long stillnesses between when the very old man watching gets up and canes to the bathroom or to the fridge for a PBR, or the tinny ring of him throwing an empty to the floor. Getting her mail, the sorority girls and graduate students she meets don’t look at her but also don’t look away. They stare straight ahead, hats dusted with snow.

Samuel Jensen

Samuel Jensen

Fiction

Winter 2022 - Jellyfish

Deity