The Vitals, page 3
In Organ School I learned my ditty:
Slither, slither
Hither and thither
Slide, slide
Far and wide
The others had their own personal songs. And then we had our group songs, like the Song of Homeostasis, which we still sing every day.
I had exercise books, ruling a red line for a margin on each page. This margin was mostly left blank, but it could be used for numbered points. We learned that:
the peritoneum was closely studied by Lord Byron, an assemblage that wandered darkling in the eternal space, as all assemblages do, and
Byron assembled in Hollandale, Wisconsin, in 1855 and disassembled suddenly in Chicago, in March 1910.
The Byron assemblage consisted of organs, bones, muscles and connective tissues all coated in matt, light-absorbing fabrics. Actually, the assemblage of Byron tended not to wander darkling but with some purpose from hospital to morgue to laboratory to lecture theatre and here I wonder if I may have confused my Byrons (see baby brain, above).
The Doctor Byron Robinson assemblage contained a large and demanding brain, which worked closely with the equally large and demanding brain inside Lucy (the Wife assemblage). Lucy, the mistress of her own hospital, received slave assemblages from the south, fixed their parts and set them free. The Byron–Lucy assemblage produced no baby assemblages, because they had no spare time for mating procedures.
Taken as a whole, the assemblage of Byron was considered squat, heavy-set, ambitious and argumentative but grudgingly admired for being enormously productive. Taken individually, its constituent parts were as multifarious as any other. It is said that while the kidneys were irritable, the gall bladder and prostate gland were charming conversationalists and excellent musicians.
Several times a week, the assemblage of Byron would train its collective attention on peritonea of all kinds: human, horse, dog, sheep, cat, cow, pig, hen, woodpecker, shy-poke, frog, turtle, rabbit, crawfish, dove, guinea-pig, rat and fish. Byronic eyes would stare, nostrils would flare, heart would beat a little faster at the beauty of certain specimens.
This wet sheet! This draping sheet! Peritoneum!
I imagine myself adored by Byronic eyes.
Fingers stroke my skin, stretch me out, notice my smoothness. I show my free surface, my translucence; fingers can be seen through me, as through a streaky window. Slowly, like a stripper, I turn and show my back, the rougher surface that clings.
Fingers with long steel nails tear delicate strips off me, dab me in silver nitrate, fix me to a glass slide. The microscope looms overhead.
The view is cloudy at first, then sharpens. I am a glistening ocean on a cloudless day. In the distance, I vanish into sky.
I stare back at the Eye of Byron, then look beyond it. After a while, I notice the wooden dissecting table, the wooden desk, the shelves of glass beakers and tubes, labelled bottles of salts and metals. I slip across the floor and up the wall. I find an anchor point, an empty coat hook. I loop myself around it, thickening myself, sucking strength from the wall. Then I begin to coat and cover: upper wall, window pane, cornice, ceiling. From the middle of the ceiling I dangle down, a long trail like the drool hanging from a dog’s lip, until I touch the wooden desk. Here, I find a pot of ink. I slide inside, lubricating the liquid, so that the pen, when it is dipped, is charged with extra smoothness, extra quickness.
Fingers, ink and quill work together, flying across the page: The peritoneum is an interstitial space. I’m not entirely sure what the fingers mean by this. I am not a space; I am a body. I have my own cells, my own tissues, my own attributes and capabilities.
More words: pearly, glossy, polished. Ah yes! This is better! I feel well turned out when it is put like that. I feel I’m putting my best foot forward, in an expensive shoe. I may drape, but never haphazardly. I follow curves, feel my way into crevices. I coat and stick. If I’m peeled away from the surface I’m clinging to, my absence will be felt. There will be something raw about it, something begging for my smooth varnish.
When I first noticed my baby bump, I could not have been more pleased. I constantly checked myself. Is my baby still there? And five minutes later – is it still there now? Yes. I couldn’t wait for the gender reveal. It would come in a shower of pink frangipanis, their scent thickening the air.
I was sure I was having a girl. I wrapped her tenderly as she grew. I called her Baby not because I couldn’t think of other names – Pearl would have been nice – but because I wanted to remind certain organs who shall remain nameless –
who?
of what?
I have lost my train of thought, that long diaphanous train, as behind a bride.
Oh, that’s right. Ute.
I wanted to remind Ute that she was not the only one who could have a baby.
Ute laughed when I announced my pregnancy. That hurt. I was expecting support. The others sat in stunned silence, then began to congratulate, but they seemed a little embarrassed.
I may need a nap.
I’m dozing off. I’m seeing all the letters of all my words jumpling darkling falling into chasms. I want to –
zzz
– sorry – fell asleep –
I wanted to say to Ute: You’re not the only organ in this cavity capable of growing babies! And I also wanted to say: Let us not forget that this is the Peritoneal Cavity. My name is on the map, I’m all over the territory. I hold all of you, I am more womb than you’ll ever be. But I also wanted to cry. I was – am – emotionally labile.
I am womb but I am also landscape. My mesos, ligaments, omenta and folds are isthmus, island, mountain, foreshore. I connect. I define and fix. I enclose transport systems, canals, waterways, nodes, points of exchange. And I’m discreetly self-cleaning, ensuring I’m always smoothly polished.
Sometimes, though, a little rubbish slides down my slippery slopes and winds up way down there somewhere, in the Pouch of Douglas. It might get stuck down there, and fester.
Well. We all have hidden parts.
Baby
Mama?
Mama, tell me what to do, how to stop this.
Am I gastrulating correctly? I fear not. I fear I have no primitive streak, no guidelines, no dermic layers. I fear I am multiplying in ways that I should not.
I lack organisation.
‘You’re just growing, darling!’ says Mama Peri. But she won’t listen to me, is incurious about the details. I feel myself dividing, dividing, dividing. I’m giddy with it.
Mama! Help me, contain me. Give me some hints and tips.
*
At least I have my own song. I made it up myself, when I was little. It goes:
Hey diddle diddle
The cat and the fiddle
The cow jumped over the moon
The little dog laughed
To see such fun
And the dish ran away with the spoon!
At least I think I made it up. I woke up singing it; nobody taught me.
Mama Peri said it would do as my nursery song, my Song of Organogenesis.
Hers was slither, slither, hither and thither. She said mine was more original than that.
Aunty Maureen thought my song was brilliant. She tucked me in, rocked me to sleep. I sang it all night long, in my dreams.
I asked Mama when I might be allowed to go to Organ School.
She said I didn’t need to go, because I was a gifted child.
There was nobody to play with.
Every time I woke up, I felt bigger. If I lay down, I felt myself growing. If I stood up, I was banging my head against the ceiling.
‘You’re like Alice!’ Aunty Maureen said.
‘Who is Alice?’ I asked.
‘She was very tall,’ said Aunty Maureen, and then stopped, as if that was the end of it. I wanted to know if Alice ever stopped growing. Did her head poke through the tail of pancreas and appear in the Cave of Spleen? Were her feet stuck to the fundus of the stomach, her left arm wrapped around the splenic flexure of the colon?
But Aunty Maureen just told me I was a precocious child; she didn’t know what I was talking about. Another time, she said, slightly irritated: ‘You seem to know more about it than me.’ I think she liked me better when I was tiny, before I started asking questions.
I wanted to learn. I wanted to go to Organ School.
‘Organ School finished a long time ago,’ said Mama. ‘But we can do Home School! Would you like that? What would you like to know?’
I opened my mouth and shut it again. I couldn’t think of anything in particular that I wanted to know. I simply wanted to become knowledgeable.
Mama said she couldn’t remember a damn thing from school. But if she could find one of her old schoolbooks, we could just start on Day 1, Page 1, and take it from there. She slithered away, saying she was on the hunt. She was gone for some hours, sliding over mountains, into valleys, niches and fossae, over ligaments, into sacs. She traversed three zones: the subcostal, umbilical and hypogastric. But she couldn’t find her old books.
‘Maybe they got lost down in the Pouch of Douglas,’ she said when she got back. She was frowning, looking worried. Perhaps she didn’t want to go there.
‘Where is the Pouch of Douglas, Mama?’
‘Far, far away,’ she said. She had that dreamy look on her face, as if she was about to make stuff up. But I didn’t want a fairytale; I wanted the truth.
‘Let me look for the books myself!’ I said. ‘How do I get to the Pouch of Douglas?’ I tried to move off in a southerly direction, but my feet were stuck to the top of Gaster’s head.
I pulled and pushed, stretched and strained, trying to get moving.
‘You’re a fixed organ, darling,’ said Mama, trying to stifle a giggle. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll turn the place upside down next time I’m in the Pouch of Douglas.’
But she kept forgetting. She’d return from each of her intraperitoneal tours empty-handed.
Meanwhile, I kept growing in all directions.
Suddenly I was a teenager, all growth-spurt ungainliness, pimpled and stretching out of my own clothes.
‘Can’t you keep tidy?’ cried Mama. ‘You’re a complete mess.’
‘Nope,’ I said, insolently.
Mama sighed and fired up her screen, settled in for a long Organ Board meeting. I watched from the sidelines as, one by one, the organs of the Peritoneal Cavity appeared. Mama, on mute with her video off, explained who they were: Aunty Maureen first, because she was always hoping for a chat before the meeting proper; Col, who was never late; and Liv, who always looked tired. The others all blinked on in a rush just as official proceedings were about to start. Mama tried to get rid of me.
‘Shoo. It’s time for your nap.’
‘I want to come to the Organ Board meeting!’ I announced, before I’d even thought about it.
‘But you haven’t been to – you’re not a –’ Mama ground to a halt, uncertain. She looked at me. Yes, I was a mess, but I was almost fully grown. I was an organ, was I not? I had vascularised beautifully, creating a rich blood supply to feed my hungry dividing cells and take away their wastes. I had even become lobular.
‘Okay, but just sit quietly,’ Mama said.
I promised to listen, learn and not interrupt.
Ute
You probably think of me as an upside-down pear with two raised arms, a football in each hand.
This is reasonable; it captures my basic features.
But I like to think of myself as a ute, the colloquial name for an Australian utility vehicle. Think of a dirty white vehicle with two kelpies riding on the back, barking and quivering, the wind riffling their fur. Or an older model ute, with a big deep tray upon which a single cow stands with a swinging udder, juddering along a corrugated road. The cow leans forward to lick the salt off the driver’s neck through the glassless rear window. Or an older model still, in the style of a horseless carriage with a wide running board, piled high in the back with giant pumpkins, Queensland blues. The horseless carriage pulls up at the front door in a cloud of dust. A voice wafts out from the dark interior of the house:
‘No! I can’t bear to look at another pumpkin!’
A ute is designed to carry, and I too am designed to carry.
During Organogenesis, I budded out of the gonadal ridge as a tiny light-blue EH Holden ute, with a neat black tarpaulin for covering my loads. I had a moveable tailgate and two attendant kelpies. Back then, the dogs mostly slept, unaware of sheep or red dirt or windmills. All that was in the future. They’d shift and twitch adorably in their sleep. I’d reach out my fallopian arms and touch their hairless skin, watch it ripple in response.
When the puppies began growing a little hair, it was time for Organ School. The dogs slept under my desk, and I’d join them there for afternoon naps. In class, I liked to draw spark plugs and wheel nuts in the margins of my exercise books. I was told to pay attention, to stop doodling.
The classroom falls into deep silence, save for the sound of industrious scritchings across the blackboard. Tiny streams of chalkdust drift to the ledge and duster below as the board fills with diagrams, graphs, arrows. Follicular phase. Luteal phase. I gazed out of the big windows that run down the side of the room. The tops of gum trees, sky. Out there, somewhere, I might find my true home: red dirt, acacia shrubs, windmills, dirty sheep.
The teacher grabs me by the scruff of the neck, forcing me to look at her. She is thin and coiled with a long flickering tongue.
‘What’s that?’ she shrieks, pointing at my exercise book.
‘A spark plug,’ I whisper.
‘Speak up!’
‘It’s a SPARK PLUG,’ I say, too loud this time. The class titters.
‘So what, pray tell, is a spark plug?’ asks the teacher, for the amusement of the rest of the class. Liv, at the next desk, shoots me a sympathetic look.
She has drawn a beautiful diagram neatly labelled with the words follicular and luteal.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘It’s something to do with ignition.’
For a split second, the teacher seems confused. Then she scowls.
‘Never forget you’re a vessel,’ she spits. ‘Your first duty is to carry, not to fabulate.’
Then she lets me go, and I run out of the room and keep running, over the white lines of the handball courts, to behind the girls’ toilets. There is no-one there, mercifully. I crouch down at the spot where crumbling cement gives way to yellow-brown gravel and find a bubble-gum wrapper, all scrunched up. I open it out over my knee, smooth the small waxy square. Bazooka artificial cherry. It is just the wrapper, not the gum. But the wrapper is a thing in itself. It does not need the gum. I am not a vessel, I say to myself. Forever, consolation will smell like artificial cherry.
My ancient DNA teachers never quite knew what to make of me. They sent me to remedial Mothercraft classes and made me do Grooming and Deportment, in which I had to walk upright with a book on my head, being careful not to slouch. I tried to play along but could not help rolling my eyes at the pointlessness of it all. But I loved Art and Craft. I loved wax crayons, Clag glue and cutting out.
At the end of the school day, the kelpies and I would burst through the door and make for the paddocks. I’d let them ride on my tray without chains, as if they were surfing. I’d glance at them in the rear-vision mirror, and our eyes would meet. They were happy, their tongues lolling.
You may be puzzled. Isn’t the uterus a fixed organ? What about the broad and round ligaments? I cannot deny my ligaments, but you must understand that I’m also a wandering womb. For me, it’s all about the open road.
Panno and Rage, our pancreas and spleen, were the bad boys at the back of the room. Constantly making in-jokes, pulling faces, gesturing behind the teachers’ backs. They were very different to Col, our colon. Col already had that middle-aged, sensible air about him. He was a young fogey in his knitted walnut-brown cardigan and polished lace-up shoes. He was always a good sport, able to focus in class and then have an appropriate amount of fun when sent out for recess. Panno and Rage, on the other hand, were always on their own trip. They did their schoolwork, but it was all a game to them. It was fun they took seriously: handball, marbles, pranks. Col would go along with them, trying to suppress a worried look if they went too far.
I gravitated to Panno, the yellow muscle car/pancreas, feeling a sort of open-road affinity.
I see Panno as he crawls to a stop near where I’m walking home with the kelpies. ‘Get in,’ he growls in his high displacement V8 engine voice. My blood quickens. I take a quick look around to see if anyone else is noticing. Maureen? Peri? They’ve walked on ahead, deep in conversation. Panno tells me to tie the dogs to the post. ‘We’ll be back soon. They’ll be okay.’ Leave the dogs? I’m puzzled. So I just stand there, and the kelpies just stand there too, and we can all hear Panno’s engine gurgling impatiently.
‘Sit,’ I say to the kelpies.
They do so immediately. Their leashes are tied in loose knots at my wrists. I use my long fimbrial fingers to untie first one, then the other.
‘Stay!’ I say. They tilt their heads, trying to understand.
Panno laughs. ‘Of course they’ll stay,’ he says. ‘Where else do you think they might go?’
He’s right. They belong to me; they are of no use to anyone else. They’ll be waiting for me when I get back. As I detach the leashes, I relish the fact that there’s more leeway in the world than most organs realise.
I glance again at Peri and Maureen hauling their textbooks in the grey schoolbags slung over their shoulders. They suddenly seem like a pair of goody-two-shoes, now that I’m being a bad girl. Maureen turns to look for me. She notes Panno in his gurgling car, the open door, the detached kelpies, and gives me a warning look.
