Lessons in Geology
By Claire Taylor
Listen to Claire reading her story:
There are three main types of rock. The first is formed when melted rock deep inside the earth bubbles up and moves toward the surface. The melted rock then cools and hardens, forming igneous rock.
The baby cries and cries. Wails is more like it. A desperate mammalian noise, the definition of keening. The mother can feel the vibrations in her bones, something tectonic shifting inside her. She pictures runty piglets and rabbits trapped in snares, the barbarous mercy of a snapped neck. The image alone is enough to frighten her, the sickening instinct, so she sets the baby down in the crib and slowly backs away. Head to knees, she counts her breaths—in and out, in and out—until the heat flaring beneath her skin dissipates, her rage settling, cooling into steadfast resolve. In the obsidian dark, she wipes her tears and tries again.
The second type of rock is formed by the accumulation of sediment like sand and other organic materials over a long period of time. As more and more sediment combines, the mixture grows heavy and eventually hardens, creating sedimentary rock.
It starts with skin-to-skin. No, before that even. A cell’s division. The placental connection, a binding cord. Communal blood and fluid escape in a gush. Then skin-to-skin for weeks on end. A steady stream of breast milk and snot, tears and saliva. Spit-up and fever sweat. Handful after handful of masticated avocado smeared like paint across the bare canvas of freshly laundered pants. Layer upon layer, this other person. The endless crumbs stuck to the bottom of her feet. Sticky lollipop lips, craft paint fingers, Play-Doh, slime, putty, and dirt. Years and years of piss and poop. When he bleeds now she doesn’t panic, cups her hand to catch the sudden spray of vomit. It’s okay, she tells him, I don’t mind. She has grown immune to the body’s horrors.
The third kind of rock is formed when intense heat and pressure deep within the earth change one kind of rock into another kind of rock. Igneous or sedimentary rocks can become metamorphic rocks. Over time, even a metamorphic rock can become a new metamorphic rock.
Some days she barely recognizes herself. Where am I? her son asks, as they flip through the pages of her wedding album and even she is a little surprised not to see him there. Her life before like a long-ago dream. These days she slices grapes into quarters, again and again. Returns books to shelves and toys to bins with the repetition of a rosary. Lullabies on repeat. Soothing words at the ready. The daily churn of cook, clean, care. Cook, clean, care. The years show in the crevices of her hands, the etched lines across her face. Long nights in the misshapen slump of her shoulders. She interrogates it all in the mirror. The dimpling on her thighs and striations on her stomach. The purple gloam beneath her eyes. She is there and not there. This woman who once was. This woman who now is. She presses the soft flesh of her body beneath her palms. Cups it in her hands like a fresh treasure, this repeated state of self-discovery. You weren’t there, she says in answer to his question, we hadn’t made you yet.
Author’s Note: Information on rocks comes from the picture book, Rocks: Hard, Soft, Smooth, and Rough, by Natalie M. Rosinky, illustrated by Matthew John.
Claire Taylor is the author of multiple chapbooks, including Mother Nature and One Good Thing. She is the founding editor of Little Thoughts Press, a literary magazine for young readers. Claire lives with her family in Baltimore, Maryland, in an old stone house where birds love to roost. You can find her online at clairemtaylor.com.