Body Heat

The day is overhauled in heat. Humidity 87*- in San Diego. Temp. hovering @ 95. It is Friday. It is Saturday. It is all day and then when the sun begins to set, it lowers it's head and breaths like a giant, placid bull and : it is all night. The kids scatter. L. is mucking about, complaining. My shirt tag pricks the back of my neck over and over. Sweat trembles down around it. The baby slaps my breast while nursing and sweat flies. smack!smack! Beads of sweat form around her little lips and her forehead. Her reddish brown hair is wet against her forehead. Fans nod their heads in every room, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth like ballet lessons, back and forth and forth and the sound of their dance is a humming in the entire house. The dogs lay pressed against the tile and the walls, unmoving but the pant. Boys on skateboards outside scrape the ground. My husband moves around the house, holding the baby, leaning in toward me, and I am stoned on him and heat. I want to place the baby in her crib and tear his clothes off and spend an hour cleaning him of sweat and spend an hour bathing him in more. All day long we swing the children back and forth between us like workers over water and we keep our eyes on each other. At night, I slide the baby seal away from me, stuffed on breastmilk still milking from her mouth, and find my husband in the thick hot darkness. This is my marriage, I think to myself, his hand on my rib. I hear an echo of a woman who lost her husband after 35 years of marriage: ..and then, when he died... and I shudder. I move my face into my husband and restrain my mind. Across the stilled nighttime backyard a woman's voice rings out, high and trembling. The sky slinks into our room through the open window. We move together with the fans. Everything is completely normal and dramatically surreal and I am a lit match in the lighter fluid of his sweat. We are alone together and nothing else could compare.