Body Stephanie Shi A fine line might distinguish humility, modesty, and chastity from one another; a chain

can link them together to render them dependent on each other. Whichever is so, the three have their own characteristics. To tie and knot them to a control bar that is shame, they let the marionette cover itself in a pose: head down, arm across chest, hand over groin, one leg crossed over another. My mind holds that position. My body, although it hasnt grown weary from years of bearing the weight and grasp of fabric, wishes for air; should it feel stiff from the heat or humidity, it would only be for the greater probability of breaking at a puff or the snap of a string. My clothes didnt always blanket every inch of me. Navet and innocence allowed me to frolic without a clue on what is considered now as flaw, so there was hardly anything to be ashamed of. Perhaps being a child allowed certain avenues of exposure like the sight of legs. The public accept babies in diapers only, so it seems being around that age with some body parts flashed is fine, if not the norm. When I reached pre-adolescence, despite revelling in the signatures of my bodys activitiesthe little swirl on my thumbprint and the darkened speck right underneath my palms from much writing or drawingthere were spots I tried to keep hidden: two rubicund bumps on the left arm. No strand of hair makes its way out through the light miniscule slashes on the surface. I was always asked what they were; keloid demanded more questions as did scars. Chicken pox, the root of all answers, caused aversion as though its scabs meant its existence instead of its ending. For a while, when I was replying to my peers at that time, I settled with mosquito bites. No one ever wondered why they never subsided just like mosquito bites. I wouldnt have covered the bumps then if it werent for the ugliness associated to them. My mother insisted I use a transparent cream that was supposed to lighten and flatten any mark

after assiduous application. The scars are on my skin because I popped the white iridescent bubbles out and scraped their vestiges off their red outlines out of boredom and curiosity when I was waiting the days by to recovery. Being signs of childhood exploration and strength, first of all of choice, my keloidal scars were no longer topped with the medicine after a few months, when red turned to beige lumps, a shade darker than my skin tone. Such fancies of mine were not, however, able to aid me against the notions of beauty equivalent to flawlessness, and to the sense of shame promulgated in and by the Catholic girl school where I was studying.

Those who have gardens tend to them by removing weeds and mowing the grass. To ensure healthiness, watering is necessary but only to an extent that the roots of plants, especially the plants themselves, arent submerged for too long a time. As with us people, its unnecessary to say that lack of oxygen from such drowning will eventually lead to the death of plants. However, watering isnt just a matter of aiming the hose and shooting water out of it or turning on the sprinklers to rain divine life to the ground. Garden hoses carry water from the spigot and out the other end. For watering plants, a sprayer is a better head than a pistol, since the former produces fine droplets; the gentle fashion from reduced pressure avoids damaging the roots. Nonetheless, it is necessary to dig into the ground and fill it with water; the wet top soil doesnt mean water has penetrated it, let alone the roots getting the benefits of water. In order to let the roots dig deeper into the ground, one must water in the direction he wants the roots to go. Suffice to say that brushing the hose and spraying water everywhere in the garden would most likely let the roots spread wide, not deep. There, too, is a schedule. Plants are either watered in the cool of the morning or evening when winds are calm and evaporation is likely to occur slowly. An inch-deep pool is needed by

lawn grasses each week; soil must be kept moist lest it dry out and deteriorate plant, as well as animal, life. Such times allow one to spray water on the leaves to wash dirt and dust off without harming the plants; water droplets on leaves left in the harsh afternoon sun act like little magnifying glasses that may scald foliage. Disease-susceptible plants are the exception, though. They shouldnt be watered at night. The presence of a pool for hours will trigger bacterial life to thrive, hence allowing fungal diseases to contaminate leaves, flowers, and fruits. Pests infect ones property, thereby the invention of pesticides to prevent and destroy them. Pesticides are either made from chemical or biological substances, examples of which are viruses, bacteria, antimicrobials, that have the effect of killing pests like disease-carrying mosquitoes that cause malaria, wasps and ants that cause allergic reactions. By preventing crop losses to insects and the like, pesticides help farmers save money which would be allotted elsewhere rather than spent to replant whats gone. The idea of banning pesticides was conceived due to side effects that pervade to human health. Minor effects include skin and eye irritation; severe, reproductive problems and leukaemia. A compromise was proposed: to limit ones pesticide exposure, to use the least toxic pesticide or a non-chemical onehere we have a matter of organism versus organism, but also organism protecting another.

I saw a very tiny black line on my underarm when I was around eleven. Curious, I tried flicking it with my finger to see if doing so would hurt. Ive seen my mother tweeze in the past; she said there was no pain. I knew from viewing commercials that underarms of women were supposed to be fair and hair-free. Without any tool whatsoever to let me pluck what I couldnt believe then was hair, I spent hours with my arm up, pressing the tips of my thumb and index fingernails

together to get the strand out. When my biceps grew sore, I leaned my arm to a wall and continued. My skin reddened as though I had the rashes; I pinched it too many times. As I finally pulled the strand out, I was much more relieved than I was disgusted; the said tiny hair was only the tip. Two weeks later three strands were jutting out of my underarms, one on the left, two on the right. In panic and fear of the possible extent of hair growth, and in much bashfulness, I sneaked into my mothers dresser for tweezers. There were two pairs. I stole onethe one with the looser screw to glaze my sin. The hairless underarms silenced my conscience. The tweezers were hardly used; hair clumped elsewhere. There were lines on my legs like stalks on a meadow. Ridding had to be done. My mother couldnt do so much as to hold her tongue when she saw my unshaven legsyuck, she said. Eventually she bought me boxes of Veet shaving cream that I constantly used. After the first shave, I marvelled at my whiteness. Ironically, without the dark brown (or blackno one notices the difference) hair that impeded the view to my skin and served as an object for comparing hues, my skin looked fairer, even luminous. The two aesthetics that enveloped me produced the same effect. I crossed between the nuances of proclamations like reveal nothing. Instinct told me to show my limbs; I did. The idea of waiting to be in my forties, fifties or beyond, when hair growth wouldve slowed down or ceased, or when hair wouldve fallen, to wear a pair of shorts is preposterous; I wouldve lost all mold of youth, gained all the jiggle of age. I may rid myself of the black lines, but lines, much fairer than my skin, wouldve embedded themselves by then. Deep inside me lurked the need to show. Showing meant the propensity of being watched. Being watched opened the chances of being likedand what was there not to like in toned fair hairless gams? In a way, as my jeans

cropped to Bermuda shorts in high school, then to short shorts now in college, clearly following the uprooting of hair, I have been revealing nothingmaybe better: nothingness. Ive laid my eyes nearly on every spot of my body. On occasion, it was to be amazed at the concavities and to realize that underneath all the hair was something considered beautiful. Immediately after shaving, which eventually turned to waxing since shaving curled the growing hair, there was always a reintroduction between myself and a body, the body with myself.

Scientists have not yet seen the center of the Earth which is about 6, 378 kilometers under mankinds toes partly because of its soaring temperature ranging from 2, 726.85 to 4, 726.85 degrees Celsius. Nonetheless, they strive to have a closer look at the Earths core as it would provide pertinent information about earthquakes, volcanoes, the rise of sea level, the warming of the bodies of water, the different minerals present, and so on. Thus far, scientists have attempted to reach the mantle before going further down. Although in 2005, for the first time, they managed to drill 1.42 kilometers below the ocean floor to the lower section of the crust, the Mohorovicic discontinuity or the Moho, a boundary that marks the division between the brittle outer crust and the soft mantle, remained untouched. The depth of the Moho varies per area, since the planet changes shape due to tectonic and climatic forces. According to the seismic data used to map the varying thickness of the crust, the hole that took eight weeks to drill was a thousand feet off to the side where the Moho could have been reached.

I dont know how the vagina looks like. Images have been flashed: a collage of animated blobs with arrows and labels and bullet points for what each organ in the reproductive system does;

videos rolled to feature an infant coming out of a seemingly deranged woman. I always looked away to preserve my innocence, which some would call ignorance. I have bowed my head neither in reverence as one would gesticulate before a holy place nor to finally look at mine, but simply to retract out of squeamishness. I was asked how I clean it without looking, as though I needed to see it in order to wash it. Its simple: Every morning and evening, I bury my middle and ring fingers in places they would penetrate my body and let water in. My left hand clutches the showerhead; it lingers below the spots I feel should be cleansed further, flicks to and fro so that the water shooting upward glides and brushes my skina gentle fountain I pray cleans. I havent soaped it in years. My body had always jerked when my soapy fingers forced themselves in. When I found out what feminine wash wasI was fifteen when I saw a little pink bottle labelled pH 5.5 in my parents bathroom and read its directions of useI thought of squeezing out a pea-sized drop for myself; it was about time I used something other than water. Commercials have emphasized enough the cleanliness and freshness gained upon application, always the image of a lady in a light-colored dress that balloons as she spins under the arm of a man who later embraces her while she endorses the bathroom product that allegedly resulted to their intimacy. The bottle was returned, not a drop subtracted. My body has always been fine, I reasoned; I never had an infection. There was no point changing how Ive done things, especially when I knew nothing about the acidity of skin and my privates. I feared feeling again the burning sensation body soap provided. Although I could have asked or researched on anatomy and washes, I didnt; my biology teacher taught that feminine washes tend to kill even the good bacteria that protect the vagina, that these soaps can infect and irritate the area; in addition, no

one was going to care; I wasnt going to have sex. Even when I did have a boyfriend, feminine wash still didnt matter: he was never around; my legs only opened in the shower. I have always been clean.

A blur of black and beige alternated with each other like the waves of a troubled sea, only frozen; overlapped one another and clumped together like the leaves of an acacia. I should have knownperhaps I didthat the coils of hair that marred the center of my body foreshadowed the convolution of what was beneath it. The details of the reflection on the mirror that I held in between my legs one night when my then-boyfriend told me not to be ashamed of my body, especially the private parts, never imprinted themselves in my mind. The unsharpened image resulted from the lack of focus of squinted eyes, noise from pubic hair never trimmed. In dresses that hug the body tightly, I, like many others, have been bothered by a bulge. Mines not the stomach, though. A little triangle protrudes inches below the belly and points to my privates, an arrow, pubic hair, marking the spot. Brazilian wax was never an option, so was laser treatment for pecuniary reasons, nor do I have tools for shaving; the ones from Veet were only for the limbs. Trimming was most feasible in terms of getting hair out, but it didnt seem hygienic to me to use the same pair of hair scissors as I did my bangs. Hair growth in that area would have posed another burden; it was already cumbersome to schedule a day for waxing my legs: it had to be a few days after my period, never before; when I didnt have homework to do for the process takes long; my father not around to tell me to cover up; I felt brave and ready to rip strips off my skin (which wasnt always the case). Cut pubic hair probably meant approximately two weeks of not being bothered by it, as well as a lifetime of having to worry about and tend to the thick sharp ends that would go through my underwear; Ive settled to

flattening it with my hand, twirling some strands to gather them better as I repeatedly pressed down. As I have managed to live with pubic hair, I have often wondered how matters would have been if I never touched the hair on my legs. Perhaps the color wasnt so dark against my skin. Maybe the strands didnt grow more than an inch long and that there werent a lot of them enough to have a hayfield on my shins and thighs; my mother did look very closely when she expressed her repulsion. Ive seen fair girls wear shorts, skirt, or a dress despite having hairy legs; no one seemed to mind. Some of them have a boyfriend; he didnt seem to mind either. I am not they; they are not I, I have told myself. Not everyone has been endowed with flawlessness or meekness that draws the attention of certain kinds of people, who, upon focusing on a certain individual, disregard all other things.

My hunched and tilted spine from scoliosis resembles the undulating Great Wall. While it may have caused one side of my waist to be unmistakably more curved than the other, alarmed me of the probability of tilting further until I need surgery, scoliosis continues to push me to be concerned with my posture, if not my physical health altogether. Fragile from a spine curvature, Ive gained an explanation for my inability to fully bend my back, touch my toes with locked knees; saved myself from carrying heavy things and being teased for apparent lack of flexibility. What Ive come to love are the three little dots on my left arm that form a straight line like the three largest pyramids of the Giza complex that are believed to point to the three stars that compose Orions belt. They sprouted on my skin most likely due to much scalding by the sun; they could either be moles or freckles, or perhaps a combination of both.

My body has traces of culture. The lines on my belly button form the character for down in Chinese, as though instructing whoever would see me naked to look in the said directionof course, he would have to be Chinese to understand; rather, hes supposed to be. I once had two moles beside each other on my lower right cheek. I was told that a pair of moles means I have a rival. On the other hand, my grandmother and my mother wanted it cauterized, since its believed that a woman who has moles which are in the path of tears will become a widow. They rubbed my cheeks hoping to erase the pair; it remained. Still a child, I was barely bothered by the moles than I was with their constant pinching of my cheek. My classmates didnt care about them, as they were much too young to have observed such a little detail. Instead, they pointed their fingers and jeered at some other kid who had a button-sized birthmark a lot like a mole on her cheek; she became my best friend in our adolescence and I realized that we werent alone having the urge to hide or rid ourselves of our flaws, hairy legs being one of them and thankfully concealed by our long eggplant-colored skirts in school. With the pair of moles that caused alarm gone, I may have lost a rival in that friendship was eventually established, yet I still have it in myself to loathe, to compete; I have other pairs elsewhere: one on the forehead, stomach, and right calf; two at the back of my left arm. Only time will tell of my being a widow that although the moles may or may not have anything to do with it, Im certain that the spirit behind such an idea will come to minda reincarnation, if not resurrection, of a person to an age-old belief to keep me company. A brown scapular embellishes my body, dangles around my neck, and converges at the clasp of a rectangle framing the image of the Virgin Mother and the child Jesus. It has no beads. The string has twirled upon itself in five groups of ten, which trickle down my torsosuspended little acorns mimicking beads of sweat. The cross hangs until my navel, blessing my body.

Reminiscent of a dagger, it defends me as it reminds anyone who tries to conquer me that body must be nurtured. I feel naked without it. Like a weapon, the scapular must be close to me preferably away from public eye, and only used when necessary as a last resort hence the need for me to draw a curtain on my flesh to impede view and temptation directed not only to a foreigner but also to myself to dislike and be embarrassed of my natural state, that opulence of hair.

Much digging into the earth leads to finding fossils, bones, these telltale signs of death and decay, harm that occurred during the remote past, lack of protection. Peoples attention is directed to the little intricacies that have marred the artifact. After brushing off dirt and dust from it, people investigate and surmise. Possibilities expand and welcome them to another world that once clothed the bones and bound them together. Desire invests itself upon the unknown. Of the artifact, as it is possessed, there is hardly any desire. The only physical contact it has experienced involves the preparators scraping off of layers of matrix, reassembling, and gluing broken pieces back together. It is set on a pedestal for all to see; there is no room for selfishness, hoarding, and depriving others of knowledge and insight that can be derived from it. No outsider touches and violates; everyone exercises utmost care in its presence.

Growing up, I was hardly fond of being touched. Most of the physical contact involved spanking and hitting, I suppose the usual punishments for disobedience and unsatisfactory performance in schoolthe number of spanks equalled that of errors in tests. In music class back when I was in prep, I was kicked (perfect 45s that sent me tumbling) by two classmates for being one of the few to understand and read beats and rhythms; a girl with a sharp Mongol stabbed my arm

where, years later, a mole took the place of the nick. For threats and peer pressure to like so and so or do this and that, arms were contorted where begging for mercy did nothing. Although I have evaded the touch of the opposite sex, my body craves to be held. Naturally or not, when a granduncle pinned me on my parents couch when I was six, kissed my face, my ears, and my neck, granted I tried to whisk myself away, but I also laughed from the tickling caused by his wet lips, tongue, and breath against my skina dissonance that has resurfaced after years of assumed dormancy. On the same sofa, another man also held me as I kept my arms around him, or at least tried to lock him in my short arms. I swung my feet whenever he kissed my head. My carnal desires were tempered most probably as a result of wanting to offer myself to God alone or to my future spouse, both for and out of love. Teachings in school emphasizing simplicity and modesty which I took to heart made it easier for me at the time to appear covered and be reserved, yet upon being removed from that environment full of maternal figures clearly from a different generation and culture, I currently grapple with time and vanity, am even tempted to display my youth especially to those who only told me about its curse, that certain exposures of flesh mean Im asking for it hence deserving of a life-long burden. I considered ridding myself of some flesh if only to inspire love rather than lust, a taking care, a mounting over me to protect rather than subjugate me. Ive lessened my food intake; my outline has become more and more evident. My ribcage becomes defined much like my knuckles with impeccable inclines and declines, yet my clavicle and sternum still dont exude fragility. Nonetheless Id like to believe perhaps out of sheer optimism and hope that my convex curves fit into someone elses concave ones; my concave his convex. To ascertain my dazzling an explorerone who is neither ashamed by anatomy like II will have to let him know about my

uncharted territories, the facts and superstitions which place my identity, elude the touch in his fantasies for there is nothing on me to touch, let alone desire. That he may be enamored is unconceivable, but I would be titillated were it to happen.