Nude in a Naked City

CREATIVE NONFICTION BY DENISE TOLAN

It is 8:30 pm. The temperature is ninety-five degrees. Because it is early June, we locals still complain about the heat. Soon we will abandon clothing and hope and accept the drying earth and scalding sun as fact.

Newcomers to San Antonio are often startled by our thick humidity and thin layers of privacy. In Nebraska, your middle-aged neighbor wore tidy slacks, a knit shirt and kept her thoughts in a breadbox on top of the fridge. Here, your new neighbor will wait in the driveway wearing a tank top and shorts to ask how much you paid for your new vehicle before she even asks your name.

It’s the South Texas way. The less you wear, the less likely you are to hide anything, including the truth.  

My truth – I miss my mother. She died in 2008.

My mom escaped the scorched earth of World War II Italy only to find herself in America, locked in a lifelong battle with a dictator we called Dad.

I could list all the reasons I miss her, but mostly, I miss her nakedness.

From the time I was four or five until a few weeks before her death, I’d lounge on my mother’s bathroom countertop listening to old stories while she bathed. She never covered the droopy stomach hanging over her pubic bone like a flesh-colored bag of flour, nor did she hide her breasts, large and forceful in a bra, but soft and billowy in the water, like a fog rolling down her body.

“Lavami la schiena,” she would say, handing me a washcloth. I would take the wet cloth and guide the fabric carefully around the large mole between her shoulder blades. If I saw bruises, I’d look away and avoid those areas altogether.

“Dai,” my mother would say. “I’m not made of glass. Scrub harder.”

“You have a big bruise there, Mom.”

“So what? I always have bruises. You know the story. Your father is mean. But I want to relax, so scrub my back, please.”

I always did.

Once, when I was a teenager, I appraised her body as she dressed. “Mom, they make underwear that will hold in that stomach fat.” I used my hands to show how the underwear could hide her rolls.

She faced me fully naked. “You don’t like this?” she said, grabbing her stomach between her fingers like she was kneading dough. “Don’t look.”

The next time she got dressed, she gave me a look daring me to challenge her body. I did not.

My mother wasn’t just naked in the tub. She was naked even when fully clothed. I hated how easily she stripped down to honesty. If someone hurt her feelings, she never covered it up. It could be a simple thing, like her best friend buying her dishtowels and potholders for a birthday.

“I’m so mad at Nadine,” my mother said, returning from their birthday lunch. She tossed me an array of rooster-themed gifts. “I saw these in Stein Mart for $9.99,” she said. “I spent $20.00 on her birthday for earrings I knew she’d like.”

“Mom, she knows you like roosters. Why do you always have to count the money?”

“Because when you are friends you are even with gifts. After all these years, I deserve better. I’m not just anybody.”

I hated how my mother used words like deserve and fair, but there they were, exposed like her ingrown toenails and varicose veins. Naked words.

“You can’t judge a friendship by money, Mom.”

“It’s not the money. I don’t like feeling I am less than her. If she loves me, she should show me. This present hurt me. Capito?”

I kept my head down, looked away. I was unable to look her honesty in the eye.

“It’s okay to say when you are disappointed with people,” she said, pulling my chin up. “I am telling you how I feel because you are my daughter.”

The discomfort I felt in having to hear her pain set me off. “Do you tell Dad how you feel? Does he know you are disappointed with him when he hits you?” Now I looked her square in the eye.

“That’s another story,” she said. “If I could be honest with him, I would. But I have you kids to think about. You can’t be honest with fire, only with people.”

“That’s just another stupid saying, Mom.”

“Ma è vero.”

I wanted to tell her to hold her feelings about everyone—my dad, Nadine and all her friends—close because once emotions are set on a table like dinner, they can be devoured. I’d seen my mother hurt physically and emotionally and I swore I was not going to end up like her. Being naked had gotten her nowhere in life but hurt.

“This is what I was trying to say about Nadine,” my mother continued. “When you love someone, you can also be hurt by them. But you have to be honest when you don’t like something. I don’t like how Nadine made me feel. I don’t like how your father treats us. And I tell you how I feel because you are my blood. I trust you. Don’t run away from truth.”

But I did. I refused to reciprocate her honesty. If my mother walked into my room while I was undressing, I’d cover up. When she touched my arm during a movie, I’d pull away. If she heard me crying and knocked at my door, I’d yell at her to leave. I didn’t allow my mother, or anyone, to see my naked emotions. I learned to hide myself beneath colorful clothing and I bought underwear intended to conceal truth. I learned how to be nude by showing my body without revealing the nakedness underneath.

Being nude turned out to be the easiest thing.

My father moved us from Italy to New Jersey, California to Tennessee, then Texas. When we reached San Antonio, my mother found a home in the soothing language and familiar nakedness of the people. My father rarely left the house, complaining constantly of the heat, but my mother was always outside with her neighbors, talking about the disappointment of children, the frailty of aging bodies, the grief of loss. No topic was off limits. Everyone talking in naked words.

I love our naked city too, but I still contend that naked means we leave ourselves open to attack. Charles Barkley talks about our fat women while other men diss our riverwalk and call it a dirty little river. I feel compelled to counter Barkley and Mark Cuban and return their volley by calling them fat and dirty, but people here just laugh it off. We walk naked in our truths in San Antonio and when people call us out, we say, “You don’t like it, don’t look.”

In this city filled with truth, I pretend at nakedness. But as I grow older, I understand nude is not enough.

I am the age my mother was when I washed her back and noticed her stomach. In my bathroom mirror, I see the same loose tummy, foggy breasts, varicose veins. But somehow, I know I am less naked than her.

Lately, I’ve begun whispering naked words like deserve and worthy. I practice saying them like I’m learning a foreign language.

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