“Jupiter’s Moons” by Sandra Jensen

Jupiter’s Moons

It wasn’t until I watched the contents of my bowel move slowly through the glass-windowed tunnel, embedded eye-level into the wall — eye-level for the hapless person lying on the “table” — that I realized I’d dissociated from my body, not least because the person administering my colonic was my husband. We had been persuaded by a well-meaning friend — an expert in colonic irrigation — that the procedure, especially if repeated daily for a week, would cure ill health. The friend, we’ll call her Cheryl, had carefully outlined the process, had in fact inserted the speculum with its condom-like disposable plastic sleeve into my anus. She was methodical, precise, a perfect nurse. She did not stay, the agreement was clear: use of the room and expensive apparatus for free, but not her services. Hence, my husband. It seemed like a good idea at the time. 
But, as I hovered wraithlike in a high, dark corner of the room, I fully understood the necessity of perfunctory doctors in their starched whites. Onto these trained professionals, it’s possible to deposit one’s shame along with unwanted body parts or the ooze from weeping sores. I could be sure all would be incinerated and forgotten by the next visit. The look on my husband’s face, carefully but inadequately disguised, assured me that he would not forget. That he had not forgotten we had six more sessions to do. That this one had only just begun.
My husband is a very fastidious person. Not that there was any splashing. Nor any smell. No, my feces left my body quite without mess or bother. It was like watching an unfortunately colored lava lamp, the gloops horizontal and moving in one direction. Where to, I did not know. A tub for further inspection? It did not bear thinking about.  The whole thing did not bear thinking about, but it was too late now, my body lying half naked on a high table with a tube stuck into my backside while the rest of me floated through the walls, higher and higher, into the comforting darkness of space. 
“I think you need another infusion of water,” my husband said quietly. “Or maybe a tummy rub?” I nodded to the tummy rub. He massaged gently, as he’d been instructed. His hands were warm, loving. Tears slid slowly from the corners of my eyes into my ears. I wondered if I’d get an ear infection. 
“A little more water?”
“Okay.”
When the speculum slipped out, gushing liquid and the unthinkable over his lap, I found myself skating around Jupiter, my arms wide, my fingers counting moons. Another person, quite bustly and organized, the sort of person you’d turn to when you were in trouble, had entered my body. My husband was clearly in trouble. Several swear words had left his mouth as he twisted about, the tube in one hand the other grappling for the tap which he turned the wrong way, spraying water in a high arc onto the wall with the embedded glass-faced tunnel in which my feces were now stationary. The tap finally turned off, my husband stared at the darkening stain on his jeans. 
“It’s all right,” the bustly woman said. 
“It’s not fucking all right.”
“It’s really fine, it couldn’t be helped.”
“I fucked up.”
“You did your best.”
“Now what?”
“Perhaps we should insert the speculum again?”
I didn’t have anything to add to the conversation, I was too busy navigating Gossamer Rings, too busy listening to the harmony of the spheres. 
After that first mishap — one was surely more than enough — we became experts, the three of us: bustly woman, my husband, and my gravity-defying, dissociated self. My body became familiar with, if not overjoyed by, the crumply slide of the speculum, the sometimes acutely painful influx of water, the kneading fingers of my husband, the carefully monitored quantity of feces (more was better). Sometimes, Cheryl would step in to study my progress. It seemed I was not evacuating enough, that perhaps I’d need a longer treatment for “severely encrusted matter.” She was certain there were decades of toxins plastered firmly to the walls of my intestines. I wasn’t so sure. I lived on organic fruit and vegetables for the most part and hadn’t been to McDonald's or KFC for decades, so where had these toxins come from? By the seventh procedure, my husband looked exhausted, wrung out, as if he were the one getting the colonic. I was feeling sicker than ever and had a temperature.
Cheryl insisted my temperature indicated a healing crisis, a desirable marker on my journey to health. 
“You should do more,” she said earnestly. “It will really clean you out.”
“I think I’ll stop now,” I told her, giving my husband's hand a squeeze. He squeezed back. The ordeal was over, never to be repeated. In fact, the procedure was the cause of one of the most severe kidney infections I ever had. E. coli, anyone? But I do not dwell on the experience. Instead I choose to remember the sound of Jupiter’s moons, all sixty-three of them, humming the perfect harmony my body has forgotten.

SANDRA JENSEN

Sandra Jensen has over 50 short stories, essays, and flash-fiction publications, including those in World Literature Today, The Irish Times, Descant, AGNI, Chautauqua, and Hobart. Awards include winning the Bridport Novel Prize and the Grindstone Novel Prize. She has been living with chronic illness for three decades and her book The Irrepressible Writer: How Writers with Ill Health Write Well is slated for publication in 2025. You can find her at http://www.sandrajensen.net.

Headshot: David Crean

Photo Credit: Staff