“Matt is a tattoo artist,” Jenny repeated loudly. I wondered how long the three of them had been watching me. “Show him yours!”
I lifted my shirt to show them the tattoo on my stomach—a barn owl, feathers spread like fingers between my hipbones. I thought about the security cameras and what it might look like if my tiny gray figure lifted her shirt up for a couple of strangers, but since the camera couldn’t see them, I hoped it would be innocuous, like flashing a ghost. The tattoo itself was bare, only line work done three weeks ago. It was my first big piece, an impulsive decision after a dramatic summer break-up.
I had other tattoos, smaller ones I didn’t show off. At first I was attracted to changing the image of myself, placing tokens on my body to center who I was or where I’d been. After a while, I began to enjoy the dry, dull pain and the way each tattoo forced me to confront my own commitment to be hurt over and over again. The first tattoo, a set of stars trailing down my spine, was the most painful. After the artist inked the first line into my skin, a shroud of dread held me in the chair. I couldn’t stop him. If I did, I’d be walking around my whole life with this symbol of weakness etched into my skin. When he dragged the needle down, he focused one hundred percent of his attention on me, and I liked that. The tattoo scabbed over so badly that the color mottled.
After that, I wanted to go bigger, more detailed, in more sensitive places. Cursive words on the backs of my thighs: hopeless/romantic. A moon on my ankle, where the skin was so thin the needle felt like splintered toothpicks rubbing frantically against the bone. The decision to get the owl tattooed right on my stomach was physical proof of my control over my body. The wings feathered out toward my hipbones, and the tail pointed down toward the most interesting part of my body, or at least the one that seemed the most interesting to other people. My mother lamented how it might stretch if I were ever to have a child, but I told her I wasn’t worried about that. The outline had been excruciating. The closer the artist got to my pelvis, the more I clenched my abs against the pain. I’d made it through the worst of the thick line work; all that remained now was the color.
The next day at work, Jenny told me Matt and Frances were interested in me, like I was a subject to be explored. When I asked what she meant, she simply said, “They want to get to know you more.”
A week went by. Jenny gave me Frances’s number. I called, a landline. Her voice sounded thick and warm. She asked if I was free that Saturday.
When I arrived, I located the garden-level window of their apartment and checked my phone. I was already ten minutes late.
Their door was hidden from the street. There were nail holes on the doorjamb where the numbers were supposed to be. The frame was a gray muted blue, painted with acrylic, the kind that peels off with age. I placed my index finger against a hole on the hinge side of the door and a paint tag caught underneath my fingernail. The lip of it nudged in between the tip of my finger and the underside of my nail. The feeling of separation, of space between these two minuscule parts of my body, and the gummy yield of the acrylic filled my chest with a sense of relief. I pulled until the tiny string of paint snapped.
Frances opened the door, the light catching her deep brown eyes. “Come in, come in!” she said. She grabbed my hand and pulled me into the house. Her hands were cool and small, like clutching a tiny animal. I felt as if I could squeeze too hard and somehow kill it.
“Hey,” I said. “Frances, right?” I tried to smirk, and she smiled back, revealing a slight space between her two front teeth.
“You can call me Frankie,” she said.
Up close, Frankie’s skin was smooth and almost poreless. She had freckles across her nose and cheeks, and her teeth seemed unnaturally white. My teeth were slightly yellowed and I did too many things to my body that made it feel old and tired, as though I were dragging all of the mistakes I’d ever made behind me with each step.
Frankie closed the door and walked me in. My eyes struggled against the light. The entryway led into the living room, where a baby-blue velvet sofa wrapped around two whole walls, oriented to a wooden entertainment center. A few hand-drawn pieces of art hung framed on the wall; I guessed they were Matt’s work. I remember the distinct feeling of their adulthood: a home with furniture, kitchen utensils, bathroom cleanser, a wipe-off calendar. When we’d moved to the trailer, my mother got rid of most of our furniture, and I slept without a mattress for some time. It seemed to take years for us to recollect the things we needed—sharp kitchen knives, a cutting board, a dented saucepan with tarnish crusted around the rim.
Frankie’s sparrow hands led me through the kitchen. A stack of old bills, a strangely shaped bag, a napkin holder, and some stains littered the circular dining-room table. A hand-painted glass vase with dried willow branches leaned against the napkin holder. The clutter betrayed the neatness of the rest of the house. She pulled a chair out for me and I sat. Salt crumbs pushed into my elbows when I placed my arms on the table. I looked around. Aside from the high chair, there seemed no
