She says, “No, that’s not right, either.”
She looks at her watch.
“Digri vrior gmjgi g giel,” I say.
“You’ll need to practice a lot, but on your own time,” she says. “Now, again.”
I say, “Jrogier fi fkgoewir mfofeinf fcfd.”
She says, “Good! Great! See how easy?”
On my pad with my pencil, I write:
Jump to the day they cut off the bandages.
You don’t know what to expect, but every doctor and nurse and intern and orderly, janitor, and cook in the hospital stopped by for a peek from the doorway, and if you caught them they’d bark, Congratulations, the corners of their mouths spread wide apart and trembling in a stiff, watery smile. Bug-eyed. That’s my word for it. And I held up the same cardboard sign again and again that told them:
And then I ran away. This is after my new cotton crepe sundress arrives from Espre. Sister Katherine stood over me all morning with a curling iron until my hair was this big butter creme frosting hairdo, this big off-the-face hairdo. Then Evie brought some makeup and did my eyes. I put on my spicy new dress and couldn’t wait to start sweating. This whole summer, I hadn’t seen a mirror, or if I did I never realized the reflection was me. I hadn’t seen the police photos. When Evie and Sister Katherine are done, I say, “De foil iowa fog geoff.”
And Evie says, “You’re welcome.”
Sister Katherine says, “But you just ate lunch.”
It’s clear enough, nobody understands me here.
I say, “Kong wimmer nay pee golly.”
And Evie says, “Yeah, these are your shoes, but I’m not hurting them any.”
And Sister Katherine says, “No, no mail yet, but we can write to prisoners after you’ve had your nap, dear.”
They left. And. I left, alone. And. How bad could it be, my face?
And sometimes being mutilated can work to your advantage. All those people now with piercings and tattoos and brandings and scarification …What I mean is, attention is attention.
Going outside is the first time I feel I’ve missed something. I mean, a whole summer had just disappeared. All those pool parties and lying around on metal-flake speedboat bows. Catching rays. Finding guys with convertibles. I get that all the picnics and softball games and concerts are just sort of trickled down into a few snapshots that Evie won’t have developed until around Thanksgiving.
Going outside, the world is all color after the white-on-white of the hospital. It’s going over the rainbow. I walk up to a supermarket, and shopping feels like a game I haven’t played since I was a little girl. Here are all my favorite name-brand products, all those colors, French’s mustard, Rice-A-Roni, Top Ramen, everything trying to catch your attention.
All that color. A whole shift in the beauty standard so that no one thing really stands out.
The total being less than the sum of its parts.
All that color all in one place.
Except for that name-brand product rainbow, there’s nothing else to look at. When I look at people, all I can see is the back of everybody’s head. Even if I turn super fast, all I can catch is somebody’s ear turning away. And folks are talking to God.
“Oh, God,” they say. “Did you see that?”
And, “Was that a mask? Christ, it’s a bit early for Halloween.”
Everybody is very busy reading the labels on French’s mustard and Rice-A-Roni.
So I take a turkey.
I don’t know why. I don’t have any money, but I take a turkey. I dig the big frozen turkeys around, those big flesh-tone lumps of ice in the freezer bin. I dig around until I find the biggest turkey, and I heft it up baby-style in its yellow plastic netting.
I haul myself up to the front of the store, right through the check stands, and nobody stops me. Nobody’s even looking. They’re all reading those tabloid newspapers as if there’s hidden gold there.
“Sejgfn di ofo utnbg,” I say. “Nei wucj iswisn sdnsud.”
Nobody looks.
“EVSF UYYB IUH,” I say in my best ventriloquist voice.
Nobody even talks. Maybe just the clerks talk. Do you have two pieces of ID? they’re asking people writing checks.
“Fgjrn iufnv si vuv,” I say. “Xidi cniwuw sis sacnc!”
Then it is, it’s right then a boy says, “Look!”
Everybody who’s not looking and not talking stops breathing.
The little boy says, “Look, Mom, look over there! That monster’s stealing food!”
Everybody gets all shrunken up with embarrassment. All their heads drop down into their shoulders the way they’d look on crutches. They’re reading tabloid headlines harder than ever.
And there I am, deep-fried in my cotton crepe dress, a twenty-five pound turkey in my arms, the turkey sweating, my dress almost transparent. My nipples are rock-hard against the yellow-netted ice in my arms. Me under my butter creme frosting hairdo. Nobody looking at me as if I’ve won a big anything.
A hand comes down and slaps the little boy, and the boy starts to wail.
The boy’s wailing the way you cry if you’ve done nothing wrong but you got punished anyway. The sun’s setting outside. Inside, everything’s dead except this little voice screaming over and over: Why did you hit me? I didn’t do anything. Why did you hit me? What did I do?
I took the turkey. I walked as fast as I could back to La Paloma Memorial Hospital. It was almost dark.
The whole time I’m hugging the turkey, I’m telling myself: Turkeys. Seagulls. Magpies.
Birds.
Birds ate my face.
Back in the hospital, coming down the hallway toward me is Sister Katherine leading a man and his IV stand, the man all wrapped in gauze and hung with drain tubes and plastic bags of yellow and red fluids leaking into and out of him.
Birds ate my face.
From closer and closer, Sister Katherine shouts, “Yoo-hoo! I have someone special here you’d just love to meet!”
Birds ate my face.
Between me and them is the speech therapist office, and when I go to duck inside, there’s Brandy Alexander for the third time. The queen of everything good and kind is wearing this sleeveless Versace kind of tank dress with this season’s overwhelming feel of despair and corrupt resignation. Body-conscious yet humiliated. Buoyant but crippled. The queen supreme is the most beautiful anything I’ve ever seen, so I just vogue there to watch from the doorway.
“Men,” the therapist says, “stress the adjective when they speak.” The therapist says, “For instance, a man would say, ‘You are so
Brandy is so attractive you could chop her head off and put it on blue velvet in the window at Tiffany’s and somebody would buy it for a million dollars.
“A woman would say, ‘You are
Brandy Alexander looks her Burning Blueberry eyes at me in the doorway and says, “Posing girl, you are
Brandy’s voice, I barely hear what she says. At that instant, I just adore Brandy so much. Everything about her feels as good as being beautiful and looking in a mirror. Brandy is my instant royal family. My only everything to live for.
I go, “Cfoieb svns ois,” and I pile the cold, wet turkey into the speech therapist’s lap, her sitting pinned under
