Skin (16 page)

And then Devin’s holding me, all warm and tight, and I’m crying harder. “Come on inside, Sep.”

I feel like I’m melting, nothing but bodily effluents, the things people flush away fast.

I shake her off and wipe at the tears. “Your mom doesn’t let Rattle in the house, remember?”

“She’s not home.”

“She’ll smell he was here and she’ll have an allergic reaction and you’ll be in trouble.”

“Shut up and come in, Sep.”

We go inside to her bedroom. Rattle sniffs everything, then collapses in a heap and falls asleep.

“Tattoos were a dumb idea, anyway, even if our fake IDs had worked.” Devin sits on her bed.

I plop down beside her.

“If this vitiligo thing really does keep going, what were you planning on doing—getting more and more tattoos?”

I imagine myself with nine hundred tattoos. “God, am I an idiot.”

“No you’re not. You’re the smartest person I know. You just can’t think straight about this whole thing. No one could. Anyway, I went on the Internet. There’s a site that
shows people who got tattoos years ago. Sep, they look really bad when you’re old.”

“You sound like Slinky,” I say.

“Who’s Slinky?”

“A girl who works in the department store. She’s become my mentor in life.”

“Oh yeah? How come?”

“I don’t know. I have the feeling she’s figured things out. Totally juicy.”

“You’ll figure things out, Sep. You always do.”

“I can’t! It doesn’t matter what my head does. It’s this goddamned body of mine.”

“Stop with the cursing, okay?”

I pull back and stare at her face. What a jerk I am. My best friend. The only one outside my family I’m honest with these days. I don’t want to offend her. And if I don’t want to be alone the rest of my life, I better shape up. People like me—defective people—we have to be nice, nicer than most others.

“I’m sorry, Devin.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

“Nothing’s okay. I’m afflicted. Like in medieval times. A curse has descended on my head.”

“See? I told you you were still Catholic. You always say
you’re not. But only a Catholic would talk like that. Or maybe a Jew. Rachel talks like that sometimes. You’re Catholic, Sep. You can take the girl out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the girl.”

I laugh. “Who told you that?”

“It’s a variation on something my father says.”

“You’re so smart.”

“And you’re surprised, aren’t you?” She looks at me slyly.

“I’m sorry if I treated you like a dumbo.”

“You don’t have to keep apologizing. You’re not a pariah yet.”

I blink. “You really are brilliant.”

I go home to cook Rattle a hamburger. After all, right is right. Plus I pop a vitamin pill. That’s part of my new regimen—it has all the vitamins and minerals a vitiligo victim needs.

In the middle of flipping the burger I remember that I didn’t even ask Devin what’s up with Charlie. All we talk about anymore is what’s up with me.

I’m an egotistical pig.

And I can’t blame that on vitiligo.

SLINKY WAS RIGHT AND Slinky was wrong. Hair and nails don’t have feeling in them, so maybe that’s why she classifies them as not alive. But they grow.

Take a hair shaft on a horse, for example. Under the skin, at the base of the shaft, there are two follicles. One is a growth follicle and the other is a color-producing follicle—which, of course, is the one I care about. Both are alive.

A popular way of branding horses is by freezing. You put a bitterly cold iron on the horse’s skin, which is covered with hair, and hold it there for the right amount of time with the right amount of pressure. The color-producing
follicles will die. So when new hair grows, it will be pure white.

On the other hand, if you press the freezing iron there too long or too hard, the growth follicles will die, too, and you’ll have a bald brand.

I stare at my own skin. Skin is more complicated than hair. It turns out that our skin is a single organ. The body’s heaviest organ. It has an upper layer, the epidermis, which looks smooth to the eye, but, in fact, is a bunch of hills and valleys. Its main function is to protect what’s under it. And it has a lower layer, the dermis.

Tattoo ink is injected between the epidermis and the dermis. But that’s not my concern anymore; I’m not getting tattoos. I’m reading about skin because my skin is my enemy right now. And what’s the old saying: Know thy enemy.

Below the dermis is a fatty layer. Under that are arteries and veins and nerves.

In most mammals the fatty layer is connected firmly to the skin. But not in all. So you can skin a rabbit easily, because the skin splits off like a jacket. You can’t do that to a mouse or a guinea pig. Or a human.

Okay. That’s a good thing about my skin. I can appreciate that.

Below the fatty layer is a sheet of muscle called the
panniculus carnosus
. In humans it covers the jaw and parts of the face. But in most mammals it runs all over the head and torso and halfway down the limbs. So a horse can twitch its flank when a fly lands on it, but people can’t. We can twitch the skin on our jaw, though. And make funny faces. Without the
panniculous carnosus
, our faces would be deadpan.

Okay. I’m grateful for my
panniculous carnosus
. I like my expressive face.

All right, Slinky, all right, all right. I love my skin, my lifesaving enemy. I have to. Like you say, any other choice sucks.

I close my computer as my phone beeps. A message from Joshua: “u there? talk to me.”

It’s Saturday, and only 9 a.m. I type: “ur awake early!”

“went 2 bed early. Grounded. Remember?”

“u won last nite. congrats.”

“thnx. 2 bad u weren’t there. I missed u.”

I type: “me 2.”

His answer is immediate: “still on for 2nite?”

My pulse speeds. I’m not good at sneaking. I never had to do it before. I let out my breath noisily. I can’t afford a month of being grounded: I’m like a fruit about to pass
from ripe to rotting. I have to stay in continual motion. Never in my life have I understood a swift or a tuna better. Time is running out—it’s now or never.

I type: “yes.”

“time?”

I’m babysitting for Sarah again. Mrs. Harrison almost cried with gratitude when I called her on Tuesday and said I could sit for her Saturday if she wanted. It was sort of Joshua’s idea, and sort of mine. We came up with it at lunch that day at the same moment.

I type: “they leave at 7. how about 8?”

“7:05.”

I laugh. Joshua acts like he’s the one with vitiligo. “What if they linger? 7:15.”

“7:10.”

I close the computer and go downstairs to do my homework. I like to work at the kitchen table.

Dad’s drinking coffee, probably his nine hundredth this morning, and looking out the back window.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“A fox.”

“Really?” I run to the window, but all I see is the bushes and trees at the rear of our yard. “Where?”

“He went by around seven.”

“Dad! That was hours ago.”

“I know. I come back every so often to look at where he went. He was big, with a huge tail—a real fox tail.”

“That’s what foxes have, Dad.”

He keeps looking out back.

So I do, too.

There are still tomatoes in Mamma’s little garden plot. They stand with brown leaves in their cone-shaped cages. In August we had a ripe armload every day. But now the few left are green.

A female cardinal alights on a tomato cage. A male watches her from the spruce. She moves her tail up and down, up and down. Is she doing it on purpose to drive that male crazy? Do males go crazy when it isn’t mating season?

“I’ve got more spots, Dad,” I say in the most level voice I can manage. My fingers grip the edge of the counter and turn white. But that’s bloodless white, not vitiligo white.

“You’ll always be beautiful, Pina.”

“Don’t say that. I can’t bear it when you say that. You have no idea what it means.”

“I have to say what I think.”

“But it doesn’t matter what you think. Can’t you see that, Dad?”

“It always matters what the people we love think.”

“I’m going to see Joshua tonight.” It came out—it just came out, like a hiccup or a sneeze.

He puts his coffee cup on the counter and folds his arms across his chest. But he’s still looking out the window. “You’re grounded for a month, aren’t you? This is only the beginning of that month.”

“I’m babysitting. He’s coming to help me.”

“Help you? Is that what you call it?”

“Yes, Dad. That’s exactly what I call it.”

He puts his whole hand over his mouth and slides it down to his chin, as if he’s rubbing away all the things he might have said. “Well, we get help where we can. Just don’t be foolish, Pina.”

“When have I ever been foolish, Dad?”

“Last weekend. Saturday night was pretty damn foolish.”

I kiss him on the cheek. “If that’s the only example you can think of, wouldn’t you say it’s about time?”

“Maybe that’s what it feels like to you, Pina. But foolish isn’t nearly as good as it’s cracked up to be.”

“OH, SEP, IS THAT YOU?”

I look up in surprise. “Hey, Ms. Martin.” She’s walking a huge white dog with hair in clumps like dirty clouds. “I didn’t know you lived around here.”

“I don’t. Or not that close anyway. But it’s Saturday, and Monster likes a good long walk on Saturday.”

I smile. “Her name is Monster?”

“It’s a he, actually. His real name is Mandar. It’s a good Hindu name for a male dog. But my niece dubbed him Monster. She was only four when I got him, and
Mandar
sounded like
monster
to her, I guess. Anyway, it stuck.”

Monster sniffs at my hand.

I scratch his big head, and wonder what he can feel through all that fur. Under it, his skin is pink for sure. Most dogs have pink skin regardless of the color of their fur. But dogs with black fur have skin in charcoal hues. And Dalmatians have pink skin with dark spots where the black fur grows. And if I keep thinking about skin, I may start slobbering like some halfwit.

“He likes you, Sep. Usually he’s diffident with strangers.”

“Probably he just smells my dog.” I straighten up. “Are you Hindu?”

“No. But I like Hindu things.” She pulls a chain out from inside her shirt. A fat yellow man with an elephant head hangs from it. “Do you know who this is?”

“Some god, right?”

“Lord Ganesh, in fact. Feel. Real ivory.”

It’s cool and smooth and seems almost soft. “Isn’t ivory white?”

“This is old. Real ivory yellows.” She slips it back inside and pats her shirt. “Ganesh removes all obstacles.”

I shake my head, holding in a laugh. “That’s a good trick.”

“Among the best.” Ms. Martin looks at me intensely, as though she’s about to say something important. It makes me nervous.

“I better keep going or I’ll be late to my babysitting job.”

“All right, Sep. See you Wednesday. You’re doing very well in dance club this year, you know. You have more of a sense of your body. It’s good to see that kind of real understanding. You’re becoming a warrior.”

I can’t help but blink.

She smiles. “You don’t remember when I talked about warriors, do you?”

My neck goes hot. “I know the warrior poses, but that’s all. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. I’m sure you were attending to something else equally important when I was talking about them.” She pats Ganesh through her shirt again. “If you build endurance in sustaining a warrior pose, you’ll be able to stand up for yourself, to argue without fear, to refuse without apology. Those are qualities of a warrior. That’s what I see developing in you, Sep.”

“Thank you, Ms. Martin.” I’m flushing with embarrassment. I look down and hurry on.

I feel weird about her saying I’m becoming a warrior. But she’s right: I do have more of a sense of my body now. And it’s getting stronger. Maybe that’s because it’s betraying me.

The front light is not on at the Harrisons’ house. They haven’t adjusted to September yet. Evening falls earlier every day. Somehow Mrs. Harrison is always behind.
Maybe she wants time to stop and wait till she’s ready for it. I can understand that. I don’t think it’s going to work out for her—or me—but, hey, I can understand it.