Her motions were replicated before her on the reflective glass in front. It depicted the wrinkled woman gently touching a scar on her wrist. A reminiscent look crept onto her face full of valleys- valleys which traced the points of her lips and eyes symmetrically. Her wrinkles represented years upon years of squinting in the sunshine, smiling at strangers, and sharing laughs with friends and family. They were permanent. Memories etched into her skin. Like mile markers lining the expressway, she had countless bumps and blemishes lining her body. The external organ which was meant to protect her from the elements and other physical damage was decaying before her eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time there wasn’t a bruise, a bump, a scratch, a break. She rolled back her sleeve and remembered a day of her youth on the blacktop.
Sneakers and boots and basketballs bounced across its coal black surface. It crumbled at a touch. Fragile and cracking, the pavement was the scene of the accident. A little girl, about the same height as her five-foot dresser at home, was skipping across that deteriorating blacktop. The girl had pale skin with the exception of her rosey cheeks. There was no makeup on her face, no blemishes to hide. She put an extra swing in her step to make her ponytail flip just right with each tiptoe. She hoped the boys in her seventh grade class were watching her as she pranced to her own song which played on repeat in her wandering mind.
A rolling basketball, lonely on the ground, caught her attention and she changed her direction to head toward it. A clever little boy saw this as an opportunity to tease the beautiful young girl. He snatched the soft orange ball, no longer grippy without having tiny bumps along its surface. Keeping the ball in his possession, the boy smirked and walked ahead without taking his stare off the young girl. Momentarily devastated, the girl acted on her emotions and followed this boy and ball past the chalk stains and the potholes and the sewer plates that marked the ground.
This initiated a game of keepaway. The object? Keep the ball away from the opposite sex. It was natural at this age to compete with the opposite gender, what with all the cooties you could contract by being on the same team as them.
Girls joined in to help the innocent girl; boys to help the conniving boy. The girl dropped the swing in her step and quickly developed a competitive stance which enabled her to pounce toward her prey effectively. She zeroed in on the ball, paid careful attention to the failed attempts of other girls on the playing field. She found the weak link on the boy’s team and started toward him. When her target received the ball, she took her opportunity. Unfortunately, she left behind her grace and her dignity. She successfully ripped the ball from the boy’s arms; however, not three steps later, the girl tripped over her own foot and took a tumble to the rough cement.
Laughs and giggles roared around her. She could feel the embarrassment creep across her face as it flushed red. The emotional pain of the embarrassment shielded her body from the physical pain of her bleeding arm. It wasn’t a scratch. Not a bump. It was a wound. A wound that would heal.
It’s something that serves as a constant reminder of her pain, her adventure, her struggle- whatever emotion overcame her at the moment of the branding. Her eye sees the broken skin not merely as a flaw to the coloring that coats her body, but as a memory. The young girl’s skin would soon heal the wound she received that day, but there’d be a permanent mark in its place. The brittle old lady reminisced about her scars and just like the physical pain was replaced by a mark, the embarrassment was replaced by a smile.