Wounds
No one gets out unscarred. Dorothy Parker knew this better than most. Her wit paid the bills and made her friends, but it was also her protection.“I know that ridicule may be a shield,” she once wrote, “ but it is not a weapon.” In this issue, our writers dive into how they healed from the things that hurt.
The Bruise
Word Count 997
The bruise bloomed into something resembling the Horsehead Nebula--a base of yellow ochre covered by a speckled paisley of purple and red dots. It covered my entire thigh and inched upwards towards the hip. The district attorney asked if I could come to his office so they could take a picture. I wore a dress so I could lift it without taking all my clothes off. They weren’t supposed to include my face, but the photographer had captured the curve of my lips. I was smiling.
At the trial, when they introduced the photo as evidence of my injury, I saw that smile and was horrified.
Mister Put his Subpoena in my Virginia
Word Count 1948
I was sitting at the bar with Detective Angela “Mac” Morales after a guilty verdict in a case we had no business winning. We were doing what we do best– drinking too much and making what just happened in trial much better than it really was.
We first met on the hockey case, which we now call the “hockey ho” case. At the time, I could have sworn Mac was a Homicide detective, not a Sex detective. but she told me she ‘quit’ Homicide and ‘transferred’ to Sex, in order to ,“...(G)et away from ‘lying-ass witnesses, motherfuckers who buck me, no-shows to trial, and ungrateful pieces of shit.” She said that it didn’t take her long to figure out that in Sex, she still had “lying-ass witnesses, motherfuckers who bucked her, no-shows to trial, and ungrateful pieces of shit.” I guess you could say it was love at first sight and we have worked cases ever since.
Itch Witch
Word Count 900
Moments after babies are born, they bloom into soft, adorable, dewy things. I also bloomed except into red scabby riot of eczema. Covered from head to toe. Word was I would outgrow this unfortunate phase, and soon enough I would be the irresistible bonny baby who made people want to blow raspberries on my rounded tummy.
Never happened.
Not only was I red and scabby, but my eyes, lips, and throat, though you couldn’t see that, would swell at the slightest provocation. A breeze through a tree I was allergic to, the smell of fish frying through an open window would swell my eyes shut. My poor mother, how many baleful looks did she get wheeling a daughter around who looked like she had gone ten rounds with Jake LaMotta? Good thing there was no such thing as social services back then.
The Bullet Hole
Word Count 1482
Dark, I remember dark. Someone knocking. And a softer sound, breathing. Maybe crying. I was thirteen, not allowed to answer the door at night.
Our house was miles out of town. Mother had died; my father, who was a country doctor, kept saying he was going to sell the place and get a smaller one in town where he wouldn’t have to worry about me at night. But he never did.
Now the sound was flap-flapping, like wings.
A window in the stair landing looked down on the stoop. A shadow.
“Please! Help me.”
I put on a robe and went down. The door was locked but never bolted until my father got back from a night call.
After unlocking the door, the porch light suddenly flooded the doorway, and the man-shadow seemed to jump at me.
The Break Up
Word Count 1687
“It was so romantic,” my best friend Jennifer said, “the way he’d walk you home after he made you dinner.”
Yes, and after I put my key in the door of my beach bungalow, Ian would sweetly hug me and say, “I love you.” I’d tell him the same.
I was so happy when he and I reconnected during the summer of 2022, hanging out at the Jersey Shore, catching up on all the decades we’d been apart. We had not seen each other since 1975, the year we were both coming out as gay.
Ian’s surprise reappearance had been perfect timing. While I loved relaxing in the beach community where I’d spent every summer of my youth, I felt lonely living alone in the little vintage house I’d inherited. My parents were gone and I was no longer young.
There Are Skeletons in These Dirts
Word Count 1194
I fell for Christina because I felt how Christina fell for me, and I like how that feels. I have never been motivated by romance. While my sisters were playing house, I played school. I never dreamed about a wedding, I fantasized about book signings and Broadway standing ovations. I failed to swoon over boybands, opting for the distorted melodies of Billy Corgan and Marylin Manson. I choose my first boyfriend, a barbershop quartet singing, civil war reenacting 16-year-old, because he had a reliable car and was nerdy enough that his devotion and chauffeuring would be guaranteed. I had thought perhaps this was due to my queerness, but even after I switched to dating women, I experienced dating as the intersection of a social buddy, a sex partner, and that person who will help you move.
The Unkindest Cut
Word Count 1255
When I told my husband I was going to write something about circumcision, in some minds the cruelest of all wounds, he promptly said, "No man will ever read this. The topic upsets them so much." Circumcision is often described as the unkindest cut of all, and foreskin activism (pro and con) is on the rise. While the topic of female circumcision continues to blow my mind, at the same time, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask why, in this day and age, so many American males are, by default, cut. Reddit has devoted entire forums to the subject, including one titled, “Why is God in the Bible so obsessed with foreskin?”
The Suffering of Art
Word Count 1630
There is a certain place on the left side of the neck that marks a person as a violinist, a pressure sore from holding the instrument against tender skin. It’s where the hard spruce of the violin ribs contacts flesh, a lumpy red chafe mark the size of a quarter that comes from the effort of keeping the instrument from falling to the ground. Sometimes, the pressure sore bleeds, and then it hurts too much to hold the violin. It’s a self-inflicted wound that turns you into an artist. When I look at myself in the mirror, I can barely see the redness anymore. It is only a dim outline, flat and smooth, with the barest contours to its edges.
Thin Skin
Word Count 1827
If we took our skin off at the end of each day, the pile of flesh would weigh eight pounds. That’s twice as much as a liver. Fifteen times as much as a heart.
**
On a windy afternoon at the beach, I look out across the sand and notice my daughter hopping along the horizon. Two friends lift her by the elbows, like college kids carrying a drunk roommate home from a party. Her face appears scrunched into laughter. Squinty eyes. Open mouth. I assume they are goofing around. Being silly. Teenagers enjoying the sunshine.
That notion disintegrates as one of the friends calls out to me, her voice slicing through the sea breeze.
“Angie’s bleeding!”
Scar Tissue
Word Count 897
The man paced, clenching his hands open and shut. I could not tell if he was anxious or angry. When I called him by name, he gave me a tentative smile that disappeared as quickly as it had formed. I led him away from the reception area, winding through long, unremarkable corridors to my office. He leaned forward in the chair, rested his elbows on his thighs, hands folded, tucked under his chin, and watched intently as I readied my notebook and pen. I leaned in, sought eye contact, and held his gaze gently.
He began by telling me about his recent employment. It was my job to help patients find and keep work. I listened closely, trying hard to understand his accent.
Separation Anxiety
Word Count 1647
My husband died. Then, my father. And then, I decided to homeschool my kids.
I was in my early fifties by then, and they were the last two (of five) at home. Everyone had been to regular school, a mix of public and Catholic, and by then, it had been decades of weekly folders and busy work, and I was tired of it. I also knew that my kids deserved better, and I actually did have the time and ability to give it to them. A last chance, really. Both paths involved sacrifice, suffering, and, yes, pain in the ass. Which would I choose? Which was the most bearable at the moment? Over months of stewing, homeschooling seemed to be winning.
Problem: I didn’t really want to. Oh, I did because homeschooling is kind of cool now, but I also very much did not want to. Why? Laziness, selfishness, I suppose. They were a little skeptical themselves, torn between competing goods—be with my friends all day or get to sleep past seven every day?
Fever Dreams
Word Count 872
1. Gravity
At ten, my mother, Diana, spiked a high fever. The doctor spoke to her parents in the hallway on the other side of her closed bedroom door.
A light appeared on her ceiling. Diana longed to join it. She levitated out of her body, saw herself asleep in her bed below, and then drifted into the hallway.
“Polio,” the doctor said. “If she survives the night, she’ll never walk again.”
That’s not true! Diana thought, wanting to reassure her parents. Her mother’s hair was uncombed. Her father asked the doctor to leave, then filled a tumbler with bourbon.
Injury Information: Homicide
Word Count 458
I remember the chase through the house to our back bedroom. How you landed on the bed across from mine. How Mom cornered you with that copper dustpan behind her back like a surprise. And I was surprised. The way she lifted it up. Her fury in bringing it down on your thighs. Afterward, the two of us huddled on the island of mattress where it happened, and I was the one who cried, who needed comforting.
Next, the hole in your smile when we came to see you at the reform school. Your front tooth with its pretty twist extracted by a dentist known for creating makeshift braces for the inmates out of bamboo. I can’t believe that witch insisted on pulling it, you told us through nearly closed lips. Your mouth now a secret source of shame.