Picture This

Picture This


The photographs I took this morning—yes, with my clothes off—are still warm from the Eckerd’s photo lab on Denton Avenue. But I’m not some porn star whore. I couldn’t be one if I wanted to.
All I need are some stamps from the post office, which closes in twenty minutes. I should have walked—this stupid bus stops every twenty feet, letting off one person after another. It’s miserable on here. Somebody’s baby is crying. Exhaust filters in through the opened windows. At least I got the last free seat—window seat, just behind the side door exit in the middle of the bus—but it was on the wrong side. A tall kid in a Braves cap, maybe sixteen, looms to my left, leaning against the handrail. His sweaty orange fingers alternate between the pole and a bag of Cheetos. Jesus. His head phones blare Eminem. I fix my eyes to the window, which has a round greasy spot from somebody’s head leaning against the glass. My right hand steadies the crisp yellow envelope in my lap, addressed to Jacob Kirkpatrick of Ithaca, New York. I take shallow breaths, not wanting to take in this petroleum filth or Cheeto-stink or any of this ick. Maybe I’m wise to stay in most of the time.
Old fashioned disposable cameras and one-hour processing at Eckerd’s is perfect for me. Not exactly going to borrow my mother’s digital, you know? I’ve gotta get these photos out today while I’ve still got my nerve up. Even though Eckerd’s is corporate-owned, it didn’t seem to have any silly-ass Bible-belt rules about what they print. The carpet was stained, the ceiling oddly low, and the photo-lab chump (named Heath) amused the heck out of me, though no doubt my pictures provided him significant entertainment too. I sat in the plastic chair next to the candy machine and waited sixty-seven minutes for my pictures to be developed. Heath didn’t look at me once. I bought one palmful of Mike and Ikes, another of Skittles, and ate them one by one. Here you are ma’am, photo-man said when the pictures were ready, steering his eyes from me, looking at the Nikons under the glass counter. Nine-fifty, please. Heath tapped his fingers and blushed. I pulled a ten from my wallet and high-tailed it into the restroom to make sure the pics came out okay.
If I can get through that, I can get through anything. I figure, if nothing else, Heath has a decent story to tell his wife, if not his kids, tonight.
Want to know what Heathie will tell his wife? Not just that some girl apparently shot an entire roll of herself more or less naked, lying on the wooden trunk in her bedroom and in various other places around her house (backporch, in front of the hallway mirror).
Anyhow I bet Heath won’t be two minutes in the door before he’s telling his wife about the distorted waxy skin that covers my tits and arms, the skin-grafted pearly pocks. Why would she do that? Heathie’s woman will ask, perplexed but distracted, stirring Rice-A-Roni or something, suddenly wondering if Heath ever develops nude photographs of hotties he neglects to mention. I’ve got it: an unpleasant image of Heath jacking himself in the break room will linger in her mind, while Heath will go on about how my ear (if you could call it that) is a seared waxy knob on the left side of my head. I got a nice shot of all this while straddling a lawn chair on the back porch. Just for Jacob, so he won’t forget.
The bus halts for the sixtieth time, a car behind us bleeps its horn, and a big lady waddles to the middle of the bus to get off. She sees me and then she looks past me. Only thing I despise more than getting stared at is being looked past. Most people’s glance-time-to-averted-eye-time ratio goes like this: every second of looking requires at least twenty subsequent seconds of looking away for good measure. Most people aren’t completely rude, you know. Poor bastards don’t know what to do when they see me coming. Actually, this particular lady didn’t even look for a full second. Her boots hit each step, one, two, three, and out she goes. It’s a miracle she doesn’t rock the bus.
From the front of the bus comes our newest passenger, her cane feeling the floor, leading her straight to the only empty seat, next to yours truly. Why now? I bury my chin to my shoulder, palm to face. Do you think it’s better to just let the entire world see your mangled face, or try to hide, and only let, oh, half the population notice? Maybe your life revolves around questions like whether to go to school or get married or go Geico or what to eat for dinner, but this factor guides my every movement. My mother says I should just stand proud, love myself, stop hiding. Finish the GED I started four summers ago, get in touch with Jesus. She says I can do a distance ed program if I want. She says I don’t have to go back to the grocery store gig if I don’t want to (trust me, I don’t). She says that if I look for goodness I will find it. Isn’t that just about exactly what you’d expect my mother to say?
This lady must be the oldest person I’ve ever seen. Seriously. She’s got this big straw hat with a fat, fake lily sitting in it, and she’s wearing a green skirt with knitted beige stockings. White, thick-soled Rockports too, which she crosses at the heels. Probably en route to church or Bingo, right? Or maybe she’s got a boyfriend in a home. The hat is a little weird. But I can’t exactly talk shit about questionable hats.
Oh, excuse me, Granny whispers, breathing heavy. Granny opens her purse, pulls out a single pink tissue, and blows her nose very softly. She reeks of baby powder. She turns to me and says―pausing between each dim word―Smile, sweetheart. You’re too young to be frowning that hard. She chuckles, her teeth clicking, and I remain still, eyes to the window.
Do I have to respond to that?
I can feel it. I should have walked.
A faulty gauge, too little water in the boiler, too much heat, as it was explained to me weeks after my fifth surgery, caused the steam engine tractor at the Buncombe county fair to explode, launching shrapnel and pressurized steam at my body. Not Jacob’s body. Mine. On my seventeenth birthday. The last I remember at the fair grounds: craning my neck and searching the crowd for Jacob, who’d left me alone in the way long Wicked Raptor roller coaster line to visit the restroom. I wanted Jacob to come back so he could see me do the cow face (you know, mouth open, tongue hanging out, eyes rolling stupid—which, by the way, always cracked him up) at these little kids who were riding that big old tractor with shiny green wheels. I had those little kids totally cracking up, too, at least until the hissing sound started from the tractor engine, a little bit like my grandmother’s cabbage steamer made, except fifty times louder. About ten seconds later the tractor exploded. The boom, I’m told, was heard as far as the next county.
But they say I’m lucky. That’s surely what the parents of those children who were actually riding that big old steam engine tractor would say. I try not to forget that. But, basically, Jacob took a leak in a makeshift outhouse while I got my skin melted off. He didn’t even have to watch me.
The bus turns a sharp corner onto Main. Only another mile or so till the post office stop. I must, must, must send these pictures today. Otherwise I’ll start worrying and have one of those should I or shouldn’t I? crises.
Well, I tell you, must be a hundred degrees, Granny says. I can feel it. She’s sneaking her look, pretending to look past me out the window, as if that Amoco station were the most interesting thing ever. I never take this kind of bait.
Once my mother caught Jacob in my bed. And, God, was she pissed. The look of boyish alarm on his face. The whole fiasco was beautiful. I had a life back then. The deliciously simple crap we all used to worry about. If only I’d let Jacob go all the way. If only, if only, if only. The pleasure of being Jacob’s first, of ever getting laid, got ripped from me and I’ll bet Granny over here gets more action than I could summon these days. I sure hope he likes fucking Eliza Grace Sellers, of Washington, DC, his apparent bride to be. An intense-looking city-slicker working on her master’s in comparative politics, who did Peace Corp in Chile after she finished up at Brown. All this I learned from the Sunday Asheville Citizen Times while slurping my corn puffs. Just shoot me, okay?
Do you think I should address to these pictures to Miss Eliza Grace Sellers too, or just to Jacob? Or Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Kirkpatrick? Ha. He has no business forgetting me. He’s done well, remarkably well, in “remembering me” department for the past seven years. But he’s gotten distracted. Señor Kirkpatrick 1) didn’t call me last month on the anniversary of my accident, which should be extra easy to remember, since it’s also my birthday, and 2) had the nerve to run that engagement announcement, without warning, knowing that I always read the paper (what else is a girl who’s been confined to a bed for the better part of seven years going to do on a Sunday morning but read about the exciting lives of others?). He didn’t even call. No card. No wistful I’ve been thinking about you. No respect. Thankless pisshead forgot me, obviously needs a little reminder of what didn’t happen to him. It might even enrich his life. Make him appreciate what he’s got. Couldn’t we all use that? Even I know I could have it worse.
It isn’t that I wish it happened to him. But straight-up cheer for his flawless skin and meaningful, med school life and impending honeymoon just isn’t something I can stomach. It just isn’t fair. Had Jacob gotten hit too, at least we would have had each other. At least we might have gone down in Waynesville history together. The couple that burns together stays together. So much for I’ll love you always and We’re soul mates and We were made for each other. If anybody ever tries to feed you that horseshit, run like hell. Trust me, if you think they’ll stay by your side when your number is up to get scorched and scarred and shitty, you’re probably wrong.
It would be a lie to tell you that he dropped me flat on my ass, flaunted about with some new chick the next week, couldn’t remember my name. Jacob’s better than that, which why I’m still stewing two thousand seven hundred days after the accident, the beginning of our end. Well, my end, anyhow. Did I mention that we got voted Best Couple by the yearbook superlative staff in eleventh grade? We got our picture taken in front of an oak tree outside the student center, Jacob’s arm around me. I smiled for that. So did he.
Actually, my face made several smiling appearances in that particular yearbook, almost as though somebody knew I wouldn’t be back for senior year. Pretty freaking pathetic that I haven’t got anything better to do than relish my high school yearbooks, wouldn’t you say? Volleyball, Spanish club, ecology group. There’s a cute picture of Jacob and me, with some other friends, serving macaroni and hot dogs at the downtown shelter. We think we’re working hard, we think we’re important, we think somebody might give a fat damn that we were there. But I’m sure I’m the only one who remembers, or cares, or even needs this memory.
Do you think she knows about me? I can’t decide about that. Jacob’s family has some nerve putting that announcement in the Waynesville paper. His mother can rot. I know she probably told Jacob it was good for him to move on from me. And, God, who could say she was wrong?
Jacob stuck it out with me for a good while—most of senior year anyway—but long afternoons changing my dressings and chatting with my mother about my bed-ridden progress apparently didn’t do it for him. Talk of finding a college together, of backpacking through Spain together, of teaching our hypothetical children to know right from wrong―all that talk died down pretty promptly. A bunch of talk, undone, erased, like it never happened. A sort of slow, subtle release, as though I might not notice if he just slipped from me and went off to college and a new life without me, so long as he didn’t let the door slam on his way out.
Sure is a hot one, ain’t it? Granny tries me again. From the corner of my eye I can see the brim of her straw hat bobbing. I watch the window. Ryan Street has changed in the past couple years. Prissy Polly’s Barbeque has morphed into a crisp-looking Jiffy Lube, and a new library is coming up on the block next to the thrift store, in place of the former Skate-O-Rama, the wildly romantic site of my first middle school smooch, circa 1991.
The bus grinds to a stop again, and a neon-clad biker flies by. It’s 4:45. Two more stops to the post. The doors whoosh open and Granny tries to pull herself up with her duck-handled cane. She’s struggling, swaying back and forth. What am I supposed to do, give her a little push from behind? Her big straw hat is lopsided and she doesn’t know it. God help me when I get old.
Granny carefully places one Rockport before the other and scoots herself toward the exit. One hand on the metal bus railing, the other gripping the blue duck bill so hard her fingers have paled. Whew. You all must think I’m a hundred years old.
Cheeto-boy removes his headphones and cuts the volume. He stops his gyrating and says, Not at all, ma’am. Take your time.
Is he kidding?
Granny reaches the stairs, right in front of me. This ordeal has taken like ten minutes and she’s gone maybe three feet. The damned post office is going to close.
The bus driver cranes his neck to see what’s taking so long. When he sees that someone born in, oh, 1890 is the problem, he smiles and wipes his brow.
Granny grimaces and maneuvers down step number one. Sorry for the hold up, folks, she calls over her shoulder.
Between steps one and two, the craziest shit suddenly happens: I see the straw hat fling forward, fly right out of the bus, straight to the grassy bank. She’s sprawled out on the ground, her Rockports soles face-up, her hat half-off. It’s utterly insane. The fake lily gets caught in a breeze and flutters about until it lands in the back vent of her green blazer. I don’t know why, but I think it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, that lily landing there. The way it quivered mid-air, like it was deciding whether it wanted to return to her hat or find a new place to rest. Totally absurd. Reminded me of that white thing floating at the end of American Beauty, except funny.
Everybody’s trying to help. It’s like a contest to see who can help the most. Seriously, does the whole bus need to get up? I feel bad, but this commotion is ridiculous. I stare at my lap, the yellow envelope, trying to think of something else. Anything. Should I get up too? Somehow I’m exempt from all this. I’m the only one not sticking my neck out saying Oh my God, I hope she’s okay. They can handle this. I mean, she hit the grass and pretty much got right up, right?
Sure, they all look worried, but if she’s really hurt, are any of them going to nurse her back to health? Will they visit her in the hospital and endure the awkwardness that comes with visiting injured strangers? Will their prayers do her any good? Will they do her grocery shopping for her? Is anyone going to make sure she isn’t lonely? No. Over dinner they’ll talk about the crazy thing they saw on the bus but forget her tomorrow.
Cheeto-boy has his arm around her shoulder, talking to her, brushing grass clippings off the front of her skirt. Ma’am, are you sure you’re okay? Let me help. He helps the old woman back into the bus, and people find their seats again. He says something about maybe taking her to the emergency room, though he seriously doubts anything is broken. Really, I’m all right. They’re so close that I can smell them: Cheetos and baby powder mixed together. I’ll be just fine. Thank you for your help, son.
I keep my eyes down, staring the black ink scrawled across the envelope in my lap. Jacob Kirkpatrick, 147 Westmont Avenue, Ithaca, NY. I run my right index finger across the letters, feeling how I scratched the ball-point into, and nearly through, the thick yellow paper. Man, was I pissed when I wrote his name. I feel the rectangular shape of the pictures inside, slightly wider than the palm of my hand. My hands look smooth against the envelope, seeming far away and oddly delicate, somehow leaner than I’d known.