Bearded Women Read online

  “She didn’t even have to be in class,” says Em.

  “I’m sure she would have rather been there than in the infirmary.”

  “Why can’t I get a cookie, too?” asks Em.

  “You’re trying to make her miserable,” I say.

  “I’m trying to make some money.”

  “You’ll get to eat at dinner.”

  “Not fair,” says Em. I walk past her to the refrigerator and find the chicken legs while Em huffs out of the kitchen. I am the mother of the bully and the mother of the bullied and I don’t always do the best job of negotiating it, but what am I supposed to do when my own child reminds me so much of kids who teased me when I was younger?

  My sister and brother and father and I all had ichthyosis. My brother was the oldest, I was in the middle, and my sister was the baby, so we had safety in numbers. My brother was an outgoing guy, the sort everyone liked, so while we did get teased, no one tried to gang up on us. Later he became an accountant and my sister went into architecture. Neither wanted to have kids. Both were worried when I got pregnant because there was a fifty-fifty chance I would pass on the condition. Ours wasn’t a bad childhood, but it wasn’t an easy one, and they didn’t want me to give that experience to someone else.

  Having a child entails an odd sort of narcissism. You decide that you’re attractive enough and a good enough person to create more of yourself. Sometimes I think I’d do it again. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t. One of my high school friends adopted because she’s diabetic and didn’t want to pass on the condition. But when I got pregnant with Jenna I was twenty-four and figured I should be able to have a baby, same as any other woman. After she was born with ichthyosis I didn’t plan on having another kid, figured the risk of having a smooth-skinned baby was too great. I didn’t want to breed rivalries. Understand that I love Em, I wouldn’t choose not to have had her, but the second pregnancy was a surprise.

  Tonight when I tuck the girls in bed I see Jenna’s arms are a little red, inflamed.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask.

  “No worse than usual,” she grumbles, glancing up at me with hard eyes. I don’t regret giving her three cookies. I worry Jenna hates me because of her skin. Worry there is nothing I will ever be able to do to make it up to her. I have to try in small ways.

  In the jewellery store I’m a gemologist, spend most of my day in a small room examining cut stones. Della owns the store, hired me to do appraisals and help her when she makes gem purchases, be sure that sellers have what they say they have. You can’t just take their word for it. Sometimes they try to give us lesser quality or even synthetic stones, but Della says they’d do it a lot more often if she didn’t have a gemologist.

  I keep a loupe in my pocket for the initial examination, to spot obvious fakes. Faux diamonds, for instance, have facets that are rolled a little, without the crisp, sharp edge that a real diamond would have, and they’re too clear inside, don’t have inclusions like carbon flecks or small cracks. In the back room I have a small laboratory for closer inspections. Everything fits on a tabletop—the coloured diamond grading set, electronic scales, refractometer, dichroscope, spectroscope, and ultraviolet cabinet. Sometimes Della calls me out into the store to do an on-the-spot appraisal with my loupe, give an estimate of what a stone is worth or if it’s genuine, but I don’t like fast appraisals because they involve too much guesswork. I hate being rushed, prefer the quiet of my lab and having time to prepare longer reports on specific gems. Those involve pictures and diagrams, describe the stone in terms of its colour and clarity, its measurement in millimetres, the dimensions of its cut and crown height, and any damage or chips that may affect the value.

  I love working with stones because of the lovely precision to the art, the weighing and measuring and calibrating. Sometimes I get a few skin flakes on the table when the cuffs on my sleeves aren’t tight enough, but I tend to lose myself in my work and my body becomes immaterial, an afterthought. That focus helps me survive on days when I’m terrifically itchy and uncomfortable.

  At the store I try not to think about my girls, but sometimes can’t stop myself from wondering if Jenna will get sick again or what Em is telling the other kids on the playground. Em is shy around adults, but not peers. Jenna is the opposite, good with older people, but hesitant with those her own age. I understand her wariness. Even a few adults cringe when they see my skin, but they’re not as rude or as hurtful as children can be.

  Two days after Em’s business fiasco, Jenna says her skin is dry and tight and it hurts to move. Her arms seem especially red, but I hate to let the girls miss school, and Em makes a big stink whenever Jenna does.

  “Can’t you try going to class in the morning?” I say to Jenna while I’m brushing my hair.

  She sits mournfully on the toilet. “Mom,” she says, “it’s really bad.”

  “You could take a tube of lotion,” I say.

  “You know how it feels when it hurts a lot,” she says.

  “And sometimes I just go into work anyway,” I say. “Because it’s my job.”

  Jenna closes her eyes. “It really hurts,” she says.

  And so I let her stay home. I’ve taken off work a couple days in the past year because of pain, because sometimes it’s best to sit in a cool bathtub for a few hours. Jenna has periods when her skin is worse—drier and thicker—than mine has ever been.

  While she draws water for her bath and dumps oatmeal and salt in the water, Em paces and rants and demands to know why she can’t stay home, too.

  “She’s making it up like she always makes it up when she says she’s sick,” says Em. “She gets out of everything.”

  “This is how it’s going to be, kiddo,” I say, handing her a bagel for breakfast because we’re running late. “You have to get to school now. We can talk more later.”

  Em pouts during the drive, doesn’t tell me good-bye when she gets out of the car.

  At work I feel lousy. My skin is particularly itchy, probably because I was in a hurry this morning and didn’t put on enough lotion.

  Just before I go on lunch break, I get a call from the elementary principal telling me that Em has been caught on the playground trying to sell Jenna’s skin. She managed to get quarters off three kids, but several other students told the teacher. Em’s going to spend the rest of the day in the office doing homework.

  “You love her more than you love me,” Em says that evening when I pick her up from the sitter. It’s the accusation all siblings make. What my brother and sister and I wailed to our parents from time to time.

  “I don’t,” I say. Which is what all parents say. What my parents said. But I worry sometimes. I don’t love one child more than the other. But Jenna has to learn how negotiate her body and she needs help to do it. I feel more for her than I do for Em. Is it favouritism or just empathy?

  In the passenger seat, Em starts crying.

  “You give her cookies,” she says. “You let her stay up later. You let her stay home from school.”

  “She’s older,” I say, “and today she was hurting.”

  “You punish me more,” she says.

  “I don’t love your sister more than I love you,” I say, almost yelling it. The sound reflects back from the windshield and fills the car. Em cringes. Funny how the more helpless people feel, the louder they get.

  “I don’t love her more,” I say quietly. “But I know she was in pain today because I have those same pains. And I punish her like I punish you when she does something that’s not nice.”

  Em stops crying but doesn’t say anything else. When we get home, Jenna is still in the bathtub, says she’s been in and out of the water all day. She towels herself off and we go to my bedroom so I can apply lotion. It’s best to do when our skin is still a little wet. I smooth it over her back and neck, places she can’t reach. />
  “I want some lotion, too,” says Em, wandering into the bedroom and sitting down beside me. I put some on her shoulders and her arms, but her skin is so smooth already, she doesn’t need it. After I spend a minute rubbing her back, I peer back at Jenna whose skin looks even worse to me than it did before.

  “I want some more,” Em says when I return to lotioning Jenna.

  “Jenna needs it around her neck,” I say.

  “If you’d rather have skin like this, be my guest,” says Jenna.

  Em thuds out of the room. At dinner she chews slowly, stares down at her plate, shrugs when I ask her about the history project that’s due next week.

  “Honey,” I say, “you don’t need lotion. Your skin is smooth enough.”

  “Brat,” mutters Jenna.

  “Hey,” I say and narrow my eyes at my older daughter.

  “Feeling like this doesn’t put me in a good mood,” says Jenna.

  By the end of the meal, both girls are scowling at me. After dinner Jenna sits on the couch in her bathrobe, starts doing the homework papers her teacher sent home with Em. I load the dishwasher. Em plods to the girls’ bedroom. I know I need time alone with her, think maybe next weekend Jenna could spend the afternoon with a friend and Em and I could be together, maybe see a movie or go to the park and get ice cream. I walk to the girls’ room, hoping the promise will cheer her up.

  When I brush through the door I find Em sitting in the middle of the floor, surrounded by a dozen or so of Jenna’s shirts and a ruler. She’s cut all the sleeves three inches down from the shoulder, scattered the pieces around her. I gape. Em smirks at me, measures down another sleeve before she hacks it in two.

  “Goddammit,” I yell.

  Twenty seconds later Jenna scrambles from the living room, starts crying when she sees Em surrounded by sleeves. “How am I going to go to school when everyone can see my arms?”

  “You don’t want to go anyway,” says Em.

  “That’s it,” I say. I grab Em’s arm and haul her up off the floor. She tries to wrest free but I’m holding tight. Em doesn’t flinch. She’s done what she wanted to do. Upset me. Jenna drops to her knees, gathers up her shirts and the sleeves. Any sympathy I felt for Em has drained through my hands and feet. The sleeves will have to be sewn back on Jenna’s shirts, and I’ll need to buy her several new ones because the seam will look funny.

  “Grounded,” I say. “No television or desserts for two weeks.” Em keeps squirming. I don’t know how else to punish this. Grounding alone isn’t adequate. I can make her pay for a couple new shirts, deduct money from her allowance, but there’s no way to make Em understand how it feels, the itching, the embarrassment, the need to be constantly covered.

  I snatch the scissors up off the floor, walk to Em’s dresser with my daughter still in tow, yank open a drawer and grab a long-sleeved lavender shirt. One of her favourites. I sit down on the floor near the still-crying Jenna, make Em sit beside me, and hand her the scissors and shirt.

  “Okay,” I say, “cut it up.”

  Em stares at me, then down to the shirt.

  “I’m not going to do it,” I say. “We’re going to sit here until you do.”

  When she makes the first cut it’s fast, on the bottom hem. She snips up to the neckline like she doesn’t even care. She takes off the sleeves, cuts them at the shoulder, then lengthwise into two pieces. When Em cuts down the back of the shirt, from the neck to the bottom hem, she’s not going as rapidly.

  “Twelve pieces of fabric,” I say. “At least.” I want something that can’t be stitched back together.

  Em cuts at a slower and slower pace as the shirt is reduced to dustrags. It was a gift from me for her ninth birthday, a shirt she wore to school almost every week. It looked nice on her. I tell myself Em’s growing, would have been too big to wear it in another half year. By the time Em has cut the shirt into eleven pieces, she’s like Jenna, near tears.

  “One more,” I say, laying a larger fabric piece in her lap.

  “I’m sorry,” she wails, but I know it’s not because of remorse.

  “Keep going,” I say.

  It takes her five minutes to make the cut. Em’s hands move like the scissors weigh ten pounds. She stands. The shirt pieces fall from her lap. Em flops on her bed and curls her body tight while I gather her sister’s shirts and sleeves, pad out of the room.

  “You should have made her cut up more than one,” Jenna says when I find her in the living room. “Or let me cut up one of her shirts.”

  “One is enough,” I say. “Especially since she had to do it.”

  “But she cut up fourteen of mine,” says Jenna.

  “And I’ll sew them back together,” I say, “or buy you new ones. Probably both.”

  “It still isn’t fair,” says Jenna, peering down at her arms then at mine.

  “No.” I sit beside her, go slack against the back of the couch.

  “Can I have some ice cream?” she says.

  “Sure,” I say because I can’t lift my hands to stop her, or to do much of anything else. Unfairness is the way of the world. But how do you tell that to a twelve-year-old? Maybe you don’t. You just give them ice cream.

  That night I sleep deeply, get up at ten in the morning and am greeted by a silent house. The girls have gotten themselves cereal for breakfast and are in different rooms—Em in the living room and Jenna in their bedroom, both reading. Jenna says good morning, tells me that the lotion we put on last night helped and her skin is feeling better. Em doesn’t say anything. I figure it’s best to let her pout.

  On Saturdays I work a short day, noon until four, and trust the girls to care for themselves for a few hours. They know the number for the jewellery store and the neighbours are around if they need anything. Today I am wary to leave them, but I tell myself that after a night of rest we’re all feeling better. Or at least less hostile.

  At work I don’t do much, just sit in my lab, brush the few skin flakes from my worktable, and stare at the tiny diamonds I use to grade colour. So small and even and perfectly cut.

  When I arrive home, Em runs up to the car and hugs my legs as soon as I get out.

  “Jenna locked me out of house,” she wails. Em says it happened when she went outside to get the mail, and she’s spent the past hour on the swing set. Jenna knows Em is terrified to speak with the neighbours, even though they’ve known her since she was born. I sit down with Em on the front step, pat her back before telling her to wait a moment longer while I go talk to Jenna.

  “She left me alone,” Em says, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Is she gonna get punished?”

  “Yes,” I say quietly.

  My older daughter is sitting on the couch wearing shorts and a T-shirt, her arms and legs flecked with white. She’s watching television.

  “How angry are you?” Jenna says.

  “I don’t know yet,” I say.

  Jenna says Em got mad at her because she wouldn’t let Em watch TV. “I said she couldn’t since she was grounded, then she went into the kitchen and got a pie plate and started burning skin flakes in it. It smelled awful. I yelled at her and told her to stop. She didn’t. So I grabbed the matches from her. When she went outside I locked the door. I didn’t want to put up with her shit.”

  “Jenna,” I sigh.

  “The pie plate’s still there.”

  I take three steps to the kitchen door and see it on the table, an aluminum tin with neat piles of small white flecks and tiny charred bits inside. Tweezers and a magnifying glass are on the table beside the pie plate. I imagine Em burning the skin with scientific care. The scent of char is thick in the house. Amazing how such tiny pieces can create such a stench.

  Jenna is watching some cartoon with little purple space aliens trying to take over a city. They kee
p getting run over by busses and shaken by dogs. It’s kind of dumb. Jenna giggles.

  “Finish the show,” I say. “But after that, grounded like your sister. Same rules apply.”

  Jenna nods like she hadn’t expected anything different. Sometimes you do what you have to do to get a moment of control. It’s not hard to notice how the house is quieter with Em outside. Occasionally, very occasionally, I wonder if she wishes she had ichthyosis, too. I need to collect my younger daughter, but for a moment I stand in the kitchen doorway, looking at the burned skin bits, savouring silence.

  Holes

  (or, Annotated Scrapbook,

  Sections Slightly Charred)

  Photo #1 (from personal archives): Most of my face. All of my nose but only my right eye. Too much of my hair. The new perm makes me look like a poodle.

  Photo #2 (from personal archives): My right hand with the quarter-inch hole in the center, between the bones of my ring and middle fingers.

  Photo #3 (from personal archives): My left hand, a mirror image of the right.

  It’s my first new camera in years. I have to test it out so I’m taking pictures of myself, the stuff in my apartment, and my hands. I had the holes made in them ten years ago. I was sure I’d earn more than two hundred a week travelling as The Fountain Woman.

  Newspaper photograph dated 15 March: The place where our trailer stood. Blackened cement block foundation, some of the charred metal shell, a few spindly trees in the background. Caption: “Local family meets with devastation.”

  I decided to get the holes made the year after my folk’s trailer caught fire, or rather exploded, because of a leak in the propane tank. Least that’s what the propane company said. They claimed it was a hardware problem, but I think it was because someone forgot to seal the tank properly when they’d delivered propane earlier in the afternoon. After the explosion there was little we could do to prove that, because there was nothing left. The trailer was gone. Or, more precisely, in little pieces scattered over a quarter-mile radius.