Burning Tulips

Chapter Seventeen: A Nose’s Job

52 Chapter Seventeen A Nose’s Job While doing dishes and listening to the radio, Mom suddenly looks me in the eyes and says, “You know, it’s too bad we don’t have money or I’d buy you a nose job. Nobody should have to live with a nose like that.” I was used to kids calling my nose a ski slope, a witch’s nose, and much worse, but Mom had always said my nose was just fine. It was Mom’s nose that had been broken several times and was large and crooked, never having healed quite right. But kids never made fun of her nose. Only Dad teased her about it. “You think my nose is that bad, Ma?” “It ain’t that ugly, but a nose is important. I hate it when someone tries to take my picture. All you ever see is my big nose.” “Ma, that ain’t true. Your nose isn’t that bad. You’re still pretty.” “I should’ve married that first man. He was a gentleman,” she says out of the blue. “What man?” “The one I got in the car accident with. I broke my pelvic bone, my leg, and my nose. And you know what? He not only offered to pay the hospital bills but he begged me to marry him.” “Why didn’t you marry him?” “Because I was foolish and thought I could do better. But after I broke my nose a second time by falling in the butter churn, only your dad offered.” “You think I won’t get anybody decent to marry because of my nose?” “I don’t know. It’s a shame you got to live with a nose like that. When you have a pretty nose, life is easier.” “What do they do to fix a nose, Ma?” “I think they break it and scrape the fat and bumpy parts off. It looks painful. I’ve seen pictures in a magazine, and those women got large bandages on their faces, and they can’t take them off right away. I’m too old to be worrying about having a nice nose,” then looking at me as if for the first time, she adds, “but you’d be real pretty with a new nose.” Diane Payne 53 I don’t know what to say. This is the first time my mother has let me know my nose is as bad as the kids say it is. “I bet I would have graduated from high school if I had another nose,” she goes on. “I thought Grandpa made all you girls quit school by the eighth grade because he didn’t think girls needed an education.” “Yeah, but I could have finished. My sisters got married young. I didn’t though. I had big plans for myself.” “Like what?” “It don’t matter anymore.” “Are you sorry you married Dad?” “Ah, that don’t matter anymore either. But I’m gonna warn you about one thing. All men change after you marry them.” “You mean Dad wasn’t like this when you married him?” “I wouldn’t have married a drunk. But he changed.” After the dishes are finished, I stand in front of the bathroom mirror and look at my nose for a long time. This hooked nose will only get me a drunken husband, a poor education, and a dismal future. Worse than finding out Mom doesn’t like my nose is knowing she is unhappy because she is married to a drunk and doesn’t have a high school diploma. But I know that isn’t the fault of her nose. It’s not that crooked. ...