Jagged with Love

The Surgery

THe surGery ForM. Today her father shampoos her hair, gently, a blue basin on his knees and her head in his hands. Her arms lie stiff in their deliberate T, never leaving horizontal with the stitches. Tubes drain blood from left and right dorsal side, and occasionally pus seeps down. She is falling asleep, Mother having brought a clean towel, the fire still riding on top her ribs. Bearable, she thinks, bearable. There is less inside her body. It was simple: a map on each breast by black marker, skin, scalpel, gauze, more gauze. There was reduction, yes: the gene, cheated. Even now, she feels as though somethinghas been returned to her. Her father's fingers move easily round the bulb of her head. Here, since she is good and flat on her back for ten to fourteen days, she recalls separately the boys in junior high, goes through them each with the eidetic flourish of a calligraphy pen, settles on Stace McBremen, loops falling from his stupid name, his seamless name, his face she remembers with the scar above the lip from football, tawny hair, how he said to her in Home Ec, against the marmoreal cupboards, measuring spoons lightly in her hand, You know,you could be a pom star with those. There wasn't space to pull away, to pull back the puffs of baking soda falling to the floor. She rolls, almost to a dream, through the girls in junior high, tying a burgundy ribbon to the ponytail of appositioned Megan, EunJin, Kirstin, how they eyed her risen skin, told the others 47 what older sisters had said in excellent secrecy, A'9 more than a handful and ag.g'sjust beinggreecJy. Not enough, they whispered in corners, the word whore flitting against orange lockers. Today, her father squeezes the last ofthe suds from the ends ofher hair. Her eyes are closed, so she does not see the bubbles spill into the basin, desist, how her father's hands contract and expand in the water. Small bowls reposition. He is giving her the slosh and turn, ripple ofthe pool that washed her. She hears it, evenunder the lamella of stillness. She will forgive him bodies, this girl dozing, her blood slipping down. She'll think ofhis hands in her hair ayear laterwhen he is gone from them. When he bundles up the pregnant woman, headed for Des Moines. ...