This is my first workshopped fiction
piece. C.S. Lewis once said, “We
read to know we are not alone.”
Back from the Summer
by Molly Dawkins
It hurt,
but she didn't say anything. Lying on the rubbery pale blue table, eyes
watering from the light staring at her from above. A shadow comes across as a
man with a tool like a tiny dagger goes for her face. He pokes, then takes his
thumbs and squeezes, pinching her skin.
"I'm
allowed to do this," he says, "because I'm the dermatologist and I'm
wearing gloves. Don't go home and do this yourself."
He
continues to poke at her face, causing her to bleed. The man starts to become
blurry, she feels someone grab her hand, realizes her eyes are closed and opens
them. Four pairs of wide eyes watch her.
"You
passed out, are you okay?" A nurse is holding her hand.
Is she
okay? That question still bothers her even after months have gone by since she
got back home to the small town, her small town, in Mississippi. It didn’t use
to before, before she spent a summer working on an Indian reservation all the
way across the country in the southern part of Washington where most often
people aren’t okay. Kids hear their mom getting beat up in the next room, and she
couldn’t walk very far without meeting someone in mourning. Suicide rates are
off the charts, and everyone is affected by alcoholism in some way or another. If
she closes her eyes, she can go back to the day she saw a bruise on that
4-year-old girl’s face. The pain is so visible because there’s not much to hide
behind in the poverty-stricken valley that’s strangely surrounded by beautiful
mountains. When she looked at the mountains, she almost forgot the mess of the
valley.
Some
might attribute her annoyance with this question to culture shock, but she’s
pretty sure it’s a better awareness of how not
okay people generally are, that bugs her. Everywhere she goes now there’s a
“How are you?” attached to the “Hey” greeting. People aren’t even thinking
about it. She starts to notice out of a robotic nature because she’s asked so
often, or because she knows the person she’s talking to isn’t actually interested
in how she is, or because she doesn’t want to involve anyone else in the mess, like
everybody around her, she always replies, “fine” to that question.
She can
tell she’s been in her head too long. The nurses look like they’re about to run
out for another doctor, so she nods. Nodding, that’s what they want her to do.
They don’t care if she’s okay or not. They don’t care that by the end of the
day she’ll probably be in her closet. They don’t want to know that’s where she
goes when she feels helpless.
"Here,
take this." They hand her a white cloth. "Apply pressure."
She holds
it to her face. They give her a lollipop.
"Alright,
let me see," the nurse says after a few minutes. The show is over now, so
it’s only her and one nurse. She lifts the cloth.
"I'm
going to put a band-aid on that spot on your chin. We can't have you walking
out in the waiting room with blood all over your face."
No, she
thinks. We wouldn’t want people to
actually see what’s been going on in this room.
She gets
in her car and takes the band-aid off. She looks in the mirror, a bunch of tiny
red dots cover her face. She pulls back her long brown hair and then takes her
thumb, licks it and tries to get rid of the unwanted color. She turned 18 last
month, she didn’t think adults had to deal with acne. She reaches for her
foundation and brushes on a new layer of perfect skin tone. Key in the
ignition, she cranks the car. She has to go meet her boyfriend Sam. Her hand
shakes as she reaches to change the radio station.
She walks
inside. He’s not there yet, he’s always late. She picks a booth by the wall,
writes her name on the table with her finger as she waits, J-A-M-I-E. She
starts to write it again, this time in cursive. J-A-M…
“Jamie?”
She looks
up. It’s Sam. He’s wearing a tan polo under his hoodie, it almost blends in
with his skin. He should be wearing the green shirt she got him for their
one-year anniversary, it really brings out his eyes.
“Oh, hey,
Sam.” She erases her name in the pretend ink off with her sleeve.
“How was
the dermatologist?” he asks as he sits down.
“Just
fine,” she says.
“I need
to tell you something.” His eyes sail off to the left. He’s watching a guy
wearing an orange shirt that says “Fear the Beard” pick up a kid from its
stroller. “I can’t do this anymore,” he continues.
“What do
you mean? What’s wrong?” These questions are a formality. In the back of her
mind, she knew this was coming.
“You’re
different since you got back from the summer. You won’t let me in anymore.
You’re holding me at a distance. I don’t know why either. You know you can
trust me, but this can’t work unless we can both be open with each other.”
He’s still
talking, but none of it’s making sense. She’s trying to make him see reason,
but it doesn’t even look like he’s listening. She’s just talking, she’s rambling,
she just used a rubber band as an illustration for their relationship. If you
pull it long enough, it stretches out and never goes back to its original
shape. He wants the original shape.
“Then I
guess we’re done here. That’s it,” she says. She gets up, grabs her bag, and
starts walking towards the door. She opens the door herself.
Her eyes are
glued to the ground as they walk on the concrete sidewalk. Her legs are moving,
but she doesn’t remember telling them to. Sam is lagging behind. She wishes he
had stayed inside and let her walk alone. One foot in front of the other,
stepping on the cracks. His hands are in his pockets. He’s wearing those dumb
flip-flops, in the middle of winter, the ones with the outline of a pineapple
on the bottom. They’d had to stop to buy them at that tiny shop off Beaver Dam
Road after he had ruined his other ones racing down the beach. Though it might
have been her fault. The old ones had snapped after she tripped him to get a
head start.
People are
walking past them now. There are too many people. They shouldn't have met here
on a Friday afternoon. She had to park too far away. She crosses her arms. Out
of the corner of her eye she can see he's still behind her. The pavement won't
end. And then without warning, it does. She stops. He walks a few steps to
reach her, and then he stops too. Nodding to the left, she says, "I'm that
way."
Pointing
the opposite direction, he says, "I'm that way." Their eyes meet. She
hopes he doesn't see her. She says, “See ya” and knows it will be the last. She
doesn't know why she came here. She wanted to fix it, but instead ruined it
all. She doesn't look back. One foot in front of the other.
She pulls
into the driveway, it feels like someone’s squeezing her heart and they won’t
let go. She wishes they’d let go. She gets out of the car, so she must still be
breathing. She fumbles around until she finds the house key. She puts it in the
knob, pauses. Takes a breath, turns the key.
"Hey
sugar, how are you?" her mom asks, drying off the dishes in the sink.
She opens
her mouth, closes it. Swallows. "I'm fine."
"Did
you see the newspaper?"
"No,
why?"
"Do
you remember the Stevenson boy?"
She had been in grade school and high school with him. He was the tall, class
clown type with spiky blonde hair that everybody knew even if you weren't
friends. Her mom hands her the paper. A large photo of Charlie with his goofy
grin is on the front page. He’s wearing camo, like he's just been hunting. She
starts reading. It’s a story about his suicide. The article reveals a struggle
with drugs, his years of dealing and using. No one had known, not his friends,
not his family. There wasn’t one person that knew he was at the point where he figured
a rope around his neck was the only way to stop the pain. In his note he said
he felt empty. His heart had hurt. Why hadn't he said anything?
A different face, a different place. Washington, Mississippi. An
Indian reservation she didn’t know existed until a few years ago, or the home she
hadn’t left for 17 years. It doesn’t matter where she goes, where she is. The hurt's felt the same way. Native Americans, all Americans, probably non-Americans
too. The pain is all around her, she can’t escape. Back in this small town, her
small town, it’s hidden behind smiles. It’s much harder to find. She touches the spot on her chin she covered in foundation. Smiles are the
band-aids you take off, alone, in the car. She wonders how Charlie would have
answered the “how are you?” question. She bets there was a slight droop to his
eyes, maybe he looked down before smiling and saying, “fine.”
Her mom is asking if she wants take-out for dinner.
“Sure,” she mumbles as she walks down the hall towards her closet.
-I've been with Pear Orchard for a little over a year and a half. I've gotten to a point with my students where we have the basis of a relationship where now we can go a bit deeper. Instead of me always being the one approaching them to hang out, they're initiating and asking me to talk. I've seen the way God has answered prayers and opened doors in conversations allowing me to speak the truth of the Gospel into their lives. I see students wrestling with the brokenness in them and around them, I see students in awe of the Lord's work, I see students hungry to learn more.
-As I wrote in my last post, I got to go back to Yakama a couple of weeks ago to serve with Sacred Road for a week. I've gotten to see the way God has grown the ministry and worked in the lives of the Native American people there. I see leadership in the kids and teenagers. I see Sacred Road's vision of them wanting the church to be a safe place where people can come learn about Christ becoming a reality. I see growth in the people's knowledge and love for the Lord when years ago some had never heard of Jesus. 
-This past week I got to go to Peru on a mission trip with Pear Orchard. It was cool to jump in on a ministry that's been going for 15 years. To see their church plants, the work happening to open one of their clinics, and our team helping with the foundation for one of their classrooms for their school. To hear the Gospel preached in Spanish, reaching an entirely different culture. To hear my students understanding the world outside of their Mississippi bubble and to see them laughing and working alongside the Peruvians of Arévalo church. To see our Christian community reaches much farther than we thought.
