Dispatches from the Splinters of My Mind — Entry 33:
The first piece came off beneath my fingernail.
Turquoise.
No bigger than a grain of rice.
I noticed it while washing my face before bed, standing beneath the bathroom light that had been threatening to die for six months but apparently lacked the commitment. It buzzed faintly above the mirror, bleaching everything beneath it—the white sink, the gray grout, the little silver hairs beginning to colonize my temples despite repeated diplomatic objections.
I had already brushed my teeth, taken out my earrings, and tied my hair back.
The ordinary little dismantling we perform every night before allowing ourselves to become whatever sleeps in our beds.
There was something rough along my jaw.
I scratched it.
The turquoise flake landed in the sink with a sound too small to deserve attention.
I stared at it anyway.
I don’t wear turquoise makeup.
Never have.
Too loud.
Red lipstick, yes. Always red. But turquoise belonged on old convertibles, cheap jewelry, swimming pools in motel brochures. Not my face.
I leaned toward the mirror until my breath fogged the bottom edge of the glass.
There was another patch near my cheekbone.
I touched it.
Hard.
Not skin.
I worked a fingernail beneath the edge.
There was resistance at first, a faint pulling sensation that made my teeth ache, and then the piece surrendered with a tiny dry crack.
Something the size of a dime curled away.
There was skin underneath.
Brown.
Warm.
Mine.
I touched it.
The skin felt normal.
Then I remembered that I hated jazz.
I stood there holding the turquoise fragment between my fingers.
Miles Davis was playing in the bedroom.
Kind of Blue.
My favorite album.
Except it wasn’t.
The trumpet slipped through the apartment, muted and melancholy, something I’d heard hundreds of times while cooking, reading, drinking wine, pretending Sunday morning wasn’t already conspiring to become Monday.
I remembered buying the record.
I remembered playing it while Daniel made pancakes.
I remembered arguing with him that Coltrane’s playing on Blue in Green was more interesting than anything else on the album.
Those memories remained.
But beneath them was something quieter.
Older.
I hated jazz.
Too busy.
Too pleased with itself.
Music wandering around looking for somewhere to sit down.
My stomach tightened.
“That’s ridiculous.”
The woman in the mirror agreed.
I think.
I dropped the turquoise piece into the sink.
Miles kept playing.
For the first time in twenty years, I wanted him to stop.
I didn’t turn the music off.
I was afraid of what the silence might confirm.
I found another edge beside my nose.
I should have gone to bed.
There are several moments in my life that would have turned out differently if curiosity possessed an off switch.
I peeled.
Coffee.
I hated coffee.
Not disliked.
Hated.
The bitterness. The scorched smell lingering in rooms. That sour film it left on my tongue. I remembered being seven years old at my aunt’s kitchen table, accidentally drinking from an adult’s cup and immediately spitting it back.
That memory felt ancient.
True.
I’d been drinking three cups every day since graduate school.
I looked toward the mug sitting beside the sink.
DON’T TALK TO ME UNTIL COFFEE.
There was a brown crescent dried inside it.
My sister gave me the mug for Christmas.
No.
Daniel gave it to me.
No.
I bought it myself at an airport.
Chicago?
Atlanta?
I couldn’t remember.
My fingertips went cold.
Another piece.
I hated running.
Another.
I preferred evenings to mornings.
Another.
I didn’t like red.
That one frightened me.
I looked at my mouth.
The lipstick gleamed beneath the bathroom light, glossy and almost obscenely vivid against my skin.
Red had been mine.
Not just a preference.
A declaration.
Red dresses. Red scarves. Red nails whenever work allowed it. Red lipstick even on days when the rest of me couldn’t be bothered.
I had been wearing it since I was nineteen.
I knew exactly why.
My grandmother.
She would stand at the hallway mirror before leaving the house and apply lipstick with the concentration of a surgeon. Church. Grocery store. Doctor’s appointment. Didn’t matter.
I could see her.
Tiny gold mirror in one hand.
Lipstick in the other.
The powdery smell of her bathroom.
The faint tremor in her fingers.
Once, when I was little, I asked why she always wore it.
She smiled at me through the mirror.
“Because I decide which face leaves this house.”
I had carried that sentence for thirty-seven years.
I had quoted it at parties.
Written it inside a birthday card to my niece.
Used it once during a presentation about women and professional identity.
I could hear my grandmother saying it.
Could see the tiny gold mirror.
Could smell her powder.
Could remember standing beside her.
Then another memory surfaced.
My grandmother at church.
My grandmother cooking.
My grandmother asleep in her hospital bed.
Her lips always bare.
My grandmother never wore lipstick.
The room seemed to tilt.
I gripped the sink.
I stopped peeling.
For perhaps five minutes.
Maybe twenty.
The clock on my phone said 11:38 when I finally looked.
I sat on the closed toilet lid staring at the pieces scattered across the porcelain.
Turquoise fragments.
Some glossy.
Some dull.
They looked less like makeup now.
More like paint scraped from an old house.
I touched my cheek.
Ridges.
Layers.
My own face had topography.
I thought about calling someone.
My sister.
Daniel.
A doctor.
But what exactly do you say?
Hello, I seem to be molting psychologically.
Emergency rooms have enough problems.
So I did what sensible people do when confronted with something impossible.
I searched the internet.
Allergic reaction.
Skin peeling.
Cosmetic contamination.
Stress.
Dermatitis.
Autoimmune disease.
Hormonal changes.
Cancer, naturally.
The internet can turn a hangnail into six months to live before you’ve finished typing.
I closed the phone.
The screen went black.
For an instant I saw my reflection in it.
Something about the face was wrong.
I turned it facedown.
In the bathroom mirror, a thin turquoise line crossed my forehead.
I pulled it.
A larger piece came away.
And suddenly I knew where my laugh came from.
My sister.
That sharp little inhale before the sound.
Hers.
I tried laughing.
There it was.
Borrowed.
I tried again, deliberately changing it.
Nothing came.
I couldn’t find another laugh.
Another fragment.
The phrase You know what I mean?
Daniel.
Another.
The way I crossed my arms when angry.
My mother.
Another.
The little nod I gave people when pretending I understood something.
Professor Bell.
Graduate seminar.
Another.
The confidence I wore during presentations.
Marianne Cooper.
My first supervisor.
She had walked into meetings like the furniture belonged to her.
I’d copied her.
At first deliberately.
Shoulders back.
Voice lower.
Never apologize before disagreeing.
I practiced it before meetings.
Eventually I stopped practicing.
Eventually everyone called it confidence.
Mine.
Except it hadn’t been.
Piece after piece landed in the sink.
My gestures.
My phrases.
My posture.
My taste in wine.
The books on my nightstand.
The way I seasoned chicken.
The perfume I’d worn for fifteen years.
My habit of touching someone’s forearm when I wanted them to know I was listening.
None of it had begun with me.
The thought should have made me feel fraudulent.
Instead, unexpectedly, it made me lonely.
How many people were living inside the ordinary things I called myself?
How many dead people still moved when I moved?
How many people I’d stopped loving still spoke through my mouth?
I looked at the fragments.
For the first time, I didn’t see debris.
I saw fingerprints.
We like to imagine identity as buried treasure.
Dig through enough expectations, enough childhood bullshit, enough failed relationships, enough jobs, compromises, disappointments and obligations, and eventually you’ll reach the authentic self.
Pure.
Untouched.
Waiting patiently beneath everything other people did to you.
That’s a comforting idea.
It is also, I began to suspect, complete bullshit.
Maybe there had never been an untouched me.
My mother’s stubbornness had become my persistence.
My sister’s laugh had become my joy.
Marianne’s arrogance had become my confidence.
Daniel’s jazz had become Sunday mornings.
My grandmother’s impossible lipstick had somehow become my mouth.
Were those things false because they came from somewhere else?
If somebody teaches you kindness and eventually you become kind, is the kindness counterfeit?
If somebody teaches you cruelty and you carry it for thirty years, does it become authentic simply because you’ve had it long enough?
Maybe we aren’t people underneath the accumulation.
Maybe the accumulation is the person.
I understood that.
And I kept peeling anyway.
That’s the part I regret.
Not beginning.
Continuing.
By midnight the turquoise was gone.
Underneath was another layer.
Ochre.
It covered my left cheek and disappeared beneath my hairline.
I laughed when I saw it.
Actually laughed.
Apparently my psyche had been decorated by someone with access to an art-supply store.
The joke sounded weak in the bathroom.
I peeled the ochre.
My first kiss happened behind the gymnasium.
No.
In Marcus Hill’s car.
No.
I’d never kissed Marcus Hill.
I could taste peppermint gum.
Then cigarettes.
Then nothing.
Another piece.
I married Daniel because I loved him.
I married Daniel because I was pregnant.
I’d never been pregnant.
Daniel died.
Daniel left.
Daniel was asleep in the bedroom.
There had never been a Daniel.
I stopped breathing.
“Daniel?”
The name barely escaped my mouth.
I waited.
No answer.
“Daniel?”
Louder.
Nothing.
I ran to the bedroom.
The record had reached the end. The needle traveled around the final groove with a soft rhythmic hiss.
The room smelled faintly of dust and the candle I’d burned earlier.
No Daniel.
No photographs on the dresser.
There should have been photographs.
Wedding.
Beach.
Christmas at my sister’s.
I opened the closet.
Men’s shirts.
Three.
One blue.
One white.
One gray.
I touched the blue one.
Cotton.
Soft from years of washing.
I remembered buying it for him.
I remembered burying him in it.
I remembered watching him fold it into a suitcase while telling me he couldn’t do this anymore.
Three memories.
All complete.
All painful.
All true.
I pressed the shirt against my face.
It smelled like cedar from the closet.
Nothing else.
I couldn’t remember Daniel’s smell.
That broke me.
Not whether he had died.
Not whether he’d left.
Not whether he’d existed.
I couldn’t remember how he smelled when I put my face against his neck.
I sat on the bedroom floor holding the shirt.
Miles Davis spun silently beside me.
I cried until my throat hurt.
Then I heard my sister’s inhale inside my sob.
For a moment, I hated her for giving me even that.
At 2:13, I returned to the bathroom.
I don’t know why I noticed the time.
The floor was covered with pieces of me.
Turquoise.
Ochre.
Gray.
A thin white layer I couldn’t associate with anything except loneliness.
They crunched beneath my bare feet.
I looked terrible.
Half my face appeared raw beneath the remaining material.
Not wounded.
Unfinished.
The red lipstick remained perfect.
I wet a washcloth.
Scrubbed.
Red.
Soap.
Red.
Makeup remover.
Red.
I scrubbed until my lips burned.
Still red.
“Because I decide which face leaves this house.”
I stared at myself.
“Did you even say that?”
My grandmother didn’t answer.
Neither did the mirror.
So I peeled again.
Mother.
Sister.
Teacher.
Lover.
Friend.
Enemy.
Wife.
Widow.
Daughter.
Professional.
Coward.
Woman who stayed.
Woman who left.
Each layer took something.
Eventually I stopped recognizing the memories being removed.
A farmhouse.
A blue bicycle.
Someone named Rebecca.
A dog called Moses.
A harbor.
For one strange moment, I remembered ordering a man named Tomas hanged.
My fingers opened.
The fragment dropped.
“No.”
The bathroom had become silent except for the electrical buzz above me.
That memory wasn’t mine.
I knew that much.
Didn’t I?
I looked at the woman in the mirror.
Most of the layers were gone.
One remained.
Thin.
Nearly transparent.
I found its edge beneath my chin.
My hands trembled.
This was it.
The original.
Whatever existed before everyone else had touched me.
Before expectation.
Before imitation.
Before survival.
Before love.
Before anybody had taught me what face to make when the world looked back.
Me.
I pulled.
The layer resisted.
For the first time, it hurt.
A deep pulling beneath the skin, as though whatever I was removing had roots.
I nearly stopped.
Then it released.
The layer came away almost whole.
I closed my eyes.
My face tingled in the cold bathroom air.
I breathed.
Once.
Twice.
Then looked.
The woman underneath was someone else.
She wasn’t frightening.
That would have been easier.
She was approximately my age.
Brown skin.
Dark eyes.
Wet strands of hair clinging to her forehead.
Red lips.
But the face was unfamiliar.
Different nose.
Different cheekbones.
A faint scar above the left eyebrow.
I leaned closer.
She did too.
I touched my face.
She touched hers.
Her fingertips pressed against skin I could feel beneath mine.
I raised my hand.
She raised hers.
I smiled.
She smiled.
I began to laugh.
So did she.
I couldn’t tell whether either of us meant it.
“Who are you?”
Her lips moved with mine.
No answer.
I looked down.
Hundreds of fragments surrounded my feet.
Everything I’d believed was me.
Suddenly I wanted them back.
Not because they were authentic.
Because they were mine.
Maybe ownership had never required originality.
I dropped to my knees.
Coffee.
Jazz.
Daniel.
My mother’s folded arms.
My sister’s laugh.
Marianne’s confidence.
The stupid mug.
The red dresses.
The lies.
God, even the lies.
Especially the lies.
I gathered handfuls and pressed them against my face.
They wouldn’t stick.
Turquoise broke beneath my fingers.
Ochre crumbled into powder.
Memories flickered and vanished before I could identify them.
“Please.”
I don’t know who I was asking.
When I looked up again, the woman in the mirror was standing.
I wasn’t.
I froze.
She touched her cheek.
I didn’t.
Her fingernail found an edge.
“No.”
She began peeling.
A thin layer came away.
Underneath—
my nose.
Another piece.
My cheekbone.
Another.
The little line beside my mouth I’d spent years pretending wasn’t a wrinkle.
“Stop.”
She continued.
My face emerged beneath hers.
The face I had just removed.
Complete.
Familiar.
Mine.
She smiled with my mouth.
Bright red.
I slowly stood.
She remained still.
Then I touched my lips.
She touched hers.
For the first time all night, our movements matched perfectly.
Both of us stopped.
On the counter between us sat the tube of lipstick.
Black case.
Gold band.
Cap removed.
A bead of red clung to its tip.
I stared at it.
I couldn’t remember taking it out.
Couldn’t remember buying it.
Couldn’t remember applying it.
The woman in the mirror looked down at hers.
Then back at me.
We stood there beneath the dying fluorescent light, surrounded by everything we had once mistaken for a single person.
Neither of us moved.
Finally, she reached for the lipstick.
I didn’t.
She lifted it toward my familiar mouth.
Then stopped.
Her eyes met mine.
There was something in her expression I recognized.
Not fear.
Not confusion.
Permission.
Or perhaps refusal.
I couldn’t tell anymore.
She waited.
So did I.
And somewhere beneath my bare feet, one of the discarded pieces cracked without being touched.
Neither of us looked down.
I don’t know which of us put the lipstick on.
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