Scars … Rebekah Pulaski

by Rebekah Pulaski My little sister, Joannah, has an ungodly number of scars. She has one very long, slender scar on her right calf, a small, almost invisible scar on her forehead, and many many tiny scars on her hands. She received the long scar on her leg when she was just a small girl. Influenced by her two older sisters, on a summer day much too late at night, Joannah had dawned her slipperiest socks and prepared herself to get a running start. After receiving one last word of encouragement from yours truly, she took off down the length of the living room, towards the long hall that separated the bedrooms from the rest of the house. Joannah continued down half the length of the hall at full speed then jumped, landing on her wonderful socks, and awaited the thrill of sliding through the remainder of the hall without the hassle of moving her body. But the length of Joannah’s slide was magnificent in a way that she hadn’t anticipated. She was quickly approaching the wall heater at the dead end of the hallway—whose door was foolishly left open by someone who refused to admit to it. And in a blindness fueled by a mix of anxiety and gravity, Joannah’s feet slipped out from under her, and her poor, small calf was sliced open by the wall heater door. Joannah’s forehead scar happened much later, after moving to a new city and after starting high school. Joannah joined the basketball team, although in reality, she hadn’t grown much since the incident with the wall heater. She was still very small for her age, but nevertheless, she pursued basketball because it’s what she loved, and it was her way of making friends. On the day of Joannah’s very

Creative Works… 119 first home game, her freshman year she was extremely nervous. I assured her not to worry; basketball is meant to be fun, so just have fun. Unfortunately, due to her size and skill, she wasn’t put in the game very much. But when she did go in, she gave it her all, even on defense. She did all she could to try and keep the other team from scoring, and, in a moment of passion – and the awkwardness that comes from two unskilled players fumbling over a basketball – Joannah and her opponent fell. Joannah was a good sport and got up to continue playing, but blood was dripping down her face into her eyebrow. After the game, when I had asked her what happened, she told me, “The girl’s tooth went into my forehead!” Now to explain the scars on Joannah’s hands—my favorite scars. There is almost nothing Joannah cares about more in the whole world than animals. She can’t stand the thought of an animal suffering, and she physically can’t stop herself from helping an animal if she knows she can—she gets that from our dad. This fact didn’t become apparent until after we moved into the house my parents are living in now. It’s a double wide mobile home that sits across the parking lot from the church my father works at. There is a huge field behind the church that used to be a walnut grove, but now is just a mix of grass and clovers. The problem with living in a mobile home, and near one of the only open spaces in town, is that many stray cats find themselves in our field, then shortly after, under our house, to keep shelter from the cold, wet air of the valley. Joannah cannot bear to let these cats go hungry, although I doubt they would, considering our mouse problem. Nevertheless, Joannah has convinced our parents to let her set out cat food for the poor souls that find themselves under our

Creative Works… 120 home. But sometimes cat food is not enough for the creatures Joannah naturally draws to our abode. Sometimes, they are small enough that they still need cat formula, and Joannah will not stand by and let these poor babies go without the proper nutrition, so she bottle-feeds them. I am being truly honest when I say that I cannot count all the kittens my little sister has bottle-fed. There were the two orphans that climbed into the engine of my dad’s car— one of which had a foxtail so deeply burrowed into its eye, Joannah cried until my father took it to the emergency vet to save it from another second of pain. Then there was the whole litter that we could hear crying under the floor of our bathroom. Joannah climbed under our house to bring them into her room. She doesn’t get angry when these babies scratch her, and she isn’t upset by the number of scars on her hands, because to her, the scars are worth it.