Read Me

When I was young, I made myself a retainer out of spearmint-flavored Orbit gum.

The inside of me couldn’t yet be read on the outside, so I pressed the wet, sticky glob to my bottom teeth, using the underside of my tongue to mold it into the shape of my crooked, under-bitten smile.

I let it sit there, imagining the sugar-free substance hardening into the glittery plastic I’d seen in other kids’ mouths. I was never able to tell they had bad teeth until they showed up to school with sparkling underbites. No one knew something was wrong until we could see it; nothing seemed imperfect until classmates were crowded around them, eagerly watching them pop the hard plastic free with their tongues then click it back down again, over and over.

The other kids also gathered around me, sometimes. When I came back to school after my daily smorgasbord of doctor’s appointments, my classmates peered at me curiously from their squeaky plastic desk chairs until—upon encouragement from the ever-empathetic Mrs. Bradley—they rushed toward me with arms open, smushing me into a Hannah Sandwich. I squirmed, and they let go easily. They never knew quite where I’d been or why they were hugging me—other than Mrs. Bradley’s warmly nonnegotiable urging—and their squeezes were a little halfhearted.

As I wiggled free, I longed to be able to open my mouth and show them some glistening new orthodontia as if to say, “Here it is! Here’s the problem.” I wanted to come back baring a toothy surprise instead of nothing. I wanted them to look at me and know me; I wanted whatever secret sickness was hiding inside my body to be written on the outside of it.

One evening when my mom was working late, I crept across her squeaky bedroom floorboards and stole her nighttime bite guard case off the bedside table. (“No, Mom, I dunno— maybe the puppy got it and chewed it all up or—something?”) I placed my precious gummy creation gingerly inside and smuggled it into my school desk, wedging it safely between the pencil case and the book of Everyday Math HomeLinks I never completed. After lunch, I carefully pried it from the case, stuck it securely against my teeth, and paraded around Mrs. Bradley’s third grade, proudly convincing my friends that, this time, I’d been to visit the orthodontist.

My best friend Helen peered inside my mouth. “Cool,” she said. “Does it hurt?”

Emboldened, I snuck into the little closet of a bathroom that was attached to our classroom and leaned over the childsized toilet to peer at my reflection, a xanthous image that was barely visible in the one bulb’s musty yellow light. My face was pasty, pale, and all one color; it was not like Helen’s: dark, defined, and alive. I looked like nothing. The thing the doctors were trying to find looked like nothing.

I opened my mouth wide, watching my tongue pace back and forth along the gum stuck there. I had a story to show my classmates when I got back from Mott Children’s Hospital. It wasn’t real, but I could touch it—I could hold it in my hands. They could see it; it was a reason for them to make a Hannah Sandwich out of me.

I wanted my disease to be visible on my body—to be readable. When it wasn’t, I settled for the fake correction of my overbite. I was slightly shocked that Helen had fallen for it, and not completely convinced that she had.

***

“Hey, what’s that there?” Cassie reached out, her fingers almost skimming the freshly healed, raised red line on my leg as I jerked hastily away. I scrunched up on the far side of the couch, blood rushing to color my ears, and turned only my mouth back toward her. I took a deep breath and spit it out: “Uh. No—nothing.”

Of course, my babysitter already knew exactly where I’d been that past weekend. She already knew my mom and I had taken a little diagnostic road trip to the Cleveland Clinic. She already knew that I’d returned without the little sliver of quadricep the doctors had taken. Cassie had personally handed me my absence note that morning, reminding me to take it straight to my fourth-grade teacher when I got to school.

But in that moment, I didn’t want her to see my scar. I understood that if anyone saw it, they’d know something was wrong with me. They’d know the doctors had cut into me in an attempt to find it. Now that my covert illness had been found, it had changed—I wanted it to stay hidden. It made me imperfect and I was ashamed of it; I did not want it to be seen. I did not want to be a Hannah Sandwich. I did not want anyone to be able to read the sickness on my skin.

I stood up, pulled my terrycloth shorts back down securely over my thighs, and hurried off to find my sister and her toy chemistry set, leaving Cassie alone on the couch and cartoons blaring blandly from the TV.

***

On my back on the musty, mottled carpet, I gaze up at the pipes crisscrossing the ceiling of my mom’s basement as I count repetitions.

One, two; shoulder blades lift higher. Nine, ten, forehead to knees.

With each crunch, I will my stretch marks to sink into me, begging my stomach to absorb its faults as though it had never torn in the first place. I’m only twenty; I shouldn’t already be marred. Twenty, twenty-one, keep breathing.

I know that biology doesn’t work like that: even if you shrink, scars don’t go away. They will belie your healthiness always. But I imagine that if my stomach were flatter, more concave, maybe the shadow of my rib cage would hide its ignominious imperfections from the light. Thirty-nine, forty, keep going. I want people to be able to read my body and know me. I am afraid what they’ll find written there. I work hard to erase the ugly part of my story from my skin. Fifty. Other side. One.

***

I’m on a first date, curled up cross-legged on the narrow booth of Ashley’s Bar. My freshly-minted, horizontal driver’s license smiles at his I.D. lying next to it in the middle of the table. We’ve just compared them, pressing the two cards close together to see whether Maryland’s crab or Michigan’s bridge better coordinates with the plastic-y, DMV-like vibe. His face looks younger in his picture; seventeen-year-old Matt isn’t quite the same as the man who sits across from me now, lofting witticisms and whimsy into the space between us. My beer grows warmer in my hands—I keep forgetting to stop talking in order to take a sip from it.

As the conversation ping-pongs easily back and forth between us, I find myself trying to find the words to tell him the secret stories he may find written on my body later. I’m starting to trust him in this dim, warmly lit bar. I want him to read me and know me, to understand the context my body gives me. But I’m afraid that as the night progresses—when we’re out from under the softening glow of Ashley’s neon sign—he won’t like what he sees. I try to slip little hints into the conversation like tiny red warning signs:

“Yeah, I guess I was kinda having a rough time physically at the end of high school—What? Yeah, I mean like I was sick. But coming here just sort of snapped me out of it, ya know?”

I’m not making much sense, only stringing halfway hidden details together into under-baked sentiments, but I don’t know how to say what I mean: Something happened to me that stretched my skin so much it tore. I can’t explain to you how it felt or exactly what happened, but look—you can see it on me.

“No, no—I’m fine now! I ran that half marathon and everything—yeah, I’m good. It’s—it’s all good.”

I sit there, starting to squirm and struggling to tell him the things that have already been written on me. This night is reinforcing what I already almost knew: my scars tell about a time that is too inextricably integrated into my cells to transcribe into words.

Eventually, at a loss and too worried that he won’t take the time to read the truth on my body, I come right out and say it: “I have a mitochondrial disorder.” There’s a beat of silence, and I finally take a sip of my beer. It’s too sweet; I try not to contort my face as I swallow. He squints at me, gently, and I know he doesn’t quite understand— it’s an unfamiliar word, and its clunkiness distracts from the truth of it. I should’ve let my body speak for me.

Read me, I think. Look at me. See my story written on my body. Don’t make me tell you the truths that are already there, if you only look hard enough.

***

“Hey,” I call across the shadowy living room. “Come feel this.”

“Yeah—one sec.” My senior year roommate Emily clunks the last of the clean dishes into the cabinets and traipse over to the couch where I’ve been sprawled, building up my courage.

I point at the biopsy scar on my leg, looking away as I await her verdict.

I am surprised when she says she can see it. The scar has lightened with the years; it’s small and flat now and almost blends into my skin. If you brush your fingers across it, it almost feels like nothing. But it is just slightly sunken into me, and it has a different sheen. It catches the light slightly differently than the rest of me.

I wear short shorts on purpose now, daring people to look at my thighs and see me. The scar there is almost imperceptible, but I know there’s some small chance that if people look at me hard enough, they will find my past written on my body. Somehow, they’ll know about the road trip to Cleveland, and about Cassie reaching toward me on the couch. They’ll understand—immediately, innately—without me having to find a way to tell them. They’ll know that someone had been willing to sacrifice the epidermic innocence of a nine-year-old on the off-chance that, when the results were read, they would have some truth about me hidden within them.

Emily has to turn the lamp on above my head to find it, but I am relieved she knows it’s there. I was worried she wouldn’t, that she’d lie—or worse, be telling the truth—and say, “Nope, your skin is clear; you’re beautiful,” like she has before.

I exhale, releasing the breath I’d stored up to explain it to her. She can see my memoirs engraved in my skin; I don’t have to use words to prove they’re there.

***

I am standing in front of the mirror in my apartment, running my fingers lightly across the small, soft ridges on the stretch of exposed skin on my stomach. I am getting ready to go on a trip, one that will feature a boy I haven’t seen in a long time.

I knew him before I was marked, and I am afraid that my tight pink crop top will pull away from my high-waisted skirt and show him what’s happened to me since the last time we stayed up late, separately together, texting until 3:00 a.m.

In the safety of my bedroom, in this crop top, my past is visible. Out in the world, people can read my history on my skin. It’s almost a relief. Maybe, if he sees it, we can restart our relationship from somewhere closer to the truth.

I look myself up and down one more time, smack my lips together to smear my lip balm onto the top one, and head straight out the door. I am apparently not that afraid.

A powerful part of me wants the story of my body to be a beautiful one. It wants to pull my skirt down, absorb my scars back into my skin. Another part, slowing growing, just longs for it to be true.

Let my skin tell you my story. I want to be read.

By Hannah Clague