SCARS

The tofu is yellow, although perhaps if the sun dips behind that lone cloud just a bit more, casts a more stoic light, I could call the tofu ochre.

Yes, the tofu is ochre, and I am sitting in the living room, unaware of the turmeric handprint on my pants. She is sitting on a couch across from me, half-heartedly reading the newspaper, hands obscured by a slender vase sprouting four dying sunflowers. We had arranged this lunch two weeks ago when we thought we missed hanging out together. But now we are both just anxious to leave and hesitant in every movement.

There is an overripe mango on a dirty plate. She is smiling because mango is her favorite fruit, but frowning because the strings will get stuck in her teeth, and she is ignoring me because I started a previous response with “my partner.”

Perhaps she is embarrassed because she mistook you for someone I sit beside in lab. More likely, she is confused, but I promise: I would not be upset had she voiced her confusion.

Now she is looking at a painting on the wall, asking what it is exactly, and the avoidance hurts more than I thought it would. She smiles and ignores and mentions how she can go to the shopping center by her house now that the scars from surgery have healed, and there are tight shirts, maybe even tank tops, that she can purchase for the first time.

In class, I learned that when the skin builds itself, piece by piece, there is an intricate overlapping of layers of collagen. Rather than forming a basket weave structure, as normal collagen does, scars produce an alignment in a single direction. The flexible structures, known as coiled coils, start to form dense skin—raised cords, rumblings that spiral out from the criss-crossed pattern to clot blood by forming a mass chemically similar to fingers interlocking. I write this down and take a photo to send to you.

She is still on the couch, and I am still at the table. I’m comforted in realizing that I will never know the reason for our declining friendship. Perhaps it is personality, perhaps interests, but those never seemed to be a problem before you entered my life.

I proceed to ask her too many questions. Perhaps I make her uncomfortable, perhaps I myself am only pretending to not be uncomfortable. I know she is reworking all of our past interactions—our three-day vacation together, when I asked her for help on a homework problem late at night, when I said she looked nice in her purple jacket. I watch these memories float above her head, positioned for a moment in bright sunlight, then become blocked off by red tape—marring the images that seemed set in stone.

I am blushing for no reason. I want to know what scar gel she uses so that I can relay the information to you and maybe buy you the best cream for your six month post-op anniversary. I imagine four incisions on the stomach would heal similarly to the two meandering the width of your chest, and I want to ask her because it would be better to purchase a cream with the advice of a real person, not some faceless name on an internet forum. So I pass the lao gan ma (forgetting she hates it) and start to ask.

In Chinese class, we learn the word for scar. I write it into a poem for you.
疤痕 (bā hén)
Scar, in Mandarin

Bā 疤 composed of
Bā 巴, meaning to anxiously hope,
housed in the radical
Nè 疒, to be sick

Hén痕 composed of
Gèn艮, one of the Eight Trigrams, symbolizing mountain,
housed in the radical
Nè 疒, to be sick

Hope living in sickness, a mountain inhabits the body.

The lunch is over, and I am sad. I thought she at least would ask about how I met you. Or how you met me. Or about our first date. Something like that.

I remember that on the first night you were wearing a band T-shirt, and the light was blue in the window. The AC was dripping, and the fan spun so that I could follow the blades and imagine them twisting out of the ceiling onto my legs. You were standing by the mirror and asked me if I wanted to see your scars. And I didn’t know if I should say of course, but before I could, you said something along the lines of

they were the greatest works of art you had ever made even though you didn’t necessarily make them, and actually you had to pay money for someone to do this, to carve the softest skin.

The night faded, and we were sleepless like teenagers. I watched as the hours slipped by and your breathing never steadied. And then it was morning, and I was cold because you prefer flat sheets, no quilts or comforters. You were running around and getting ready for work, looking for your keys. You ran to me as if you were going to ask if I was sitting on them. I got up to check, but you stopped me with a kiss. You made coffee, and I pretended to read an article on my phone.

I would have told her this, had she asked.

In class, I learn again. This time, I learn that the formation of scars is not limited to skin. Scars can form in tissues in many organs of the body, including the heart after a heart attack or in the abdominal organs after inflammation. For over 20 years, electrodes have been used in the brain to regain muscle movement in people with various disorders such as Parkinson’s and paraplegia. Patients will regain control of their muscles and limbs for around six months until a glial scar forms around the implanted electrodes, blocking neurons from interacting with the electrical signals. The glial scar forms as a way for the body to protect itself from foreign invaders.

I return upstairs, and I’m thinking about you, of course I am. It’s autumn, and the smell of cold asphalt and drying leaves reminds me of when we met. I remember sitting in my bed, eyes open wide, writing notes in my head. I opened my notebook and wrote big crush feeling alone. It was true, I couldn’t tell my friends about you. There was too much backstory to sift through, too many people that would be hinting at why didn’t you just tell me. I didn’t feel like consoling people back into their comfort. I didn’t feel like dealing with people that were hurt by my silence. It seemed to me that any potential move would alter every relationship I had. I didn’t want to deal with that, I just wanted to be alone.

In the spring, the air smells like you. It smells like an unintentional picnic in late April, like stalking Instagram profiles and googling surgery aftercare. It smells like my makeup routine and store-bought hummus. It smells like picking courage out of me, slowly, as if within me is a lawn, and I am replanting every blade of grass on my skin. It smells like telling.

Originally Published on May 9th, 2019

AUTHOR: Erin Walden (she/her/hers) is a junior at Brown studying English and Biochemistry. Ask her and she will bake focaccia for you.

ARTWORK: Angie Kang