Autobiography of a Face

by Lucy Grealy

  With the same numbed yet cavalier stance, I waited for a father to click the shutter. At least these were photographs I'd never have to see, though to this day I fantasize about meeting someone who eventually shows me their photo album and there, inexplicably, in the middle of a page, is me holding a pony. I have seen one pony party photo of me. In it I'm holding on to a small dark bay pony whose name I don't remember. I look frail and thin and certainly peculiar, but I don't look anywhere near as repulsive as I then believed I did. There's a gaggle of children around me, waiting for their turn on the pony. My stomach was always in knots then, surrounded by so many children, but I can tell by my expression that I'm convincing myself I don't care as I point to the back of the line. The children look older than most of the kids at the backyard parties: some of them are even older than nine, the age I was when I got sick. I'm probably thinking about this, too, as I order them into line.

  I can still hear the rubbery, metallic thud of hooves on the trailer's ramp as we loaded the ponies back into the hot and smelly box for the ride back to Diamond D. Fifteen years later, when I see that photo, I am filled with questions I rarely allow myself, such as, how do we go about turning into the people we are meant to be? What relation do the human beings in that picture have to the people they are now? How is it that all of us were caught together in that brief moment of time, me standing there pretending I wasn't hurt by a single thing in this world while they lined up for their turn on the pony, some of them excited and some of them scared, but all of them neatly, at my insistence, one in front of the other, like all the days ahead.

  ONE

  Luck

  KER-POW!

  I was knocked into the present, the unmistakable now, by Joni Friedman's head as it collided with the right side of my jaw. Up until that moment my body had been running around within the confines of a circle of fourth-grade children gathered for a game of dodge ball, but my mind had been elsewhere. For the most part I was an abysmal athlete, and I was deeply embarrassed whenever I failed to jump bravely and deftly into a whirring jumprope, ever threatening to sting if I miscrossed its invisible boundaries, like some science-fiction force field. Or worse, when I was the weak link yet again in the school relay race. How could one doubt that the order in which one was picked for the softball team was anything but concurrent with the order in which Life would be handing out favors?

  Not that I considered myself a weak or easily frightened person; in more casual games I excelled, especially at wrestling (I could beat every boy but one on my street), playing war (a known sneak, I was always called upon to be the scout), and in taking dares (I would do just about anything, no matter how ludicrous or dangerous, though I drew the line at eating invertebrates and amphibians). I was accorded a certain amount of respect in my neighborhood, not only because I once jumped out of a second-story window, but also because I would kiss an old and particularly smelly neighborhood dog on the lips whenever asked. I was a tomboy par excellence.

  But when games turned official under the auspices of the Fleetwood Elementary Phys-Ed Department, everything changed. The minute a whistle appeared and boundaries were called, I transformed into a spaz. It all seemed so unfair: I knew in my heart I had great potential, star potential even, but my knowing didn't translate into hitting the ball that was coming my way. I resigned myself early on, even though I knew I could outread, outspell, and outtest the strongest kid in the classroom. And when I was picked practically last for crazy kickball or crab relays, I defeatedly assumed a certain lackadaisical attitude, which partially accounts for my inattention on the day my jaw collided with Joni Friedman's head.

  Maybe I was wondering whether Colleen's superiority at dodge ball would be compromised by her all-consuming crush on David Cassidy, or maybe some other social dilemma of prepubescence ruled that day's game. I do know that the ball I was going for was mine. I hadn't even bothered to call it, it was so obvious, and though it was also obvious that Joni was going to try to steal it away from me, I stood my ground. The whistle to stop playing began to blow just as the ball came toward us, toward me. I leaned forward and Joni lunged sideways, and suddenly all thoughts about Colleen's social status or Joni's ethics were suddenly and sharply knocked out of me.

  I felt the force of our collision in every one of my atoms as I sat, calm and lucid though slightly dazed, on the asphalt. Everyone was running to get on line. I assume Joni asked me how I was, but all I remember is sitting there among the blurred and running legs, rubbing the right side of my jaw, fascinated by how much pain I was in and by how strangely peaceful I felt. It wasn't the sensation of things happening in slow motion, which I had experienced during other minor accidents; it was as if time had mysteriously but logically shifted onto another plane. I felt as if I could speculate and theorize about a thousand different beautiful truths all in the time it would take my lips to form a single word. In retrospect, I think it's possible I had a concussion.

  My jaw throbbed. Rubbing it with my hand seemed to have no good or bad effect: the pain was deep and untouchable. Because the pain was genuinely unanticipated, there was no residue of anxiety to alter my experience of it. Anxiety and anticipation, I was to learn, are the essential ingredients in suffering from pain, as opposed to feeling pain pure and simple. This alien ache was probably my first and last experience of unadulterated pain, which perplexed me more than it hurt me.

  "Are you all right, dear?"

  Interrupted in my twilight, I looked up to see Mrs. Minkin, who was on playground duty that afternoon. She fell into the category of "scary" adults, and from there into the subcategory of adults "with cooties." In her plaid wool skirts and thick makeup, luridly ugly to schoolchildren's eyes, Mrs. Minkin was not someone to whom I was willing to admit distress.

  "I'm fine, thank you."

  And I was fine: as quickly as it had happened, the sharp ache in my jaw receded and my sense of self transported itself back to the playground. I quickly stood up and brushed myself off. The looming issue now was how far back in line I would have to stand because of this bothersome delay. By the time I was back in the classroom I had forgotten the incident entirely.

  I was reminded of it again that evening as I sat on the living room rug earnestly trying to whip up a book report I had been putting off for two weeks. Now, to my grave dismay, the report was due the very next day. Gradually I became aware of possible salvation: I had a toothache. This wasn't as welcome a reason for staying home from school as a cold or a fever because it would entail a visit to the dentist. Had it been only a minor toothache I'd probably have preferred to suffer the wrath of my teacher rather than my mother's inevitable agitation, but now that I had noticed the ache it seemed to be worsening steadily.

  The dentist and I were already well acquainted. I was cursed with terrible teeth. We were told it was a common trait among people of Anglo-Irish descent, but my mother felt personally affronted by this bit of information and, as if by osmosis, I too felt a sense of shame about my teeth. Dr. Singer convinced my parents that if there was to be any chance of my having normal adult teeth growing in, he must be allowed, posthaste, to do everything imaginable to my baby teeth. I can't even remember the work he did, but it seemed as if I went to the dentist every week for some mysterious procedure. No one likes the dentist, but what I resented most about Dr. Singer was that he made a practice of lying to me.

  "Hold out your thumb and I'll show you how I'll make your tooth go to sleep so that nothing will hurt it."

  I'd hold my thumb out.

  "You see, I'll put this medicine on your tooth just like I'm putting it on your thumb," he'd say as he pushed a syringe lightly into my finger, releasing a jet of clear fluid.

  "It won't hurt any more than that."

  Then he'd turn to his instrument tray, his back blocking my view, and switch syringes. Before I could see what flashed before me, he'd stick the needle deftly into my waiting gums. I was always surprised that a simple stream of fluid could hurt so much. Even after he h
ad performed this dirty trick many times, I believed there must be something extraordinarily wrong with my gums. I suspected I had some terrible problem in my mouth and, afraid that complaining would only bring some new and certainly painful treatment, I kept my suspicions to myself.

  As the evening wore on, I could no longer pretend the toothache wasn't there. Finally I went to my mother and confessed my pain in the guarded tone I might use to admit the loss or destruction of something valuable. As I had expected, she was angry. Of course, she was angry at the situation, at the bother, at the possible cost, but at that age I had no way to distinguish such subtle gradations. I painfully presumed that her anger was directed at me alone.

  Only when my father walked into the room and asked what was going on did I remember my collision earlier in the day. This new information seemed to irritate my mother even more, especially when my father, characteristically trying to dissolve the tension of the situation, ventured the prognosis "She's just got a cold in her tooth, that's all. She'll be fine in the morning."

  He meant well, but his dismissal of the problem confirmed my mother's belief that she was the only one in the family who faced facts. This was true in a sense, but she never recognized that her anger scared all of us into retreat. By churning problems through her own personal mill, she kept us from ever discussing a problem outright, which, in turn, exacerbated the problem. My mother was always particularly annoyed when my father put on his good-fellow-Irishman act and dispensed comforting misinformation about the world, such as the backward notion that a tooth could have a cold in it. I was sent off to bed with two aspirins and a promise of reappraisal.

  "You've got lockjaw!"

  My brothers pronounced this happily the next morning, obviously excited by the idea.

  I mumbled back to them as best I could.

  They were only too pleased to describe in detail how I would never open my mouth again, that everything I ate from now on would have to come through a straw. It was true that I had woken up with my jaw swollen and seemingly locked—it didn't hurt when I tried to open it so much as it appeared to be stuck—but a diet of milk-shakes didn't seem like such an awful fate. Primarily, however, I was excited by the idea that something really was wrong with me, that I hadn't been overacting the previous night, as I had allowed myself to believe; I was authentically sick—no school definitely. I felt cheerful. My mother made an appointment for me to see the family doctor later that morning.

  "Well, considering the swelling and this immobility and that she had a hard knock, I'd say it's probably fractured."

  A broken jaw. This would be the first of many diagnoses and surely the one most completely off course. Dr. Cantor explained plainly to me that if it was broken I'd have to have it wired shut so it could heal, but first I had to go over to the hospital to have it x-rayed. I wasn't particularly thrilled with the wired-shut part, but I was too involved with the idea of venturing off to a hospital emergency room to think much about it. My two absolute, hands-down favorite television programs were Emergency! and Medical Center, and the possibility of personally living out one of these thirty-minute dramas elated me. My mother kindly indulged me as I sat on a trolley in one of the curtained cubicles, humoring me about what an adventure it all was and how jealous my brothers would be that I was the principal player in such a drama. She told me how brave I and how lucky we all were that this had happened to me and not Sarah, my twin sister, an avowed scaredy-cat. Sarah would have cried horrendously, but I was courageous and didn't cry and thus was good. It seemed a natural enough equation at the time.

  The x-rays came back: it wasn't a broken jaw, but something called a dental cyst, probably caused by the blow to my jaw forcing one of my back molars down into the gum, nicking the mandible. It was nothing serious, but they would have to operate and remove the cyst right away to avoid an infection. I went back home with my mother to collect my pajamas, and off we went to Pascack Valley Hospital, a small community hospital in the next town over. Surgery was scheduled for the following day.

  What I remember most from that first night in the hospital is that I didn't sleep very much. I devoted most of the time to a silly conversation about David Cassidy with the girl in the bed across from me. Also I had to have my temperature taken throughout the night to monitor possible infection, and much to the delight of my neighbor, who stood up in her bed to watch, my nurse insisted on taking it rectally without bothering to draw the curtain. My neighbor giggled and I thought her a fool, but I didn't yet have enough resources of dignity to do anything except giggle along with her at my absurd situation. At midnight a nurse came along and taped an NPO sign to my bed: Nil Per Oral, nothing by mouth. I felt special, singled out, and I allowed myself a condescending tone as I explained to my neighbor what it meant, just as the nurse had explained it to me thirty seconds before.

  Every hospital has its own quirky protocol. Some hospitals make you put on the surgical gown in your room, some make you wait until you reach the O.R. Some anesthesia departments have rooms in which you are put to sleep, others take you tight on into the operating room itself. Pascack Valley Hospital subscribed to the latter and also, bless their hearts, to the theory that it's best to knock the patient out as quickly as possible and then assign the IV's and other assorted needles and tubes to their final bodily destinations. Medically this isn't the most desirable procedure, as there should be instant access to the blood and airway systems in case anything goes suddenly awry during the initial stages of administering gas. Presumably this small pediatrics department figured it wasn't worth all the tears, screams, and struggling: get the conscious entity out of the way as quickly as possible, then insert instruments to your heart's content.

  Still living in the fantasy of a television show, and slightly dopey both from the pre-op medication and from my sleepless night, I was impressed with the sight of a real live operating room, just as I had been pleased by my view of the corridor ceiling during the trolley ride down there. I was somewhat disappointed when I failed to detect a glass-domed amphitheater through which row after row of doctors would peer down, intrigued by my fascinating case, but the gleaming metal and impressive lights, exactly as I'd anticipated, placated me. My first authentic surgically masked face peered down at me, blocking the bright light from the overhead lamp.

  "I'm going to put this mask over your face and give you some air to make you sleepy, it might smell a little funny."

  Funny was an understatement. Through the black rubber mask came chemical fumes, so alien to me that I could never have imagined such a smell existed. I thought I would suffocate. I struggled slightly, trying to turn my head away and reach for the mask with my hands. Someone I couldn't see reached out and grasped my hands, squeezing them too tightly, while someone else put his hand on my forehead. This last gesture calmed me instantly.

  "Now I want you to close your eyes and breathe and relax and think about some nice things. Do you have any pets?"

  I began to list the names of the menagerie back home, aware that a faint buzzing was growing louder and louder. The things around me began to lose their borders. The doctor's face and the bodies of people hovering nearby no longer appeared in terms of what they were but in terms of what they were not. It became increasingly difficult to speak. After listing the names of two cats, I was reduced to producing only a syllable at a time with each breath, and even that seemed like a great effort.

  "Close your eyes."

  This was unthinkable. First, I didn't want to miss a thing, and second, what if they thought I was asleep and began cutting me open when I was merely resting my eyes? This last fear was to haunt me through subsequent operations. Even after I admitted my fear a couple of years later and had the whole process patiently explained, I remained wary.

  I felt nauseated. The gas was overpowering, the buzz now drowning everything else out, and finally I couldn't take it any longer and rolled over to vomit. A viscous magenta liquid with swirls of green poured out and created an interesting s
tain on the white sheet. I must have groaned, because someone put a metal basin near me, into which I vainly tried to deposit more of the smelly but curiously pleasant concoction. I still felt nauseous but could bring nothing else up. I lay back and closed my eyes, exhausted from the effort. A strange nurse was standing beside my bed insisting I acknowledge her visually and then, to my great annoyance, verbally. The very last thing I wanted to do just then was open my eyes, let alone speak to this woman, who was now asking the most ridiculous question I'd ever heard: Lucinda, what time is it? I wasn't used to people calling me by my full given name. With an outstretched arm she directed my gaze to a clock on the wall. This is nonsense I thought. Couldn't she understand that sleeping was the single most desirable act in the world, the only thing I could ever want to do with the rest of my life? She asked me a third time, and only to rid myself of her I gathered my wits and focusing powers and told her. was eleven-ten. My first operation was over.

  Six months later, sometime near Easter, I came home from school with the right side of my face swollen and hot. I'd been going in to the hospital sporadically to have x-rays taken of my jaw ever since the first surgery. A bony knob had appeared on the very tip of my jaw just under my ear shortly after the initial surgery, and my mother had asked the doctor about it repeatedly.