“I don’t want to end this letter—
“Love always,
“Tim.”
I stood on the steps in front of the downtown bus station, my suitcase leaning against my leg. This was where I usually caught a taxi to take me to school, but at the moment I couldn’t move. I was stunned with loss. It seemed pointless to go forward or back. A door opened behind me and a man in an overcoat passed purposefully down to the sidewalk. The world could go on: I didn’t want to. If this was life, I certainly didn’t want any more of it. I’d had enough. Like Tim said, what did it matter anyway? You could line us all up—the nun, the soldier, the schoolgirl, the murderer, the good and the bad: we all came to the same end. Why go on? Why even bother if it hurt so much?
Buses rumbled past in front of me, heavy silver tanks with destinations spelled out above their windshields: Lake Charles. New Orleans. I hate to say this, Liz, but I suddenly saw that relief was no more than a few steps away. It would be as easy as taking my next breath. One instant of shock, like jumping into a cold lake, and it’d all be over. Another bus passed trailing black clouds of diesel smoke: Biloxi. What would I miss? Nothing. Who would miss me? Nobody. I would be far, far away, released from all this regret, and whatever was there, even if it was nothing, could only be better than this miserable, ugly life I had now.
I stepped down toward the street and waited for the next bus, shivering in my coat as I readied myself. Could I do it? I believed that I could. The necessary thing, I saw, was to do it all at once and get it right. Another bus was coming, pulling out of the station at the end of the block. I measured the distance from the curb to the middle of the street. Three quick steps was all it would take, like running to the end of a diving board, and then the plunge. And then … what? Release. Quiet. Dark. I was conscious of my breath and of the muscles tensing in the back of my legs. I could feel the blood tingling in my fingers at the ends of my hands. Facing me on the opposite side of the road, like a backdrop to this last scene of my life, was a dilapidated row of shops. At the corner stood a barbershop. Next to that, a used bookstore. The last shop in the row was one I must’ve seen before but never quite registered. “Tattoo” the window said.
It wasn’t a matter of choosing, Elizabeth. How do I explain this? It was as if the act had been there all along, in my mind and in my body, only waiting for this moment to be realized. I see it now as one of the few truly inspired moments in my life, a kind of divine intervention that may have literally saved me. Something told me what I had to do, and I did it.
I waited until the bus passed and then hefted up my suitcase and walked directly across the street to the shop. There weren’t any lights on but the door was unlocked. A bell tied to the inside doorknob clinked tinnily when I entered.
The front room was dingy and small, with broken linoleum flooring and a few pieces of secondhand furniture. It smelled damp and unclean. Music played from behind a beaded curtain. “Be right there,” a voice called. On a low coffee table were scattered some magazines—Easyriders, Playboy, Rolling Stone. After a minute a man stepped through the hanging beads, putting on his eyeglasses like he’d just woken up.
He was big and scruffy with pale skin, an unkempt beard, and long reddish hair pulled back in a ponytail. He wore a green army shirt. He looked down at my suitcase. “Yeah?”
“You do tattoos?”
“I do.” His voice was lazy, matter of fact, but not coarse.
“Will you give me one?”
He drew his fingers through his beard, like he was combing it. “That depends. Have you got any money?”
“A little.”
“What do you want?”
“Can you do words?”
“Sure, I can do words.” A flicker of curiosity passed across his eyes when I told him what I wanted. “That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem, then. When do you want to do this? Now?”
“Yes. Now.”
“Fine. You want to, ah—?” He indicated that I should follow him into the back room. As he held the bead curtain aside, he looked back at my suitcase. “You running away? Not that it’s any of my business.”
“No.”
“Good.”
He shooed a cat off an old hospital exam table, draped the table with a towel, and then went to wash his hands in a corner sink. I glanced around the room, my arms folded over my coat, still shivering a little. On the wall were an American flag and a poster of a smiling Buddha. The back of the room was cluttered with junk—a hot plate, an army trunk, some clothes, a standing lamp. Books lay everywhere. On a plywood shelf sat a Panasonic stereo playing a record of jangly folk rock.
“What’s your name?”
“Laura.”
“I’m Greg. You’re eighteen, right?”
“Yes.”
He hung up a hand towel and came and turned down the music. “So. How do you want it?”
He explained the colors he had. He showed me an album with tattoo designs on paper, some with lettering. He grabbed a pen and paper and practiced writing out the lines I’d told him. “Something like that?” He had surprisingly good penmanship. “Kind of like, what, Victorian? Edwardian?”
“That’s good.”
“Hm? Like that? You sure? Okay. Good enough. Where would you like to have this?”
I don’t believe I’d ever seen a tattoo on a woman before, and certainly not in the place I had in mind. But like I said, it wasn’t a matter of deciding. I knew where it had to go. I ran a finger down below my hip—a spot to mark the night in the parlor when Tim and I had promised ourselves to one another.
“You’ll have to, ah, lie back there.”
“Take them off?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be better. You might take off your coat, too.”
I handed him my coat, and as he hung it up I pulled my blue jeans off and lay back on the cot.
“Little cold in here,” he said. “You want a blanket or something?”
“I’m fine.”
He turned to a counter to ready his things. I watched from the cot as he drew a long needle from a cloth pouch, looked at it, and chose a different one. He dropped the needle into a steel tray and poured rubbing alcohol over it. Then he turned his attention to the tattoo machine. It was a small, complicated, ugly brass device; it looked like something yanked from a car engine. He hooked the thing up to a black cord that ran to an electric power box on the counter and tested it. It made a harsh buzzing sound, like a dentist’s drill. I turned my eyes up to the ceiling, where there was a black-light poster of the stars of the zodiac arrayed around a golden sun against deep blue space. There was Sagittarius, and Scorpio, and Libra …
I jerked when something cold touched my skin. “Just gonna clean it with some alcohol,” he said. “I’ll trace it first with pen and then let you have a look.”
He settled himself on a stool by the cot. I could hear his breath sighing in and out of his nose as he drew the words on my skin. “Don’t get many girls your age in here,” he said. “Don’t get many girls at all, actually.” He rubbed at my skin with the cotton ball to correct something, and then resumed drawing with the pen. After a minute he sat back. “See what you think.” I pushed myself up on my elbows. “I brought the line around down underneath to give it a kind of flourish…. I can take that off if you want.”
“No. Leave it.” I thought it was lovely. Graceful and elegant, like something from a distant, romantic era. I watched as he spread a thin sheen of petroleum jelly over the words. Then he turned back to the counter and squeezed a small amount of red pigment into a tiny tin cup. Last, he removed the needle from the alcohol and fitted it into the machine. I lay back and looked up at the stars.
“You comfortable?” he asked.
“Mm-hm.”
He leaned over my hip and brought the tool close to my skin. He buzzed it once or twice and I braced myself for the sting. But then he abruptly stopped and sat back up.
“Look, ah,
Laura. You sure about this? It’s just, you know, you’re not my typical customer.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose.
“It’s permanent?”
“Permanent.”
“Won’t ever come off?”
“Not likely.”
“Okay then,” I said.
“Okay then.” He nodded, and I closed my eyes as he lowered the machine and drove the needle home.
“Did it hurt?” you once asked me, Elizabeth.
“Not much,” I said.
What I meant, though, and what would’ve been impossible to explain then, was that it hardly hurt enough. I wanted the hurt. I welcomed the hurt. As the needle scored my skin, I understood for the first time why Saint Catherine of Siena had passed over the crown of gold and seized the one of thorns. There could hardly be pain enough to erase all my misgivings.
The stereo played a slow, waltzlike shuffle. The refrain, I remember, went, “Sad-eyed lady of the lowland,” the “low” drawn out in a long, lonely moan that seemed to go on forever. I tried to feel the words as he etched them into me: “I,” then “shall,” then “but.” As he worked, Greg spoke in a soft, even voice, as you might talk to calm a frightened animal.
“People ask for all kinds. Most are pretty predictable, actually. ‘Love.’ Get that a lot. A heart, a woman’s name. Some guys want the name of their unit. ‘The Twenty-fifth Infantry Division,’ ‘Tropic Lightning,’ ‘Screaming Eagles.’ Something like that. ‘Semper fi.’ That’s pretty popular….” He paused to wipe the blood. “Most people, of course, when they think of tattoos they think of sailors. What they don’t realize is that tattoos have a long history. Go way back. I’ve read up on it. The mummies had tattoos. Ancient Egyptians. Greeks. Persians, Polynesians. The Maori. Japanese. American Indians. You name it. You find them in just about any culture, any part of the world, any era. Interesting thing, though, is that different societies have used them to signify different things. As a sign of royalty, for instance. Or spirituality, like for priests, the priestly class. Shamans. They’ve been used to mark rites of passage. Scarification—you get that a lot in Africa. Same thing as a tattoo, basically. A boy becomes a man. Girls, women. You got tattoos for beauty. Or as charms, magic symbols to bring luck, or prosperity, or love. And then at the totally opposite end of the spectrum, you got your tattoos for outcasts. Criminals. Slaves. Got your Jews, of course …”
And then something quite strange happened, something that had never happened to me before and has never happened since. As his voice faded in and out with the music and the buzz of the needle, I felt myself separate from my self. I don’t know quite how to explain this. I slipped up out of my body and came to hover somewhere near the ceiling, only the ceiling wasn’t there anymore, just an infinitude of space and stars—the universe at my back. Looking down on the table, as if peering through the wrong end of a telescope, I could see a girl. A young woman, in fact. Her dark hair was spread out on either side of her head, her pale winter skin exposed and vulnerable. Her eyes were shut tight, her fists bunched. A red-haired man was bent over her, searing her skin with a needle. I saw that she was trembling, and in that moment my heart went out to her. Brave girl! I wanted to help her, to protect her from harm for the rest of her life. With all the power I could muster, I tried to signal a wish for good to her. You’ll be fine, I tried to tell her. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. You’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll take care of you….
“You’re done. It’s over,” Greg said, and in a flash I was myself again. The needle had stopped buzzing. I could hear the music again, the same song playing the same slow waltz. Below my right hip I felt only a dull burn. “You did real good. That’s a sensitive area,” Greg said, dabbing carefully at the wound. “You’re a real strong lady. Real strong.”
At that I finally broke. All the air rushed into me and I sat up with a gasp on the cot as the tears I’d avoided for a week came all at once. I folded over myself, heaving. Greg was taken aback at first. But then, somewhat awkwardly, he cradled his arms around me. He rocked back and forth with me on the cot as I cried, and cried—not out of pain, you understand, or remorse, or even self-pity, but for something more: for the beauty and brevity of life.
Below my hip, still wet with jelly, blood, and ink, was the tattoo you’ve asked me about so often, but that, until now, I’ve always put off explaining.
“But what’s it mean? Why’d you get it?” you would ask.
“Later. When you’re older,” I always answered. There seemed too much to say, and to say too little wouldn’t do it justice.
Well. Now you are older, Liz, and I hope that with this letter you’ll understand at last why it’s there and what all it means to me: “I shall but love thee better after death.”
It’s getting late, Liz. Your father won’t go to bed. I told him I’d wait up, he didn’t need to, but he says he’s not sleepy. He found an eyeglass repair kit, and now he’s repairing all the eyeglasses and sunglasses he can find in the house. It looks like we’ll be waiting this out together. He’s got the TV on again in the living room, but it’s just news about the war, that interminable, mad war.
I have to imagine the best for you, Liz. You’re not lugging a suitcase from a bus station to a tattoo parlor. You’re not lying unconscious in your black clothes on an empty beach somewhere. You’re out having fun with friends, laughing and talking in an all-night diner. Or maybe you’re already safe and warm in bed—a friend’s bed, or even a lover’s. Or maybe you miss your own bed, and even now you’re turning the car toward home, coming back to us.
I could stop this letter here—god knows it’s long enough. But I’m afraid if I stop now it’ll make the story of my adolescence sound like a tragedy, and I don’t want to leave you with that impression. There are happier things to tell if I can write a little longer.
Could all our lives be that simple, I wonder? They’re only tragedy or comedy depending on where we end them? Here’s the rest, Elizabeth, the happy ending.
The first week back of my last semester at Sacred Heart Academy, during an afternoon PE class, my tattoo became public knowledge.
We’d been running basketball relays in the gym when the tattoo began to bleed. I didn’t notice it until we were already in the locker room and I was removing my gym shorts and saw red. The bandage had worked loose, and when it came off, so did the scab, leaving an ugly black scar, like someone had carved up my skin with the point of a steak knife. Blood was dripping down my leg. Obviously this was not your usual menstrual mishap. Girls gasped, the coach was called, and as I was cursing and shouting for paper towels and trying to clean up the mess with my underwear, Sister Agatha stepped into the locker room.
You have to understand, Liz, that in the 1970s normal people like me just didn’t get tattoos. Today I know they’re almost commonplace; you can hardly go to the shopping mall without seeing dozens of teenage boys and girls flaunting them. Even celebrities wear tattoos nowadays, giving them an air of glamour. But back then, tattoos were reserved for people of only the lowest, most disreputable classes, like prisoners, or prostitutes, or sideshow freaks. They signaled thuggery and vice. So for a girl at a Catholic school to have one was … well, it was unheard of. It was outrageous.
For the second time during my stay at SHA, I was dragged by Hagatha-Agatha to the nurse’s station. The principal was called. My parents were called. Sister Evelyn couldn’t bring herself to use the word tattoo over the phone. “It’s … something … your daughter did … horrible …” she stammered. “You should come immediately.”
Nurse Palmer was furious. “I can’t understand it. Why you, a young woman, would knowingly inflict this kind of damage to your skin, your own skin! Not to mention the health risks involved …” She painted the wound with Mercurochrome and rebandaged it. “Were you drunk?” she asked, and then gave me a tetanus shot, jabbing me with the needle much harder, I thought, than was necessary.
When my parents arrived from Zachary the bandage had to be removed a
gain so they could see. Nuns bent around taking turns to look and recoil in horror. My parents were shocked, of course, but more than that, they were ashamed. They stood as far back from me as the small room allowed, as if they were already taking steps to disown me. When we all moved from the nurse’s station to the principal’s office, they walked well ahead of me, my mother with her arms folded grimly over her coat, my father close by her side, touching her elbow. “Back to class! Back to class!” Sister Evelyn shouted at the girls who had gathered in the front hall. They gawked as I passed, the girl with the tattoo. I heard my name repeated, passed down from the upperclassmen to the newer girls: “Jenkins … Zachary … trouble.”
I sat on a chair outside the principal’s office while my parents conferred inside with Sisters Evelyn and Agatha. Two Beta Club girls stared at me, entranced, as they slowly sorted mail into teachers’ pigeonholes. When Sister Mary Margaret arrived, she shooed them away.
“Laura—” she said, stopping in front of me. The oversized wooden cross swayed against her tunic as she took a moment to collect herself. “First of all, is this true?” I nodded. “And what’s written there, is that … Browning?”
“He died,” I explained. “In Vietnam. Three weeks ago, just before he was supposed to come home.”
She brought a hand to her mouth. “Oh dear. Oh dear, you poor child. I’m so sorry.”
“There was a funeral, in Zachary. And I didn’t … You know I didn’t plan to do this, Sister.”
“No …”
“It was something … I had to do. For him. It’s for him.”
She nodded slowly, as if forcing herself to understand. “Yes.”
“I didn’t have a choice. This is what I had to do. To remind me … so I never forget … how much he loved me.” I looked away. It seemed hopeless. “They won’t understand.”
Sister Mary Margaret was quiet, as if thinking things through. After a moment she sighed and said, as much to herself as to me, “No. No, I don’t suppose they will.” I saw her glance anxiously at Sister Evelyn’s office. Then she bent down and gave me a hug. “Are you all right here?”
Letter to My Daughter Page 11