Under Her Skin

by Stephen Law

  Shaz had not prepared a story.

  “Hi.”

  She began calibrating an explanation, but her mom interjected.

  “That’s how I met your father.” Scanning the grid on the page, her mom continued to worry away at the puzzle. “Your nana used to call it my ‘condition.’”

  Waiting, Shaz braced herself.

  “But she never told my dad about it. It was one of our secrets. I was restless. At night I escaped, walked around, explored. I felt suffocated at home. But going out then, with no one around, it didn’t matter who you were. I could breathe.”

  Steeled for a lecture or a reprimand, Shaz remained at the door, trying to draw as little attention as she could.

  “I went to the habourfront. There’d been a dance or a carnival or something festive going on, but all that was left was the mess.”

  Her mom’s eyes were distant. Shaz felt if she could scoot around, she might avoid recrimination.

  “I almost tripped over a drunk. I threw my hands to my mouth to keep from screaming. Almost gave me a heart attack. He was urine soaked and reeked of alcohol. In getting away, I ran to the wharf. At first I didn’t see your dad there, sitting with his feet dangling. He’d been watching me the whole time.”

  Shaz surveyed the kitchen, to see if her mom had been drinking. There was nothing on the table but a cup of tea and the crossword. Her mother rarely spoke about her father. Drawing away from the doorframe, Shaz inched forward.

  “He wasn’t in his uniform. I probably wouldn’t have approached him if he had been. I wasn’t sure if you could trust the navy guys.” A smile, perhaps at the irony. “But, he was just sitting there on the wharf. On furlough. He’d stayed out while all his mates had stumbled back to the ship. He said he wanted to be alone, taste the air that surrounded a city, before he went back out to sea.”

  Shaz wondered if the flavours and smells surfaced for her mom along with the memories.

  “It couldn’t have happened during the light of day. Black women and white men didn’t meet, they didn’t mingle.”

  Edging a chair out from the table, Shaz eased herself down as her mom went on to describe the obscurity of the night, and how with only a passed-out drunk as their witness, her mom and dad got to know each other. “Not quite in every way, not yet.”

  Seeing her squirming, her mother laughed at her discomfort.

  “We just kissed that night. I took his hand, leaned in, and took what I wanted. It was like …” A fond glow seemed to come out of her.

  Dragging her eyes from recalling the time, her mother took Shaz’s hands in her own. Wanting to pull away, but careful not to damage the sentiment that might get her off from being out past curfew, she remained still, not holding back, but not moving. “That’s the night it all began. When you began.”

  This was new.

  “Well, the next night to be precise. In the commons, in Dartmouth. Under a lovely big white pine. I wasn’t even sure if he was going to show up. That was the night my world changed.”

  Letting go, her mom drank down the rest of her tea and lay the pen beside the crossword. “Best thing I ever did.” And just like that, she rose from the chair, kissed her on the top of the head and went off to bed.

  Sneaking out at night? Rendezvousing with her father? Sex? Shaz stayed up and tried to finish the crossword, breathing relief at the reprieve, yet disconcerted. It was that conversation that hovered around her as she hesitated at Nan’s front door, hands full of snapdragons.

  “Hi Mom. I brought you these.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  Going over to the cupboard, Shaz brought down a vase. “Just something I thought you would like.”

  ***

  SHAZ FOLLOWED AS HER mom made straight for her styling chair.

  “What brings you here?”

  Visits to the studio were rare. Was bringing her flowers all it took?

  Her father sported tattoos — he practically had to, being in the navy. But her mom didn’t abide them. She’d made her views known in the beginning. “God has given you your body. It is a temple you need to respect.”

  “But God also gave us war.”

  “You won’t find me sullying His work.”

  Despite how she felt, she helped Shaz sign the lease for the studio when she was first starting out.

  Now here she was, decked out in a red dress, classy black pumps, her hair straightened and long. She wore yellow earrings and red lipstick. Like her nana, she always dressed up when she left the house.

  “I want a tattoo.”

  Shaz tried not to look surprised.

  “Right here.” Flipping over her wrist, she offered her arm, as though she wanted Shaz to check her pulse.

  Taking her mother’s hand, Shaz followed the veins that extended from her elbow to her wrist, endeavouring to take the visit at face value and not overthink her mom’s appearance. But something was afoot. It wasn’t April fool’s, though she glanced towards the calendar, just in case there was something she was missing.

  “What do you want on it?”

  It occurred to Shaz she might want a cross, that this might be the way she’d bring Jesus to the studio.

  “A trumpet,” her mom said, pointing to her left forearm. “An f sharp trumpet with rotary valves.”

  Ah, music. Now that made sense. Her collection of vinyl records spanned the generations of jazz from Dizzy Gillespie to Thelonius Monk, Charlie Parker to Nina Simone and Alice Coltrane.

  Maybe the offering of snapdragons had opened the gates.

  “I don’t know if I ever told you much about Fitzgerald?”

  Now this was a name that had never come up before. Shaz wondered if she had secrets to share, illicit love affairs other than the one with her father.

  “An f sharp trumpet,” she said while Shaz kept hold of her arm. “I’m not a singer as you know, I was directed to join the band by the pastor. And I loved it.”

  Shaz had known her mom was musical, and that she’d played a trumpet when she was younger, even fancied herself as somewhat good at it. But it wasn’t something Shaz knew from experience. Shaz had never heard her play.

  “We’d play at church and practise in the basement. We moved from gospel to jazz on our own. Then someone even got us to do a little gig, an opening act in Halifax. A bit of a lark — we only had three songs that suited. Your grandfather would not have approved. But, play them we did, at the Double Deuce.” Her mom grinned at the memory. “Got us to thinking, to dreaming really. That’s when we started talking about going to the St. Henri district in Montreal where Oscar Peterson and the Sealy family made it big.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “It was a silly idea, we were never that good.” Her mom pursed her lips. “We never got a chance to be good. Your grandfather got wind before I left. The music and me pregnant, he correlated the two. Took my trumpet down to the CN rail by the water. Put it right on the tracks. Made me watch as the train rolled over it.

  Her face remained passive, but Shaz could feel tension course through her mother’s arm.

  “It was an f sharp trumpet. It was my instrument, my Fitzgerald. I loved it, the way you love your art.” Her mother eyes were soft. Shaz held her tenderly.

  “I have a picture I brought with me.” Pulling a photo from her purse, she showed Shaz a picture of a trumpet on a bed. “The tattoo will be a graduation gift, to myself.”

  When her mom left with the rendition of Fitzgerald on her skin, Shaz took some time, and with the gun in her left hand, fashioned a duplicate trumpet onto herself, on her arm just like her mom.

  12

  STOMACH

  [ ]

  ALEYSHA WAS FURIOUS. FRANK was mister “no comment.”

  “You got tested? What the hell were you thinking?” Aleysha paced the studio, unable to settle.


  Shaz had called the huddle so she could give her friends the news about the match. She’d considered telling her mom while she’d been inking the trumpet onto her arm, but it didn’t feel right. She didn’t want to muddle the moment. Her dad didn’t belong there between them, at that moment.

  As news went, it was big. Momentous. Something she needed to share with her team, to help her work out what she was going to do. It was something she wouldn’t have hesitated letting them know about in the past. Like Aleysha’s mother’s brush with cancer and the passing of Frank’s grandparents, the big stuff had always brought them together, no matter what else they had going on. They’d had plenty of bumps over the years, and perhaps the latest challenge brought on by her brother paled next to others. But in the past, all had been forgiven. Well, mostly.

  Shaz fiddled with her styling chair, spinning it around.

  Frank piped in, “William couldn’t make it.”

  Including Frank’s Will was not something she’d even considered. She filed it away for next time and returned to her two closest friends.

  “Why would you agree to give your dad anything?” Aleysha had known Shaz the longest. More than anyone, she’d witnessed Shaz’s hope fester into disappointment.

  “That no-good, son-of-a-bitch, thinking he has some kind of right to you?”

  Shaz appreciated the protection, knowing that if the roles were reversed, she’d have reacted the same.

  “Giving him your kidney … it’s a big step …” Frank’s reaction was less definitive, but she could sense his hesitation. Realizing it might be hard for him to talk about her family, Shaz gave him some room and stayed at the counter. She crumpled rejected flash drawings into little balls and threw them, one at a time, with a free throw wrist flick at the garbage can.

  Part of her wanted to hear them out. She felt so unsure of everything lately. She wanted them to make the case as to why the decision was wrong, why she shouldn’t even consider it. She wanted them to talk her out of it.

  “Listen up, you want me to tell you the number of times Mr. Donald Dad said he was going to show up and never did?” Aleysha pointed her finger and then stood like a linebacker, preventing her from moving forward.

  And that was it. Shaz wouldn’t have considered it. She would have punished him, or maybe not given him what he wanted in a kind of schoolyard tit for tat. But then the thought of him being forced to cart a part of her inside himself for the rest of his life had a kind of appeal. He’d be unable to ignore her or to forget about her. And every time he ran away or didn’t show up, her kidney ran with him.

  She kept throwing paper into the basket until there was nothing left to throw.

  “I can’t let him die,” she offered weakly.

  Frank came over and threw his arm around her shoulder. Aleysha humphed her uncertainty, then joined them, not satisfied, but in solidarity. They may not understand what she was doing, but they stood beside her.

  ***

  THE TEENAGER WHO WAS watching, was clearly pregnant, and she rubbed her belly while Shaz tattooed the girl’s name, “Norah,” on her boyfriend’s neck. The girl used a circular motion on her stomach, up and around. Her actions unconscious, a pattern, easing anxiety, or just to connect, to let the baby know she was there.

  Shaz had her own pattern to follow — during her breaks in the day, walking home, making dinner, at night in bed, she traced circles on her stomach, testing imagined contours.

  She’d been thinking about a design, something to complement the scar. Ideas such as angels, or Odin hanging from the World Tree, a maple gad used in flagellation, or perhaps just a depiction of a Harry Potter house elf all surfaced at one time or another. A dove holding an olive branch through her stitched together skin was an option. But nothing was right, nothing quite fit.

  After Norah and her boyfriend left, Shaz sat at the couch and leafed through the albums, looking at client photos for inspiration. Pictures didn’t always capture the work at its best. Following a session, the skin was red and irritated from the needles. And while she had examples of art on every body part and of what seemed like every imaginable symbol, and yet as she flipped through the pages, still nothing stood out.

  She lay down onthe couch, and pulled up her shirt, to see and feel where the scar would go. She imagined its contour, the skin separated, kidney removed, skin stitched back together again. Something she would be able to see and feel every day. The scar would always be there, it would be a reminder of what she did.

  ***

  SITTING UP, SHE PULLED her shirt down and closed the binder.

  Unobscured. She wanted the scar to stand out for exactly what it was, the sacrifice she made for her father. It was the things he took out of her, the things she had given him. It was a gift he couldn’t return, though he might be able to forget about it. But not her — she never would.

  13

  RIGHT SHOULDER

  dragon and chrysalis

  “WHY LIVE NEAR THE ocean if you don’t like the water?” Shaz asked, kicking off her sandals, impatient for the feeling of beach on her feet. The best thing about living in Nova Scotia was proximity to the water. As promised, she’d packed a picnic lunch for two and headed them to her favourite place, the ocean, which she loved for the freedom and the expanse of space that could carry you out into nothingness.

  “We came over on a boat,” Rashid said, his voice serious.

  Glancing up, she noticed his eyes stayed tied to the sand, never drifting off shore.

  “I guess we were the Tamil version of boatpeople.”

  Her ancestors had arrived on ships, too. The family on her grandfather’s side were Black loyalists up from Boston after the Revolutionary War. On the Downey side, she had Maroons, free Jamaicans who were descendants of African slaves exiled to Nova Scotia, most of whom, except for her ancestors, immigrated to Sierra Leone back on the continent. Her dad was probably Scottish, she wasn’t exactly sure.

  A country settled by the sea.

  They stepped up onto the wooden boardwalk that cut a path through the grass to the beach. Planting their picnic blanket on the sand, they strolled, zigzagging along the shore. Her feet played tag with the tides, while Rashid, shoes on, stayed back from the waves. Out across the sea, only a thin line separated where the water ended and the sky began.

  Pier 21 showcased the many arrivals to these shores, those scores of immigrants from all over the world debarking from ships and starting new lives in the land of the Mi’kmaq. There were those who passed through, like the Chinese, who built the railways, and those who were denied, like the Jews of the St. Louis who were turned away prior to World War Two.

  “What was it like, seeing land, coming ashore, after being on the water for so long?”

  Rashid coughed. He looked cold, but the weather was mild and warm in the early fall, one of the best times to visit the beach. Given the proximity to the city, and the smooth white sand, Crystal Crescent was plenty busy in the summer. Early fall, it was quiet. “I was just a little kid. I don’t remember it well.”

  Noticing his quick sideways glance out to the waves, she gave his hand a squeeze.

  In middle school she’d learned about the arrival of Vietnamese refugees who had fled the war in the 1970s. They’d been shown video footage and documentaries, and she had memories of Nana cooking up meals for a family from Kosovo that had fled Southeastern Europe.

  Rashid was looking more and more seasick as they strolled, so Shaz led him away from the shore to a short wall of rocks and boulders deposited by the sea. She choose a large rock to climb on. Barnacles clung to its surface and bits of seaweed dangled from its face here and there. Rashid followed and they sat together on top where little pools had formed in concaves. Abandoned snail shells, sea anemones and a small, solitary crab waited for the tide to return and pull them into the sea again.

  “We came ashore in
St. John’s and were held in detention for a while. I don’t think they knew what to do with us. Then churches took us in. I’d never seen a body on a cross before. I remember looking at my mom, wondering if we’d landed in a safe place.”

  It was drilled into them and normalized, that Jesus had suffered for their sins. Crucified for love. Shaz had never considered what a cross with a body nailed to it might look like for someone who’d never seen it before.

  Shaz dipped her toe into the pool and swirled it around gently.

  “Things were bad back home in Sri Lanka. I don’t remember much. My mom tried to shield us from what was happening, but you hear things and kids know when their parents are scared. So we had to leave.”

  The crab was crawling up the side of the crater, trying to get out. Shaz moved her foot away to avoid a pinch.

  “People were kind, but we stood out here. I remember being stared at a lot.” Rashid was maintaining his distance from both Shaz and the pool.

  “Do you remember what it was like on the boat?”

  He bit the side of his cheek. “I remember pushing my fist into my belly to try to make the hunger go away. And then we got to the church and there was so much to eat. I was confused. I couldn’t understand why there could be so much here, and so little when we were on the boats.”

  The sky was a bright, bright blue, the only clouds quite far off. As usual, there was a strong breeze.

  “We didn’t know if we were going to live or die, and being on a boat in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a storm, I was pretty sure I just wanted to die.”

  Shaz stared out at the water, watching the waves gently ride onto shore. Waves that, under the right conditions, could lose their beauty and be a torment.

  “Where’s your dad?” She’d noted his absence when he spoke about family.

  There was a heavy breath before he spoke and Shaz wondered if maybe she shouldn’t have asked. “Well, my mother said ‘enough is enough’ after we made our way here from Newfoundland. She wasn’t going anywhere, and she wasn’t moving away from the water, in case we had to flee again.”