Dressed up in Awkward.

Held together by safety pins, I secure straps of an ill-fitting shirt to that ratty old bra I promised you I’d retire but kept because it goes so well under everything I own, regardless of the underwire protruding white satin, marking indents on soft tit flesh.

I fidget in a room full of strangers, tugging at fabric which doesn’t breathe in summer heat but instead traps sweat, pooling beads of insecurity at the small of back, bleeding through fabric shrink-wrapped to that unseemly swatch of small hairs collected at the nape of spine, a bunny tail.

Shoes, weather-worn faux-leather, stick to swollen pads trapped in pools of stench I’ll apologize to the cat for later when, at home and alone, I slip off the smell and wash toes outlined in sticky dark dirt under bathroom taps which drip-drap into the chipped porcelain sink I neglected to rinse the last time I perched on the edge of the bathroom counter, feet sunk deep.

Bumping the shoulders of these strangers, I order another drink and, with a mighty gulp, shush the rush running laps round my brain as I strategically balance the energy of a room off-kilter. I check my cell again and again and again to look real important, phone face casting eerie blue glow on heat-flushed cheeks, a trick of light making my face look less cordial, more gelid.

Like a lost puzzle piece, I can’t find a fit: shirt too sloppy, shoes too tight, gaze too long, laugh too loud.

Dressed up in awkward, I finger the hole in my back jeans pocket and pray it won’t rip wide to show the sheath of bubble gum pink panties, a little girl playing dress up in mom’s clothes, hiding the stuff of childhood under layers of makeup and lace.

We exchange pleasantries: the rehearsed social motions of hullos and well-thank-you’s and you-know-the-usual’s. You pretend you care because you caught my eye: an obligation to the too long stare when, after you looked away, you realized there was no one standing beside you to goad into conversation and so, without a runaway lane, you’re forced to suffer through the robotic dance: left hand motion hair swipe, right cheek lift half smile, gaze down 4, 3, 2, 1, and up, maintain eye contact, break left, side step right foot, indicate exit, half hug (right arm over left shoulder), two pat reassurance, turn, turn, turn and…cut.

I repeat this dance with 12 other partners – the motions more fluidal the darker it gets – when, after having shed the last of the reserve energy, I nod in your general direction, bid my leave and think what a relief it is to swallow the starry night on the long journey home and not ever have to tell you how discomfited it really was to see you that way.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Blue.

Stall 54, a slight space with grey walls and a heavy door.

“Take off everything but your underpanties,” her voice thick with accent.

I let the word “underpanties” bounce around my brain as the big door falls closed.

In the too small cattle stall, I change out of street clothes and fumble a heavy blue gown over goosebumped skin. The lady, she yells: “stay there till I come get you, k?”

“Okay,” I whisper.

I can hear the shuffling of other women, pent up, pawing the ground.

52 recites a hymn, half word, half hum as she rips the gown Velcro apart over and over again, the crick of hooks and loops keeping beat to the performance staged by 47 and her small son as they sing Old MacDonald’s Farm, the child’s voice an e-i-e-i-o echo of farm animals speaking Portuguese. 55 mumbles to herself, drops her purse, classic girl spill, tampons and lipstick and pens with chewed lids scattering the floor: “motherfuckinshit,” she huffs.

The personality of these numbers a show of feet on display in the one foot window between the door and the floor; I stare at poignant pumps and fraying flip flops and smart sneakers; I paint pictures of these women in my mind: coiffed backcombed ‘do, peasant skirt, pleated pantsuit, desperate ladder climbing, school-test-frenzy, long road retirement.

“54? 54!” her gravelled voice worn with use, camouflaging a slight lisp: “follow me, please.”

Downtrodden patients awkwardly fidgeting matching blue gowns, embarrassed by the bare ass underneath, line the walls. No one makes eye contact.

In the room, I’m told to lay down, lay still, don’t breath, look left, now right.

On the screen, my insides in auric light: dancing violet, indigo, blue and green, a sway of yellow, orange, red; a rainbow reveal of creativity, awareness, intuition, health, love, wisdom, happiness, courage; my being in parts: the brain, the brow, the throat, the heart, the stomach, the ovaries, the adrenal glands.

Blue, so much blue.

“Stay here,” the door a whoosh-shick behind her.

Under low lights, I stare at the tiled roof wondering how the sallow stain managed its way, way up there, when the doctor walks in.

He pauses thoughtfully before the imaging screen and nods his head, pulls a clenched fist up under his chin, removes his glasses and slides his open-pore-pocked nose closer and closer until he says: “Hm, why yes. Right, I see.”

He walks back out. Whoosh-shick.

She looks at me and grins: “let’s do it again!” repeating the board game dice roll that didn’t get her to the desired square offering the jackpot win.

This time, black and white, a scroll of larynx and lymphnodes and esophagus. On the screen: white, white, grey, white and then black, black, black – a big black void. A hole.

“Aha.”

A blip-bloop press of sonar machine buttons.

“K, you go now. You’ll know results in five to seven business days,” she says ushering me back out into the herd.

xoxo

M. L. H’art