Sewn

ALLEN PARK, MICHIGAN
Early 1960s

Why am I here at the doctor’s office, the one with little squares of bathtub tile around the door? Why is the tile outside? Why does it touch the sidewalk at the bottom? Why don’t they have it in their bathroom? Why do I go to a different room, not the room where I get shots? Why didn’t I go into this room before? Why don’t I get to sit in the room where you can see the ladies in white dresses and white shoes behind the indoors window? I want to sit in the big smooth chairs that are green-brown and red-brown and make my skin pinch when I slide around on the seat. I want to touch the little metal bumps all around the edges. Why can’t I play the game of finding where bumps are missing? There is always a little hole where the bump used to be.

I am going to be sewn, tall people tell me. How am I going to be sewn? With a needle and thread like I’ve seen my mother do to a button? Will they put a hard wood ball inside my head and darn me like a sock? Will I be outlined with a shoelace like on my sewing cards? Will the lace go through me to my back and then get pushed to my front again? Will they have to punch holes in me like the card? I am much thicker than a card or a sock or a button. I think I will need holes. I sit in the strange room on the high long table on the white paper.

I think I will like being sewn. I want to see how I am sewn. I think they will use a needle. I like needles. I like to see them go into my skin. I am magic. I make needles turn into pointy hurt inside me. I always watch the shots go in. I get to keep the round piece with the lines and the pusher piece but I can’t have the needle. I squirt bathtub water onto my arm but it doesn’t go in me. When I am sewn I will have thread inside me. I feel shivery about thread being inside me. I need to be sewn so my head doesn’t stick out of my eyebrow like a toe in a sock. This is what I think when I sit on the paper. I will be darned like a sock with a special shiny needle for skin. When do I get to be sewn? I want to be sewn.

Why does someone put green cloth on my face? It’s hard to open and close my eyes. My eyelashes feel funny. Why can’t I unstick my eyelashes from the cloth? Why do they hold down my hands? I want to hold a mirror so I can see me being sewn. Where is the mirror? How can I see with a cloth on my face? Why don’t they listen to me? I am asking in my nice voice to see. I will need to cry if they don’t listen. It is hot under the cloth. I want to see. Why can’t I see? My legs kick to make them listen. Why are they mad at me? I want to see. Why can’t I see? They are sewing without me. I want to see. I feel crying in me. I feel screaming in me. I feel kicking in me. I feel crying coming out. I feel kicking legs. I feel screams come out because I want to see. Why can’t I see? They hold my feet but my knees kick. I want to see! I want to see my skin. It is my skin. It is my very own skin being sewn without me.

They are very mad at me. They say I am being bad. I cry. I scream. I try to kick. I try to unstick the cloth. It is wet. It sticks to my nose. My nose doesn’t work. I want the cloth away from my nose! It is hot. It is wet. My nose doesn’t work! I am scared that my nose doesn’t work. There are screams in my mouth. They are very very mad at me. My hands hurt from being held too tight. I am being sewn without me. I scream and scream. I say I will stop if I can see. I scream about the cloth. Why won’t they listen? My nose doesn’t work! My mouth is too full of screams coming out for anything to go in. It is hot and wet under the cloth. I am coming out of my mouth. I can’t get back in. My skin is being sewn without me. I am coming out of my mouth. I am going away from me. I am scared to go away from me. I need what comes in my nose to come in. I am getting flat like a card. I can’t puff back up. I am too scared to kick. The cloth is stuck to my skin. I can’t see. I can’t see my skin. I can’t feel puffed up. I want what needs to be in me. It hurts to be flat. I am scared to be flat. I want to be back in me. It is me who keeps me puffed up. I want to come back to me. I cry and I cry and I cry. I am scared. I am scared. I am scared. I want to puff me up with me. I am gone away from me. I feel floppy like a sock. I want to come back into me.

Before I was sewn I was not scared in my skin. I used to be safe in my skin. Needles went into my skin to keep me safe. But then I came out. I hit my head and my head came out my eyebrow. I screamed and screamed, and I came out of my mouth. I am scared. I am flat. My skin had a hole and I came out before I was done being sewn.

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I feel such piercing tenderness now, more than three and a half decades later, for the poor small divine child I was that day, in the minutes before they put in the stitches. I was so utterly whole and fearless, so thoroughly unbrokenly in love with my entire being that even the pain of a needle or the prospect of sutures being put inside me only filled me with joy and excitement and awe at the marvel I was.

It could not last, of course, it could not last. But it would be many years before I would understand it was death I felt suffocating me, and it would be many more years before I knew it was my sense of my place in eternity that came out, never to come back into me.
Because it was mortality that held me that day, more than the nurses who grasped my hands and feet, for this is the way perhaps we all picture it coming: the sudden darkness across our eyes, limbs held down against our will, screams and pleas that go unheard, the struggle for breath, acts upon your very body which is now no longer yours, acts which you can not stop, an animating force pushed out, and then the simple terrible flatness forevermore.

Oh my precious little self. Oh God.