treatswords

“If I have to lose you, I will be devastated.”

I say to the small brown oval on my left forearm.

Last spring my aunt who worked at a skin clinic, stopped me mid-sentence. She gasped, grabbing my arm, studying the large mole.

“Oh honey, you need to get this checked out. See these edges? They are obtuse, jagged…something has shifted.”

The mole had changed, but so had I. I thought we were just changing together.

Reluctantly, I make an appointment with my dermatologist.

“Yeah, I have a mole that’s changed. I hope it won’t need to be removed, it is my favorite mole.” I can hear the receptionist sigh.

The brown mole with tiny black hairs poking out of it, was my first lesson in security.

One night, I woke from one of my persistent childhood night terrors. Cheeks wet, fear crumpling me into a small ball on my mothers bed.

“I dreamt someone took me, a man. He snuck into my window and stole me.”

My mom’s voice is hazy, her clock blinking red little lines that read, 3:30. Only a few hours until she has to slip from her blankets and turn her curling iron on. Another day beginning.

“Oh, my sweet girl.”  She says, “This mole you have here? This is how I will always find you. If someone ever tries to take you, I will tell the investigators that my daughter has a large mole in the center of her forearm. No one else has a mole like this. They would be able to find you so easily my girl, with a marker like the one you were gifted.”

After falling a sleep in a nest of goosebumps from her nails softly scratching over my mole, I wake. The red sticks on her clock now read 6:30. I slip back into my bed, leaving a small kiss on my large mole.

***

The same mole that allowed me to sleep at night, also became my greatest fourth grade insecurity.

Blunt bangs sticking to a wide, greasy forehead. Red bumps scattering like braille on every crevice of my face. If a blind woman put her hands to it, it would read LOSER. My pants were too tight, I ate too much, and I didn’t understand that lime green was NOT my color. Insecurity filled me to my edges. One small push and I would spill over into a foamy, Proactive Cleanser filled substance.

Robert with the big green eyes sits across from me. Our desks mushed together into a “four square” layout. The only thing missing is a big red ball and an overwhelming smell of rubber.

He is cute, he makes me giggle. I give him the best Sponge-Bob Valentines Day card of the entire pack. Written inside was a special message that read, “You are funny and nice. Glad we are desk mates. Can’t wait to see where the year takes us. Love, Calissa.”

LOVE.

I said it in big, bold letters. When he opens the card, I see red hearts explode from the crease like fire crackers. Pop, pop, POP.  A cloud of flash powder lingering around him. He closes the card, not even remotely phased and moves onto the next one in the pile. He pauses for a moment, looking at my arm.

“What’s that?” He points to my brown spot of identity.

“Um, a mole?”

“Oh man, It’s huge and UGLY! It looks like a hairy, creepy bug.”

His buck teeth and loud laughter fill the room. He drops his pencil, keeling over from the abomination that is my forearm.

I feel my heart, a small ball of plastic, cordite and black powder, hitting the classroom floor.

POP.

After that, I beg my mom to have it removed.

“It’s ugly and everyone knows it.” I tell her.

“Well, why don’t you give it some time to marinate. Tell me how you feel come…lets say tenth grade?”

I imagine my mole marinating in garlic, onions and black pepper, soaking in a yellow sauce. I would let it sit all day, only to uncover it that evening and see it’s brown, furry face, still ugly. I wanted it gone.

***

Tenth grade came in the blink of an eye and my sights were set on a new boy.  He still had green eyes, but his humor wasn’t as childish. His name was Dylan.

I’d grown into myself a little more. Quit eating two pork-chops at dinner, wore denim  covered in holes, pink polos and learned how to crimp my hair. My eyes didn’t know who they were without coats of black eyeliner and my skin after 6 PM smelled like a tanning bed.

Dylan picks me up around 8 O’clock.

“Now, be home in the next few hours. It’s a school night and I don’t like the idea of you bumming around town past midnight.” My dad says, removing banana bread from the oven, red oven mitts coated in old charcoal.

“Yeah, yeah.” I say, slinking out the door.

We drive down the street to a small house party at Matt’s. He greets us with a beer in hand and a sloppy hug that smells like tequila.

“Heyyyaaa guys! Come on in!”

Dylan grabs my hand and we sit down on a brown couch that smells like mold. I’m worried he’s going to kiss me. My nerves get the best of me . They come blowing out of Matts air conditioner, an insecure green substance, globs of it sticking like snot to the ends of my hair. I imagine Dylan running his fingers through my blonde-do, his finger snagging, “Umm what’s this?!”

Despite being sixteen, I still have yet to know what a first kiss feels like. He leans in and I can feel my heart bashing it’s head against my rib-cage over and over, trying to knock itself unconscious.

What if I’m a bad kisser?

My heart couldn’t find out.

A girl wearing a bright red Christmas sweater in July enters the room. She has black curly hair bundled on the top of her head. A basket of dark ringlets. Her brown skin looks smooth, like a melting caramel on my tongue.

“Hi.” She says, looking at the both of us.

“Well howdy there! I’m Dylan, what’s your name?” He leaps from the couch, his hand caressing her shoulder.

“Dude, scram.”

Dylan peers at me, and does an embarrassed slink to the kitchen, his snake skin leaving dry scales on the floor.

She sits by me.

“Hi, I’m Sophia, Sophia Ray.”

” Calissa.” I wave.

“I moved here a few weeks back. It’s been hard to meet people during the summer, especially here. Everyone seems so close knit and here I come, a stranger from Maryland to a town of 600 people. Man! It’s been wild.”

I try to think of something cool to say. Something confident. I want to match her long legged strides.

She looks at my arm and smiles.

She rolls up her thick sleeve, exposing a flat, canoe shaped mole, smack-dab in the center of her forearm. It looks like it was plopped there and spread out delicately with a rolling pin, a dusting of flour left around it.

I smile.

“You have one too.” She says.

***

I pull into the North Sound Dermatology parking lot. I snap a picture of my mole. Admiring the blemish on my body. It is imperfect, but it’s still me. Who was I without my uneven, over-sized mole?

I didn’t want to find out.

The nurse brings me into the room and exits almost immediately after.

“Doctor Stoff will be right with you.” She says.

He enters quickly, “Well, where is the little culprit?” He says, magnifying glass in hand.

I point to her.

He examines it carefully.

“Oh yeah, this is a Congenital Nevus, meaning, you’ve had this marking since you were just a baby.”

I imagine my infant arm, cradled in my mother. Her covered in my goo, a brown dot on her babies left arm.

“Well, good news, we won’t be removing this today. It has changed, but not all changes are harmful.”

I leave the office, sit in my car and to my surprise, I cry.

I would remain the same. I was able to keep the skin I had finally grown comfortable in.

I turn my car on and crank the music up, flinging my arm out the window, my hand dipping in and out of the moving air, trying to catch it like a wave.

I glide through town and my mole sighs with relief, it can kick it’s shoes off and stay awhile. It turns on the TV, pours itself a cup of tea, throws some logs onto the crackling fire place. The nightly news anchor mumbles on and on about the election. It turns to its door and straightens the crooked sign that has been there for years.

The word Home, finally reading straight.