“On me,” she said. I thought she was confused, or maybe she had a tattoo I hadn’t noticed.
“Okay, where are you hiding it?” I asked, suddenly nervous.
“On me. I carry it everywhere.”
“A tattoo?”
“Maybe. But that’s not how I think of it.” I was embarrassed. We’d already been intimate. How could there be something I hadn’t seen?
“It’s an abstract painting someone drew on me,” she said.
“Who could have drawn on you?”
“Your friends did,” she cut me off sharply. Anger tinged her voice.
I froze.
“Is it expressive or lyrical abstraction?” I tried to joke.
“It’s not funny,” she said, her green eyes wide.
“Come,” she said at last.
“I want you to see it in our kingdom.” I liked that phrase – our kingdom.
In the bedroom, she lowered her pants slightly below the knee and slid down her sock.
“You understand the doctors painted this,” she said, pointing to a discolored patch, over twenty centimeters, covering the lower part of her leg.
For the first time, I saw her scar.
“Medical abstraction?” I tried again, half to ease the moment.
“Doesn’t it repulse you?” she asked, tears gathering.
“Why should it? I love you – with or without it. I love you, Lily.”
“I had to show you everything. I hope you’ll be the last.”
“Last what?”
“I don’t want to show it to anyone else again.”
“I’ll be the last. I promise,” I said, not realizing the weight of those words.
“Do you want to know how I got it?” she asked me of her own accord. And then, she punished the scar with her words. I’d never heard anything like it. It was, unfortunately, a tragedy with Lily in the leading role.
Eleven years earlier, at the age of fourteen, she had been ill with what seemed at first like an unremarkable throat infection. After a week of high fever that didn’t respond to antibiotics, strange symptoms appeared – uncontrollable movements, and severe memory lapses.
“The doctors said chorea?” I guessed, playing doctor.
“I think that’s what they called it.”
“But chorea doesn’t leave scars. So what caused this?”
“Please, just listen.” They’d given her blood thinners, thinking she had clots in her leg veins, and admitted her to the Hospital. On a Friday night, she suddenly felt unbearable pain in her rightshin near the ankle. By the time the doctors came, the leg had turned black.
“What do you mean ‘by the time the doctors came?’” I asked in outrage, imagining the situation.
