You Are God's Artwork

            My mother used to tell me that the biggest scars are unseen- that words are sharper than any knife and leave wounds that neither time nor space can heal. But I lived for words.

            It never seemed to matter where I went or what I did, the words followed me. They trailed me, haunted me. They flew from the mouths of strangers, commenting on my appearance and reminding me that in their eyes, I was nothing.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Too often, I believed them.

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When I was nine, Zan and I were interviewed by the French edition of Marie Claire. Two women came to our home and interviewed us. My mother put us in dresses and curled our hair and we sat at the dining room table, which we were only allowed to do on special occasions. The women took pictures of us and they asked us questions about our life. All I can remember of them is their accents and the way I felt confused when they kept implying that I was different.

In the center of the table sat a framed picture of Zan and I from when we were five. We were in coordinating blue and white jumpers and holding strands of pearls. It was one of those forced mall photos that families liked to hang in their homes to convince everyone else they were happy. I hated the picture. Zan looked happy and healthy, but my eyes were bloodshot and I looked weak. It was taken only months after I had the second surgery to expand my skull and advance the middle of my face. They broke my bones and shifted everything forward. They took bones from my hips and put them in my face. I had to learn how to walk again. I try not to think about that time, though, because when I do, all I can remember is the screaming and the begging.

  I guess I didn’t like that memory on display, because it hurt too much.

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            A few years ago, I found the article. It was buried beneath memories and a thick layer of dust in the attic. The words were in French and so I sat on the plywood floorboards and began translating.

            The words spoke of the way the bones in my head were fused prematurely and described the devices that the doctors invented in their garages of their homes as a last hope for Zan and I. I cried as I read the words, because it all felt so simple. The way they described it, I mean. They didn’t mention the weeks spent in the ICU or the fact that my mother spent her nights hunched over the edge of my hospital bed, too afraid to leave. The article didn’t mention that I was a person and not a disease, and stretched across the page, in big bold letters, I saw it.

Their faces resembled work of Picasso.

The words stamped the page right below a picture of my sister and I sitting at our kitchen table, laughing like normal children. But we weren’t normal children. Because normal children didn’t get written about in French magazines. Normal children didn’t get called ugly in French magazines.

I was embarrassed or maybe I was more ashamed, and I found myself wondering how I ever could have thought someone could think I was special. I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders and it felt as though the whole world was laughing at a joke I wasn’t in on. I slammed the magazine to the floor and spent the rest of the night in my room.

Picasso was an artist. You are God’s artwork, my mother would tell me.

God should take up a new occupation, I would say back.