Under Her Skin Page 2

  When she walked, she made elaborate loops and deviances, so that her route varied, if only a little. Some days she circled around Almon Street and came out near Duncan. It changed her perspective, changing her route, allowing her to see different things, like the work of a graffiti artist who had graduated from tags to images. She watched his style and confidence emerge as he marked places around the neighbourhood.

  But today felt different. She kept her eyes peeled. She stuck to the places where there would be people, went with the direct route. No diversions.

  Keeping her mind from fixating on her ravaged place was hard. She tried to settle her thoughts on designs, patterns, or colours — back to the tentacles or the daisy shoot she spotted pushing through next to a rusted barrel. The shoot wouldn’t last, but she could at least weave it into her work.

  She made her way past Citadel Hill along Bell Road, trying to control the images. But her anxious mind was stronger than her artistic one, and the daisy broke through the cracks in the sidewalk and wound its way up her legs, circling round her neck. She quickened her pace, which only made things worse.

  A cut through the grounds of the community garden they’d built on the site of the old Queen Elizabeth High school. She was trying to shave time, to hurry off the streets and into the calm of her studio. Running down the path that bisected garden boxes planted with borage and chard, staked for tomatoes, and trellised for peas, she zipped past a couple tending their plot. The man was pointing skyward, using his hoe for emphasis, while the woman crouched, the ends of her hijab tucked out of the way, busily planting seeds in the ground. They took no notice of her as she flew by, just out of reach of a trail of vines that no one but her could see.

  Down Quinpool Road, she whipped by the family businesses of the neighbourhood and burst open the door to the studio, trying to catch her breath. It was just as she’d left it. Clean and ready. She realized then she’d half been expecting the place to be trashed, too.

  Into the back, just to be sure no one lurked in the shadows and closets. Out front, she shuffled a magazine with ghouls and skeletons on the cover to the bottom of the pile and turned her focus to the clients who would soon be walking in.

  A distraction surfaced with the whoosh of the door, but it announced just what she didn’t need today — three convention-type guys, the kind who came in from out of town, on a lark. The kind who didn’t think through the permanence of the decision to get a tattoo. But there was no stopping someone from stupid. Sometimes, she’d propose something understated, like a horoscope sign or mother heart-type stuff, or somewhere understated — under the ankle, underarm of the bicep. It hurt a lot there, but at least it wouldn’t stick out past the golf shirts. She discouraged cartoon characters but would usually do them if the client insisted. Her own taste had to be as broad as possible in order to make a living. She couldn’t afford to cater to her artistic sensibilities alone. But today — she wasn’t sure she had it in her to tackle Yosemite Sam.

  “Sorry, guys. Fully booked today.”

  Off they went, while she wondered if their mommies would thank her.

  With one eye on the door, Shaz sat at her desk, doing her best to concentrate on a design she was developing for a long-term client. Normally, these were the projects she loved the most. She could spend time with the person instead of having to pump out the usual skull and crossbones work for the drop-ins. She sat and listened for sense in the randomness of ideas, waiting for the long, slow circling of sentiment to get to the core emotion. She’d do a sketch, a quick rendering to capture the idea, then together they’d work on adding details and discuss shading, colour, and size.The door opened again as she was finalizing the sketch of a lizard-witch coming out of the Garden of Eden. She tensed and looked up. A young couple. She relaxed. The guy had two full-arm sleeves and wore a tank top to prove it. The girlfriend looked fresh.

  “She wants a Maori tribal thing with roses or something. And maybe you could match it to this skull here.” He pointed to his forearm while the girlfriend, whom he introduced as Samantha, flipped through magazines.

  Multiple storylines covered each of his arms. If there was a consistent narrative, Shaz couldn’t discern it.

  Pulling out a portfolio, Shaz placed it in front of him. “Why don’t you look through these for something you like?” She pulled the girl into the back. “I’ll show you how this works. Have a seat.”

  Samantha hesitated.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t start anything until you’re ready.”

  Shaz set herself down across from the young woman, their knees almost touching.

  “So, what are you looking for?”

  Engrossed in comparing his own tattoos to the ones in the binder, the boyfriend didn’t notice when Shaz started inking. When the sound of the machine finally burrowed into his awareness, he jumped from his chair.

  Samantha shooed him away and encouraged Shaz to keep going. Two hours later, the boyfriend left the studio, not sure what had happened.

  A purple ribbon above her left breast with a feather detaching from her heart scored the skin underneath Samantha’s chest bandage. Having lost her mom to cancer before they could reconcile, the feather floating upward symbolized the peace offering she hadn’t been able to deliver. The girl left red and sore, but smiling and grateful.

  Shaz felt confident the tattoo would prove to be more permanent than the boyfriend.

  The things people chose to have printed on their skin mattered. For Samantha, for her clients, tattoos acted as body billboards, shouting out a memory or a sign to the world, to their partners, sometimes just to themselves, what was meaningful to them. As loaded a badge as reconstructive surgery, coloured contact lenses, or straightened teeth. It changed the way someone looked and was looked at, so Shaz approached her practice with intention and precision.

  Shaz had half expected the boyfriend to follow-up the tattoo with a piercing, a double brand. Where tattoos were her bread and butter, piercings were a trendy side dish. There was a lot less art in piercing an earlobe, eyebrow, tongue, or clitoris than there was designing and inking a tattoo. She drew the line at beading, scarring, and implants. Extreme body modification wasn’t her thing. Tattooing was about the art of body expression and the colours you could make leap from the skin. Piercing just helped cover the bills.

  ***

  Come out for dinner. Frank is going to cook.

  A text from Aleysha.

  Shaz could spot her friends trying to keep her busy when she saw it. She waited for the next ping.

  You’re not going home, you won’t go out with other people, you gotta join us.

  A steady stream of clients meant she’d been able to keep thoughts of strangling vines at bay. She had just finished piercing the ears of a girl who came in with her father. He was someone she’d worked on in the past. A young, single, hipster dad.

  She’d been attracted to plenty of the men and women who booked in to see her. When the beautiful people came along, she’d notice. Her free hand might linger a second longer on a bicep, calf, or thigh. Instead of acting on the attraction, she’d mark them. All it took was a fraction outside the contour or a touch of an over shade — microscopic defects, but purposeful. A re-balancing and accounting of sorts.

  Hipster dad was one of her “flawed group.” He had the head of a fiery demon busting out from a church on his thigh and she made sure the steeple didn’t sit precisely straight.

  “How about a drink later?” He made the overture while his daughter was captivated by the new bling in her ears.

  “Strictly professional, you know that,” Shaz answered. Dating a member of the flawed group was out. In fact, Shaz didn’t date anyone she worked on. There was no ethical code of conduct preventing her from doing so; it just wasn’t her way.

  She settled the bill with hipster dad, closed up the till, and tidied the counter before sending Aleysha a tex
t.

  on my way

  Not normally one to check in, she thought she should today, just in case.

  ***

  THE FIRST THING SHAZ noticed was the half empty bottle of wine.

  “Shall I pour?” Frank reached for the glass that had been waiting.

  Aleysha was in work clothes, the kind Shaz might wear to a gala — bling, coiffed hair, make-up — looking as though she’d just stepped out of a red-carpet Essence spread. But different didn’t mean distant. She and Aleysha had been sisters since they were in strollers. Their moms had been best friends, and their daughters, different though they were, followed suit.

  “Come and give me a squeeze.” Aleysha was perched on the counter, surveying the meal preparations. She never cooked, but that didn’t stop her from commenting. “Are you okay? What did they take?”

  Grabbing Shaz’s hand, she gave her friend a quick once over. Upon deciding Shaz was well enough, she went on: “I would be so pissed off if any motherfucker went through my things. You know the hell he’d pay. Sit, sit.”

  As he poured, Frank spun the bottle around. “It’s a Rioja. We’re going Spanish tonight.”

  Blackberries, cinnamon, and smoke. Two sips of wine and the fluttering of anxiety edged off.

  “So what happened? Any idea who did it?” As usual, Aleysha wanted to excavate the details, extract descriptions, find explanations.

  Shaz took a slug of wine. Swishing it around, letting it coat her palate and slow her down. Swallowing.

  Taking a chance, Aleysha thieved a prawn off the plate and popped it into her mouth.

  “If you hold on a sec, you can have it with the alioli.” Reaching for the blender, Frank spooned the garlic dip into a bowl. At his nod, they jumped in.

  “Hmm, so good.” Aleysha’s wiping of the sauce from the corner of her lips with her pinkie brought a smile to Frank’s face. He left them to check on something in the oven.

  Aleysha turned back to Shaz. “Really, are you, okay?”

  “I’m good.” Shaz watched Frank test the paella.

  She had been fine all day. Drawing, preparing her irons, balancing the needle in her hand, carving, detailing, filling in, gauging the pain tolerance of her clients — when to take a break, when to push through — there hadn’t been the space to think or worry about the who and the why, the where are they now? But in Frank’s apartment, it was all coming back. She could feel her hands beginning to shake, so she placed one on the counter against the cool marble. Her other hand she wrapped around the stem of the wineglass.

  “It’ll be ready soon. Let’s go sit at the table.” Frank uncorked a new bottle and poured them all a generous fill as they settled into the meal.

  “… and with all the new businesses …” Frank and Aleysha were discussing the gentrification of the North end.

  Shaz was drifting.

  “… I think they are coming from South Sudan.” Refugees maybe? Different subject? Same subject? Shaz tried to hold on, but was struggling to keep her eyes open.

  It was time for bed. Or time to go home.

  Frank raised a brow, a question and an invitation.

  She couldn’t stay away for ever.

  “Not tonight.” She kissed Aleysha’s cheek and turned to Frank, but he was already in the kitchen, clearing dishes.

  “Bye Frank.”

  She’d been tempted to stay the night. It would have been so easy. She considered never returning to her house again. She could just stay at Frank’s, maybe forever. She imagined her room, frozen in time, only to be rediscovered again through some archeological excavation.

  But she had to go back.

  Suddenly Aleysha was on the stairs behind her.

  “Are you okay? Should I come with you?”

  “No, I’ll be fine. I’m going to grab a cab.” She touched her friend’s arm. “Thanks, though.”

  Aleysha wrapped her arms around herself against the cold and watched the cab pull away from the curb.

  “Towards Agricola,” Shaz said to the driver as she hunched herself close to the door.

  ***

  THE HOUSE WAS QUIET, but Shaz listened for sounds anyway, catching only the muffled snoring of a housemate down the hall. Edging into her room, she nestled into the corner on her bed, knees to her chin. The sound of a siren heading down the street made her freeze. As the syncopated wail faded into the distance, she took a sharp breath.

  Her room was like a museum display she’d crossed into. Desk, on which sat the picture of the intrusion, closet door askew, pile of clothes on the floor. She felt numb, unable to move forward, unable to clean up the mess, unable to lie down on the bed.

  Grabbing her pillow and a blanket, she retreated to the bathroom, locking herself in. Tomorrow, she told herself, tomorrow she would sleep in her own bed. When her housemates woke up in the morning, she’d get up and let them in, and hope no one had to go to the washroom in the meantime.

  She jiggled the handle to make sure the door was locked. Twisting, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She looked familiar, but different. Her features were the same, her eyes unchanged, but something had shifted.

  It had happened before. She’d been nine years old, sitting at the kitchen table in her nan’s house.

  “My name is Shaz.” She scooped up a mouthful of spaghettios and waited for a reaction.

  “I see. How was school?” Shrugging off her coat, her mom took a plate from Nana, came over and kissed her on the cheek. How could you not notice the ground shift?

  Shaz closed the seat to the toilet and put the pillow and blanket on top. Then she turned to the mirror. She pulled the skin down from under her eyelid and looked inside. Something had gotten caught, impairing her sight, but she couldn’t tell what it was.

  She’d decorated a sign for her bedroom door with bright sticky stars and permanent markers declaring her new name to the house. She used the same pens to mark the tongue of her shoes and the waistband of her panties.

  When her mom called down the hall, “Lanelle, let’s get ready to go,” she wouldn’t budge till she heard her new name. During roll call at the start of the school year, she would advise the teachers of the change. It became routine until there was no turning back. In the course of time, Lanelle became a memory.

  Shaz had a mole on her stomach, below her bellybutton, off to the left. She lifted up her shirt to see if it was still there.

  The clothes Frank picked out felt foreign on her body. Scarlet for a shirt? Too much colour. She tore it off. Black, she preferred black clothes, part of the frame for her art. Was it the clothes that were making her feel different? She realized she was wearing the bra that went with the underwear that had been snipped. Scrambling to unhook it, she dropped it to the floor, pushing it all away with her toe.

  The mole on her belly was still there. She brushed it with her fingers.

  Pushing aside the towels that hung in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the door, she scrutinized her body. She undid her pants, slipped them off and inspected her face, arms, chest, legs, toes. Using the mirror over the sink she angled it to see from behind. Designs, colours, patterns, and memories accented her skin. The only changes to her body were the ones she’d authored.

  “Wshhhhh.” From the living room floor, she heard the steam coming off the clothes as Nan ironed while watching her shows. Another World had ended and General Hospital was about to begin. She was just a kid, digging into the pull-out container of assorted pegs, making colours come alive by poking them through the black paper attached to the light box. She wrote words, made animal shapes and patterns with the pegs as she punched them satisfyingly through the paper. Jaunty commercials rang in the background as the steam hissed off the iron. The room filled with the smell of fresh laundry. Lanelle put a final peg in a butterfly design and Shaz came out the other side. It was the kind of c
hange that happened in childhood: striking yet natural, like learning to tie your shoes or ride a bike. Shaz knew it like she knew she loved Neapolitan ice cream. As Shaz, she carried Lanelle as a memory, a buried twin that never fully formed.

  Mole, tattoos, marks from life. There was nothing to tell her she had changed. There were no startling revelations. No pegs of light. Lanelle hadn’t returned. But Shaz had changed, she just hadn’t figured out how.

  Making sure the tub was dry, she threw down the pillow and her comforter, and crawled in.

  She woke up early, before dawn, and puttered around the house till things began to move and the city awoke. She dressed in the clothes she’d worn the day of the break-in. Down the street at Mary’s Café, she stuffed herself with falafel, couscous and coffee. Fortified, she headed to her studio, and back to her work.

  ***

  PRIVATE NUMBER.

  Normally, she switched her phone to vibrate, so as to not to startle her clients, but she was finished for the day. She sat in her studio, not wanting to get up, not wanting to go home. She’d just turned the ringer back on when it rang.

  Aleysha never called, but texted at will, sometimes about a new fingernail polish she’d found at a shop, other times with snaps of hotties she spotted on the streets. A call from Frank or her family would have shown a name.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. It’s Dad.”

  Shaz held her breath. It had been so long since she’d heard from him.

  “How are you, baby?”

  Any response was too much of a commitment.

  “I miss you, sweetie, I do. I, ah, just wanted to call you to see how you’re doing.”