Damage Control
To remind ourselves we didn’t invent pain in our fifties, my sister and I talk about our childhood ailments. I was the crusty one with impetigo. At night our mother bent me over the bathroom sink, lathered my face with Phisoderm, and splashed me clean with cupped palms of cool water. In bed, I raised my arms like a laying of hands as she pushed clean white socks over my fingers, knuckles, and wrists. Then, always, she pushed her mouth into a soft beak to find my lips rising from the sores. My tending came after she strapped my sister into leg braces, mid-century leather and metal meant to correct pigeon toes because it was a flaw our father’s constant correcting could not reverse. When we talk like this, my sister remembers the ache of being pulled straight. My mother remembers how often she woke to my sister’s crying. And I remember moving my hands in front of a wall lit by moonlight, hoping to release a single ear or wing.