She still has that lump on her right temple. She feels skittish about it, wondering if that’s the kind of injury that recurs, years later, as a tumor.
On the other hand, she likes to think that the bruising around her right eye is starting to fade.
The last eight days are the longest self has ever felt this ugly. She has to go all the way back to her freshman year in high school, when she had very long, straight hair and glasses, to recall feeling similar levels of ugly.
On the positive side, self is hugely enjoying Obama’s Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.
In the passage she’s just finished reading, Obama notices a series of oval-shaped scars on his Indonesian stepfather’s legs and asks, “What are those?”
“Leech marks,” he said. “From when I was in New Guinea. They crawl inside your hiking books while you’re hiking through the swamps. At night, when you take off your socks, they’re stuck there, fat with blood. You sprinkle salt on them and they die, but you still have to dig them out with a hot knife.”
I ran my finger up one of the oval grooves. It was smooth and hairless where the skin had been singed. I asked Lolo if it had hurt.
“Of course it hurt,” he said, taking a sip from the jug. “Sometimes you can’t worry about hurt. Sometimes you worry only about getting where you have to go.”
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 