Where You Got That Tan

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by Elizabeth Collis

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You bleed onto the Emergency Room floor. You crushed a finger in your apartment door on the way to work; called me. The finger’s swollen and cut, your eyes are swollen and wet, your work clothes smudged with blood, but I don’t point that out. You message on your cell phone with the okay hand, cancelling meetings, hold the damaged hand carefully immobile.

We’re called to the intake booth and a triage nurse takes your details. Shift end is near, the woman’s face labors pale under unsympathetic lights. I introduce myself as the mother.

You rock over your hand, “I think I saw bone,” you say.

“I can give you some pain medication,” the nurse offers.

“Yes, please,” you bite your lower lip, “Please.”

The nurse rises. One hip hitches; she grabs onto the sides of her cubicle to manoeuvre the short distance to the medicine cart. The creaking hull of a boat, rocking in and out of her berth. I feel sorry for her. She’s surely past retirement age. Two pills in a little container. You slide them onto your tongue and take the proffered cup.

“Let’s do blood pressure,” the nurse says. She pulls the machine beside you. The blood pressure cuff puffs, then sighs. The nurse says, “You’ve got some tan on you. Where’d you get that tan from, then?

You freeze, mouth full of water. We exchange glances flesh-and-blood taut. When you were a child, I was your mouthpiece, I set strangers straight. You’ve dealt with the same assumptions in your adulthood, but without me as witness or intervener. It still unmoors me, the slack line of a stranger’s seeing, thirty-four years after your birth.

Your look warns; let me handle this. But you haven’t swallowed the water, so I answer, “From her dad,” I hold out my white arm in contrast to yours, “No one ever connects her to me.”

The nurse isn’t following, though, “Why’s that, then?” she whips the blood pressure cuff off your arm in a Velcro rip.

I wait two beats: click, click. Nothing. I brace my mouth.

You race through pain to rescue—the nurse, me, all of us, “My dad’s from the Middle East. I get my skin color from him.”

The nurse rocks onto her bad hip as if she’s forgotten its instability, grabs a chair back for support. “Oh, I thought—you must’ve been on the beach—what I meant was, you’ve got nice skin.” Her neck flushes embarrassment red. “I’m jealous, I guess, that’s all.”

That is all, I see you decide. Your face smooth as diplomacy, you thank her for the compliment with the indifference of one whose features are remarked on often, and to whom such unwelcome notice is only a tiny grit of sand between toes on the beach, flicked away and instantly forgotten.

You look again at what’s important. The nurse and I return our attention to your injury as well.

Oh daughter, I did not give you your skin color or your grace.

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