The Journey Within: Part 4

Posted on October 26, 2009
Filed Under Journey | 16 Comments

Maddie and I entered the mall and took only a few steps before we found the place we were looking for. We walked in cautiously, looking around at the bizarre things hanging from the walls, and covering the counter tops. There was hardly any space to walk, and this spot looked like more like a 30-year-old stoner’s bedroom in his parents’ basement, than a place to shop.

“WHAT is THAT?” Maddie said pointing.

She took a step back, and right onto my foot.

“Ow, move!” I said, shoving her to the side.

I looked up and gasped. There was a stuffed rabbit the size of a baby calf perched on a shelf right in the middle of the store.

“Hi there,” a man said stepping over boxes, and making his way over to greet us.

“Are you the gals that called?”

“Yeah,” I said, examining the man standing in front of me.

He was white, about 5’5” and kind of stocky. He had a pleasant face, and his caramel colored hair was spiked, and painted with blonde highlights.

“Who’s up today?” he asked.

“I am.”

“I’m just going to need to see an I.D.”

I reached for my wallet, and pulled out my driver’s license.

“Looks like someone just had a birthday!” he said. “Let me guess, 18?”

“Yup,” I replied.

“Alright, ladies,” he said, scribbling down some notes on piece of yellow paper. “Follow me this way.”

Maddie and I ducked under the massive animal heads hanging from the walls, and followed the man into a tiny room

“Okay, have a seat right here.”

I hopped up onto a black cushioned chair, looked over to the sink on my left, and saw gauze, a needle, and what looked like large scissors on the counter.

“Okay,” the man said. He snapped on a pair of white latex gloves, and leaned toward me. With a small piece of gauze, he reached into my mouth, and held my tongue firmly between his fingers.

I squeezed my eyes shut, and Maddie put her hand in mine.

“This is just the clamp,” the man said. “You’ll feel a little pressure, and then I’ll count to three. When I say ‘three,’ I want you to let out a deep exhale.”

He clamped my tongue, and I squeezed Maddie’s hand even tighter.

Oh my God
Oh my God
Oh my God.

Clink.Clink.
No pain?

I opened my eyes.

“Oops,” the man said.

With the clamp still holding my tongue, he reached down to pick up the needle he dropped on the floor.

I released my grip on Maddie’s hand, and relaxed for a moment.

“Sorry about that,” he said, standing up. “Three!”

Ah! What? Ouch. Gross.
Oh my God! He didn’t wash the needle that he just dropped on the floor!

I looked at Maddie confused, and disgusted, and she burst into laughter.

He released the clamp, and dabbed my mouth with a tissue.

“You’re all done,” he said.

“How does it feel?” Maddie asked.

I licked my lips,  swallowed, and carefully moved my tongue around inside my mouth.

No pain.

“Pretty good,” I said.

“You don’t even have a lisp,” Maddie said proudly.

“That will change,” the man chimed in. “Expect swelling for the next few days. It might be a little tender, just make sure you follow the cleaning instructions, and you should be fine. Once the swelling goes down, you should be able to talk and eat normally.”

We got in the car, and Maddie thoughtfully reminded me that the needle that had just gone through my tongue came off of a dirty mall floor.

“You probably have AIDS now,” she said nonchalantly.

I gave her a menacing stare, and then pulled down the passenger-side visor to take a look at my new accessory.

***

Maddie was one of the best friends I ever had.
We met at orientation freshman year of college, and coincidentally, ended up living only a few doors away from each other in the dorms. Within just a few weeks, maybe sooner, we hit it off, and for the next two years we were inseparable.

I’ve had some really great friends in my life, best friends even, but Maddie was different. Never in my life had I met someone who was exactly like me. Maddie and I had the exact same sense of humor, and loved the same movies and T.V. shows. We shared everything from our clothes to flat irons, make up, and even money without either of us ever keeping count of how much the other person owed. And though my family was Muslim, I could relate to Maddie’s strong Catholic upbringing, which included a life spent in Catholic school. Through meeting each other’s families, and siblings, and spending excessive amounts of time together, Maddie and I discovered that even our parents’ approach to raising us was uncannily simlar. Our personalities were so eerily identical you’d think we shared a womb, and had been separated at birth. And though it’s not uncommon to have the same taste in music as your friends, Maddie was the only person I knew who could appreciate the lyrical genius of Tupac as much as I did, and still belt every single word, and hit every ad lib of “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” by Britney Spears, with as much emotion as I could.

Maddie was from a city in Maryland, which was about a 30-minute drive from my house in Northern Virginia, which meant that our on-campus friendship didn’t end there. Even when we were home for short breaks, like a long weekend, or for months during the summer, we talked on the phone everyday, hung out with each other’s friends and families, and were constantly having sleepovers.

But Maddie and I weren’t exactly your little girl’s role models. We were mischievousness (in a nutshell) and caused a lot of trouble together. We rarely had our priorities straight when it came to our academic commitments, and would decide at 2 a.m. that we were going on a road trip. We’d pack our overnight bags, jump in Maddie’s car, pick up snacks from Wawa, and spend the the next few days hanging out with friends who lived a few hours away on another college campus.

By sophomore year, Maddie and I decided to live together, but that was a pivotal year for me, just as my friendship with Maddie was, in re-evaluating the direction my life was headed in. Eventually, Maddie and I drifted apart, and the last time we spoke was briefly over Instant Messenger about six years ago.

But none of that changes how much fun we had when we were together. Everything was an adventure with Maddie, and when the two of us joined forces, it was like we were untouchable, unstoppable, and every little scheme we came up with, or plot we concocted, was infallible. One afternoon, while we were on the highway headed back to campus from one of our many spontaneous road trips, Maddie was driving well over the speed limit, when a police officer rushed up behind us, and flashed his lights.

But Maddie didn’t stop.

“What are you doing?” I yelled.

“I can’t get a ticket here!” she said. “No one is supposed to know where we went. My dad can’t find out that I was driving this car all over the place!”

“Well my dad’s gonna kill me if we get arrested!” I rebutted. “Pull over!”

“No way” she said, flooring the accelerator.

But this was Maddie, and she always found a way to make things work.

She weaved in and out of traffic on a four-lane highway, and then made a split-second decision to get off on an exit ramp, leaving the police officer confused, with no where to go. Within moments, we screeched off the exit, into an unfamiliar town, made a few turns, got back onto another exit, which put us back on the highway, and in the clear.

We headed back to school with no officer, or ticket, in sight.

***

I walked back to my dorm room after the men’s basketball game with my black Capezio shoes in hand, and flip flops on my feet. I still had on my dance team uniform, and a candy pink lipstick you could see from the furthest seat in the stands. My hair was curled, and pulled half up with blue and silver ribbons tied in it, and as I started to unwind, I kept the phone close by in case Uzma called. She was on her way, and she was going to be here any minute. Uzma went to school about two hours from me, so it wasn’t rare for her to come down to Virginia Beach, hang out with me for a few hours, and then drive back the same day.

As I pulled on an old t-shirt, the phone rang. It was Uzma; she was outside.

I grabbed my key card, my camera, and then I ran across the hall to grab my friend, Lucy.

“You have to take a picture of my sister’s face,” I said. “She doesn’t know about my tongue yet.”

“Oh my God,” Lucy said. “Is she going to kill me?”

“Why would she kill you?” I asked. “If anything, she’ll kill me.”

“I don’t know,” she said half laughing, and half trembling. “It could be like a ‘Oops, I shot the messenger’ kind of thing.”

“She’s not going to hurt you,” I said, handing her my camera.

I ran down the stairs, and saw Uzma waiting outside. I opened the door, grabbed her arm, and yanked her up the stairs.

“Umm, hello? Salam?” she said. “What are you doing? Where are we going? Why are we running? Where’s my hug?”

“Hurry up!” I said, keeping my head turned away. “I have to show you something.”

We got upstairs, and stopped in the common area, which all the girls lovingly referred to as the “living room” of our floor, and my hallmates started to gather. Uzma looked at Lucy holding the camera and then looked at me.

We were face to face, and Lucy was ready for her cue.

“Oh my God,” Uzma said. I think I saw a little light go on in her brain. “Did you…”

I opened my mouth and dropped my tongue a few inches from her face.

Snap.
Lucy took the picture.

Uzma’s jaw hit the floor, and she stood paralyzed.

Lucy snapped another picture, and Uzma turned to glare at her.

“Okay, I’m done here,” Lucy said, shoving the camera into my side, and dashing to her room.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“You’re dead,” she said.

“Don’t worry, mom and dad aren’t going to find out,” I said.

“Yes they are.”

“No, trust me,” I said. “Bridget told me about these clear tops you can wear so it looks invisible. I’ll get one before I go home.”

Uzma just stared, her mouth still open.

“Ugh, close your mouth already,” I said.

“You close your mouth!” she said. “I can’t believe you did that.”

***
Since Maddie lived so close to my house in Northern Virginia, my dad said he’d drop her off at home when he came to pick me up for fall break.

As I was packing up the last of my things, I started to worry about my tongue getting noticed. Maddie brought her stuff into the hall, and we dragged our bags outside to meet my dad. We exchanged hugs, and I tried my best to channel the ventriloquist in me. We all got in the car, and my plan was to sleep (or at least pretend to sleep) the whole drive home.

“So, how’s everything going, girls?” my dad asked, excited to pick us up and go home.

“Good,” I said, being mindful of keeping my head facing forward.

But for the man whom it has been said about, “he’s one of those people who can count the feathers on a flying bird,” ‘good’ was all it took.

My dad stiffened, and removed his hand from the car keys already in the ignition. He turned toward me wearily. Something didn’t feel right. I kept my mouth closed, and my eyes locked on the road ahead.

Drive already. Oh God. Don’t talk to me. Just drive.

“Sabrina,” he said in a soft, but stern voice. “What’s in your mouth?”

“Nothing,” I said, keeping my head still.

“Open your mouth.”

“What?”

My heart fell to the pit of my stomach.

“Open your mouth,” he said again. “Stick out your tongue.”

I turned toward my dad, and pushed the tip of my tongue through my lips.
I could hardly breathe.

“All the way,” he said.

There was no getting around this. My heart was racing a million beats per second. I swallowed, and then stuck my tongue out all the way, revealing the steel rod that was embedded in the middle.

I braced myself.

But there was nothing.

My dad let out a cold sigh, turned forward again, started the car, and we drove.
We drove for four and a half hours, and no one said a word.

***

When we finally made it home, my dad went to his room, and I quietly retreated to mine.
The next few days were naturally awkward between us, but just as I expect the world will end, I also expected my dad to confront this situation head on. The day before I left to go back to school, my dad called for me from the basement.

“Can you come downstairs?” he said.

Oh great. Downstairs.

Downstairs was where we always had family meetings when I was little. Downstairs was where I was told not to steal Uzma’s make up and clothes. Downstairs was where I was lectured about privacy, and told how it was wrong to read Uzma’s diary. Downstairs was where I was always given the speech about “being really smart and charasmatic, but not applying myself, and causing classroom disruption” after one of my parents returned from back-to-school night (although I often got that talk around bedtime, too).

And this downstairs, like every other downstairs, was something that not even Houdini could escape from.

“Yeah?” I said, standing at the bottom of the stairs, not wanting to walk into the basement.

“Can you have a seat, please?” he said. “I want to talk to you.”

My dad was sitting on his computer chair, and I took a seat on the couch just a few feet away.

“Beta,” he said. “I need to know something about this thing you’ve done to yourself.”

“It’s just a piercing,” I said.

“I need to know if you have any tattoos, or other piercings like this,” he said. “You know, inside, outside, upside down.”

“EW! Dad! No,” I said irritated, while trying not to laugh.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “You’re young right now, Beta. You don’t understand that stuff like this sends the wrong message. You know, you’re getting older, and men, well, they’re going to start thinking things about you.”

“Dad!”

This was almost as bad as the “sex, drugs and alcohol” talk my dad had with me before I left for college. I was pretty sure he was kicking himself at this very moment for not including “piercings” in that conversation.

“Beta, this is serious,” my dad said. “These kinds of things send the wrong message. I want to tell you about this girl at my college, this was back in the ’70s, her name was Linda, and…”

“Yeah dad, I know.” I said. “She was like the campus slut, and everyone called her ‘Easy Linda.’”

“Yes! You’re right. You know that story?”

“Yeah, you’ve told me and Uzma about ‘Easy Linda’ like a hundred times.”

“Yes. Exactly my point. You think she wanted to be called that?” he said. “Her reputation was ruined because of the choices she made. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

“That’s not going to happen to me,” I mumbled.

“After I saw what you did, I did some research,” he said. “And I found out that there was someone who was pierced with an infected needle, and it got so bad they had to go to the emergency room, and the doctor found cockroach eggs in their tongue.”

I started to laugh.
But my dad didn’t crack a smile.

“That’s so dumb,” I said. “That’s impossible, and it’s a rumor floating around on the Internet. I’ve heard it too.”

“Can you at least give me a time frame of how long you’re planning on keeping this in?” he asked, half negotiating, half begging.

“I don’t know.”

He sighed, and then leaned back in his chair as if his closing argument wasn’t enough for the jury. The criminal was about to walk, and there was nothing more my dad could say.

“You’re an adult now,” he said. “I can’t tell you what to do. I’ve done the best I can to teach you, and guide you, and I hope that you and Uzma both will make the right decisions.”

The room was quiet for what felt like an eternity, and then I slowly got up, and went back upstairs.

***
I headed out to Fairfax the next morning to a piercing and tattoo place I had been to before with friends. It was also the same place I got my nose pierced a few years later while I was home for a visit – this time, with the approval of my family. I bought a retainer, which was clear and hardly noticeable, and swapped it out right there in the store with the silver ball I was pierced with, and then drove to my mom’s house.

The rest of the trip went well, and by the time fall break was over, my mom didn’t find out, and my dad didn’t bring it up again. I went back to school, and returned home two months later for our Christmas vacation, with my retainer in tow.

That year, my mom, sister and I had planned a trip to Chicago to visit some of my mom’s family. I was feeling confident about the retainer since it worked once before, and things were going really well until I was snacking before dinner, and cracked the plastic retainer in my mouth.

I grabbed Uzma, and ran into the bathroom.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Do you have another one?” she asked.

“No, this was the only one I bought,” I said. “I didn’t know it was going to break.”

“Okay, just put the other thing in and then don’t talk for the rest of the trip.”

“What?” I said squinting my eyes, and shaking my head. “That’s crazy.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “Mom’s going to see it, and she is not going to handle it the way dad did. Just take it out.”

“No! Okay, I’ll just put the other thing in, and then I’ll be really careful.”

My cousin and his fiancée came over for dinner, and brought some really amazing kabobs from a Middle Eastern restaurant downtown. We were all huddled around the large aluminum containers plating our food, while my mom’s cousin took out serving dishes to set the table, and my mom argued that it was “just us,” and there was no need to act formal. My mom took a bite of one of the kabobs and started raving about how delicious the food was.

“Try this,” she said turning to me with a small piece of food in her hand lifting it to feed me.

I leaned forward, opened my mouth, and suddenly remembered how much of a good idea that was not.
I jerked away, and some of the kabob fell onto the counter top.

“Sabrina!” she said in an annoyed tone.

“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t really want any.”

“It’s delicious,” she said.

“Yeah, I’ll get some in a second.”

Uzma glared at me, and then came closer.

“That’s how you plan on being careful?” she said sarcastically.

The next day, Uzma and I went out with my cousin Kamal, and his fiancée Violet – both of whom were in their 30s.
As Kamal was reversing out of the driveway, he turned he turned to look at the road behind him.

“That was a close call last night, huh?” he said.

“What?” I said.

“Yeah, your mom could have killed you.”

I was lost.

“What?” I said again.

“What?” he said. “You don’t think we all didn’t see that little thing you had put in your tongue?”

“WHAT?”

“Yeah, girl,” Violet said laughing. “We all saw it.”

“WHAT?”

I started to panic.

“Oh my God. Do you think my mom saw it?”

I looked over at Uzma who was biting back a smile, and shaking her head.

“I don’t think your mom saw it,” Kamal said. “But I did. You were playing with it and you didn’t even notice.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I could see that ugly little ball from between your lips,” he said. “You didn’t even know you were moving it around.”

“I saw it too,” Violet said, still laughing.

“Well, I bought this plastic thing that sits right on your tongue so you can’t see it, but it broke,” I said. “I had no other choice but to put the ball back in.”

“Do you need to get another one of those things?” Kamal asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Alright,” he said. “We’ll swing by the mall. But you really should think about taking it out. It’s not attractive.”

“Aw, it’s okay,” Violet said. “You remind me of myself at that age. Your young, you’re on your own, you’re doing things. Just don’t let your mom find out. ‘Cuz for real, girl, she WILL kill you.”

***

We got back from Chicago a few days before I was supposed to go back to school. Maddie was going to pick me up from my dad’s house in the morning, so I said my goodbyes to my mom, got in my car, but sat quietly for a few minutes. It was dark outside, and the weather was starting to get chilly. I couldn’t stop thinking about my dad. It wasn’t what he said, but what he didn’t say that was weighing on my conscious. The worst feeling in the world is to know that you’ve disappointed your parents. Making them mad is one thing, having them yell is another. But to know that your actions took them to a place of silence, a place where no words could do justice to what they felt in their heart, a place where they question themselves as the people responsible for raising you – that’s a gut-wrenching feeling, which you would rather trade for a good screaming, and a slap across the face any day.

I knew I could easily go back to school, and continue to live my life the way I had been. But I couldn’t return to Virginia Beach bearing the weight of having disappointed the man who taught me how to ride my bike without training wheels, who spotted me on back-handspring after back-handspring on an old mattress when I just couldn’t get it right at gymnastics practice, or who made me the best eggs and toast the way no other person could.

The weight of it all was too much.

I let out a deep breath, and pulled the rear-view mirror toward myself, examining my reflection.
I stuck out my tongue.

I guess the whole idea is pretty gross. But I really do like it.

I took a deep breath, and leaned closer to the mirror.

“This is it,” I said softly to myself. “This is the end.”

I held the silver ball that had found a home in my mouth for the past few months tightly between my right index finger and thumb. I slowly unscrewed it, and let the rod slip through my tongue and into my hand. I looked at my reflection once again, fixed the mirror, started the car, and drove to my dad’s house.

My dad met me in the hallway when I came in, and we exchanged our Islamic greetings of peace. He asked me if I was packed up, and what time Maddie was coming to get me. We talked for a few minutes, and then he said he was going to bed.

“Dad,” I said.

He turned around, and I stuck out my tongue — and this time, my heart wasn’t racing nearly as fast.

He froze.

“I took it out,” I said.

A look of joy, and overwhelming relief came over his face. He lowered his glasses to the end of his nose, and lifted his head the way he always does when he’s examining something closely.

He put his hand on my shoulder, and leaned in to take a closer look.

“Is everything back to normal?” he asked.

“It’s fine,” I said. “It’ll probably just take a few days to close all the way.”

“Now, you don’t have any plans of putting that back in, do you?” he asked, a subtle smile forming across his face.

“No,” I said, meeting his smile with my own.

“You made the right decision,” he said, pulling me in for a hug, and kissing the top of my head. “I’m proud of you, Beta. Very, very proud.”

***

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