Lakewood(34)

She rubbed her forehead. Couldn’t think of what to say that would de-escalate the situation.

“I don’t know where I was,” Charlie said. “I was at my grandparents’ house, but I know I was also somewhere else at the same time.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on here,” Lena said.

Ian and Dr. Lisa walked into the hallway.

Dr. Lisa was saying, “My favorite queen is the one who sometimes dresses like a combination of a sexy-cat Halloween costume and an anime character.”

“I didn’t realize you were so campy,” Ian said. They laughed.

Charlie shook his head at Lena and headed back to his desk.





14


Day 25+: You were asked to work overtime on a Saturday to coordinate a delayed shipment.

Lena put in eye drops that burned and smelled like rubbing alcohol and old plastic. Haircut set a timer and told Lena she had to keep her eyes shut for five minutes. When the alarm went off, Lena opened her eyes. Winced against the light. The observer held out a mirror, smiling. Lena’s eyes were blue.

“I look supernatural.”

“Well, write that down,” Haircut said, passing her the sheet.

On a scale of 0–10, 0 being not at all and 10 being excruciating, how much do your eyes hurt? Are you experiencing any burning or stinging? How do you think you look? Be specific. With 10 being most attractive, how would you rate your appearance on an average day? Looking in the mirror now—same 1–10 scale—how do you rate your attractiveness? After looking at the mirror for an additional five minutes, how would you rate your appearance now?

“Are my eyes going to be like this forever?” Lena asked while giving her comfort level a 6.

“Put it on the page.”

As she stared more and more, Lena liked how the blue looked so bright against her brown skin. She looked like someone who would be in a magazine, maybe, wearing a big gown, looking a thousand feet tall, incredible shoes on her feet. When she returned the form, Haircut drove her to a bar in the city 40 minutes away.

As she sat alone at the bar, sipping a Dark & Stormy, people couldn’t resist talking to her. A black man who looked slightly older than Deziree started calling her Miss Twilight. He told her that he used to be an artist, liked to paint girls like her when he was a young man, before his wife. You, Miss Twilight. He shook his head. A drunk Korean woman did a double take when she noticed Lena’s eyes and said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Toni Morrison would be ashamed of you.”

Two white guys close to her age kept offering her drinks and asking when her friends were coming. Their frat was having a party. Flip cup, beer pong, shots. They said it as if there weren’t a million parties happening in the world that night with those same events. Someone sent her a drink, but she only pretended to sip it once. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, grubby sneakers. Some people, once they saw her face in good lighting, acted as if she were dressed in stilettos and a tight Hello-I’m-here dress. Haircut, sitting farther down the bar, was sipping a beer and filling a notebook. There were other black women in the bar, but they were clearly ignoring Lena; she was not used to that. Although, to be fair, she was not used to any of the attention.

She ordered another drink. The bar was set up so that pool blue and golden lights shone on all the top-shelf bottles. A bottle of Grey Goose was illuminated in such a way that it looked as if God was about to speak to her through it, give her some commandments to live by in this modern age. She stared at the display while contemplating how malleable her body was. A body is like outer space: The more you actively think about it, the smaller you feel, the more detached you feel from the business of living. Lena’s body was constantly doing things her brain wasn’t actively aware of: shedding skin, releasing eggs, waking up to inexplicable aches, pains, bruises. Blinking. She tipped her head toward Haircut. Here was a person she had given—without completely understanding what she was agreeing to—the power to make her body more unknowable. What would she do if her eyes were blue for the rest of her life?

Lena finished her drink in one big gulp, and then went to the bathroom. As she washed her hands, one of the black women was at the sink next to her. “I love your shoes,” Lena said. The woman’s sandals were bright red, adorned with an oversized bow that looked like it was made out of leather.

“Thanks.” The woman’s voice came out tight. She stayed focused on her fingers, the sink. As Lena dried her hands, the woman turned to her. “You know, you don’t have to look white to look good. You should get rid of those contacts.”

Before Lena could say anything, the woman wiped her hands on her jeans and walked out. It was one of those moments Lena knew she would return to over and over again, finding the right response. A return insult? A way to say this wasn’t her choice without violating her NDA? Something personal and melting that would make the other woman say something like “Oh, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have judged you. I had no idea what you were going through.”

“You are going to have to work twice as hard to get the life your white friends will be able to get,” her grandmother had told Lena when she was 16 and said without thinking that maybe someday she would like to be an artist. She was in an art club at school and the advisor had told her a few days ago, “I see real promise in you.”

You should become a lawyer or a doctor, you’re smart,” her grandmother continued, “And when you’re older and you have money, a house, then you can go back to art.”