That first night had set the rhythm for their entire relationship. Everything moved so quickly between them. Uma always wondered if he knew he didn’t have much time before everything changed. Before he messed things up.
Within two months, she’d moved into his place, gone on the pill. By the end of the year, most of her friends had given up on her. Oddly, Mom remained the one person Joey hadn’t minded sharing her with. Uma never understood how he knew from the get-go that he’d found an ally in her mother. He’d always had the strongest, oddest instincts when it came to how best to hurt her.
At the same time, Joey had taken such good care of Uma, given her everything he’d thought she wanted. He’d tried so hard to get her to stop working, telling her that this was also part of spoiling her rotten. It was the only point on which she’d staunchly refused to give in. Not working, she knew, would never make her happy.
Eventually, in a roundabout way, he’d ended up winning, even on that front.
After more than a year of refusing to admit that there might be trouble in paradise, Joey had cheated on her. It was a strange move from someone so seemingly obsessed. Why on earth would he cheat after making her the center of his world?
That’s when she’d realized what he’d really done. He hadn’t, in fact, made Uma the center of his world, but had rather made himself the center of hers.
She’d found out about his cheating when the woman called their home. She’d spilled the story, every detail so clearly Joey that they had to be real. Uma’s hurt and embarrassment were terrible, but after suffering through Joey’s apologetic self-flagellation, it finally sank in that she didn’t care that much. A dangerous thought to have about someone so obsessed.
From there, things steadily grew worse until the day she left him. He started by accusing her of cheating, convinced she’d done it to get back at him. In all the time they’d been together, the only thing Uma had ever hidden from Joey was the money she’d put away to purchase her own car. A consummate liar himself, he had a sixth sense for when people tried to pull one over on him. Accusations led to yelling, then pushing, and eventually, a slap across the face, leaving an angry red welt in its wake. At the time, that slap had been the worst thing anyone had ever done to her.
She’d had no idea how bad things could get.
13
Tattoo removal sucks.
Uma had known it would—had spent a good chunk of the last six months researching it online. But it still surprised her how very bad it was. It hurt, God it hurt, but she would have withstood ten times the pain to get all of the poison out of her.
Motivation, it turned out, was quite the painkiller.
When she got to Dr. Hadley’s office, only eight days after arriving in Blackwood, the lights were dim and the receptionist gone for the day. At Uma’s knock, the doctor came to the door herself, a skeleton crew of one.
“Come on back, and we’ll get started.” She sounded friendly, capable, which was good, considering how raw Uma’s nerves were. “I think we should take it slow and begin with one arm today. The treatment downtime is often the worst, so I want to see how you do and then work from there. That sound good?”
“Sure.”
“Any preference on what we do first?”
Uma’s eyes flicked down to her left arm. She’d had the debate back at the house: most visible or most offensive? She’d finally opted for visible.
She lifted her left arm. “This one, I think. But I used the cream you gave me on both.”
“Excellent. That should help numb you. Let’s get your shirt off and ice this as best we can. Then we can get started.”
Let’s get your shirt off. It sounded so easy, a quick move: grab fabric, swing it up and over the head. Nothing to it. Only it wasn’t like that. Her shirt, for one thing, felt stuck in place, impossible to move. Not heavy like a winter coat, but tight like a straitjacket, her arms trapped by…by what? Nothing. Just take the damn thing off.
It took strength to finally peel it away, and rather than clutch at it like a security blanket, she threw it to the side before lying back on the table to stare at the ceiling while the doctor covered her arm with ice packs. Her stomach roiled, but settled again after a few minutes.
The process sounded pretty simple: certain laser strengths worked for blue, others for black, green, and so on. Unfortunately, Joey hadn’t stopped that night when one color was gone. No, when the bottle of black was empty, he’d moved on to blue, then green, and finally red. Not your color, he’d said with his brand of regret. Not her color, but he’d been obliged to go on anyway, hadn’t he? Carrying on with his grisly work until every single bottle was empty.
“This is the laser; this is the chiller. I run the cool air over it first, which helps with the pain. You ready?”
Uma nodded.
“Okay. Let’s begin. I’ll start down here. Let me know if you need a break, all right?”
“Okay. Thanks, Doctor.”
“Call me George.”
“Oh, right. Thank you, George.”
Dr. Hadley grabbed Uma’s hand and squeezed it for a moment, handed her dark glasses, and put on her own before snapping on a pair of rubber gloves. At the push of a couple of buttons, a machine rumbled to life.
The thing was loud—shockingly so, at first. Uma could imagine how this might set off a soldier’s PTSD. As it worked, the laser sounded like sharp bursts of automatic fire and looked like tiny, bright explosions burning white into her skin, like splatters of hot oil…but the burn lingered longer than bacon grease would have.
Pain is relative.
Getting the first tattoo had hardly hurt at all. She and Joey had been drinking, and they’d been happy. So stupidly in love. It had been his idea initially, although, being Joey, he’d changed history to suit himself and had given Uma the credit. There’d been a slight hesitation on her part. Yes, she’d loved him—or, at least, she’d thought she had—but she’d also known how people could change, known they could disappear from your life for one reason or another. She’d seen the impermanence of her mother’s relationships and worried about putting something so indelible on her body. But Joey had prodded and cajoled her through that moment of sanity, making her feel bad for not believing in them as strongly as he had.
Since Joey had gotten tattoos in the past, he’d gone first. UMA. For some reason, even at the time, seeing those three letters scrolling over his upper back hadn’t given her the feeling of security she’d been looking for.
And then Uma’s turn. The four letters in JOEY took up more space than her paltry three, and on her back, they’d looked massive, as if already he owned more of her than she did of him.
Afterward, the tattoo guy—she could still remember his name, Zap—had rolled back his chair, giving her room to get up and look. “What d’ya think?” he’d asked around the toothpick in his mouth.
Uma had stood, staring over her shoulder in the mirror and feeling two distinct, warring sensations.
First, there was some pride. Her eyes caught Joey’s, and she’d recognized it in his face. It only occurred to her later that it had been pride of belonging, while his had been pride of ownership. Not the same thing at all, as it turned out.
The second thing she’d felt upon seeing those dark, dark letters stamped on her skin was a sharp twinge of regret.
It was that feeling that came back to haunt Uma every time she caught even the faintest glimpse of Joey’s legacy, the same weight that made sleep so elusive at night. This is it. The words had floated through her brain as she’d stared past her reflection into the mirror that night. It’s permanent. There’s no turning back now.
Feeling the doctor’s zapper work its way over the thick black M embedded in her wrist, then the I, the N, and E, brought something new trickling in. It was the first time it had appeared in months, a tiny grain of a notion so foreign, it wasn’t even c
lear whether it would stick around long enough to be identified. It dug down into Uma’s heart, lodged itself there, and nearly choked her with its newness. As the ink dissolved slowly—oh so slowly—the sensation, whatever it was, dug in deeper, mingling with her flesh, melding with her blood.
After twenty minutes or so, Dr. Hadley—no, George—leaned back to switch the machine off. The absence of sound left the room feeling empty and so very still. She pushed her dark glasses up onto her head and smiled.
“That’s it for today, Uma.”
A reluctant glance at her arm told Uma that it was pretty bad. A whitish cloud over the tattoos, dotted with minute specks of blood, but the ink was still there.
“I’ll put some petroleum jelly on it. It’s best to leave it uncovered, if you can. Or wear loose clothing. Cotton. Not this tight thing you’ve got here. Can you do that?”
“Oh. I don’t know. I—”
A wave of nausea rose up. Not again. She wouldn’t throw up here again, damn it.
“I can’t wear my shirt?”
“You can wear something loose, but it’s best to leave it out if you can. And you’ll need to reapply the petroleum jelly to keep from scarring. I usually recommend buying a pack of cotton shirts you can throw on.”
“Okay. Yeah, okay.”
Cotton shirts and petroleum jelly. At least today was payday.
“You okay?” The doctor looked worried.
Uma considered her question. Am I okay?
Practical matters aside, she actually thought she might be.
“I think so.”
“The first session’s hard. I know.” Dr. Hadley grabbed Uma’s hand again and squeezed. “You’ll get through this. I promise. All right?”
“Yeah.” Uma squeezed back. “Thank you.”
It was true, she realized. She was going to be okay. One less layer of ink to pull out. One day closer to becoming a clean slate.
Hope was a tiny grain lodged in her heart. Like a speck of dirt in an oyster shell, she had a sudden notion that the minuscule particle would pester her, gathering layer upon layer of protective grit until it built into something big enough to hold on to.
For the first time, there was light at the end of the tunnel.
I can do this, she thought. And, for once, she knew, without a doubt, that it was true.
* * *
With no other options for now, Uma slipped back into her shirt before driving back to Ms. Lloyd’s place. As she drew near the house, she came close to releasing the brake and letting the car glide those few extra feet down the road to Ivan’s. The fantasy of disappearing into his workshop and his bed to heal was unbearably appealing.
She pretended, for the handful of seconds it took to walk to Ms. Lloyd’s front porch, that her arm didn’t burn and her heart wasn’t tight in her chest.
The door, of course, was locked. Faced with the prospect of walking her scarred, aching body to Ivan’s or facing the she-devil inside, she’d opt for the latter.
“Please, please, please, open up,” she begged Ms. Lloyd—or God or providence—as she shoved uselessly at the front door. She started banging, more frantic than the occasion probably warranted. But standing there made her feel naked, the pain of her arm bringing her back to the night she’d worked so hard to forget. She wouldn’t look down, wouldn’t acknowledge that it hurt, wouldn’t give these wounds another moment of attention. Blinders on, head in the sand.
Don’t see it. Don’t feel it.
“Ms. Lloyd! Let me in, please!” Her voice came out thin, frantic. Her hands scrabbled at the knob again, and she twisted, twisted, pushed.
Locked.
Uma’s head turned woozy, eyeballs constricted.
Stress, she thought. This is stress. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.
The door suddenly swung open, and she fell in behind it, jostling her boss in the process. After pulling the door from the woman’s grasp and slamming it shut, she leaned back on it, bent double from the waist, gasping. It was like that first day here, against the side of the house, and—
A ghostly whisper of Ivan’s warm hand. Just a memory, but tangible enough to calm her. She glanced up and caught Ms. Lloyd’s horrified expression.
“What the hell is that?” the woman snarled, pointing at Uma’s arm. Her sleeve was stained dark with grease and dotted with blood.
“Nothing.” She tried to move to the stairs, but before Uma understood her intention, Ms. Lloyd blocked her way, grabbed hold of the fabric, and yanked it up, baring half her left arm.
It hurt. Oh, it hurt.
“You call that nothing? What is wrong with you? This what you’ve been doin’ in town? Gettin’ these filthy things put on?” Ms. Lloyd’s accent got thicker when she was riled up. More country and less genteel.
“No,” Uma muttered. Her vision, dark at the edges, narrowed on Ms. Lloyd’s face, the focus too close: an eyebrow, a hair.
“You just did those.”
She swallowed. “I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie to me, girl. You think I’m blind? It’s all red.”
A tiny, snide little voice inside Uma almost pushed her to laugh. At Ms. Lloyd’s innocence, maybe. The fact that she had no idea what a new tattoo looked like. It was weirdly liberating. Because what did it matter anyway, if she knew? “I’m getting them removed.”
A pause. “What?”
She forced herself to watch the woman’s face as understanding dawned.
Yeah, that’s it, lady. Look at the freak show you hired.
Those enormous black eyes took in the story, read the words scrawled across Uma’s skin, no doubt shoring it up as ammunition to drag out at some later date. The messy Js and Os, Es and Ys, veering off into skid marks when Uma had gotten a kick in. Other things too, marking Uma as devalued property, like where he’d forgotten the T in BITCH and scratched the whole word out. What she couldn’t see was that he’d moved to the other side to start afresh. Mostly, though, what Ms. Lloyd stared at was a road map to the single worst night of Uma’s life—a series of jagged, unintelligible inscriptions, documenting Joey’s descent into jealousy-fueled madness.
“Who did this to you?”
“My ex.” With a sigh of relief, Uma pulled the sleeve back down.
“I’m callin’ the sheriff.”
“No!” She stopped Ms. Lloyd with a hand to the wrist—bird thin and brittle.
“You sayin’ you wanted this?”
“Of course not.”
How could Uma explain what Joey had done? How he’d chased her to the door, yanked at her hair, pulling it out by the roots, and dragged her back by the ankle? Crushed her like a bug and trussed her up like a pig. Held her down and hurt her, over and over and over.
How could she possibly tell this woman about the humiliation, the degradation, the foreverness of it? How she’d begged and cried and tried to fight him off. But in the end, she’d endured it, hadn’t she? Fucking weak, pathetic thing that she was, Uma had lain there and let it happen.
She wouldn’t do that today. No cringing, no flinching, no giving in. Today, she’d—
“Well, honey, we’ve got to do somethin’ about this, then.”
“What?”
An evil glint shone in Ms. Lloyd’s eye, and for once, it wasn’t directed at Uma.
“We can’t. He’s… I can’t go after him.”
“Why not?”
“He’s…he’s powerful, Ms. Lloyd.”
“He ain’t powerful enough to get away with something like that.”
“Oh, he is.” Uma briefly shut her eyes, swallowed.
“Ridiculous.” Ms. Lloyd’s mouth worked for a while, searching for an argument, a way to push Uma into doing something. “I’m gonna—”
“Listen to me, please,” Uma broke in quietly, looking the woman dead in the eye. “You c
an’t call the cops. You can’t tell anyone about this. He’s a prosecutor. In Northern Virginia. Big time.” Ms. Lloyd opened her mouth to argue again, and Uma stopped her. “You want to stay in this house forever, hidden away from the real world? That’s your prerogative. I’ll do your shopping, I’ll cook your meals and clean up after you, as long as I’m in town, but I won’t ever try to make you go outside. Never.” Her voice came out in a harsh whisper, surprising in its strength. “You can lord it over me and treat me like crap, but remember that it’s because I say you can. Don’t you think for one second that you get to decide anything for me. I make my own choices now. Nobody else gets to decide for me. Not you or anybody else. Got it?”
In the moment that followed, Ms. Lloyd stared at Uma with her big, unblinking owl eyes. The ticking of the rooster clock in the other room counted down the seconds. Finally, instead of the irritation Uma had expected, understanding dawned—perhaps even a jot of respect.
“Got it?” she repeated.
Ms. Lloyd reached out and grabbed Uma’s hand, hard and quick, before letting it go and turning around to thump her way into the kitchen.
“Don’t snipe at me, Irma,” regular, mean-ass Old Lady Lloyd spat over her shoulder. “You gonna cover yourself up, or do I have to look at those nasty things all night?”
“I need to buy a couple of shirts, but…” Uma’s voice trailed off. She’d apparently used up her store of courage for the day.
“What? Spit it out.”
“I’ve been here a week. It’s payday.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Ms. Lloyd muttered, veering off toward the musty, rarely used dining room. “Always wanting somethin’, aren’t they?”
She waited in the entryway while her boss rustled around in the other room and returned to press a wad into Uma’s hand.
“Thank you.”
“Tomorrow, you go buy yourself something decent to wear. It’ll be a relief to see you looking nice, for once.”
After the other woman walked off, Uma looked at the money in her hand. It wasn’t nearly enough to live off in the real world, but it felt like a fortune.
Under Her Skin Page 13
