The Other Side of My Face

Sue Ann Colvin

I get teased a lot. Kids push their fingers against their cheek to make it crush in, like mine does. They call me deformo and retardo, like the way I look makes me stupid or something. The worst though, is the grown-ups, the way they squish up their faces like it’s painful for them to look at me. They always say the same thing, "Ooh, what happened to your face?"

My mother said to tell people when they ask, "It’s none of your goddamn business." She said that would shut them up. I don’t really like to be mean, so I just say it’s a skin infection. Then they ask me if it hurts. I tell them it doesn’t.

On the bus, on my way home from Dadeland Mall right before Christmas, an old wrinkled-up lady (who had to be at least ninety) scrunched up her face in a knot and said, "Ooh, you poor child, what happened to your face?" She was sitting all the way across the aisle from me.

Everybody on the bus stared at my face. I turned to the kids I was with and decided I just couldn’t take it anymore. So, I did the only thing I could think of to do.

Loud enough for the whole bus to hear, I started to make up a story. I told her that when I was three, I ran out in the road and a Mack truck ran over my head. One of the boys in the back started to laugh, but I shot him a look so he’d know if he laughed again, I’d get my brother to beat him up, and he covered his face.

The whole bus was quiet then. They all listened while I told the old lady that the doctors were able to use plastic to put my head back together. It was space-age plastic discovered by scientists for NASA.

"They did a pretty good job," I said. "But they couldn’t get rid of the tire track on my neck and cheek." I showed her the tracks that the truck’s tires made. Her saggy old eyes got really big.

She said, "Oh, Lord, yes, I can see them." She shook her head from side to side repeating, "My lord, you, poor, poor child."

We were all about to bust a gut holding back our laughter, so we jumped off the bus two blocks before our stop. We cracked up about the old lady thinking she could see the tire track on my face. It was the first time I felt laughed with, not laughed at, about my face.

Lately whenever anybody is rude about my face, I tell this story. Which now includes a collision with a bus full of old people who get all mangled up and die.

That’s how I got the idea to be a writer. I figure if I could make that old lady believe that a Mack truck ran over my head, people would believe anything.