He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart,
and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. – Aeschylus
Behind Lea, the bridge’s cables flicker in the sun’s fading light like the golden strings of a solitary harp.
She balances herself atop the guardrail, feels the steady shudder of tires crossing the span. The barbed face of
the concrete pierces the soles of her feet. Yet, she stands firm. She has chosen this side of the Sunshine
Skyway because she can see the old bridge far below, that crumbling remnant whose severed ends reach out
across the bay in a futile attempt at embrace.
From this height--two hundred feet up--Lea is alone above the world, the sky a boundless blue sail. A
gust of wind brings fresh ocean air, wiping away the oily residue of exhaust fumes, delivering with it the
ephemeral promise of flight. Lea steadies herself for the leap.
* * *
Lea didn’t know she was different from other kids. She had climbed the ladder to the monkey bars, twisted
her long, lean torso as she grabbed one bar, then the next. A smile from the boy on the opposite side
distracted her. She missed the next rung. The drop from the monkey bars to the sand--three and a half feet--
happened so fast Lea didn’t register the fall until she was on the ground. She scrambled to her feet and ran
back to the metal ladder. Left hand, right foot, up. Right hand, left foot, she tumbled back. Her right arm was
limp, dangling below the elbow. What should have been one piece were two, a protrusion of bone pointing back
at her.
The other kids hurried to look, mouths a perfect egg of excitement. Lea’s mother divided the crowd,
gasped at the sight of bone and blood. Lea protested. “Can’t I stay ten more minutes? It doesn’t even hurt.”
The hospital room reeked. Too many scents mingled together, clean trying hard to cover up dirty. Lea’s
mother paced, stopped, foot tapping, distanced by a worried scowl. Almost accusatory. Lea wondered if it was
too late to fake the pain, shift her mother’s emotion to sympathy. Her father arrived, breathless, clutched her
hand, patted her head, boasting, “My brave little sparrow.”
A conversation with the doctor outside the door. Her parents’ voices--Mom’s sky-high pitch, Dad’s restless,
stumbling words. Something was wrong. Something more than a broken arm.
The hospital windows streaked with rain. Lea clacked a green lollipop against her teeth. She thumped her
fingers atop the chalky armor of the cast and felt the echo through her bones, skin already suffocating from the
enclosure. When the door squeaked opened, her mother threw on a smile that showed a spread of teeth
between stark pink lips, eyes fluttering with tears. Her father stopped in the doorway, fussed with a pack of
cigarettes, gaze skimming the floor though Lea saw nothing there but a worn yellow path around the bed. Down
the hospital’s long corridor, Lea’s father walked ahead, far in front, too far for his daughter’s hand to reach him.
Word spread at school. Teachers said she was special. They shielded her from danger, handled her like a
fragile egg. “You could hurt yourself and you wouldn’t even know it.” Always checking her, rushing her into air-
conditioned rooms in the heat of the afternoon. Trips to the nurse’s office for a paper cut. Library duty replaced
gym class. Inside. Tucked away. Safe from harm. Blunt scissors for art class, dull as wood. But the gaze of
other students--and their words--cut, deep.
Her father crushed the empty cigarette pack in his fist. Rings of sweat painted his armpits. “I gotta fly,
bluebird,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He stroked a wedge of Lea’s hair that had fallen across her forehead, then kissed
her cheek, lingering there. A minute later, his Buick sputtered to life in the driveway.
“Where’s your father gone?” her mother asked.
Lea stood at the window. “To get another pack,” she answered. “I think.”
An hour later, her mother was on the phone with the police when she found his note. Said he wasn’t
equipped to handle this, to tell Lea it was his fault, not hers. Nobody’s fault, really. Just something he had to do.
Her mother slumped across the kitchen table, crying in fits, her despair a villain that robbed the life from her.
Mascara streaked down her cheeks in ribbons of charcoal. Lea sat next to her, pulled the chair close. “Lea, why?
Why?” her mother sobbed. The note lay open on the table, left there on purpose, or maybe just an oversight.
Later, Lea slipped into her parents’ bedroom. One parent now, awake, staring at the ceiling, tongue slapping
the roof of her mouth as she wept. Lea thought of the doe she had seen once, trapped in the silver flood of the
Buick’s headlights, so paralyzed with fear it couldn’t save itself.
Back in her room, Lea imagined her father driving away, down the road, the street lights a blurry strand of
pearls. She kicked the wall hard. Did it again, and again, until blood seeped through the whites of her Keds. She
flipped off her shoe. The nail of her big toe was wrenched up and away from the skin. Not a twitch of pain.
Nothing. Inside her, a fractured, hollow space opened.
Her mother’s grief was a stranger in the room. Joined them at the breakfast table. A third passenger in the
car. Stood next to Lea in the mirror, taunted her. I’m her favorite now.
Late one night, when her mother’s bedroom fell into quiet, Lea slipped into the bathroom. Shuffled through
the drawer for scissors. The sharp ones, pointy ends. Didn’t sense the cold sting of the porcelain tub on the
backs of her thighs. She had never known the difference between hot and cold, but learned quickly. Steam
meant heat. Red meant burn. Her brain told her what her senses couldn’t. Flames were easy, but not stove
tops, sidewalks, curling irons, car hoods, water pouring from the faucet. The scars from blisters, dimes of waxy
pink skin reminded her.
Lea’s chest clamped tight as a fist. She bunched up the sleeve of her nightshirt, scissors in hand, blood in
her veins pulsing beyond the thin casing of skin. She flipped her arm over, scored the tip across the pale, soft
flesh. Starting at her wrist, a straight line running toward the crook of her elbow. Too deep. It was like cutting
through a cantaloupe; once the point broke the skin it eased through the flesh. There was no pain. Of course
not.
The fist released, then clenched again as blood oozed out, a chain of inky drops that stained the white grout.
It followed her out of the bathroom, pooling onto the hallway’s grooved wood floor. Lea locked her bedroom
door. Her body trembled with shock. Her heart raced, then slowed.
What if her mother hadn’t gotten up to get a tissue? “What the....” She screamed Lea’s name, jimmied the
lock with a bobby pin. Panicked voice into the phone. “My daughter’s had an accident.” Her mother’s rippling
dissertation of her disease to the attendant: “Congenital insensitivity to pain. Even as a baby, she never
teethed. Never cried when she fell down or scraped her elbow. We thought it was strange, but she seemed so
normal, a tough little girl, you know? Liked to play touch football with the boys. I mean, who’s ever heard of
such a thing? The disease, I mean, not the football.” She squeezed out a nervous laugh. “We had no idea until
she broke her arm. Last year, it was appendicitis. She almost died. It ruptured. She should have been bent in
two with pain. She was finger painting, for God’s sake. Started throwing up everywhere.” A sigh. A swallow. “Her
father left because of it.”
Maybe this is what pain feels like, Lea thought. And she wished she were nothing but air, an expanse of
molecules, unseen, unfelt, free to disperse at the slightest breeze.
The doctors came after that. All about stuffy offices and leather chairs and feelings of self-worth. Lea was a
quick learner. The blade, not too deep; the placement, between her toes or behind her ear or in her armpit, even
hidden in the nest of hair below her navel. There was no pain. Never any pain. But still, the hurt.
* * *
Lea’s clients would shift in the chair, watching intently as she loaded the needle, lined up the inks, slipped on
her gloves. The mere thought of pain induced sweat on their brows, clammed up their palms. Once, a man who
was tattooed down both arms and across his back asked for her trademark eagle across his chest. The bird’s
long talons would sweep over his ribcage, she told him. A good bit of shading. Could he handle the pain? “Had
half my foot shot off in Desert Storm,” he said. As though suffering was a trophy you placed on a mantel.
Lea had a method. Told them to count backwards from two thousand four hundred eighty-seven. When the
mind was taut, the muscles relaxed. Parlor trick. Or so she thought. Clients came from three counties, told her
other artists made it feel like scratching broken glass over your skin. Asked about her technique, was she using
a different kind of machine, the angle of the needle, the colors, what? Lea plugged ink beneath a sixteenth of a
layer of skin, her clients counted down, then up again, and never once a wince of pain from any of them. The
veteran with the missing foot seemed disappointed.
Her shop became so popular she could refuse the death tributes and broken hearts and tribal stencils.
Focused on her original artwork, designs she had perfected on her own body: species of birds, all in soaring
flight. Herons and hawks, kingfishers and kestrels, eagles, of course, and her favorite, the albatross, a bird that
spends almost its entire life in flight. No ostriches, no penguins; a pigeon, sure, if you can live with the ridicule.
Lea had no flash. Freehand only. Clients chose from a picture that she skewed to their shape. No two alike from
the artist who wasn’t like anyone else.
Then came the man with the heavy gait and rusty moons beneath his eyes. Bent like a weak stalk. Head
smooth as an egg. He moved as though he might break in two, swayed to a stop against the wall.
Lea held up a hand. “I can’t do it if you’re drunk. You’ll bleed out too easy.”
He shook his head. “I don’t need a tattoo.” His voice, the spit of gravel. “And I’m not drunk.”
Lea felt the oscillating fan sweep a breeze across her face. “Oh. I don’t erase them. There’s a guy down the
street who does that.”
The man stepped closer, craned hard to look into her eyes. A peach fuzz of hair covered his head, his face
and arms stripped bare. His scent was steel and sweat. “I’ve got this pain, all knotted up in my spine. Sharp as
nails.” His words were still unraveling in her mind when he added, “I can pay you.” Fishing out crisp green bills.
Trembling hands. “Whatever it is you get for one of these...” A head nod toward the pictures that lined the
walls. “I’ll pay you double, triple. Anything you want.”
“What exactly do you think I can do?”
“Take away my pain.” It surprised Lea to hear it spoken aloud, put to words, the idea now a statement, a
fact, something she couldn’t deny anymore.
She hadn’t recognized the signs at first. Thought maybe it was her muscles getting used to the repetitive
task of inking, what other artists experienced as back and neck pain, cramping in their fingers. With her palm flat
on a stranger’s skin, needle pulsing ink through the fragile layers, she would feel a tingle up both arms to the
bony tips of her shoulders. Sparks without fire. Constant as long as there was contact. She came to expect it.
Part of the procedure.
But once, while painting on an ex-jock she’d known in high school, what began as a tingle became a force
that pried her fingers apart. Energy coursing up her arms. The realization that something was filling her mind,
something distant, unreachable, a shadow filled with jagged memories. The force was strongest above his right
shoulder, and then she remembered the injury that had doomed his career. Still, she had no real sense of it,
this pain. The difference between walking barefoot down a cobblestone street and staring at it, a tourist on an
air-conditioned bus.
next page
and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. – Aeschylus
Behind Lea, the bridge’s cables flicker in the sun’s fading light like the golden strings of a solitary harp.
She balances herself atop the guardrail, feels the steady shudder of tires crossing the span. The barbed face of
the concrete pierces the soles of her feet. Yet, she stands firm. She has chosen this side of the Sunshine
Skyway because she can see the old bridge far below, that crumbling remnant whose severed ends reach out
across the bay in a futile attempt at embrace.
From this height--two hundred feet up--Lea is alone above the world, the sky a boundless blue sail. A
gust of wind brings fresh ocean air, wiping away the oily residue of exhaust fumes, delivering with it the
ephemeral promise of flight. Lea steadies herself for the leap.
* * *
Lea didn’t know she was different from other kids. She had climbed the ladder to the monkey bars, twisted
her long, lean torso as she grabbed one bar, then the next. A smile from the boy on the opposite side
distracted her. She missed the next rung. The drop from the monkey bars to the sand--three and a half feet--
happened so fast Lea didn’t register the fall until she was on the ground. She scrambled to her feet and ran
back to the metal ladder. Left hand, right foot, up. Right hand, left foot, she tumbled back. Her right arm was
limp, dangling below the elbow. What should have been one piece were two, a protrusion of bone pointing back
at her.
The other kids hurried to look, mouths a perfect egg of excitement. Lea’s mother divided the crowd,
gasped at the sight of bone and blood. Lea protested. “Can’t I stay ten more minutes? It doesn’t even hurt.”
The hospital room reeked. Too many scents mingled together, clean trying hard to cover up dirty. Lea’s
mother paced, stopped, foot tapping, distanced by a worried scowl. Almost accusatory. Lea wondered if it was
too late to fake the pain, shift her mother’s emotion to sympathy. Her father arrived, breathless, clutched her
hand, patted her head, boasting, “My brave little sparrow.”
A conversation with the doctor outside the door. Her parents’ voices--Mom’s sky-high pitch, Dad’s restless,
stumbling words. Something was wrong. Something more than a broken arm.
The hospital windows streaked with rain. Lea clacked a green lollipop against her teeth. She thumped her
fingers atop the chalky armor of the cast and felt the echo through her bones, skin already suffocating from the
enclosure. When the door squeaked opened, her mother threw on a smile that showed a spread of teeth
between stark pink lips, eyes fluttering with tears. Her father stopped in the doorway, fussed with a pack of
cigarettes, gaze skimming the floor though Lea saw nothing there but a worn yellow path around the bed. Down
the hospital’s long corridor, Lea’s father walked ahead, far in front, too far for his daughter’s hand to reach him.
Word spread at school. Teachers said she was special. They shielded her from danger, handled her like a
fragile egg. “You could hurt yourself and you wouldn’t even know it.” Always checking her, rushing her into air-
conditioned rooms in the heat of the afternoon. Trips to the nurse’s office for a paper cut. Library duty replaced
gym class. Inside. Tucked away. Safe from harm. Blunt scissors for art class, dull as wood. But the gaze of
other students--and their words--cut, deep.
Her father crushed the empty cigarette pack in his fist. Rings of sweat painted his armpits. “I gotta fly,
bluebird,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He stroked a wedge of Lea’s hair that had fallen across her forehead, then kissed
her cheek, lingering there. A minute later, his Buick sputtered to life in the driveway.
“Where’s your father gone?” her mother asked.
Lea stood at the window. “To get another pack,” she answered. “I think.”
An hour later, her mother was on the phone with the police when she found his note. Said he wasn’t
equipped to handle this, to tell Lea it was his fault, not hers. Nobody’s fault, really. Just something he had to do.
Her mother slumped across the kitchen table, crying in fits, her despair a villain that robbed the life from her.
Mascara streaked down her cheeks in ribbons of charcoal. Lea sat next to her, pulled the chair close. “Lea, why?
Why?” her mother sobbed. The note lay open on the table, left there on purpose, or maybe just an oversight.
Later, Lea slipped into her parents’ bedroom. One parent now, awake, staring at the ceiling, tongue slapping
the roof of her mouth as she wept. Lea thought of the doe she had seen once, trapped in the silver flood of the
Buick’s headlights, so paralyzed with fear it couldn’t save itself.
Back in her room, Lea imagined her father driving away, down the road, the street lights a blurry strand of
pearls. She kicked the wall hard. Did it again, and again, until blood seeped through the whites of her Keds. She
flipped off her shoe. The nail of her big toe was wrenched up and away from the skin. Not a twitch of pain.
Nothing. Inside her, a fractured, hollow space opened.
Her mother’s grief was a stranger in the room. Joined them at the breakfast table. A third passenger in the
car. Stood next to Lea in the mirror, taunted her. I’m her favorite now.
Late one night, when her mother’s bedroom fell into quiet, Lea slipped into the bathroom. Shuffled through
the drawer for scissors. The sharp ones, pointy ends. Didn’t sense the cold sting of the porcelain tub on the
backs of her thighs. She had never known the difference between hot and cold, but learned quickly. Steam
meant heat. Red meant burn. Her brain told her what her senses couldn’t. Flames were easy, but not stove
tops, sidewalks, curling irons, car hoods, water pouring from the faucet. The scars from blisters, dimes of waxy
pink skin reminded her.
Lea’s chest clamped tight as a fist. She bunched up the sleeve of her nightshirt, scissors in hand, blood in
her veins pulsing beyond the thin casing of skin. She flipped her arm over, scored the tip across the pale, soft
flesh. Starting at her wrist, a straight line running toward the crook of her elbow. Too deep. It was like cutting
through a cantaloupe; once the point broke the skin it eased through the flesh. There was no pain. Of course
not.
The fist released, then clenched again as blood oozed out, a chain of inky drops that stained the white grout.
It followed her out of the bathroom, pooling onto the hallway’s grooved wood floor. Lea locked her bedroom
door. Her body trembled with shock. Her heart raced, then slowed.
What if her mother hadn’t gotten up to get a tissue? “What the....” She screamed Lea’s name, jimmied the
lock with a bobby pin. Panicked voice into the phone. “My daughter’s had an accident.” Her mother’s rippling
dissertation of her disease to the attendant: “Congenital insensitivity to pain. Even as a baby, she never
teethed. Never cried when she fell down or scraped her elbow. We thought it was strange, but she seemed so
normal, a tough little girl, you know? Liked to play touch football with the boys. I mean, who’s ever heard of
such a thing? The disease, I mean, not the football.” She squeezed out a nervous laugh. “We had no idea until
she broke her arm. Last year, it was appendicitis. She almost died. It ruptured. She should have been bent in
two with pain. She was finger painting, for God’s sake. Started throwing up everywhere.” A sigh. A swallow. “Her
father left because of it.”
Maybe this is what pain feels like, Lea thought. And she wished she were nothing but air, an expanse of
molecules, unseen, unfelt, free to disperse at the slightest breeze.
The doctors came after that. All about stuffy offices and leather chairs and feelings of self-worth. Lea was a
quick learner. The blade, not too deep; the placement, between her toes or behind her ear or in her armpit, even
hidden in the nest of hair below her navel. There was no pain. Never any pain. But still, the hurt.
* * *
Lea’s clients would shift in the chair, watching intently as she loaded the needle, lined up the inks, slipped on
her gloves. The mere thought of pain induced sweat on their brows, clammed up their palms. Once, a man who
was tattooed down both arms and across his back asked for her trademark eagle across his chest. The bird’s
long talons would sweep over his ribcage, she told him. A good bit of shading. Could he handle the pain? “Had
half my foot shot off in Desert Storm,” he said. As though suffering was a trophy you placed on a mantel.
Lea had a method. Told them to count backwards from two thousand four hundred eighty-seven. When the
mind was taut, the muscles relaxed. Parlor trick. Or so she thought. Clients came from three counties, told her
other artists made it feel like scratching broken glass over your skin. Asked about her technique, was she using
a different kind of machine, the angle of the needle, the colors, what? Lea plugged ink beneath a sixteenth of a
layer of skin, her clients counted down, then up again, and never once a wince of pain from any of them. The
veteran with the missing foot seemed disappointed.
Her shop became so popular she could refuse the death tributes and broken hearts and tribal stencils.
Focused on her original artwork, designs she had perfected on her own body: species of birds, all in soaring
flight. Herons and hawks, kingfishers and kestrels, eagles, of course, and her favorite, the albatross, a bird that
spends almost its entire life in flight. No ostriches, no penguins; a pigeon, sure, if you can live with the ridicule.
Lea had no flash. Freehand only. Clients chose from a picture that she skewed to their shape. No two alike from
the artist who wasn’t like anyone else.
Then came the man with the heavy gait and rusty moons beneath his eyes. Bent like a weak stalk. Head
smooth as an egg. He moved as though he might break in two, swayed to a stop against the wall.
Lea held up a hand. “I can’t do it if you’re drunk. You’ll bleed out too easy.”
He shook his head. “I don’t need a tattoo.” His voice, the spit of gravel. “And I’m not drunk.”
Lea felt the oscillating fan sweep a breeze across her face. “Oh. I don’t erase them. There’s a guy down the
street who does that.”
The man stepped closer, craned hard to look into her eyes. A peach fuzz of hair covered his head, his face
and arms stripped bare. His scent was steel and sweat. “I’ve got this pain, all knotted up in my spine. Sharp as
nails.” His words were still unraveling in her mind when he added, “I can pay you.” Fishing out crisp green bills.
Trembling hands. “Whatever it is you get for one of these...” A head nod toward the pictures that lined the
walls. “I’ll pay you double, triple. Anything you want.”
“What exactly do you think I can do?”
“Take away my pain.” It surprised Lea to hear it spoken aloud, put to words, the idea now a statement, a
fact, something she couldn’t deny anymore.
She hadn’t recognized the signs at first. Thought maybe it was her muscles getting used to the repetitive
task of inking, what other artists experienced as back and neck pain, cramping in their fingers. With her palm flat
on a stranger’s skin, needle pulsing ink through the fragile layers, she would feel a tingle up both arms to the
bony tips of her shoulders. Sparks without fire. Constant as long as there was contact. She came to expect it.
Part of the procedure.
But once, while painting on an ex-jock she’d known in high school, what began as a tingle became a force
that pried her fingers apart. Energy coursing up her arms. The realization that something was filling her mind,
something distant, unreachable, a shadow filled with jagged memories. The force was strongest above his right
shoulder, and then she remembered the injury that had doomed his career. Still, she had no real sense of it,
this pain. The difference between walking barefoot down a cobblestone street and staring at it, a tourist on an
air-conditioned bus.
next page
r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal
spring 2008 fiction
swan dive by mel hicks
spring 2008 fiction
swan dive by mel hicks
