Maidenhead

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It was my last chance to get outside before the taxi came to take us to the airport. I had on a big straw hat and Jody’s Sophia Loren glasses. My mom didn’t try to stop me from leaving but she handed me her watch. Twenty minutes, she said without looking at me. We’d eat dinner at the airport. We had two flights to get home. The sun was still hours from going down. My cheek felt like matches were being struck and lit against it. But it occurred to me as I left the four of them packing that I was now free of my mother’s desire for my life to be safe.

I walked to that woman’s store in the alley, freaked out the whole time that I was going run into him. The bird woman sat on the same little stool outside, in the same pounds of turquoise. She stood up when I went in through the beaded curtains saying hi, but she didn’t come in after me. The walls of the shop were cherry-coloured. Dark wood bookshelves with angels carved at the top were packed with trinkets and blankets. Mobiles of birds made of gold-painted paper hung all over the ceiling. Her shop smelled the same as his room. I was wearing big sunglasses and a hat but I knew she recognized me.

The woman didn’t come inside the store for a while. There were these coral and beaded necklaces at the cash, pinned in a glass box like specimens. I just wanted that woman to tell me if that guy had a contagious disease. I knew her slap wouldn’t cause all this swelling. I would not be able to go back to school looking like this.

‘You want some help, sweetheart?’ The woman was suddenly behind me.

I realized that people call each other names during sex to turn themselves on.

I knew the woman could see how ballooned and red my cheek was even though I was almost all covered up.

‘Try this on,’ the woman said. She opened up the door of the specimen box and held up a spiky necklace that had some turquoise in the collar part.

‘No thanks,’ I said.

Did I contract some kind of contagious disease from his piss?

The woman bent down below the glass box and rummaged around. She was rustling through tissue paper, stacked boxes. Then she held up a necklace with a plain leather strap. It had a tiny black pendant in a teardrop shape. It had red and green and yellow stripes.

‘This is malachite,’ she said.

Before I could think to say no or yes or whatever, she was putting it on me. She was touching my hair, lifting it up to fasten the clasp. It was really tight at my throat.

‘This is a good one for young women,’ she said. The black pendant felt like a bone. ‘It’s protection.’

The woman brought me over to a full-length mirror and I looked at myself with the necklace on. I wasn’t looking so much at the necklace as I was looking at her trying to diagnose me. Jody was just like, ‘You’ll go see Dr. Bernhard at home. It’ll get better.’ My dad especially seemed unconcerned. ‘No big deal,’ he said, one-upping Jody. My mom got mad at him when he said that. ‘Not to you,’ she hissed.

‘This necklace is a very powerful talisman against violence,’ the woman said, fingering the teardrop, then laying it back down softly on my neck.

Why’d she think I needed a talisman against violence? I needed protection against disease from blowing into one of your fucking ocarinas!

‘It’s forty-five dollars. A special piece, handmade,’ the woman said.

‘I don’t have any money on me.’ I gave away my money to that fucking woman and him.

The woman sneaked behind the cash and set a prickly, long-limbed plant on the counter. ‘You should put some of this on your cheek,’ she said. ‘It’s very healing for whatever’s going on under there.’

The woman tapped her chest, which was covered with turquoise. There was New Age music playing. I put my hand on the black bone necklace. The woman used an X-acto knife to cut off a piece of the plant. There was see-through cream dripping from where she cut. She squeezed some of it on her fingers and tried to touch my cheek. No fucking way, I pulled away. The woman held out the plant piece to me. It looked like a headless lizard, I thought. I took some of the oozing. It was cool. It felt all right.

‘Three times a day,’ the woman said. ‘No more sun.’

‘I’m leaving, anyway,’ I said. Bitch.

‘My name is Olinda.’ She was smiling tightly. ‘I’m going to give you a deal on the necklace.’

Olinda went behind the counter again. She put the lizard plant in a paper bag.

I took off my sunglasses and hat. I actually wanted this bitch’s opinion: is getting slapped by a stranger what you mean by violence? I didn’t know what the fuck a talisman was.

Olinda didn’t look shocked that I had a huge swollen rash, a contagious disease. I wanted to ask her why she thought I needed protection. I knew that that was going to torment me at home. Jen wouldn’t know, Jody wouldn’t know, Dr. Bernhard wouldn’t know either. No one would know why I needed protection.

‘You can pay me by mail, if you’d like,’ Olinda said.

All of a sudden I felt panic, because I really didn’t want to see Elijah again, especially looking like this. Maybe he was going to walk right in, maybe pass by on his way to dinner with her. I put my hat and sunglasses back on. I don’t know if Olinda knew I was freaking out. My cheek felt redder with that ooze from the plant. It was like I had shellac on top of fresh hives.

‘I don’t have any money,’ I said. ‘I have to go now. We’re leaving in half an hour.’