Jo

I’m sitting on a cold metal slab, and there’s blood all over my shirt. I’ve been screaming so long my throat’s raw. Jo leaps out from behind the door and goes, “Ha!”

You know those sticks doctors gag you with when they’re looking down your throat? Tongue depressors. Jo’s slid two of them up under her top lip. In a goofy voice she says, “I’m Wally Walrus. Tusk. Tusk.” One of the tongue depressors falls out. “Oops,” Jo says. “Make that tusk.” She bends over to retrieve the stick off the floor.

Through my blur of tears I see something on her butt. I hiccup and point.

“What?” Jo bolts upright. She reaches back. “Oh, hey. I wondered where that went.” She peels a gummy worm off her jeans and slurps it into her mouth. I giggle a little.

Jo clutches her throat, staggering backward like she’s poisoned. She knocks a box of latex gloves off the counter and curses. I can’t see her as she’s picking up the box, but I hear blowing sounds. Cautiously I peer over the edge of the table.

Jo shoots up, and I yelp. She’s filled a glove with air and twisted it at the wrist, and she’s holding it in the middle of her head. She’s bobbing and strutting around the room going, “Cock-a-doodle-doo. Cock-a-doodle” — reaching out a claw to grab me. She pecks at me. Her eyes are evil and she’s going to get me. Just as I shriek, the doctor bursts in. He looks from Jo to me.

“Who needs help here?” he asks.

Jo and I point to each other. We both crack up.

For a moment I forget I’m in the emergency room getting stitches for the gash in my chin. I forget I’ve been howling and wailing and clutching my jaw ever since I fell and hit it on the coffee table, and Jo had to scoop me up, wrap me in a towel, and rush me to the hospital. I don’t forget she held me on her lap the whole way here while my face and eyes throbbed and I cried and bled and screamed bloody murder. I imagined I was dying and my life would go away.

We’re laughing now; we’re laughing so hard I forget how much it hurt and how scared I am.

Weird. Wow. That was my first memory of being alive. I’d just turned three. I’m fourteen now, but I remember that like it was yesterday. Where was Mom? At work, probably. Or home. She hates hospitals. I don’t know why I kept a reminder of that day. All these years, all these reminders. Some things you carry with you forever; you don’t need reminders. Some things leave permanent scars.