cosmetic, but I’m willing to make an exception in this instance, Layla. Although you’re young, you’re very articulate and intelligent. I realize that your concerns go deeper than mere vanity.’
Layla nodded. She said slowly, ‘For a while I tried to make myself believe that I had made the size of my nose into an issue, that the problem was to do with me, on the inside, not the out. My parents encouraged this line of thought, although my Mum has always been supportive, and my analysis did the same thing. But now I know that the problem is on the outside too. People judge one another visually; I should know, I do it myself. I want to be normal. I want to stop being on the outside, the periphery.’
Dr Shaben nodded and smiled at Layla. His bald head and short stature made him look like a tiny, benign, laughing Buddah as he sat hunched and serene in his big, leather, office chair.
Before the operation Layla abandoned her GCSE course work and concentrated instead on the leaflets, diagrams and information surrounding the surgery that she was about to undertake. She read how modern technology now meant that some nose operations could be undertaken entirely through the nostrils without any recourse to external incisions and unsightly scarring. The nose was chiefly made up out of bone and gristle, but was also extremely sensitive because of the large number of nerve endings at its tip. She tested this theory by smacking her nose with a pencil and then smacking other parts of her face like her cheeks and eyebrows. The nose was much more delicate. After the operation, a certain amount of swelling and bruising was to be expected.
Four days after her sixteenth birthday Layla awoke in a large and unfamiliar room. Her duvet was tightly stretched across her chest and felt unusually harsh and full of static. She was dopey. Her throat felt weird and dry. Her nose was numb but ached. She thought for an instant that she was dreaming her nose dream, that she wanted to put her hands to her face but her hands were restricted, yet after a few minutes she realized that she was in a strange bed in a strange environment. It was no dream, but her arms were restricted by the tightness of her sheets and blankets. She wriggled her body gently to create some room and worked her hands free. She placed them on her face. Her nose hurt. Her hands touched soft, filmy bandage and Band-Aid. It was done.
For the next five days her head felt light. Dr Shaben said that it was simply psychological, but she felt the lightness of a person who once had long hair and then cut it short, the roomy strangeness of someone who has had their arm broken and set in plaster and then has the plaster removed so that their arm floats up into the air because it feels so odd and weightless and light.
At first her face looked swollen and ugly. In hospital she wore no make-up and was blue with bruises. But she could see the difference. In the mirror her nose looked further away. Dr Shaben was pleased for her. He was well satisfied.
Throughout her stay in hospital, Rose had been in to see her every day. Larry preferred to stay away. Before she had gone in on her first night he had said to her, ‘Remember how when you were small I would sit you on my knee and bounce you up and down and call you my little elephant girl? You always laughed and giggled. It’s not like that any more. Now you’ve grown up into someone I don’t recognize. I can’t approve of what you are doing. God made you as you are. That should be enough.’
This came as a great shock to Layla. She had completely forgotten Larry’s pet name for her. When she heard him say it again it was like a blow to her face, a blow to her nose, making it ache, making her numb. It was a kind of violent anaesthetic.
She was being pulled in so many directions. Everyone had a different opinion as to the whys and wherefores. Rose simply said, ‘Do whatever will make you happy.’
After five days she came home. Although she was still slightly bruised, the mirror was her friend. Her three brothers greeted her at the front door with euphoric whoopings. Larry sat in the living room, watching the cricket. He turned after a minute or so and saw her, standing nervously by the door, her hands touching the bookcase for support. First he smiled, then he laughed, ‘Five days away, all that money spent, and look at you. No difference! You look no different.’ He laughed on long after she had left the room, but when he’d finished his stomach felt bitter.
Later Marcy visited. She smiled widely and hugged Layla like a real friend. Then she looked closely at her nose and said, ‘Maybe your nose looks slightly different, but to me you are still the same old Layla. In my mind’s eye you are exactly the same person. Nothing has changed.’ She thought that she was saying the right thing.
Layla sat alone upstairs in her room, staring into the mirror. She felt sure that she looked different. She felt sure that she was now a different person, inside. But the worry now consumed her that other people would not be able to see how different she looked. It felt like a conspiracy. She thought, ‘Maybe I’ve become the ugly person I was outside, inside. Perhaps that can never be changed.’ She felt like Pinocchio.
That night she had a dream. In her dream she was a tiny little elephant, but she was without a trunk. She had four legs and thick grey skin, big flapping ears and a thin end-tassled tail. But she had no nose. Because she had no nose she couldn’t pick things up – to eat, to wash, to have fun – all these things were now impossible. It was like being without arms. She kept asking for help. Her mother smiled and stroked her, but everyone else just laughed and pointed.
She slept late. When she awoke she felt battered and exhausted. When she looked into the mirror, her old face looked back at her. Nothing had changed. She felt utterly helpless. Her mind rambled and a thousand different images moved through the space behind her eyes. Her head was full of colour. She saw different people too, pointing their fingers, wiping her nose, holding her arm, bouncing her up and down on their knee, up and down, up and down.
In the kitchen she looked for a small knife to cut the top off her boiled egg. Instead she found that she had a chopping knife in her hand and it was as long as her arm. She cut the egg in half and its yolk hit the wall. She placed the blade near to her nose and felt tempted to move it closer. She stopped. For hours she remained stationary.
Larry had forgotten his sandwiches. He drove home in his lunch hour and let himself into the quiet house. He went upstairs for a quick pee. For once he neglected to shut and lock the door. He whistled contentedly.
Downstairs in the kitchen Layla’s mind started to turn again. She considered her options.
A Necessary Truth
Sammy Jo burped the baby and then lay her down on her pink, rubber changing mat and began to unpin her nappy. The baby puffed a gentle tongueful of spew out of her tiny mouth and down the side of her chin. Sammy Jo undid the nappy and then, almost without thought, used one of its Terry corners to mop up the sick. She lifted the baby’s head up, gently supporting its weight in her free hand, to make sure that her mouth was now empty. She didn’t want her to choke accidentally.
The baby was called Charlie, short for Charlotte. She was four months old. Sammy Jo tossed the nappy into the (thankfully close) washing basket and carefully laid Charlie’s head down again. She picked up a clean nappy and formed it into the requisite shape. The baby wheezed quietly.
Sammy Jo stared out of the window for a moment and caught sight of her husband Jason hanging out some nappies on the line. She rolled her tongue around the long nappy pin with its baby pink tip which she had stuck in the corner of her mouth – like a metal cigarette – while she felt around sightlessly on the table for some baby-wipes and talc.
The telephone rang. She grimaced to herself, let go of the tin of talc and then reached over to pick it up. Charlie screwed up her face at the sudden sharpness of the ringing – she couldn’t decide whether to cry or not – and then relaxed again when it stopped. Sammy Jo carried on staring out of the window. ‘Yes?’
She never said anything but ‘yes’ when she answered the telephone. Her biggest mistake in the past had been repeating her name and number on answering. She now knew that if you say your name and number some strange people copy this information down when they hear a woman’s voice. Then they telephone you again and again and turn your life into a living hell.
Sammy Jo’s telephone