NONFICTION
A Fearful Age
by Lisa K. Buchanan
The lady crossed her ankles at the base of the stool and lifted an obedient chin to the white, hot light. Tears trickled over her crowfoot wrinkles while tiny bristles grazed the twitchy skin beneath her eyes. Her cheeks were porous; her forehead, a clammy cheese. Her eyeballs zoomed in all directions, skimming the tray of instruments by her elbow. At last, she fixed on the tip of her own nose and became docile.
"Edna," said the white-smocked technician. "You'll be transformed."
Having ditched my mother's grasp in the store, I hid behind scented ladies and observed the procedure through a clearing between two unacquainted sleeves: one fur; the other, pink silk. Gathered in hushed reverence, we watched the technician place a clamp on Edna's eyelashes, extract fine hairs from the place between her brows and smear the blotchy cheeks with bronze paste. Edna didn't complain about the pain, but her toes curled in her sandals; her hands fussed with the clasp of her purse. Why had they not put her to sleep as they had done for me when they took my tonsils out?
While I fretted, people yawned. The sleeves wandered off. Two women behind me rustled their shopping bags and whispered about where to have lunch. Nobody held Edna's hand. Nobody gave her shoulder a sympathetic squeeze or assured her it was going to be all right.
When a second technician appeared with a clipboard and asked for volunteers, I slipped away. A lady with rabbit teeth and big hair tried to spray me with something; run-together voices spoke gibberish; a baby in a stroller screamed to spare her life.
Hurrying past a row of velvet, decapitated, pearl-strung necks, I found an upholstered platform and sat down to rest. Only a few seconds had passed when a shadow prompted me to turn slowly around. On the platform behind me, just four inches from my fingertips, was the pointy toe of a black evening shoe, its owner a tall, erect lady who gazed straight ahead and smiled. At first I thought she was rude because she wouldn't look at me. Then I understood that she was paralyzed. Her hair was stiff and frosted. Her eyes were dry, black and unblinking, the lids painted in progressive shades of purple. Her lips were parted, but unable to speak. No heat emanated from her body, no perfume or perspiration or smell of breakfast. Her skin had no creases. The backs of her legs had seams, and her fingers were petrified mid-air, as if reaching to answer a wall phone. Never again would she braid a daughter's hair or dab a bloody knee with cotton. Had she, like Edna, climbed willingly onto the transformation stool? Had she sorted her jewelry and taped cat-feeding instructions to the refrigerator? How long before her kids would find her here, sealed and mounted, a human trophy?
Rummaging through the sale table in the lingerie department, my mother was annoyed that I had strayed. And yet, for once, her frown was a comfort. Behind her on the escalator, I checked her legs: no seams. I pressed my cheek to her freckled arm: warm. When she wiped her wet, sneezy nose with the back of her wrist, I knew the technicians hadn't come near her. Outside, I slogged along with my knees pressed together, insisting we use a restaurant bathroom rather than reverse course for the store. After lunch, I pestered my mother for an ice cream I didn't want, knowing that the errand would take us past the grand plate windows where even now I expect to find Edna – fingers splayed, cheeks bronzed, eyes painted open.
Lisa K. Buchanan's fiction has appeared in Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan, Descant, SmokeLong Quarterly, several anthologies and on public radio. Honors include finalist awards from GlimmerTrain and New Millennium Writings, plus a Pushcart Prize nomination. She earned her M.F.A. from Mills College, lives in San Francisco and paints her face on occasion.