The painfully bright light casts me in a yellow glow. Sweat gathers on my upper lip and falls in rivulets through my hair. It drips off my naked body, onto the stainless-steel table, which is hot and slick. I chew the flaking skin off the corner of my lip until I taste blood.
Fifteen identical bodies surround me, like petals around the centre of a flower. Fifteen identical faces look down on me, like fifteen suns in a white-hot sky.
“Are you sure you’re ready?”
It’s the main Glory, the one at the crown of my head. Technically, there is no main Glory, but of course there is. And she’s it.
Her eyebrow is arched. Like the rest of the Glories, she’s wearing a doctor’s smock as white as her skin.
“I’m sure.”
What choice do I have?
The smell of cauterized flesh and antiseptic is unbearable, so I’m breathing through my mouth—a discouraged behavior for a Glory. The scent is so much different than that of the hovel of my childhood, which was permeated by beeswax candles and apple cider vinegar, unwashed armpits crammed too close together. Here, the halls are sterile and sparsely populated. We would have dreamed of space like this. The ability to stretch out and relax—okay, maybe not relax, but comparatively so.
Thirty sets of hands grip every part of me, holding down my legs, arms, torso, and head. I can only move my eyes. 120 pink fingernails bite into my flesh, hungry and sharp as predator teeth.
“Then let us begin.”
The Glories begin singing in wavering falsettos. Some of them pulse their fingers in time with the music, sinking their nails further in, then bringing them out of the grooves they created.
“Glory, glory, Hallelujah. Glory, glory, Hallelujah. Glory, glory, Hallelujah. Her truth is marching on.”
The main Glory lifts her fingers from my forehead. I can feel the indentations left by her manicured nails. I imagine a crown of red crescents, like the daisy chains I wove around my forehead as a child in those brief, sweet moments I could go outside. She turns to the surgical tray and plays eeny meeny miny moe until her pointer finger rests on the scalpel.
Soon I will have that graceful nose and those angular cheekbones, the upturned eyelids and full lips. My skin will be lasered smooth and my eyebrows will be shaped into identical angles. Soon, looking at my Sisters in Glory will be like looking into a mirror.
It’s the moment my life has been building towards for a long time. Ever since my parents set me loose.
#
“Get yourself a gang, Hattie.”
“A gang?”
“It’ll be the only safe way when we’re gone.”
“Where are you going?”
“Never you mind.”
Even if I had time to research options, the Dopples would have been a good choice. Gang Green, with their tattooed lizard skin, or the Chain Gang, with their heavy shackles, they weren’t as powerful as the Dopple Gang, or as prosperous.
All these years, the Glories have kept me safe, and I am grateful. I am ready to turn over the rest of my life to them. No one’s coming back for me.
#
“Come in,” Main Glory had opened the door with a wide smile, her identical sisters busy behind her when I first showed up on their stoop. “This, we can work with.”
I later learned I was one of many desperate cases that came to their door. Most were sent away. You needed the right bone structure, the right malleability—both physical and mental. I was fit with a mask to begin the process.
It chaffed my face. I was young and unused to pain and constraint of this sort. Sometimes, a fit of claustrophobia would come over me and I would try to scratch and tear it off. I would strike my head against the wall, trying to break free. But it was unbreakable. Luckily, so was I.
“It will make the surgeries easier, dear,” one of the lesser Glories crooned as she put me to bed, my salty tears worsening the sores on my face.
I sullenly complied but boy, did I appreciate the hour a day I could take it off for meals of strict caloric intake.
“You want to be like us, don’t you dear?”
“Glory, glory, Hallelujah,” I whispered back—the accepted response.
#
The scalpel comes closer to my nose. Her hand is steady. I shouldn’t be surprised—it’s not like it’s her first time.
“Glory, glory, Hallelujah. Glory, glory, Hallelujah. Glory, glory, Hallelujah. Her day is marching on.”
It sinks in. Deep. Springs a fountain of blood. It doesn’t even hurt—not at first.
“If a blade’s sharp enough, your enemy won’t feel it ‘til it’s too late, Hattie.” Daddy was stooped over his whetstone. Momma was beside him, needle sinking into pink cloth with red thread, nodding agreement, pursing her lips in concentration.
Then the freight train of pain and adrenaline takes over. Everything goes black.
#
“This isn’t going to be enough. We’ll have to break her nose.”
“Wake up, morning Glory!” A singsong voice, muffled by the bandages covering my head, stirs me from sleep.
I don’t know how long I’ve been out. I hear the crisp metal-on-metal sound of the shears taking practice cuts. Then, the cool blade worming in under the blood-clotted cheesecloth. “Are you ready? It’s time to continue.”
The singing recommences. She peels back the layers. The cool air stings my wounds. It takes my eyes a minute to adjust to the bright light. The fifteen identical faces come into focus.
“Glory, glory, Hallelujah! Glory, glory, Hallelujah! Glory, glory, Hallelujah! Her God is marching on.”
A crash interrupts the singing. It’s the door.
“Wait! Wait!”
All the Glories gasp together, hands moving to mouths in sync. I smell something I haven’t smelled in a long time—beeswax and cider vinegar. I see a blur of familiar difference amidst all the same.
“Momma?”
I can hear the cruel smile in the Main Glory’s voice. “You’re too late.”
I lunge for the surgical tray. All the Glories’ hands grasping and pulling can’t contain me. A metal-on-metal clatter. I grab the scalpel, crusted with my own blood. The Glories back away.
I look past the Main Glory into my mother’s teared-up eyes. I can only imagine what she sees, the swollen skin and crooked stitches, bruised flesh, and dried blood.
I smile through the pain. “Better late than never.”
Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay
Lindsey Harrington is a Nova Scotian writer with Newfoundland roots. This year, she was shortlisted for the Fiddlehead’s Creative Nonfiction Prize, longlisted for CBC’s Nonfiction Prize, and published a letter to the editor in the New Yorker. Her current projects include an unmotherhood memoir and an essay collection about Newfoundland. Learn more at lindseyharrington.com
Brilliant – intense story. Absolutely love the ride.