Ty's Tattoos, Part III "Remember to Breathe"

I remember a day long ago when Rose and I took Tamsin to the park. The little girl played on the swings and the merry-go-’round, while her mother and I sat on one of the splintery picnic tables and smoked and discussed the men in our lives. Rose was well into a description of her new boyfriend’s motorcycle and their plans to take it camping that summer, when a wail from the monkey bars broke the thread of our conversation. Tamsin was lying at the base of the tangle of iron bars, her face in the dirt, her arms and legs splayed at odd angles.

      Rose clamped her cigarette between her teeth and strode over to her daughter, lifting her gently and brushing her off, carefully checking the alignment of her small limbs. Tamsin continued to scream, and when she raised her head to take another tremulous breath, I saw blood streaming down her neck. “Looks like her chin went right through the flesh.”

      Rose grabbed Tamsin, I grabbed the car keys, and we raced her to the emergency room. Tamsin alternated shrieks of “Mom!” and “Aunt Jackie!” until the doctor let us stand on opposite sides of the examining table while he cleaned the wound and prepared to stitch closed the gaping, inch-long tear at the bottom of her chin. He worked quickly, and I remember thinking how much his stitches were like the design I’d been embroidering on a shirt for Tamsin--tiny little cross-hatches of silk thread. His needle dipped and pulled, dipped and pulled, each stitch bringing together the edges of the deep red gash, each stitch perfectly set in the white flesh of her small chin.

      I don’t remember how much time went by, but all of a sudden the doctor paused and said in a calm, detached voice, “Mom, maybe you’d better take Aunt Jackie outside for some air,” and I realized that the room had turned black and crackly and that I’d been watching him work through a long tunnel of vision that was slowly narrowing.

      Rose lowered me into a chair and pushed my head down on my knees. “Remember to breathe,” she said, and I took three shuddering gulps. The room brightened gradually, and when I lifted my head, Tamsin was sitting up and gingerly tapping her bandaged chin with the heel of her small hand.

I remember to breathe now, and Brando works quickly. The ink has changed from black to purple; he’s filling in the center, leaving a pale highlight. The three high school girls and Tamsin and I all sing along with the music: “Are the colors brighter...am I finally waking up...there’s no such thing as destiny...no bad or good luck.”

      Tamsin twists her head to look up at us. “You getting a tattoo?” she asks the girls.

      “I am, for sure,” says one of them. “Just turned eighteen yesterday, so my mom can’t stop me.”

      “I got my first one when I was eighteen,” Tamsin says. Then she’s quiet again, and I don’t know if it’s because of what Brando’s doing to her ankle or because she’s thinking about her own mom. Rose was killed in a motorcycle accident a week before Tamsin’s eighteenth birthday, three weeks before Tamsin got her first tattoo.

  “Stop!” Tamsin commands. “I need a break.”

      Brando stops. “I’m done.” He blots her ankle again, lifting away tiny drops of blood. He turns the ankle toward me. “Look.”

      I look. A dark, dainty eighth note rises toward me on the bruised and burgeoning flesh. Brando glazes the new tattoo with antiseptic ointment, then relinquishes his hold on Tamsin’s leg. She prods the swollen pink tissue around the tattoo. “It’s perfect. Just what I wanted.” She swings her legs over the side of the chair and hops to the floor. The girls form a semi-circle around her as she pirouettes before a mirror set near the foot of the chair. Tamsin turns her ankle one way, then another, admiring Brando’s work.

      “Does it hurt?” the girls ask.

      “Naw. Not now. I love it.” She straps on her sandal as the CD begins another cycle. “Hey, hey, you got me goin’ boy,” sings Tamsin again, shuffling and dancing around the mirror. Brando squats on his stool, watching like a proud father.

      One of the girls hops into Tamsin’s vacant place in the chair. “I want Tinkerbell,” she says, pulling a scrap of illustration from her pocket. “Here, on my shoulder.”

      Brando glances at the picture. “Can do that,” he says. “Lemme get the paperwork.” He takes papers from the table drawer and and hands them to the girl.

      Tamsin still stands before the floor mirror. She gives her leg a little shake. The music notes rides high and bright on her ankle. “Got my wallet?” she asks.

      I pat my shoulder bag. “Yeah.”

      “Then pay the man.”

      I hand Brando fifty bucks, and Brando hands me one of his business cards. “Whenever you’re ready,” he says, and winks.


[To order a copy of the book, Walking Pocatello, call the Idaho State University Bookstore, (208) 282-3237, or send me an email.]