Tell A Lie to Keep A Promise

Dead Skin in A Person's Head

My grandparents, who came into the Mecca of immigration, were obsessed with education. I guess in part because they were poor Yiddish speaking immigrants with no real formal English-American education. They viewed migration and education as a process and system that excavated them out of the depths of poverty. They learned to be silent and picked up a couple of conversational phrases that advanced them on their journey. They spent a lot of their spare time in the cities library, learning about business and culture and how to exist financially in America. Shit! If I didn't further my education by getting accepted into a college and one of those elite colleges for pre-med and advance the families thirst for education, I would have been considered a product of repeated factors that insulted the privilege of a successful life.

We moved here when I was fifteen from Long Island. My parents took over my grandfather's mortuary business and my mother co-owned a salon with her four sisters. I am a force laborer at both places, periodically, when I am not doing homework and attending school. They wanted to teach me work ethics by making me be their non-stipend intern at our family owned businesses. During the weekdays I'm an indentured servant at the salon, and on the weekends I am a struggling make-up artist coloring dead people's faces with my mother. Such a waste of quality brain cells and muscle contractions. My mother doesn't know that I'll be quitting today. I will no longer subject myself to the cleansing of dead skin cells from our local town inhabitants.

"Orsi (Or-shee), when you decide to do what you are here for, instead of staring into la la land, please attend to the customers wash and rinse," said my mother. I hated the salon. All the snobbish women from the town would be here talking their rubbish about the insignificant people to them. "Sharon did you hear this...? Sharon did you hear that...? Oh! We had a marvelous time darling, marvelous, I say marvelous. Jim got accepted into Yale. Becky got accepted into...Blah Blah blah fucking blah. Did you see what she had on? It was an outrage! I tell you?

I often placed earplugs in my ear or some type of drowning out-device that would drown out all the BS people would converse about routinely. These washed up women would be the faces I would paint in a few years. I am their artiste, their commencement reconstructive face surgeon with a brush before they graduate into the afterlife.

I dreamt of lacrosse and rugby as an exciting life. Me running free hitting my opponents with the shrug of a shoulder. Throwing my ball of contentment from netted stick to the next-netted stick. What an adrenaline Rush. Although I never tried out for the teams at City High they weren't tough enough for me anyway or I wasn't tough enough for it according to being called a book worm. We were taught to keep to ourselves unnoticed, quiet, and meek. I got so good at it that I realized I didn't exist to people. I became such an introvert. Books are my escape. I've seen pain, death, tears, souls, anger and fate-real heroes, heroines, real-life athletes in my imagination.

Miss Contemptuous, for that was my nickname I coined for her, because she was intolerant about pretty much everyone in the human race, finally relieved herself from my seat and, I and my nostrils were removed from the overly priced perfume stench she wore. "Here you go, Hun." She always gave me $50-dollar bills grasped by her thumb cuffed in the palm of her hand and when she shook my hand saying, "take care".

It was a passing gesture of sympathy and I accepted it with empathy. I felt her pain being trapped in her God forsaken role. She wanted to be normal, speak the truth, and get from behind those lies-but her communal relationships she had formed caused her to sojourn with the majority.

"Grandma!" "Zer'Rah," she retorted. "I am en need ooohfff a good scrobbing please my luff I am so tired of this life and your hands are the masseuse-thero-pist for me heads pain". My grandma, continues to provoke the inner beast in me.  "Zer'Rah how is school? What did you learn today? You know me and your grandfather rose out of the depths of poverty because of the education we received through just picking up books reading them".

"Grandma I know". "Well, are you going to go to college or just throw that fantasy stick at the garage door"?

"Well grandma with all that education you received from the public library did it get you a scholarship into college"? I am going to get into college".

"Oh really! How? More shampoo. I need a double wash". "Well grandma I am going to use that imaginary stick and become the best lacrosse player this high school has seen and get me a scholarship to one of those fancy schools, I replied grandiosely".

If that wasn't just a flippant remark by me. I didn't care two shits about college or getting into college. That didn't define life. I wanted something more, something prestigious, I wanted to become someone who people revered.

As I swooshed then tilt-forward with a massage like gesture tilting front and backwards so the foam of soap wouldn't subdue her eyelids. Grandma'ma sternly held her head backwards looking at me while my fingers were entangled in her hair and said immensely, "get an education" and at the same time of me saying I promise she blew her breath in my face with a sigh of relief and in that moment death took her, with piercing eyes sealing the promise. I was caught in an awe moment mouth wide open and the room went into an ultrasonic sound of silence and I screamed, I screamed, I screamed without a break in between grasping for air. I whaled with stomach dropping pain as a dead woman's head lie in my hands.

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