Standing fourth back in line at the Walgreens checkout, Marilee couldn’t help but notice the almost-bare back right in front of her. The weather had finally warmed, and winter-whitened skin was making its pallid appearance everywhere. On sidewalks. On motorcycles. Sprawled on the greening lawns of the college and high school. And in line at the Walgreens.
But this skin wasn’t completely white between its two hot-pink spaghetti straps. Shoulder blades stuck out like parentheses. And in between, in a bluish-green, these words in an artsy script:
Open your mind.
Marilee, bored as she waited, read the words over and over, compared the O’s length from the left (to Marilee) shoulder blade with the d’s length from the right. They seemed about equal. The your rose gently over the young woman’s nubbled spine. The letters, Marilee figured, were no more than about two inches tall. Placed as they were, they were likely unnoticed most of the Wisconsin year, tucked beneath T-shirts and long-sleeved button-downs, sweatshirts, and sweaters. But in the desperation of spring, when people poured out their skin even in 50-degree temperatures, and later, in the swelter of summer, these words would blaze in their blue-and-green mix. As they would at a winter formal, Marilee mused, if the young woman wore a backless dress. As they would at night, if she slept in the nude and turned her back to a lover.
Why, Marilee wondered, would this woman want to make such a statement to a lover? Was she kinky? Open your mind: touch me this way and that way, do this, that and the other thing. Those things that everyone knows about, but no one mentions; saved in a book that everyone reads, but no one admits to.
Why would she bare her back to say this to anyone? Why would she say this to absolute strangers in the flush of a Wisconsin spring? The stunning unexpected fever of a Wisconsin summer?
Marilee stood in line and stared. Because the young woman’s back was smooth as ceramic, Marilee placed her in her 20s. Her hair was brown and blunt-cut to just the base of her neck. To keep the words in clear view of others? Marilee wondered how much it hurt to have a tattoo etched into your skin. She supposed they still used needles. Were they hot? Were there many? Or was the same needle applied over and over, maybe even rapid fire, like a hypodermic-needle sewing machine?
She shuddered.
Marilee, at 53, infrequently pondered the possibility of a tattoo. Almost 20 years before, when it was all the rage to have a bracelet filigreed onto your bicep, she considered it. And she considered the secret of a hummingbird tucked onto her left breast. A heart just above the split in her butt cheeks. A smiley face peeking from her pubic hair. Those were much more appropriate to surprise a lover with, she thought, than an admonition to open your mind. A friend had her mother’s name scrolled above her heart when her mother died, and while Marilee appreciated the sentiment, she thought it enough that she bore her mother’s hair, eyebrows, and nose. Plus she didn’t like her mother nearly enough to spend the rest of her lifetime with that name branded on her chest like the barn-marker for cattle. Marilee was, she thought, much more than a calf.
And so Marilee’s skin remained clear. She adorned it instead with fresh-smelling scents, spritzed all over after her shower. Even her pubic area. A surprise, she thought, though she hadn’t surprised anyone in a long, long time.
The young woman stepped up to the counter, and Marilee was now only one back. She sidled just a bit to the left, so she could see the young woman’s items as she laid them out. A tube of lipstick, a sweet pink that reminded Marilee of baby blankets. A tin of peppermint Altoids. Some clearance items from Easter, including five packages of purple-and-yellow Peeps, which Marilee intended to pick up herself, but forgot until now. Massengill douche. A package of ribbed condoms, with one heck of a good-looking man on the front of the box.
It had been a long, long time since Marilee bought condoms. She remembered how they used to be tucked like a secret, like a hummingbird or a heart, behind the pharmacy counter, and you always had to ask for them, like a pack of cigarettes, and with no little amount of shame. Now they were right there, out in the open, in the aisle, along with tampons and Kotex and Peeps and lipstick.
So there was a lover then, for this young woman. A lover who would see that tattoo whether this young woman’s back was turned to him in anger or petulance, or if he was just spooning her before sleep. A memo to open his mind pressed against his chest. Marilee wondered why.
Why this constant reminder, held in place by the slenderest of shoulder blades, viewed in the verdancy of spring, the calidity of summer, the privacy of intimate moments. Open your mind. A statement, not a question. Not a request. It could even be seen as a command.
From her one step to the side, Marilee couldn’t see the face of this young woman. She could only see the tip of a petite nose and the swing of the neck-length haircut. The young woman’s voice, as she thanked the cashier who was bagging her purchases, was firm and rhythmic as a march. Marilee immediately pictured confidence. Maybe even feminism. Hot-pink and silver bangles jangled at her wrist; no bracelet tattooed this young woman’s bicep. Marilee glanced down. Nothing on the ankle either. From what Marilee could see, there was nothing but this statement on the expanse of this young and confident back.
The young woman picked up her bag and walked away. Marilee watched the tattoo disappear through the sliding doors and into the glint of sunshine. Then she moved to the counter and laid down her own purchases.
“That young woman had a tattoo on her back,” Marilee told the cashier. “It said, ‘Open your mind.’”
The cashier quirked an eyebrow but said nothing. She began beeping Marilee’s products across her scanner.
Claritin, for Marilee’s every-spring allergies. Fat-free popcorn chips for late-night snacking and a Caramello bar for when she needed something sweet with a taste of decadent. Toilet bowl cleaner. Two percent milk. No condoms. No Kotex or Massengill. Marilee hadn’t bought anything in that Walgreens aisle for quite some time now. She wondered how long.
As she paid, Marilee glanced at her own wrist and thought again about a tattoo. She looked at the cashier and noted a bluish-green and red rose, tucked right under her (to Marilee) right ear. Marilee wondered if it was permanent and if the color would fade over time. And she thought the earring swinging over it distracting. Too busy, she thought. Too busy.
On the way home, she kept thinking about the young woman. Open your mind. Marilee appreciated the sentiment, she really did. An open mind led to broader experiences, she believed. But why put the tattoo on your back? Where it was covered most of the year? Why not on a wrist, a bicep, underneath your ear if you didn’t wear earrings? If you were interested in sharing a statement only with those intimate with you, then why not on the secret of a breast, a butt cheek or just above the pubic hair for special and surprise viewing?
Why the back?
By the time she got home, Marilee wondered if the tattoo was somehow a reminder to the young woman herself. To glimpse over her shoulder as she tried on clothes in a fitting room? The young woman was very, very thin, with those parentheses sticking out of her back, and so maybe she had to remind herself that she really looked okay, that she needed to open her mind to her own attractiveness or to a different style of clothes that wouldn’t hide the pretty body she had. Maybe wearing the little spaghetti-strap top was difficult for her. Marilee went into her own bedroom and stood with her back to her dresser mirror, peeking over her shoulder. What would the young woman see?
.bnim ɿuoy nɘqO
In order for the young woman to read her the message on her own back, the phrase would have to be tattooed on backwards and the letters would be inverted, just the way the word “ambulance” was painted backwards and inside out on the vehicle but appeared correctly in a rear-view mirror. The tattoo Marilee saw was straightforward, and so the message couldn’t be for the young woman herself. It had to be for the viewer. Marilee frowned for a moment as she studied her reflection. Her shoulder blades weren’t nearly as prominent as the young woman’s. Marilee wondered if a heart just above her butt cheeks would even be able to be seen by an intimate partner, for the bit of extra skin there.
Then she shook her head and left the room. She didn’t need to be talking to herself, reminding herself of anything, giving herself a message. She was fine. She was.
Marilee worked her way through an evening’s dinner (chicken breast and broccoli, steamed in its own bag in her microwave), television, a handful of the popcorn chips, a sudden urge for the candy bar and a cup of coffee at midnight. A taste of decadent. It was Saturday tomorrow; she could sleep in. Some candy and caffeine and a late-night movie were just fine. They were. Even if she talked to herself. And even if she lost track of the movie’s plot from time to time because she was pondering a back with a blue-green phrase tucked between shoulder blades. Like wings, she mused, the caramel mellowing her into poetics. Not parentheses, but wings.
When Marilee went to bed that night, she decided to shuck her pajamas and sleep in the nude. Open your mind, she reminded herself, and so she did something she had never ever done before. Not even when she was dating or married and walking down that Walgreens aisle at least once a week or so. There’d always been a negligee, a nighty, silk pajamas, cotton, flannel. But on this night, she undressed, slid between the sheets and lay on her side. She pictured her bare back facing the empty of the bed. She wondered if anyone was facing the young woman’s back on this Friday night, if anyone was reading her blue-green artsy scroll message.
Open your mind.
Marilee tried to close her eyes. But her lids kept flipping up like broken blinds.
The next morning, late morning, because she tried to stay asleep once she fell asleep, because it was Saturday, after all, and it was fine, she sat blearily over her cup of coffee. She’d brought it out to the balcony, since this was a Wisconsin spring, and it was supposed to be warm as the state worked its way out of what had been a brutal winter. The sun lit her balcony, and she had a little table and chair set up out there, a chair, just one, not two, because she told herself there just wasn’t room. Just as she told herself it was warm. She sat in her chair and looked across the table into the expanse of the apartment complex’s yard. A courtyard, they called it, this square of green, outlined in concrete going to each of the four buildings. And in the middle of the courtyard, a scrawny tree, four benches braced around it, elbows touching. Marilee never saw anyone sitting there. She only heard the complex’s maintenance man swearing at least once a week in every season but winter, as he had to yank those benches aside to mow around the tree. And then he yanked them back. Elbows touching.
If the young woman sat on one of those benches, even if she sat among a crowd, if every bench was full, hip to hip between each bench’s elbows, the only one who would see the message on the young girl’s back would be the tree.
Marilee groused as much as she could, over her coffee cup, there on her balcony with no one to grouse to but the empty benches below and the squared-in tree. Why would the young woman put that message on her back, of all places? Where the only people who could see it would be behind her? Would be behind her, like Marilee was yesterday, in line at the Walgreens, fourth back to begin with, and even more trailing after her? Where everyone behind the young woman could see the message, could stare at it, eyeball it, glare at it, and talk about it while the young woman’s back was turned? Where she couldn’t even see it herself? Where they could all talk behind her back?
Marilee blinked.
To those talking behind the young woman’s back:
Open your mind.
Oh.
Feeling better, Marilee finished her coffee. She took a shower and took notice of herself as she did, running her loofah over skin that wasn’t as smooth as it used to be. Nor as taut. But in the shower, it pinked nicely. And in the warmth of a Wisconsin spring, when skin was brought out of winter’s hibernation, Marilee knew she toasted into a delicious shade of caramel. And while she wasn’t as smooth as a blank canvas, as taut as a blackboard, Marilee thought she could still bear messages. Just like the young woman. She could bear messages, and she just might be able to walk down that aisle at Walgreens. The right side (to Marilee) wasn’t applicable to Marilee anymore, but the left side, the left side with the cartons of good-looking men, maybe even some of them with a touch of gray in their hair and a little slack in their skin as well, that left side could still be paused by and studied. And things selected. Taken home.
Open your mind.
From her dresser drawer reserved for summer clothes, Marilee pulled out a spaghetti-strap tank top, a deep teal, with a built-in bra that the young woman probably hadn’t even thought about yet. Marilee’s hair, cropped curls, left the skin on her back and chest open to view. In her car, seeking out a tattoo parlor, if they were still called tattoo parlors, Marilee planned what she would do. No bracelet around her bicep. No hummingbird or heart-held secret. No smiley face as a surprise. On the inside curve of her left (to Marilee) breast, she would have an artsy word:
Hello.
When she wore any shirt, whether a scoop neck or a button-down, a zipper or a V, it would be seen. It would be seen and read. And on her back, to all those behind her, in between two shoulder blades that weren’t quite so prominent, she would say it again. But she would say it with an exclamation point:
Hello!
And she would be prepared to say hello right back. Hello and hello and hello. To the front and the back, to the left and the right. Touch me this way and that way, do this, that and the other thing. She would admit to it. It was fine. It was. Hello! When she got home, after being tattooed, she would go outside to the courtyard where no one sat, and she would move those benches. She’d spread them out, with room between their arms, room for people to slip in and sit down, and she’d turn them around, so everyone could see everyone, and everyone could see the tree. She bet the tree would grow greener. And the maintenance man would no longer curse … his mower would fit easily between the elbows. He might even have to ask people to lift their feet, to pause their conversation. Maybe someone would offer him a beer. Maybe Marilee would. He might say hello. Hello! She remembered a touch of gray at his temples.
Marilee would sit on one of those benches, on this very night.
Open your mind. Hello!
Marilee cranked open her car window and rested her elbow on the ledge. She smiled in the warming air. She would soon be a delicious caramel. She would soon be a greeting. Front and back, left and right. Even to a man who would look at her back, no negligee, no nighty, no silk, no cotton, just her, just Marilee, just the warmth of her skin, the caramel, and spoon her to him in bed. Press her greeting to his chest. Constant.
Hello. Not a secret or a surprise. Not a request. A command.
Hello!
Marilee appreciated the sentiment. It was fine. It was.