2006-05-08
allergies
I woke up with my eyelashes glued together. "Allergies," my dad says. He should know. He gave them to me.
My doctor gave me a pin-prick test. It says I'm allergic to mangoes, cheap nickel-plated earrings, and cockroaches. I'm also allergic to palm trees, which happen to be puffing out thick clouds of pollen. When I open a window, the smell leaks down my throat---a cross between my grandmother's drugstore cologne and artificially-flavored pies (the supermarket kind, like "Dutch apple" that comes in a box).
I blink away the tears. It looks like I can't stop crying. So Mama takes me to the eye doctor. At least I get to skip first period (another stupid quiz on plate tectonics). The doctor hums a lot and asks, "How's school?" at least five times. He straps me into a google-eyed machine like the one in Clockwork Orange.
"Rest your chin here," he says, breathing coffee fumes all over me.
I mash my forehead against the metal bar. He beams a light into my eyes and I see galaxies twinkling in mid-air. He squirts something cold at me and I dab it away, staining my Kleenex like rust. He asks me to read the swollen letters on the chart.
"A....D...." I murmur, trying to make them out.
"I believe you," he says, rolling down to the last row. I can't read it. I feel like an idiot.
"Y?" I say. "Or maybe V?"
"This better?" he asks. He clicks down another lens.
"No."
"How about this?"
"It's worse," I tell him.
He gives up.
The lights wink on. He stuffs a bottle of Soothe in my hand (I can't see it. Later I'll check out the fine print: "A brief period of blurring is typical upon application," it says, making it seem like the box itself will blur beyond recognition).
"So I'm not dying of some fungus disease?" I ask.
"Not yet," he says. "You have allergies."
I go home and crawl under the covers, still wearing the flimsy plastic sunglasses that the receptionist strapped to my face. In the mirror, my pupils are the size of cherry pits. Each hour, they grow smaller. There's nothing to do except sit in the dark and wait for them to shrink back to normal.
"Have you used your drops yet?" Mama calls down the hall.
I keep my eyes closed. When I wake up, my room is darker, safer. I could move through it without turning on a lamp. I can't see the dirty t-shirt on the floor or the pile of overdue library books about vampires. I can't see my orange fingernails, which need repainting.
Everything looks so much better in the dark.
f-i-n at 9:36 p.m.