Making Faces

by Amy Harmon

life returned to normal, but it felt wrong, like a favorite shirt worn inside out--still your shirt, still recognizable, but rubbing in all the wrong places, the seams revealed, the tags hanging out, the colors dulled, the words backward. But unlike the shirt, the sense of wrong couldn’t be righted. It was permanent, the new normal.

Nobody or Nowhere? Fern: I’d rather be nobody at home than somebody somewhere else. Ambrose: I’d rather be nowhere. Being nobody when you’re expected to be somebody gets old. Fern: How would you know? Have you ever been nobody? Ambrose: Everybody who is somebody becomes nobody the moment they fail.

If God makes all our faces, did he laugh when he made me? Does he make the legs that cannot walk and eyes that cannot see? Does he curl the hair upon my head ‘til it rebels in wild defiance? Does he close the ears of the deaf man to make him more reliant? Is the way I look coincidence or just a twist of fate? If he made me this way, is it okay to blame him for the things I hate? For the flaws that seem to worsen every time I see a mirror, For the ugliness I see in me, for the loathing and the fear. Does he sculpt us for his pleasure, for a reason I can’t see? If God makes all our faces, did he laugh when he made me?

It’s so much easier to take if God had nothing to do with it. If God has nothing to do with it, then I can accept that it’s just life. Nobody is special, but nobody isn’t special, either. You know what I mean? I can come to terms with that. But I can’t accept that your prayers are answered and theirs aren’t.

“Maybe there is a bigger purpose, a bigger picture that we only contribute a very small piece to. You know, like one of those thousand-piece puzzles? There’s no way you can tell by looking at one piece of the puzzle what the puzzle is going to look like in the end. And we don’t have the picture on the outside of the puzzle box to guide us.”

“Maybe everyone represents a piece of the puzzle. We all fit together to create this experience we call life. None of us can see the part we play or the way it all turns out. Maybe the miracles that we see are just the tip of the iceberg. And maybe we just don’t recognize the blessings that come as a result of terrible things.”

Death is easy. Living is the hard part.

“Because terrible things happen to everyone, Brosey. We’re all just so caught up in our own crap that we don’t see the shit everyone else is wading through.”