Sporting a Black Eye

(This was written as one of my essays in my Creative Writing Class.  Fortunately, my black eye has finally faded.)

It took me 62 years to acquire my first black eye. Since it's been in my possession, I've discovered much finesse is required to successfully negotiate life's encounters as I've displayed it to the world. First, my eye really is BLACK. It's not purple, blue or magenta; it's black. It's been black for several days. I feel like the character, Bele, in the old Star Trek TV episode, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”. Bele (played by Frank Gorshim) was ½ black and ½ white, so if you looked only at his left profile, he was black, but if you looked only at his right profile, he was white. That's me. One half of my face is doing a Zorro imitation, and the other half is a dumpy old lady.

My black eye has two accessories. I have dermabond holding together the edges of a jagged cut above my eye. It's at the end of my eyebrow bunched in this attractive blob. It's an irregular pearl of non-translucent superglue perched there like a beauty mark gone cancerous. If my fashionista had been in control at the hospital, she would have elected stitches and asked them to sew in a decorative button. Maybe something in gold, or hey, how about a cartoon character; I have a Snoopy button in my sewing stuff. Happiness is a warm puppy bobbing at the end of my eyebrow.

The other accessory is a ball. It's taken in up residence right under my skin next to the dermabond. This ball can't make up its mind. Initially, it was a golf ball, without the dimples. Next, it morphed into a jacks ball, then a marble, regular, not shooter, and finally it decided on pea sized. Thank God, it's not pea green. I'm eagerly awaiting the next downgrade to ball bearing. When it was a golf ball, I thought about painting a happy face on it, but it would so detract from the dermabond bauble.

I've discovered a black eye on a man means he's manly....the eye probably acquired in fisticuffs, or doing something heroic like saving a six-pack from a burning building, or recklessly doing wheelies on his Harley. His 'shiner' is somehow OK. A black eye on a woman is suspect. The best you can hope for is to be thought of as a klutz. “Oh, did you trip over your own feet?” “Run your car into a mailbox and the airbag bit you?” At worst, you are battered, and I don't mean dipped in egg and cornmeal.

Since the shiner when I'm with my husband, he gets scornful looks while I reap silent pity. A woman wearing “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” T-shirt saw us. She seemed a little steamed, and I thought she might be fingering a weapon in her pocket. I asked my husband what he would do if someone confronted him as an abuser. “Oh, he said, “I've got that covered. I'll just tell them the rough sex got out of control.”

Mostly, people are furtive when you have a black eye. They look everywhere except in your face. When they do check your face, fleeting looks mingle pity, contempt, and curiosity. Not a single person has said, “GOOD HEAVENS! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU!” If I don't introduce the elephant on my face, people I meet pretend they can't see it. For crying out loud, I'm half raccoon, and you don't notice?

Yesterday, after six days of ugly ebony, my eye is fading. Today, I woke up to magenta and gold. Hey, I can work with that. For the first six days, I didn't bother with make-up. I mean, who could I fool? It's not like you can glue on some false eyelashes, slick on some electric blue eye shadow and Bob's your uncle. But magenta and gold inspires creative possibilities. We decided to go to the Art on the Lawn Festival because I needed to get out of the house and away from ice bags. I made up my boring, plain eye to match my new magenta and gold eye. I even 'touched up' the magenta eye. It had great color, but needed a little sparkle. Then I donned a coordinating bright gold T-shirt and accented it with magenta jewelry. With my white safari hat, I was quite the fashion picture. If only I'd had a Snoopy button.