It was one in the morning in San Francisco. That’s four in the morning back in New York City. Doubt wanted a double-breasted suit, cashmere, with a felt cloak but also a prayer robe. Her entourage, three broaden men, boisterous despite their size, pale handkerchiefs peeking from their dark suits’ breast pockets, poked in the nooks and crannies of my shop. Doubt looked straight ahead, glancing over only when a crash erupted or someone called to her affectionately.
I circled her. I measured her slender waist, her slender neck, and her angled shoulders. Inseam, sleeve length, the stretch of her forearm. I marked them down in pencil. I wrote down her measurements. The next minute, we were out the door.
We did not know what to say but knew where we had to go. As we approached our destination, she told me what she believed about the detriment of monotony, and how she wanted to show others the power of having multiple sides to themselves.
“We‘ll all just be carbon copies of each other otherwise… right?” she asked.
I found myself trying to respond, knowing there was a question pending, but one second passed and I failed to remember the meaning of her words. So, I asked her why she was alone. She recounted how her family members were like baby teeth; some removals were bloody, and others came out of nowhere. Together forever, because she consumed them.
“My older sister, if you will, kept nagging me on all the tasks I have yet to complete. The younger would always bring up stories that were better left under the compact soil I buried them under. So, I did what any good sister does, I absorbed ‘em. Just like in the womb. Blood and Bone as it goes, and we were one, and I am alone.”
As we waited, I asked Doubt about her operation.
Hundreds of people came and went, she said. A sea of rainbow heads, some soft, others misshapen. The categorization of doubts were often driven by confusion, like the numb ache after traversing waves one minute too long.
“You cannot imagine the application process,” she complained. “You want someone thoughtful, but with the influx of people leaving, you will settle for anyone who will stay.”
“Worse,” Doubt said, “were the therapy sessions.” Her waitlist was booked five years out. Each session resulted in Doubt grasping the definition of her own self. “Wore her out and tore her down,” she said
Late at night, as she settled in bed, she grappled with what constituted herself. Bystanders, wondering whether they should help a homeless person buy dinner: was it an issue of doubt or ethics? Elderly questioning the location of their dentures, college admissions officers determining who to accept, homesick college students. How was she to know all that she was?
Upon the opportunity to ponder, Doubt’s previous contentment dissolved into a blue hue. Her well-like eyes stared at me as if she had come to a foreign conclusion. She paused for a moment and sipped. Her straw grew limp and purposeless.
“What about you?” she asked. Her glow began to re-emerge. “What is your doubt? What is your life about?”
My eyes attempted to distract me from things unsaid that Doubt most likely had in her archives. My face began to turn scarlet.
I asked Doubt if she would like to come to my house for dinner that night. Her question had activated something in me that once felt like a listless tumor but was now earnestly gnawing at the lining of myself.
We sat across from each other. Both of us could feel the haunting void of space between our dialogue. It was like a coerced game of telephone.
“I have what you want to know,” Doubt said.
She did not seem unwilling to oblige, but I could tell that her hands were shaking. Her empty coffee cup was still in her grasp, and the condensation pruned the nubs of her fingers.
“I want to make a deal with you,” I professed.
Doubt nodded but said nothing. Silence ensued once more.
“Give me all my records,” I told her. “My manila folder. I need to know what is in there. In return, I will tell you what you are.”
Doubt’s mind was swirling. We waited for sound to fill the hollow air. Eventually, she agreed. We shuffled from one end of the dinner table to the other and shook our slippery hands. It was just enough to bind the agreement.
“Don’t blame me for what is in there,” Doubt grumbled. “I get that a lot, you know.”
My arms felt weighed down and my lungs were burning as I clutched the folder. I opened the flap. Inside was a bullet-pointed list of things I had forgotten. Fantasies turned into panic attacks. Quitting school. Things I no longer let consume me. At the back, there was a tab labeled “Top Secret.” I peeked at the page to find a single line.
Wishing mom was dead.
A rusty coil of chains that had been at the bottom of my chest began to unravel and suffocate me. I felt salt on my face. Doubt stared at me with her deep, longing eyes, as if to say I’m sorry.
“I wish my heart could change,” I muttered, remembering all of the times I had been afraid and enraged at the swirling of waiting for ambulances, waiting for surgeries, waiting for her to be released from our late-night hospital stays. The times I let the naked hero in myself consume it all, doing nothing but waiting for her to get better. The day I put my first deposit to the hospital. The crinkled $1,300 was snatched away from me by some listless nurse. We sat quietly for a while. My bleached mind almost forgot about my promise.
Before Doubt left, I got up from the concave armchair in my living room. That was the first time I had noticed how prevalent the tattered dent was. Perhaps the people I was afraid of did not have to be limited to blindness and fear. Appreciation could arrive before the fate of an event was sealed. I felt a stream of revelation surge through me.
Doubt’s face lit up. Her iridescence shone like headlights dancing across a bedroom window.
“I know now,” she whispered, as her cloak performed one last twirl out the door.