Ashlie Crabtree is a recent graduate from Georgia Southern University with a B.A. in English and a minor in
Creative Writing. She plans on pursing a career in content editing, but if this fails, her back-up plan is to
invest in a sturdy tent and enjoy a life of unemployment.
Creative Writing. She plans on pursing a career in content editing, but if this fails, her back-up plan is to
invest in a sturdy tent and enjoy a life of unemployment.
My Scars and My Lovers
Middle school gym teachers always come up with the worst nicknames. “Crabapple!” I hear Coach Berry in the
distance but I ignore him. “Crabapple!” He only makes fun of my last name because his is a fruit and by making me
a fruit instead of a whole tree he feels he isn’t alone. “Crabapple, get to the track now!” He looks like a berry, small
round and purple. He’d be a lot less purple if he would stop yelling.
“There’s no point!” I scream back finally. “I can’t even run!” I wonder if he’s seedless or if I can squish him into
wine and get drunk.
He yells, “You can walk!” One good thing about having recently busted your lower half is you get to sit out at gym.
“I just got off crutches! Give me a break! Geez!” When you sit out you can pick at your cuticles better.
“Then stretch your ankle or something!” He’s won, but only because we have this same argument every day and he
knows by that point it’s just a waste of time and breath. He still has other students to yell at.
After the routine and redundant squabble, I limp to his office to get my small stack of wrinkled and worn
instructions my physical therapists gave me to help get flexibility back into my stiff joints. I wrap the thick orange
band around the top of my foot, grab the loose ends, lean back, and move my foot back and forth. I sense my
toes move away from my body and wince. It still hurts. I suck in air through my teeth, making a pathetic hiss. I
look down, but for the first time watch the long scar on the top of my ankle drop into the dip that has formed. I
wiggle my left foot, my normal foot, and notice that there isn’t a dip. No shallow, concave, pale skin sinking into my
body. I release my right foot and put it next to the left. I wiggle them both widely and start to laugh at my scar. It’
s forming small waves, giving me quick glimpses of small sections. The three inches of pink looks like caterpillar
running down my foot. I laugh harder.
I examine the others. The shorter ten scars circling the remainder of my ankle, each with their own set of dots,
their caterpillar feet, and the three on my shin that look like animal bones. I don’t understand why the girls are so
scared of them. They point and whisper as I replace my jeans with soft, cotton shorts in the locker room. They
grimace and move away when they see the top two inches of the six inch scar on my hip peer over the white elastic
band.
I press my legs into my chest. I curl my fingers around my right ankle and place my palm on my left hip. I do my
best to hug my scars.
***
Avis was a terrible kisser. His tongue would swirl and poke about as if it was digging for some scraps of food. His
saliva would run down my chin and once up into my nose. But I kissed him anyway, because he was nice.
We dated a month before I let him see me without clothes. I was surprised how long I had waited. I wanted him to
think I was a good girl. A nice girl to take home to mother and bring to church on Sundays, even though I don’t
get along with most parents and don’t believe in God.
His tongue was a tornado, full spiral sucking up and destroying everything in my mouth, as he pushed up my shirt.
His hands were rough from construction work and his palm scratched my back while he clicked his fingers to
unhook my bra. “Do you want to?” he politely whispered. I, in return, politely nodded. He traced his calloused
fingers down my ribs, stomach, and then hips to unclasp my jeans. I started to giggle like a child as he began to
pull them off, slowly, one leg at a time. I pressed my head into the pillow, pushing it as far as it would go as my
breathing got heavier. I reached out my hand to tug him towards me when I heard his hand slap against his
mouth. “Oh my God! What happened?” he said between his fingers. “Are you alright?” He had found the scar on
my hip.
“I’m fine. It’s from a long time ago.” I finally reached him and pushed his back down towards my chest so he lay on
top of me. I wanted to avoid having a conversation about them. They tended to kill the mood. He was reluctant,
but he eventually went down and then shifted his weight to his hips. He barely put his lips on mine before he
popped up and said, “Am I hurting you? I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You aren’t going to hurt me,” I sighed in frustration, “I’m titanium reinforced.”
“But ya-ya-your scar,” he stuttered a bit, “your scar is just so… ”
***
I don’t remember how I felt when I first saw them. I don’t remember the trauma of seeing the stitches running
down my hip like barbed wire, protecting and holding in the two broken pieces that had been drilled back into my
body. I don’t remember looking down at the crushed fragments of my right ankle being pushed together by
protruding bars and nails, caked with dried blood and flakes of tissue.
I can only imagine the purple ink covering my broken body marking what to drill. I can only imagine the team of
doctors shrouded in cheap paper suits and chalky gloves, bearing down on a Black & Decker to force the fifteen
screws into my aching bones. The high-pitched shriek of the bit, low humble hum of it hitting the gray head, the
deep bellow of it finally being in.
I only remember crying so hard my chest felt like it was caving in, because two nurses had to cut my new green
and khaki sweater and American Eagle jeans to prepare me for ICU without disrupting my bleeding body. I cried
because they slid their gleaming stainless steel scissors down two of the pieces of fabric that could make me
popular. They had cut off all the clothes the girls who made fun of me wore. I would never be one of them. I would
never be liked.
***
Ray was in my history class. I never missed a day so I could purposefully drop my pencil beside his desk and watch
his muscular arm stretch as he bent over. The bulge of his bicep would push up the sleeve of his shirt and his long,
blonde hair would slowly creep over his signature red bandana and onto his chiseled jaw. It thrilled me. I was even
more thrilled when he kissed me against the wall in a bar.
Drunk, reeking of cigarettes and cheap tequila, we stumbled through his townhouse, leaving one piece of clothing
along the way. His shirt was in the kitchen, my bra was on the stair railing, and I was in his bed wriggling in the
satin sheets.
He kissed my naked body slowly and as strategically as my dropping pencil. I watched his hair brush against my
hips, his toned chest breathe in the scent of my vagina, and felt the cold wet of his mouth as he moved to my legs.
Just over the hill of my knee, he looked down at my scars. He gave the standard, “Oh my God! What happened?” I
opened my mouth to respond but before I could say anything, he gripped my ankle and yanked my whole body
down to the end of his bed, which was quick and shocking, given the slickness of the sheets. My right leg in the air,
he began turning my ankle left to right to see all the scars.
“It’s from an accident a long time ago.”
“How old were you?” he said with a mixture of shock and delight, not taking his eyes off my ankle and shin. “How
did this happen?”
“I got in a 4-wheeler wreck when I was thirteen. I lost control and hit a tree in my back yard.”
“That’s so cool! What did you do?” his pupils widening and dark.
“I crushed my ankle, broke my leg, and broke my hip in two places among other things.” I was confused. Why
weren’t we having sex? Should I light a cigarette and play music really loud to recreate the bar atmosphere so he
would kiss me again?
“Awesome.” Not awesome. “I’m going to nursing school. I want to be a surgical nurse, so this kind of stuff just
fascinates me.” Ray kept examining me as if I were on a table in a hospital room. He was completely desexualizing
me. I was now a “neat” piece of medicine. I pushed the base of my palms into my temples to keep the, “Can we
please have sex now?!” groans from sneaking out of my head. It was another five minutes before he finally put me
down.
***
I never liked the word scar. The way it sounds when you say it. The harsh scuffle of sc and the drawn out, lazy ar.
When you have a Southern accent and say it, the ar becomes exaggerated and you sound like a crow. It terrifies
me. I tense up in anticipation of its filthy beak digging into my hip to pull out the two shiny screws. Bright red
blood is splashing all over the black feathers as it squawks and shrieks in anger. The livid flapping of its wings is
causing my blood to crash into my face. I can taste the rich coppery flavor on my tongue as I open my mouth to
scream. I can’t scream. I can’t move. I’m too scared it’ll move to my eyes.
***
He began rubbing my breast. Gradually moving from gentle strokes to terrifying snatches and jerks. His nails
digging into my nipples. No. I can remember saying no before he flips me from my side to my back, mumbling
words like “whore” and “nympho.” His forearm is heavy on my chest and presses down into my ribcage. I can’t
breathe. I do my best to gather bits of air to squeal as he pulls down my panties. My mother calls them
“underthings.” I am an underthing.
I close my eyes and try to think of pleasant things; things I like. For some reason, I can’t think of anything. I can’t
think what I need to do the next day or what name I would rather have. I can only think about the high-pitched
scream in my stomach and my little hands trying to push out and escape from my abdomen. I don’t even want to
be in my own body. I want to tear off my skin.
He gives one big exhale as he collapses on top on me. I close my eyes in relief and picture myself crawling then
running out of me. He presses his palm into my left hip. He’s dingy compared to my fair skin. I can feel the bones
in his hand as he pushes off of me. I feel can the sting of him against my scar. He never said a word about my scar.
***
“This has vitamin E in it. Here.” My mother is handing me a bottle of lotion. “If you rub it into them twice a day it’ll
make them less obvious and will smooth the bumps.” I take the bottle. I read the back. It has words like nourish
and soothe printed larger than the rest of the text, as if the bigger print will make it more convincing. I squirt the
plain white lotion onto the tip of my fingers then bring it to my nose. It has no smell. I place my fingers on the
biggest one. I rub it onto the small, pink ripple of my scar. The lotion feels oily and vulgar. I decide I don’t want to
use the lotion. I want to keep my scars.
***
I don’t know why I have orange sheets. They clash with my red hair and make my complexion look pasty. I look
terrible in my sheets.
Aaron becomes more beautiful in my sheets. The curls of his black hair make perfect, soft patterns against the
pillows and his blue eyes never get lost in the brightness of the orange. No matter what, you can always find his
eyes.
I let him see me naked with the lights on. I didn’t hide fragments of my body under the orange or in the dark. I
wanted him to see me wholly and genuinely.
I tuck my head into the dip of his shoulder as he traces his strong fingers over the arcs and curves of my body.
With two fingers he begins to caress the long scar on my hip. It’s gentle and kind. My nerves never reconnected
correctly so I can’t feel him, but I still get a satisfying chill across my body. Without the quivers of fear or the
squeaks of wonderment he calmly asks, “What happened?”
“It’s from an accident a long time ago. I know they’re gross.”
His fingers never leave my scar. “No,” he says, “I think they’re beautiful.”
Middle school gym teachers always come up with the worst nicknames. “Crabapple!” I hear Coach Berry in the
distance but I ignore him. “Crabapple!” He only makes fun of my last name because his is a fruit and by making me
a fruit instead of a whole tree he feels he isn’t alone. “Crabapple, get to the track now!” He looks like a berry, small
round and purple. He’d be a lot less purple if he would stop yelling.
“There’s no point!” I scream back finally. “I can’t even run!” I wonder if he’s seedless or if I can squish him into
wine and get drunk.
He yells, “You can walk!” One good thing about having recently busted your lower half is you get to sit out at gym.
“I just got off crutches! Give me a break! Geez!” When you sit out you can pick at your cuticles better.
“Then stretch your ankle or something!” He’s won, but only because we have this same argument every day and he
knows by that point it’s just a waste of time and breath. He still has other students to yell at.
After the routine and redundant squabble, I limp to his office to get my small stack of wrinkled and worn
instructions my physical therapists gave me to help get flexibility back into my stiff joints. I wrap the thick orange
band around the top of my foot, grab the loose ends, lean back, and move my foot back and forth. I sense my
toes move away from my body and wince. It still hurts. I suck in air through my teeth, making a pathetic hiss. I
look down, but for the first time watch the long scar on the top of my ankle drop into the dip that has formed. I
wiggle my left foot, my normal foot, and notice that there isn’t a dip. No shallow, concave, pale skin sinking into my
body. I release my right foot and put it next to the left. I wiggle them both widely and start to laugh at my scar. It’
s forming small waves, giving me quick glimpses of small sections. The three inches of pink looks like caterpillar
running down my foot. I laugh harder.
I examine the others. The shorter ten scars circling the remainder of my ankle, each with their own set of dots,
their caterpillar feet, and the three on my shin that look like animal bones. I don’t understand why the girls are so
scared of them. They point and whisper as I replace my jeans with soft, cotton shorts in the locker room. They
grimace and move away when they see the top two inches of the six inch scar on my hip peer over the white elastic
band.
I press my legs into my chest. I curl my fingers around my right ankle and place my palm on my left hip. I do my
best to hug my scars.
***
Avis was a terrible kisser. His tongue would swirl and poke about as if it was digging for some scraps of food. His
saliva would run down my chin and once up into my nose. But I kissed him anyway, because he was nice.
We dated a month before I let him see me without clothes. I was surprised how long I had waited. I wanted him to
think I was a good girl. A nice girl to take home to mother and bring to church on Sundays, even though I don’t
get along with most parents and don’t believe in God.
His tongue was a tornado, full spiral sucking up and destroying everything in my mouth, as he pushed up my shirt.
His hands were rough from construction work and his palm scratched my back while he clicked his fingers to
unhook my bra. “Do you want to?” he politely whispered. I, in return, politely nodded. He traced his calloused
fingers down my ribs, stomach, and then hips to unclasp my jeans. I started to giggle like a child as he began to
pull them off, slowly, one leg at a time. I pressed my head into the pillow, pushing it as far as it would go as my
breathing got heavier. I reached out my hand to tug him towards me when I heard his hand slap against his
mouth. “Oh my God! What happened?” he said between his fingers. “Are you alright?” He had found the scar on
my hip.
“I’m fine. It’s from a long time ago.” I finally reached him and pushed his back down towards my chest so he lay on
top of me. I wanted to avoid having a conversation about them. They tended to kill the mood. He was reluctant,
but he eventually went down and then shifted his weight to his hips. He barely put his lips on mine before he
popped up and said, “Am I hurting you? I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You aren’t going to hurt me,” I sighed in frustration, “I’m titanium reinforced.”
“But ya-ya-your scar,” he stuttered a bit, “your scar is just so… ”
***
I don’t remember how I felt when I first saw them. I don’t remember the trauma of seeing the stitches running
down my hip like barbed wire, protecting and holding in the two broken pieces that had been drilled back into my
body. I don’t remember looking down at the crushed fragments of my right ankle being pushed together by
protruding bars and nails, caked with dried blood and flakes of tissue.
I can only imagine the purple ink covering my broken body marking what to drill. I can only imagine the team of
doctors shrouded in cheap paper suits and chalky gloves, bearing down on a Black & Decker to force the fifteen
screws into my aching bones. The high-pitched shriek of the bit, low humble hum of it hitting the gray head, the
deep bellow of it finally being in.
I only remember crying so hard my chest felt like it was caving in, because two nurses had to cut my new green
and khaki sweater and American Eagle jeans to prepare me for ICU without disrupting my bleeding body. I cried
because they slid their gleaming stainless steel scissors down two of the pieces of fabric that could make me
popular. They had cut off all the clothes the girls who made fun of me wore. I would never be one of them. I would
never be liked.
***
Ray was in my history class. I never missed a day so I could purposefully drop my pencil beside his desk and watch
his muscular arm stretch as he bent over. The bulge of his bicep would push up the sleeve of his shirt and his long,
blonde hair would slowly creep over his signature red bandana and onto his chiseled jaw. It thrilled me. I was even
more thrilled when he kissed me against the wall in a bar.
Drunk, reeking of cigarettes and cheap tequila, we stumbled through his townhouse, leaving one piece of clothing
along the way. His shirt was in the kitchen, my bra was on the stair railing, and I was in his bed wriggling in the
satin sheets.
He kissed my naked body slowly and as strategically as my dropping pencil. I watched his hair brush against my
hips, his toned chest breathe in the scent of my vagina, and felt the cold wet of his mouth as he moved to my legs.
Just over the hill of my knee, he looked down at my scars. He gave the standard, “Oh my God! What happened?” I
opened my mouth to respond but before I could say anything, he gripped my ankle and yanked my whole body
down to the end of his bed, which was quick and shocking, given the slickness of the sheets. My right leg in the air,
he began turning my ankle left to right to see all the scars.
“It’s from an accident a long time ago.”
“How old were you?” he said with a mixture of shock and delight, not taking his eyes off my ankle and shin. “How
did this happen?”
“I got in a 4-wheeler wreck when I was thirteen. I lost control and hit a tree in my back yard.”
“That’s so cool! What did you do?” his pupils widening and dark.
“I crushed my ankle, broke my leg, and broke my hip in two places among other things.” I was confused. Why
weren’t we having sex? Should I light a cigarette and play music really loud to recreate the bar atmosphere so he
would kiss me again?
“Awesome.” Not awesome. “I’m going to nursing school. I want to be a surgical nurse, so this kind of stuff just
fascinates me.” Ray kept examining me as if I were on a table in a hospital room. He was completely desexualizing
me. I was now a “neat” piece of medicine. I pushed the base of my palms into my temples to keep the, “Can we
please have sex now?!” groans from sneaking out of my head. It was another five minutes before he finally put me
down.
***
I never liked the word scar. The way it sounds when you say it. The harsh scuffle of sc and the drawn out, lazy ar.
When you have a Southern accent and say it, the ar becomes exaggerated and you sound like a crow. It terrifies
me. I tense up in anticipation of its filthy beak digging into my hip to pull out the two shiny screws. Bright red
blood is splashing all over the black feathers as it squawks and shrieks in anger. The livid flapping of its wings is
causing my blood to crash into my face. I can taste the rich coppery flavor on my tongue as I open my mouth to
scream. I can’t scream. I can’t move. I’m too scared it’ll move to my eyes.
***
He began rubbing my breast. Gradually moving from gentle strokes to terrifying snatches and jerks. His nails
digging into my nipples. No. I can remember saying no before he flips me from my side to my back, mumbling
words like “whore” and “nympho.” His forearm is heavy on my chest and presses down into my ribcage. I can’t
breathe. I do my best to gather bits of air to squeal as he pulls down my panties. My mother calls them
“underthings.” I am an underthing.
I close my eyes and try to think of pleasant things; things I like. For some reason, I can’t think of anything. I can’t
think what I need to do the next day or what name I would rather have. I can only think about the high-pitched
scream in my stomach and my little hands trying to push out and escape from my abdomen. I don’t even want to
be in my own body. I want to tear off my skin.
He gives one big exhale as he collapses on top on me. I close my eyes in relief and picture myself crawling then
running out of me. He presses his palm into my left hip. He’s dingy compared to my fair skin. I can feel the bones
in his hand as he pushes off of me. I feel can the sting of him against my scar. He never said a word about my scar.
***
“This has vitamin E in it. Here.” My mother is handing me a bottle of lotion. “If you rub it into them twice a day it’ll
make them less obvious and will smooth the bumps.” I take the bottle. I read the back. It has words like nourish
and soothe printed larger than the rest of the text, as if the bigger print will make it more convincing. I squirt the
plain white lotion onto the tip of my fingers then bring it to my nose. It has no smell. I place my fingers on the
biggest one. I rub it onto the small, pink ripple of my scar. The lotion feels oily and vulgar. I decide I don’t want to
use the lotion. I want to keep my scars.
***
I don’t know why I have orange sheets. They clash with my red hair and make my complexion look pasty. I look
terrible in my sheets.
Aaron becomes more beautiful in my sheets. The curls of his black hair make perfect, soft patterns against the
pillows and his blue eyes never get lost in the brightness of the orange. No matter what, you can always find his
eyes.
I let him see me naked with the lights on. I didn’t hide fragments of my body under the orange or in the dark. I
wanted him to see me wholly and genuinely.
I tuck my head into the dip of his shoulder as he traces his strong fingers over the arcs and curves of my body.
With two fingers he begins to caress the long scar on my hip. It’s gentle and kind. My nerves never reconnected
correctly so I can’t feel him, but I still get a satisfying chill across my body. Without the quivers of fear or the
squeaks of wonderment he calmly asks, “What happened?”
“It’s from an accident a long time ago. I know they’re gross.”
His fingers never leave my scar. “No,” he says, “I think they’re beautiful.”
Ashlie Crabtree
