By Eda Naz Gokdemir
Art by Sophie Williams
When she wakes up, she finds a crack on her chest that does not belong there. She recognizes the sensation, but the depth of it feels unfamiliar. She places her hands on her chest, searching for small fractures. “All it needs is a little stitching,” her grandma would say. She gets up and reaches for her pencil, ready to find a patch for her chest. But the crack grows louder: blaring pop music reverberating across the basement, hazy neon lights, the smell of cheap beer and sweat, burning fear and excitement on the cheeks, drunk eyes searching for bodies, bodies, and bodies. And she is amidst the crowd: dancing and defenseless, laughing and lost, foreign and fragile, out of control.
Her heart starts tumbling, her chest tightening, her world spinning, her body sinking. “You are not dying,” her mom says. “This is just a panic attack.” She closes her eyes and starts counting breaths. “Breathe in.” One, two, three, four, five . The crack is banging on her breastbone. “You are safe. Breathe out.” One, two, three, four, five. Her entire body is now tingling with fractures; she can still feel the gaze of others on her skin. “Calm down. Breathe in.” One, two, three — the crack radiates to her shoulders, neck, jaw, forehead — four, five. “You will be fine. You have been here before. Breathe out.” One, two — The exhaustion starts setting in, yet she still feels defenseless with her eyes shut — three, four — No, this feels more physical than a mere panic attack. “You have to get it together. Walk it out.” She puts on the first sweatshirt and pair of sweatpants she can find, leaves her dorm room, and races down the stairs. She pushes the door open and finds herself outside. As she starts walking, the cold air sweeps in through her cracks, somewhat soothing the panic but not enough to numb it. No, this is not a small fracture.
This is nothing. Maybe I just have a hangover. Maybe I am getting sick. Perhaps I was a bit too tired and a bit stressed. Just get on with your day. You will be fine. Everything is under control.
The initial panic slowly dies down with every step, though the ground she walks on still feels unstable. I am stable enough. She unlocks her phone. A mistake is made. Texts, reminders, missing calls. Assignments, commitments, appointments. Crack upon crack. “You have to keep going.” Her steps, her heart, her breathing — everything seems too loud. She walks past someone she knows; she barely says hello. The visibility frightens her. She sees herself again: unironed clothes, hair undone, no makeup, disoriented, messy, walking around aimlessly on a Sunday morning. “You have to be careful.” She needs to hide. What if the cracks are loud enough for someone else to hear, to see, to judge? Her steps take her back to her room. She collapses on the bed, her heart banging on her chest and back, hammering away at the cracks. My cracks. A thousand fractures pulse through her body. This is too much for me to be able to stitch together. She can feel a rift opening up. I am going to fall.
She reaches for her phone. A last resort. The nurse is on the other end of the line:
“This is just a panic attack. Have you tried breathing?” Obviously. “Have you tried walking?” I have tried to run away from it, yes. “Talking to a friend?” Impossible. “Describe the feeling.” Like I am dying. “Well, I am concerned now. Maybe you should go to the emergency room.” What? “It is better to be safe than sorry. But you know your body best.” Do I? Everything inside her body feels wrong, unfamiliar, out of control. What if this is an actual emergency, not her insanity? She imagines herself: a disheveled, anxious girl in the emergency room, an ocean away from home, her voice shaking, her accent more discernible, the doctors laughing at her. No, I think I am fine. “Okay, call 911 if you feel an emergency. Have you tried washing your face?” Well, which one is it? Am I dying or do I need skin care? “Just find something to calm you down.”
She hangs up the phone. The nurse is right. “You should be able to control it.” She just needs to find a big enough patch to cover up the cracks for the time being. She has done it before; she can do it again. She starts writing, holding her pencil like a needle:
I do not know what is happening to my body. And it scares the hell out of me. But I do not have enough time to let fear consume me. I have to fix myself. Now. But why do I still feel in danger?
She remembers her grandmother stitching her torn dress with her shaky fingers, her eyes squinting behind her glasses, mumbling some prayers. When she finishes, she helps her put the dress on. She attaches a small blue bead at the back of the dress. “Mashallah, my pretty girl. May Allah protect you from nazar. Here’s a blue bead against the evil eye.” Her grandmother is a sorceress, casting spells to shield her from whatever dangers may lurk outside the house that she never leaves. “Beware of strangers, beware of friends.” The girl learns to search the eyes of others for hidden threats. She grows up with stories of women being beaten, stabbed, and raped by lovers, strangers, fathers, in dark back alleys, near metro stations, in their own bedrooms. “Beware of the dangers an evil eye cannot protect you from, my smart girl.”
Don’t be melodramatic. You were perfectly safe last night. With friends. But maybe you were too careless. Revealed too much of yourself. Is that what you are afraid of?
Her mother keeps her floral bedsheets, lace tablecloths, and cotton towels in her drawers, tucked away with naphthalene, never used. “My dowry,” she says, “that I am saving for you.” She only brings out the laced tablecloths and napkins with the porcelain tableware her grandmother gave her for special guests and occasions. The girl learns how to keep parts of herself separate, to hide what is precious, to protect what is delicate. The girl watches her mother glue together the wooden picture frame her father keeps knocking over. A wedding picture. She is terrified of how easy it is for her mother to pretend something was never broken. Always mending, cleaning, stitching, repairing.
Why am I thinking about all of this now? Are these cracks new or have I been ignoring them all along? Either way, I am tired of stitching the tears over and over again. Somehow, this feels inevitable; perhaps I had fallen a long time ago.
She sees herself sitting alone in her dorm room: her limbs about to fall off as if they were merely held together by puppet strings, her body rock solid with cracks moving up from her chest. Years of suppressed anger, fear, resentment, and sorrow rise to the surface from within the fractures. There is no hiding from it anymore; she looks down to the rift opening up within her. She comes eye to eye with a little girl. And holds out her hand.
