Ashley's Wedding (3 page)

"Th ... th ... thanks, Erin."  Susan would be polite – after all, it wasn’t Erin’s fault. She tipped her in cash. Erin pointed her to a pedicure chair where Phuong waited for her.

The pedicure took another forty-five minutes. Susan managed to relax while Phuong cut her toenails short, removed calluses from her feet (Susan feet were in beautiful condition already), soaked them, massaged them, and finally applied polish to match her fingers. Phuong was very good. By the time she finished, Susan had managed  to regain some composure.

Susan paid the receptionist and left the shop, walking slowly down the street, still in somewhat of daze. She occasionally reached up to run her fingers through the tight curls. Her head felt foreign, and the feeling from her short fingernails accentuated the difference. It was like touching someone else’s head with someone else’s fingertips. She was astonished at how tight the curls were, at how little hair there was, at how difficult it was even to get them to uncurl enough to pass her stubby fingers through.

Her neck and shoulders felt completely exposed.

"This isn't me anymore," she thought, before her thoughts trailed off and she continued numbly down the street.

"Susan, you look great! That's perfect! Just what I had in mind!" Susan had bent down to put her purse in the closet. Straightening up, she instinctively reached up to brush hair from her face - hair that was no longer there. She reddened and fumbled with the curls above her ear. Ashley rushed up to hug her.

Ashley looked at her cousin's mass of short, tight curls. She thought Susan looked really cute. Not the ravishing beauty that her longer hair had afforded her, true, but her pleasant face pulled off the look well. Ashley resisted the urge to flip her long hair, not wanting to overtly upset her cousin further. That would certainly come later anyway.

"Susan, let's hurry and have lunch. A good friend of mine, Elsa Clarke, is coming over this afternoon to do our makeup - it's all my treat - it'll make your new look even better," she quickly added, noting Susan's sinking expression.

"You never said anything about makeup," Susan managed. Then her thoughts shut down again from the shock of what had been done to her hair. Her mind started to recede from behind her eyes and Ashley seemed to be talking from far away. The detached feeling continued through lunch, up to the arrival of Elsa and Susan’s fellow bridesmaid, Teri.

Ashley handed Susan a small, wrapped package. "Here, Suzi, a little present from me for being such a good sport and all." Susan had never been called “Suzi” before, but barely noticed it. She opened the tiny box. It held two, one-inch diameter, gold, pierced earrings.

"Ashley, my ears aren't pierced!" She exclaimed.

"Don't worry, Cuz, Elsa will take care of that in no time, right Elsa? Come on, Susan, just sit down over here and we can start."

Susan felt as though she were being railroaded but was too shocked from the morning's haircut and perm and Ashley's sharply barked commands to offer resistance. Trying unsuccessfully to muster some inner strength, she found herself unable to respond in her own defense. She’d been psychologically shocked into something resembling a suggestion-receptive state. For the moment, she was almost without a will of her own.

Ashley seated Susan at the dressing table in her room. "Ears first," Ashley announced to Elsa.

Susan had never had her ears pierced. She wasn’t squeamish; it just seemed kind of barbaric to her to have metal thrust through a part of her body and left there until her body healed around it. Although far from being an ardent feminist, Susan still regarded ear piercing as one of society’s subtle, historical attempts at female submission, which she couldn't bring herself to accept. It didn’t matter that men also pierced their ears in the twenty-first century. Now, however, she just sat there perfectly still, saying nothing, as Elsa rubbed her earlobes with an antiseptic. Then, suddenly, she felt a sharp sting as the needle pierced her right ear. "Stop!" She shouted, leaping to her feet.

Elsa jerked back, leaving the needle pushed through Susan's ear like an arrow.

"Stop it, Suzi! Be quiet and sit down!" Ashley snapped. She was in control of her cousin now and she knew it. Oh yes she was! Ashley had carefully planned how to gain that control. She knew Susan well. After all, they’d grown up together as sisters for years. She knew her cousin's sensitive points and understood how to manipulate them from years of study in school, studies with special emphasis on resocialization and dominance. Knowing her cousin's spirit was weakened and disoriented by the severe hair restyling a few hours before, Ashley was ready to apply her training to get her way and finally win dominance over her big sister. Tightly controlling the tone of her voice, she had Susan seated again like a submissive puppy, in spite of - perhaps because of - the turbulence in Susan's mind.

In a moment, Susan felt another prick and her left ear was pierced. Elsa threaded the small rings through the holes in Susan's ears by flexing them to the side and inserting one end into an indentation in the end of the needle. She then pushed the needle through and the ring followed. She closed the ring with a "snap."

"These rings lock in place so they won't come out, Suzi." Ashley told her. "That way you can never lose them." And you can't take them out yourself when you get your senses back, she thought.

"They're bigger than what is usually used for a first piercing," Elsa offered, "And the hole they make is bigger than the typical stud. But if you take care of them with antiseptic several times a day, they'll heal fine by the time of the wedding."

"No," Susan quietly mumbled. She was sitting perfectly still with her hands in her lap. A tear formed at the corner of her eye. She thought about getting up, but, seeing Ashley's reflection in the mirror, was unable to move.

"Only five holes to go, Suzi," Ashley announced, staring directly at Susan's reflection. A victorious smile began to form in the corners of Ashley's mouth. She remembered those first months when Susan had come to live with them, disrupting her ideal routine, stealing her parents' affection. Sure, Susan's parents had died tragically, but that was no reason for her parents to favor a niece over their own daughter!

Ashley picked up the box that had contained the rings. She lifted a layer of cotton from the box.

"You didn't see these, did you Susan? These will give you a nice set in each of your pretty little ears! That’s another advantage of your new haircut. Now everyone will be able to see those cute ears and these darling earrings!"

There in the box were two other pairs of gold rings, one about three-quarters of an inch and the other about half an inch in diameter. They were the same thickness as the first pair.

Quickly but precisely, Elsa swabbed and pierced Susan's ears again, about three-eighths of an inch from the first rings. She inserted the next-largest rings into Susan's earlobes and snapped them permanently in place. Susan's ears burned in pain and the tears that formed this time were as much from the smarting as her emotional distress. Ashley gently dabbed her eyes, continuing a dominance-followed-by-kindness routine.

Ashley had just finished wiping her eyes, her hand softly resting on Susan's shoulder, when Elsa repeated the process again with the smallest rings placed another three-eighths of an inch up her earlobes. This time it was more difficult to thread the rings through as their smaller diameter didn't allow for much flexing. Susan moaned in pain as Elsa flexed both the rings and Susan's earlobe to get the rings through. Two more snaps and they were permanently in place. Susan’s pretty, small earlobes were dominated by the rings. There was little room for any others below the cartilage.

Reaching into a drawer in the dressing table, Ashley removed another tiny jewelry box and opened it in front of Susan. "Here's another present from me, Susan. Each bridesmaid is getting one of these charming diamond studs too!" There in the box was a small, flat diamond on a post with a strange flattened fastener at the other end. Susan recognized it because of the fastener, although she’d never before seen one close-up that wasn’t worn by someone. The nose stud gleamed in the light from the window to her left.

Teri, who had kept her right side turned toward Susan, stepped up to hold her in her seat. Susan saw the gleam of an identical small diamond in the left side of her nose, and, for the first time, noticed the three rings in Teri's ears. Ashley motioned Teri back. "That won't be necessary."

"It's OK, Suzi," Teri offered. "I just had it done last night and already I love it!"

Elsa turned Susan toward her. Susan felt like a little girl with the enormous presence of an authoritative adult looking down on her as Elsa bent to swab her nose with a disinfectant laced with a topical anesthetic. Then, silently, Susan began to cry as Elsa positioned the needle at a point on her nose where the flare of her nostril just began. With sudden force, Elsa pushed the needle through.

"Why, Ashley?" She asked, sobbing more loudly. The needle stuck out rudely from the hole in her lovely, straight, smooth nose. The other end protruded oddly from her nostril.

"I intend to have the final say on how you look, Suzi. All the time we were growing up together you had the long hair. You were the beautiful one. You could eat anything and look great while I had to watch every bite. You were the one who took the affection of Mommy and Daddy from me because you were so pretty. I had to force myself into the boyish hairdos and play the part of the tomboy because I couldn't compete with my gorgeous little cousin. Now, I'm in control. But bear with me, Cuz," she added good-naturedly. "You're basically a very cute kid now. Not the classic beauty you grew up to be anymore, but you retain a certain charm. Now you'll be both more feminine and more boyishly delightful at the same time!"

Elsa inserted the diamond stud through her nose and, holding the back with tiny pliers, screwed the flat fastener onto the post inside her nose. When it tightened onto the post, one final turn locked it onto the shaft. It could now only be removed by cutting the diamond off and withdrawing the post from the inside. The hole, which would heal over the following weeks, would of course, always remain.

"Make-up time!" Ashley announced.

Elsa led the stunned, sore Susan to the bed and laid her down. She pulled a tweezers from a manicure set. "No, use this," said Ashley, holding a pencil- shaped object which she had unplugged from a stand on the dresser.

"Suzi, you have to admit that with your darling hairdo, those bushy eyebrows of yours make you look like one of the Marx brothers. Elsa will fix you up, OK?"

Susan found herself nodding. Somehow, Ashley’s hypnotized me! She realized.

Elsa rubbed the antiseptic/anesthetic onto Susan's brows. Susan felt a numbness develop from above her eyes onto her forehead. Elsa began working with the electrolysis pencil, removing hairs from the underside of Susan's eyebrows in the center and the upper side at either end to curve them. Because of the anesthetic, Susan barely felt the tiny stings as the brow hairs were removed and their follicles destroyed.

She's ruining my face! Susan shouted to herself. She was unable to do anything about it.

Almost reading her mind, Ashley replied, "Settle down, Suzi! Close your eyes. Relax. You'll look slick!"

Elsa worked for almost two hours. The result was a very thin brow line without the arch that had been there before, only one row of hairs thick, curved in a smooth arc at what had been mostly the top of Susan's eyebrows. The effect, with Susan's tight curls, was a look of child-like astonishment permanently traced on her face. The graceful, full eyebrows which had so much contributed to Susan's look of understanding and intelligence were gone forever, replaced by the look of girlish surprise, unconcern, and submissive femininity.

Elsa applied Susan's makeup: a foundation, rather heavy eyeliner along upper and lower lashes, heavy black mascara, a trace of narrow eyebrow pencil along the thin brow line, muted eye shadow on the lids with a darker brown in the crease of the eye, and a lighter shadow which extended up to the pencil-thin brow. A dark red lipstick and some blusher completed the look. Elsa sat Susan before the mirror.

"Snap out of it, Suzi!" Ashley exclaimed. "This is the new you! You look super!"

"It... It isn't me," Susan whispered in shock. The image that stared back at her bore little resemblance to the vivacious young woman who’d arrived the previous day. The diamond glinted in her otherwise flawless, perfectly-shaped nose. The rings in her ears set off the short, curly hair that had been middle-of-the- back long and barely even wavy. The thin brows etched a look of perpetual surprise on her lovely face, completely erasing the quiet intelligence, the mature wisdom, the gentle humor that had been there before.

"Wha ... what have you done to me?" She stammered.

"What I wanted. What I knew you needed. It's you now, Suzi. You'll get used to it – I honestly think you'll love it! Anyway, you know you'd better get used to it. A whole lot of what you see is permanently you!"

Susan stared at her face. She wouldn't have recognized herself. She ran her finger lightly along the tiny brow. The makeup obscured the redness that the treatment had caused. The other hairs were gone, smoothly removed for good. She touched the diamond in her nose, the gold rings in her ears. She tugged on them - they wouldn't come out, she knew, and Ashley would make sure that she had no access to tools that might remove them. At least not until her body had healed itself around the metal now so rudely piercing it. Healed so that it would be always ready to receive the rings or posts which were now so much a part of her. There wasn't much soreness yet, although she suspected that it would build over the next few days until the healing process actually took over.