“Let’s see,” said an amateur palm reader, with a rich Colombian accent.  “It looks like your love line goes all the way up to the edge of your finger.  That means you are in love with someone right now.”

 “I don’t think so,” I replied, straining to imagine such a thing.

 “It’s true,” she said following the line up my palm with her finger, ending between my index finger and middle finger.

 I looked down, chuckled to myself, but did not have the heart to tell her it was just a scar.  Oddly enough, it runs right along the love line she pointed out and seems to connect it to the base of my finger.  However, when I extend my hand and stretch the skin, the marks the doctors left, sewing my skin back together, show up clearly.  I still wonder what she would have said, had my scar not been there.

 I was a young boy: four, maybe three years old.  Leading my younger brother down the street, through an alley, and then up the following street, I made my way to a friend’s house.  I cannot remember his name, and I am not sure how often we played together.  His house had a small, pinkish block wall around the front yard, topped with black rod iron bars.  There was an iron gate I had to open to get to the sidewalk to the front door.  There was a mulberry tree in the front yard, and I can remember walking by once during the winter and seeing my friend sitting among the bare branches eating a scrambled egg sandwich.  I went home that day and had my dad make one for me.  Today, however, I knocked on the door as hard as I could, but no one was home.

Being young and bored, I looked for something to interest me and I found it.  Just outside the wall, there was a dark brown beer bottle.  I picked it up, not examining it closely.  I do not remember what possessed me to do this, but I threw the bottle as hard as I could onto the doorstep of my friend’s house, causing it to shatter into hundreds of pieces.  As it flew out of my hand, a searing pain ripped through my hand.  The lip of the bottle had been broken, and as it slid from my hand, it sliced open my flesh.  The blood started pouring out.

I was hysterical.  I forgot all about my younger brother, who did not know his way around our neighborhood, and started running home as fast as I could.  Many years later, my brother told me that he followed the trail of blood to get back home.  I ran into the house, crying and screaming.  When my mother asked me what happened, I told her that I had fallen into some gravel.  I knew what I had done was wrong.

Time must have passed quickly, because I do not remember my brother getting home, my mom cleaning and bandaging the cut, or the ride to the hospital.  All I remember is the bright light of the operating room, on my back, staring up into the mirrored light, and wearing the flimsy hospital gown.  And I remember the pain.  More than once, I jerked my hand as the needle passed through my flesh to sew my skin back together.  I think they needed a second nurse just to hold me still.  My mother must have explained to me that I should try to be still, because I remember trying really hard to keep my hand stretched out and not to move.  It just hurt too much.

Now, I sit back, rub my hand, and wonder again what the palm reader would have said if she had known it was only a scar.
 

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