Deformed Essays

Five years ago, my at-the-time boyfriend told me that when he sees people with tattoos, he wonders what they’re trying to prove. It struck me because I, his tattooed girlfriend, felt immediately defensive. And it’s stuck in my mind for all these years because it hit exactly the reason why I love my tattoos. I have something to prove. For as long as I had plans for ink, the ideas were tangled up with my disability, Erb’s palsy, a birth injury to my left shoulder. The injury partially paralyzed my left arm, which is visibly small and misshapen compared with what it would have looked like on a hypothetical, nondisabled body. Before I could walk or talk, I was under the knife for an experimental surgery — a nerve transplant that gave me much more movement in my arm without losing (as far as I can tell) any function in my legs. Ever since, I’ve had two long scars running down the back of each of my legs, like permanent in-seams on a vintage pair of stockings. My first tattoo was an ivy vi...

The smell was one part books, one part food, and one part warehouse. The floor was water-damaged hardwood. My mom met my stepdad there — in the poetry section, they said, although they refused to disclose more details. During the summer after fourth grade, we moved from the condo downtown across the street from the parking lot where my stepdad used to do a lap to pick up pieces of broken glass before watching me roller-blade around and around in circles. Now we had a two-story house with a big backyard and Christmas-light-ready porch. It happened just in time for me to be deemed old enough to walk unescorted to nearby Beaver Brook Park (with the dog) and convenience store (for candy). But my favorite destination was Tatnuck Bookseller. Here are a few momentous things that happened there… In elementary school: My mom always insisted that the end of The Giver was a metaphor for Jonas’ death, and I insisted she thought everything was a metaphor for death and couldn’t she lighten up?...