Click "recent" to return to the index of recent work.

Rings
Christen Enos
© 2008 Portland Review Literary Journal

            It was the most bizarre thing: she could’ve sworn that, after seven years, her body was rejecting her belly button ring.  The piercing had never healed completely, never become a dry hole like her earlobes.  Instead it was always a bit red, sometimes scabbing over, other times with traces of pus.  That’s why, as she pressed her chin into her chest in the privacy of the bathroom, she wasn’t sure it was really happening.  The patch of skin that held the silver bar in just seemed thinner every night she checked.  It reminded her of a horse working a bit slowly down its mouth before spitting it out.  Not that she thought her belly button would spit the ring out.  (The next morning, she’d be walking out of the bedroom in her white silk slip, and it would simply hit the floor—no bounce, just a ping.)  It was inevitable, and she couldn’t stop it.          
            The ring was his idea, this man who’d just asked her to marry him.  He’d told her seven years ago that she’d look hot with a navel piercing, and if she got one, he’d get his tongue pierced at the same time.  They weren’t kissing yet—still friends—so she decided to take him up on the challenge.  She’d gone first, at that shop down on 2nd Avenue, and when the piercer told her she needed to roll her jeans down, she jumped off the table and unbuttoned them, which made her friend, now her boyfriend, exclaim, “Hey!”  When it was his turn, she realized that she wouldn’t be able to see a rod go through his tongue.  She muttered some excuse, said she’d be outside in the waiting room.  He was too panicked about the imminent violence to protest.  Afterward he came out, told her that he couldn’t go through with it, that it was a dumb idea to begin with.  It wasn’t until they’d walked three blocks toward the F train that he opened his mouth—“Blahh!”—and showed her. His tongue hadn’t swelled up yet, so he’d been able to talk like nothing was different.  She should’ve guessed, because he was always lying to her back then.
            His tongue ring was long gone.  The ball fell out one late night the next winter; even on St. Mark’s you couldn’t find a tongue ring at 3:00am, and by the next morning the hole was closed.  They didn’t start kissing until later, so she never felt the metal in his mouth.  But her piercing had stuck.  He caught her looking at it that night, the night when she wondered if it was about to fall out.  He knocked and entered the bathroom without waiting for an invitation.  Instinctively, she pulled her shirt down, but it was too late.  “What are you hiding?” he asked.  She pulled up the bottom of her shirt.
            Without being prompted, he said, “Hon, I think it’s going to fall out.”  He said it in a way that made her want to stay with him forever, because he’d always tell her the truth, even though it might be painful or she might not want to hear it.  She found his quiet directness reassuring.
            In the next beat, though, he said, “It was never the right idea for you, anyway,” and the feeling was gone.