The Itch in the Mirror
by Nadine Perez Fox
My belly button itches. I try to scratch it through my shirt in the dark of the theater but the itch is too deep. It's inside now. Traveling to parts I can't scratch in a theater without causing a scene. It itches so bad I can hardly hear the actors on screen. It spreads inside my body until I am filled with it. I double over, head between my knees scratching the top half of me with the bottom. I am a skin-wrapped itch.
I get up and edge past the row of moviegoers — their bony knees are heaven against my legs, the coarse seat-backs euphoric on my backside. I want to turn myself inside out and rub my lining on the scratchy popcorn-kernelled upholstery of the seats.
In the frantic yellow light of the bathroom, I inspect my hands. Blotches bloom and fade on my skin, but in the mirror my complexion is fine.
Fine, but not my own.
It's the itch, smiling white-toothed and sharp-eyed.
I wriggle, trying to friction my bones together. The itch laughs. The fluorescent lights buzz. A toilet flushes behind me.
My throbbing hands scrabble trembling into my purse for something to scratch my insides with. A Swiss army knife from a friend's wedding — Love has many uses, Tucker and Chelsea 2018.
I flip open the nail file.
A hand on my shoulder. A woman with freshly washed hands and antihistamine eyes.
"Let me," she says. She takes tweezers from her purse, clicks them twice, then lays me over the sink. The itch in the mirror is livid and red. My throat is closing; my tongue prickles. The woman tweezes into my belly button pulling the itch from me like a clown pulls handkerchiefs from his mouth. I am turned inside out so deliciously I scream. I shrink to the size of the sink drain, then expand to fill the whole room, then back. I rush to the end of my life then whip to the beginning. The backs of my eyes prickle then soothe. The woman coils the itch around her elbow like a garden hose, loop after loop.
It is out.
The mirror cracks.
The woman yanks the last of it from me, tosses it into the toilet, and high-kicks the handle.
When the last gurgle of the flush fades, I thank her.
"No problem," she says. "Happens all the time. Us ladies got to look out for each other."
Nadine Perez Fox is a half-Mexican writer currently traveling in place in Portland, Oregon. She can be contacted on Twitter @nadineperezfox.