The Almost Murder and Other Stories by Theresa Saldaña Page A

called my cousins, I raved about all the new friends I’d made. They were glad for me, and when they visited, all three noticed that I seemed less shy about myappearance. Training and working at St. Joe’s had adjusted me to being around people, even unscarred ones, like my classmates, the staff and family members of patients.
    Four weeks later, training complete, I became an official Burn Unit volunteer. I’d found a place in the world where I could feel good about myself and be of service to others. I had found people to connect to, for whom my scars were a link: something to help me help them and let them help me.
    I assisted the nurses and heard cries, held hands, touched souls. Anything I did to help was given back to me manyfold. I made the closest connections of my life—we were more like sisters and brothers than friends. I talked, watched and learned from patients whose deformities disappeared when I came to know their hearts.
    Jeremy, a boy my age, had come back to St. Joe’s for a third skin graft on burns he’d gotten a year earlier when his legs and feet were scalded by boiling water at his dad’s restaurant.
    He and I compared scars: mine jagged, sharp and dry; his swirly, leaky, multicolored and raw from multiple skin grafts. Jeremy is African American; the dark pigmentation of the areas which had been burned was gone. That skin was pink and white, not deep brown-black like the rest of him.
    I told Jeremy that my scars reminded me of snakes. Jeremy confided that he thought his looked like a blotchy mess of lava and lumps of molten clay. To him, some parts of his body looked polka-dotted. He called himself the Human Domino.
    Neither of us said, “Oh, your scars are just fine.” Instead, we listened, scrutinized, commiserated. Our heads and souls were linked. We finished each other’s sentences.
    After his skin graft, Jeremy was in awful pain. He asked me to stick around one day when he was about to have his dressing change. He couldn’t take it when his mother came to these procedures, since she cried so hard, making him feel worse. I told him I’d been through the same thing.
    The charge nurse, Marta, set it up so that Jeremy’s dressing changes took place during my shifts. I was his buddy, holding his hand, never wincing. Instead I distracted him or just kept quiet—whatever he seemed to need.
    One day, his mom, a tall, beautiful, religious lady, burst into Jeremy’s room and smothered me with hugs and kisses. She said the Lord had sent me to her son and him to me. She declared that the South Central Baptist congregation had me and Jeremy in their prayers at every service. Jeremy grinned at me, wondering if I felt overwhelmed. I didn’t; I just felt good.
    Alexia, twelve, was my pet and protégée. The entire left side of her pretty face had been burned in an explosion, when a prankster switched the chemicals in her school’s lab. After many skin grafts and surgeries, with more ahead, Alexia was glad to have an older girlfriend whose face, like hers, was marred.
    When my shift was over, I’d go to Alexia’s room to braid and brush out her long hair, watch TV or listen to music. Alexia trusted and looked up to me. She seemed quiet at first, but became a chatterbox once she came to know me.
    I noticed that Alexia kept the burned side of her face averted habitually, and I never remarked on it. After a week, she suddenly started to look at me full on. Then, she held her face up for others on the unit, too. I was proud of her.
    I kept Alexia busy, met her parents and brother and devoted myself to her. I never had a little sister and lovedto spoil Alexia, listen to her and bring her books from home I knew she’d love. We felt we’d known each other forever. This was common in the Burn Unit.
    When Alexia asked about life “out there,” I was honest. I told her of the beach walks at night my parents and I took together, rain