by Karla Jynn
“No, I need to go on my own,” I said when my new-ish pagan computer-whiz friend Brent offered to come along with me. He had recommended Eddie’s Tattoos on fourth street below South where he and his primary partner had spent multiple days getting their backs etched with intricate labyrinths. I wanted Brent’s calm, worldly-wise support, but was determined to honor the very reason I was getting a tattoo: as a stamp of the strength I gained from my newfound innocence.
But as I approached Eddie’s, anxiety shot like sun rays from my bundle of stomach nerves. I felt like I was 14, trying tampons for the first time, or like my 16-year-old self when she drove to the Huntington Valley shopping center alone after getting a license. I feared I might do something embarrassing, but I also imagined passersby noticing me and being impressed with my independence.
The tattoo artist behind the counter said a nonchalant hello. I could hardly take my eyes off the two clients who lounged in reclining chairs being buzzed and drilled, without glancing at me. I wondered why they wanted tattoos, what their process was, and whether they were as attuned to their meanings as I was. Then I thought, why do I have to notice everything? Care and compare? It’s freaking exhausting.
I wanted a stylized M, my first granddaughter’s first initial; I was as blameless as she was, though it had taken decades to unearth that fact. When my siblings and I were born, our mom had gone under general anesthesia. In 1978, when I was pregnant with our family’s first grandchild, I thought I would do better. Instead, the pain was knives from all sides aimed straight at my cervix. After Demerol and an epidural, I birthed our daughter, believing I had failed her, my husband, myself, and God by not being stronger. It took months to accept my “betrayal.”
By contrast, the birth of my first grandchild had felt like a sacred event. My daughter was totally present with her body’s needs. She disappeared into her own world, able to give her all to the being inside her trying to come alive. After breathing and growling through the crescendoing pain of labor, she pushed out a perfect girl as I knelt crying beside her. The baby slipped into the huge tin watering trough that had been set up in the living room, while I bathed in the waves of innocence flowing from them both—a birth, for me, of a primal goodness I’d never known.
Despite my lifelong art career, I didn't have a design in mind for the M. My desire for a tattoo had nothing to do with art or style. And I did not want something removable like a necklace. I wanted a permanent reminder of my amazing growth, small and simple, explicable to anyone who saw it and asked.
From a mountain of notebooks on the counter, the tattooist slid over a thick, heavy tome with the alphabet in every shape and size. I breezed through the pages, alighting on an M that resembled an Asian character, a fake, without a thought about its ethnic resonance. To me it looked like a tiny temple whose roof had caved in and then caught its own fall, reconnecting in the middle instead of collapsing. My finger landed on the page, and I said, “That one.”
He told me the piercing of tattoos on your torso hurts more than on your limbs, so I chose my upper thigh. I wanted it to show at times, like when I wore a bathing suit, or if I revealed it casually, but not somewhere intimate, like my butt. I needed to be able to share my landmark. I settled into the chair and breathed deeply and rhythmically, feeling proud of myself.
The needling of my flesh was a refreshing pain, the kind I thought childbirth was before it assaulted me. This pain allowed me to brace myself like the resilient grownup I was becoming. The artist kept checking if I was OK, and I surprised myself by saying yes, though I was glad I’d chosen such a small one. And I didn't want the bother and expense of coming back. Tattoos for me were one and done, or so I thought.
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