Page 21 of Ruling Scar
Janis nods, but her narrowed eyes don’t go away. She goes in for the kill. “You’ve always used it to hide your scar?”
We’ve touched on the scar once or twice. It’s hard not to when you come to therapy with something so noticeable.
After eighteen years, it’s still a gnarly-looking thing. It’s grown white with time, but there’s a chunk of skin missing.
I’d like to say the Frankenstein appearance doesn’t bother me anymore. I’m not the only person in the world walking around with a facial scar.
It never goes away, though. Not the scar itself. The way people act around it. Yesterday, a kid stared at me in the store. That’s par for the course, but the eyes lingered on me long after I walked away.
Mom’s my biggest champion in so many ways. When other mothers asked if she’d considered plastic surgery for me, she’d roll her eyes and say we don’t mess with God’s beauty. But she frequently smooths my hair over my left cheek and asks what moisturizer or topical I’m using.
“Remind me again, how it happened?” Janis asks.
“I was eight and with a bunch of kids.”
Dad dropped us off at the Zimin’s. During the summertime, we’d go over there more often. There were a bunch of us kids, all of our parents connected in some shadowy way.
“There were some kitchen knives. And. . . it was just an accident.” I wave at my face, shrugging.
“You guys were just playing with kitchen knives?” Janis frowns.
This is the hard part about therapy. I can easily explain my parents are well off and lie about our family business. That day, I was one of the youngest there, and by that point, we all had a basic concept of handling weapons.
Though, that wasn’t exactly what was going on.
“One of the guys, was just being stupid. Running around, he grabbed the knife. And then. . .”
Somehow Elijah got a hold of it. He turned, and maybe he wasn’t expecting me to be so close.
He was thirteen and taller than me. A coldness swept over his face when he stared down at the blood all over the serrated knife.
In my memories, I remember staring up at him, a hand clamping down on my sticky cheek. There’s no memory of pain, at least not in those first few moments as I watched Elijah. Watched his face darken, like he was pissed at me.
Things went black, not because I passed out, but because I swear a halo of darkness exuded from him.
But that’s just Elijah.
Even at thirteen, his reputation as a sly, strange child preceded him. You didn’t fuck with him or else your parents went away. Or maybe you did.
He wasn’t a mafia prince like his brothers. He was a fucking warlord. A pure mixture of his effortlessly powerful father, Lev, and his Uncle Dima, the strategist.
The story of my scar makes him sound ruthless, but truthfully it was an accident. I know it. He knows it. My mother does too, on the rare occasions she admits it.
But Elijah never shied away from using the story to his advantage. He took it and twisted it to fit into his villainy.
Elijah told people he’d scarred me on purpose. Everyone believed him. Why wouldn’t they? Everyone knows Elijah can ruin a person’s life if he really wants to.
No wonder I kept my distance throughout the years. There were times I wanted to rage at him, but looking back I think I only ever emulated my mom’s anger.
It was just an accident.
“Did it hurt?” Janis gently asks.
“There were a lot of stitches.”
“Why do I get the feeling you internalized the pain?”
“Because that’s what I do,” I say quietly, sighing.
