what it looks like

when my baby brother Peter was a freshman in high school and i was a senior, this callus began forming on Peter's foot. it grew for weeks until eventually he walked around with a slight limp. he complained and complained about this thing incessantly. when we examined it closely, it just looked like a lump of coarse, roughened skin that sat between the ball of his foot and his second toe.

would you please wash your feet, Peter?

but he limped and limped and even communicated worry about doing the 'dreaded mile' that all schoolchildren have to suffer through K-12, in the States. (whoa, i'm saying "in the States"... Korea has changed me.)

bah! it's fine! scolded my mother.
my mother was one of those Korean nurses back in the 60s and 70s. young Korean women were commissioned/encouraged somehow by the Korean government to study nursing in Germany in order to make a life for themselves. she studied in Germany for several years and then eventually married my father. they ended up in Chicago.
anyway, growing up under her care, we ~never~ went to the hospital under any circumstances (except for an unfortunate fork incident--another time).
i remember once, when i was in 6th grade, i was feeling sick as hell from the flu and she stayed up all night, feeding me Tylenol every 4 hours--so that when i got up for school the next day, i really had no excuses.
i didn't miss a day of school, K-12, for reasons of malaise.
these immigrant parents.

anyway, she took several looks @ Peter's foot and declared him healthy. so, Peter limped to school and began limping through the mile. fortunately, the gym teacher raised his eyebrow at Peter's fumbling gait and made him explain himself. due to the growing litigious nature of our society @ the time, Gym Teacher sent him to School Nurse. School Nurse took one look @ Peter's deformed lump of callused skin and blanched:

oh my..! in my 22 years of nursing, i have never seen such an enormous Plantar's wart! you need to get that treated immediately!
(my mom's thinkin: drama queen.)

so, rather than going to the clinic, we went to Walgreens.
did we have health insurance at that point? not sure... our insurance coverage seems spotty to me throughout life... i don't really blink about not having any...

so we got this Dr. Scholl's stuff in this tiny square glass bottle. it had this toxic, burning yellow tang that you could smell from across the room.
now, i've always been the hand holder through these more minor family health crises (i.e. accupressure for my 엄어) because no one was patient enough--nor willing enough to hold hands and provide sympathy through those brief moments of agony.

this Dr. Scholl's elixir was particularly brutal. you applied the stinging auburn goo to the affected area and then placed this small circular adhesive gauze upon it. after a few minutes of letting it stick and firmly bond itself to the skin, you carefully removed the gauze--w/ all the diseased skin beneath.

Peter and i participated in this bizarre daily ritual every night for about 4-7 days... the skin kept on peeling back and peeling back... we were both fascinated and repulsed... it eventually became painful--and then excruciating for him, as the exposed skin became more raw and red and raw. these were epidermal layers normally not viewed in daily life.

we got down to this point in his skin where, nestled into the sore bloody debris of his foot, there were 4-7 of these little black points of wriggling disease. it was fuckin disgusting to look @. absolutely horrifying that this is what it had come down to.

***
it's fascinating that this is the appetizing image that entered my mind as i sat on the #3 bus as we emerged from the whirling lights of the Shinchon bus stop. blaring Korean announcements blew my hair around my face. the lights flipped and flashed past as i considered P Eddie's words about forgiveness: "he is not a sinner worse than me, but he is a sinner just like me..."

my raw bloody diseased heart... fuckin pus-filled dirty bullshit that festers and pounds and pounds. grimy gritty pulsing black... ... bubbling... sometimes...
only sometimes

he's just like me.
damnit.

just like me.