I Was a Pre-Teen Thing

I never thought about my skin. It was just there. I splashed cold water on my face every morning, and that was it. Everything was fine until fifth grade. I can’t remember if I’d gotten my period yet or not, but it was right about that time. I’m sure I’d started having sexual fantasies and getting crushes on a couple of boys in my class.

It was about this time that my face started coming off. The whole process started innocuously; little places on my body would itch, and I would scratch them. The itching and scratching continued, pretty soon around the clock. But I still didn’t think anything of it. I had bigger things to worry about, like if my tits would ever start growing.

This was a devastating time of life, when things that were supposed to grow didn’t and things that weren’t, did. The itchy places on my body grew into little red that became dry and inflamed. As I continued scratching, the red areas got larger. They were all over my body now: on my face, on my legs, my arms, my back.

At first I successfully hid the red, dry areas with baggy clothing that covered every inch of my body, or by keeping my head down and my hair forward. In some ways my thick glasses saved me: I was faceless, and no one wanted to look at what wasn’t there. I was invisible.

But my strategies couldn’t win the war. The red, itchy areas got larger. Then the larger areas became very dry and started flaking. The dryness spread until it felt like my whole body was desiccated and peeling. My skin was also starting to crack all over; the worst areas were painful to the touch. The Invisible Girl was morphing into Lizard Girl.

Eventually my mom noticed her daughter was becoming a reptile. She went through her dusty medicine cabinet and dug out whatever leftover tubes of skin ointments she had. My mom didn’t believe in doctors. Unless you were really sick. (I’m not sure what that meant, but I think you had to be almost dying.) Doctors were expensive. So my mom used whatever she had at hand to try to help. I think we started with Vaseline, which made me feel greasy, but still dry—sort of like an old, tough chicken that’s been baked until it’s dried out, and then basted with butter. We tried various skin moisturizers and lotions, including calamine and Noxzema. Nothing helped. Finally all we had left to try was the old tube of Desenex my mom dug out of one of her drawers. The tube said “medicated,” so it had to have something good in it.