the magic

"I want you taking birth control." The doctor demanded.

"What? Why?" I asked as Mom twisted a brochure in her hands.

"So you don't get pregnant."

"How would that happen?" I screwed my face up into a question mark. The doctor sighed deeply and looked at the wall clock, calculating the seconds he would have to spend on me.

"Mom, have we not had "the talk" yet?" The doctor asked, using a tone of voice that was best reserved for very small dogs or very stupid children. Mom stammered and flushed apologetically.

"I know how you get pregnant!" I practically shouted. "I mean, what does that have to do with the medication?"

"Well," he began, unbuttoning and rebuttoning the fat white buttons on his lab coat, "If you get pregnant while taking this medication, the baby would most probably be born with devastating birth defects."

Mom's skin turned the green of a not yet ripe banana. I guarded my belly protectively, imagining the six-legged swamp beast that would slither and ooze out of my womb. Squeezing my eyes shut, I shook my head violently to expel the image from my brain. I wondered what my mother had gotten me into.

After a few months with no results from Dr. Blank, Mom had decided to take matters into her own hands. She consulted mothers from softball and PTA, Girl Scouts and basketball. Sympathetic shrugs and embarrassed sighs ensued from these mothers, but no one seemed to have the answer.

One summer day before the start of eighth grade, Mom and I ran into my old babysitter Beth.

"Oh my God! You look gorgeous, Beth!" Mom screamed down the block. Beth was unrecognizable. She glided down the street with her head held high and her long curls swept confidently off of her face. Smiling serenely, she nodded at my mother.

"What happened? I mean, what have you done to yourself? You look amazing!" Mom gushed.
A proud pink flush swept across Beth's now-clear face. Beth had had the worst skin I had ever seen. Cystic acne had assaulted every inch of her face and neck. She had often hidden behind blood tinged tissues, dabbing at her constantly erupting pimples. Looking at her now, I immediately shrunk back in embarrassment, painfully aware that my skin was now much worse than hers. There was, however, a ping-pong ball of hope hopping around in my stomach.

"I know! Isn't it amazing? I tried this new medication. I mean, look at me. It's a miracle!"

"Beth," Mom whispered. "Do you think you could give us your doctor's number? We've tried everything, but...." Mom trailed off, nodding in my direction. I stared down at my feet. Even Beth's sneakers seemed brighter than my own. Beth nodded knowingly and patted me like a puppy with fleas. She rooted around in her purse and handed my mother a card. Mom stared at its crisp white edges and poked me in the shoulder.

"Look at this, Noreen. All your troubles could be over!" I shrugged and glanced at the card, almost afraid to hope, but feeling my step lighten a little as we walked away from Beth.

A week later, Mom and I sat in the waiting room of the skin cancer and dermatology clinic of a major New York hospital. A sickening smell surrounded us, seeping into my nostrils and sitting on my tongue, thick like a wet sock. Patients, some in wheelchairs and padded with gauze, lined the white walls. I looked at them suspiciously, wondering if the odor was escaping from underneath their bandages.

"It's the burning skin." The man sitting next to me whispered as he scratched at a bandage covering the left side of his neck.

"Huh?" I leaned away from him and into my mother.

"The smell. They burn the skin away when there's cancer. It smells awful, doesn't it?" He sneered down at me as my mother took notice.

"Leaver her alone! Creep."

"I was just...."

"Knock it off or I'll call security. Noreen, sit over here." Mom yanked me up out of my seat and repositioned me on her other side. She glared at the man, who shrugged apologetically.

"Sorry, lady." Mom snarled and sucked in air through her teeth.
Now I was marooned in yet another doctor's office, being told that I would give birth to a head of broccoli with teeth, if I could even get a boy to somehow look in my direction.

"Umm, have you gotten a look at my face? No boy will even kiss me. How exactly would I get pregnant?" The doctor exhaled dramatically out of his wide nostrils. Mom bit her lip, but I couldn't tell if she wanted to laugh or smack me in the back of the head.

I had had some experience with boys, and how to avoid their advances. At Katie's thirteenth birthday party last year, I had been thrown in the closet with Nelson during a heated game of Seven Minutes in Heaven. Although two girls and one boy had already come out of the closet with raspberry-colored hickeys, I wouldn't let anything like that happen to me (unless I was lucky enough to end up in the dark with Anthony. I was not.)

Nelson spun an empty gallon of Coke, and the plastic red cap pointed decidedly at me. I groaned in disappointment and fear as hands jostled me towards the closet. Nelson waited expectantly in the dark, nestled between a parka and a fur coat. I was thrust into his open arms and bumped my head on his chin. The tiny stubble that had grown there dug into my skin.

"Have fun! Don't do anything we wouldn't do!" Cheers and sneers erupted behind us as the closet door slammed shut. Nelson's greasy hair smelled like a gas station. I wiggled my way to the back of the closet, hoping he wouldn't be able to see me. His hormones guided him like a missile to the spot where I was hidden. Raspy, breathless sounds escaped from his lips. His cheese puff breath felt hot on my cheek. I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath, trying to make myself as small and quiet as possible.

Within seconds, his hot hands were on me. His left hand groped my right breast firmly, while his right hand reached for and missed my left breast, ending up on my elbow. The surprise was so sudden that I froze, leaving his hands to push and pull and pinch me.

"Oh, baby! Yeah!" Nelson cackled close to my ear. This was the same boy I had previously seen shove a pretzel up his nose and then eat it. That image bolted me out of my stupor and into action.

With one swift motion, I raised my right knee as if I were hitting a soccer ball. The effect was instant. Nelson crumbled into a crippled heap on the closet floor. There was complete silence for several seconds, and I was afraid that I had killed him. Suddenly, a tortured gurgling came from the bottom of the closet, and I exhaled with relief that he was at least alive. I spent the next six and a half minutes huddled behind the coats as Nelson gasped for air on the ground. When the closet door was finally opened, I exited triumphantly, my honor still intact. Nelson crawled out on his hands and knees, sweat dripping from his reddened face.

"As a precaution, we insist all women of child-bearing age take birth control while on this medication." The doctor said decisively.

"Well, she's not a woman, she's a child." Mom asserted, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

"As a precaution...."

"No birth control. Thank you, Doctor." Mom's jaw was rigid and her nostrils flared. She fidgeted in the way she often did before saying, wait till your father gets home.

"All right then," he sighed. "You'll have to sign this release which says you understand the dangers of becoming pregnant while taking Accutane."
Accutane. It was the first time I heard the name of the medication that I hoped would transform me from a duck into a swan. I read through the form that warned of birth defects and fetal death. While scribbling my bubbly signature and dotting my i with a heart, I had a vague thought nagging at the back of my brain: if Accutane could turn my unborn baby into an octopus, what could it do to me?

There were some vague explanations of possible side effects. My skin would get worse before it got better. Redness. Peeling. Dry skin. Chapped lips. Upset stomach. Headaches. I would take the medication for twenty weeks, visiting the clinic every other week for a check-up. Each week, I would have blood tests done to monitor the medicine's effects on my kidneys and liver. Mom looked hesitantly from me to the doctor. Her finger pulled nervously on her lower lip.

"Noreen. Are you sure?" I took the brochure out of her hand and stared at the bold block letters spelling out ACCUTANE. The inside of the brochure had before and after pictures of men and women, boys and girls. The pictures on the left depicted pitted, pimply-skinned misery. The pictures on the right, however, showcased bright smiling faces with clear skin. This was it. This was the magic I had been searching for.

"Absolutely." It came out with such force that neither my mother nor the doctor thought to ask again. A few scribbles on a prescription pad and it was over.

"See you in two weeks." The doctor said, already walking out the door to his next patient. Mom raised her eyebrows and rubbed my back. For the first time in a long time, I felt myself smiling on the inside. In just twenty weeks, five months time, I would be a new me. I walked out into the sunshine, clutching the prescription for my future, my head raised towards the sun.

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