Every outing used to be accompanied by strangers blessing my eyes. “Que Dios te bendiga,” followed by their palms covering half my face. I never questioned it, but I also never truly understood it until I got older—that these Mexican ladies were protecting my eyes from brujeria. That my eyes were considered a gift, a rarity, being as light as they were in our corner of the world. They told me they had to be saved.
And then they stopped working.
And I found it exceedingly suspicious that I, with blessed eyes, was forced to see the world through a blur when my sisters, who were spared each blessing, saw with such clarity.
It was the same with the curls. The Brazilian ringlets that were considered a “miracle,” being the only of eight Costa children to inherit them. And they were treated as such. Each dark twist carefully crafted as my sisters enjoyed an extra hour of sleep, before we were all sent off to Catholic school. My scalp being mutilated as the world was still savoring the nightfall.
Riddled with envy, I found joy in a hair straightener for a decade. Unsurprisingly, I regretted it later.
Then there were the freckles. Littering my nose and cheeks like an explosion of glitter, to the chagrin of every woman in my life. Now, pool days are marked by the thick mask of sunblock they would smear on my face. The smell, irritating my nose and eyes, as I jump into the water face-first for relief.
The eyebrows. Only in their current untouched condition after the mortification that followed my twelve-year-old self’s discovery of my mother’s tweezers…It took two years to get them back.
My teeth that underwent several dental surgeries and five years of orthodontia—three years longer than either of my sisters. And I still think I have remnants of a cross-bite.
Mother’s nose. Slightly downturned and crooked. I don’t think much of it now but at fourteen I offended her when I asked for a nose job. She refused.
Unlike my sisters, I didn’t get my ears pierced at birth. My parents allowed me to revisit the notion when I was nine and had already developed a fear of needles. All because I felt earrings would take up some of the surface area of my Dumbo ears, as my older sister had called them.
Joke’s on her, because at the time it was my head that was too big for my body
But I’ve grown into all of it now. Learned how to take care of it after years of trial and error. I am still in the process of accepting that this is the face to my name, but I love every eccentric anecdote that comes with each present detail.