78
SANFORD CHERNOFF
Am I? And the window now - had I turned to it or had it
turned to me? Had it always been so turned? And so turned, it faced
me now with all the aborted, stunned expressions which I had fool–
ishly believed, all this time, to have gotten away with.
"Open your eyes at least, for Christ sake."
That was the last I saw of Sophie. There was of course, still the
shop. But even there, since I no longer went to her with those dresses
of my mother's, we seldom came together. And then, there was little
left to say. The dresses gave me some trouble.
It
was fall in fact,
before I really got the hang of undoing them. Though by then, it
hardly mattered. I was back in school and limited now to the hours
I could put in at the shop.
It
was busine s, I convinced my mother,
but she swore that if it didn't pick up by the end of the month she
was going out and find work elsewhere. I hadn't expected anything
like this, and began to hope. But the end of the month came and
another began without her setting foot out of the house. The weather
was not what she thought it should have been and, she reasoned,
things would probably be no better for her wherever she went.
Around that time, if my memory serves me right, I began
scratching. I would scratch myself raw and not even come close to
any kind of satisfaction. The more I scratched in fact, the more I
itched. I would have done better to Ica\'e myself alone, but I couldn 't.
Whatever it was I was doing to myself seemed to me then less than
I would have had to bear in not doing it. The day did come, how–
ever, when the clinic seemed the only way. I was put through all
sorts of tests and presc ribed something that was supposed to relieve
me. And it did.
It
did everything they said it would, but only for
short periods of time. So I never went anywhere without this bottle
of it I took to carrying.
It
saw me through the day , and I was even
managing some sleep now. I still woke in shreds, though found it
hard to believe now that it was all my own doing.
1 looked like someone that had just been through a battlc, 1 was
told, the following Thursday at the clinic, and that the tests had
~hown
nothing. "I wouldn't worry about it. In itself thafs some·
thing." They wanted me to stay on at the hospital for observation.
;'Just for a couple of days. We want to get a real look at you. It
won't cost you anything."
I appreciated that, 1 said, but still didIl't see how 1 (Quid.
"It's not going to get any better itself you know,"
