A Little Change of Face by Lauren Baratz-Logsted Page A

very small and very much like I was a part of what constituted the least attractive part of being born an American, like maybe I was still on the flag, but I was the star that had gotten mustard spilled on it at the baseball game or something. Know what I mean?
    â€œHello, Scarlett. Earth to Scarlett. Is anybody still at home?”
    â€œOuch,” I said, fending her off. “You don’t need to tap on the side of my brain like that.”
    â€œMaybe if you stayed with me, I wouldn’t. But as T.B. always likes to say, ‘You does like to wander.’”
    Somehow, hearing Pam mimic T.B. never seemed the same as when I did it or when Delta did it, especially since we knew T.B. hammed it up for us, anyway. And in Delta’s case, she wasn’t exactly mimicking. Regardless, T.B.’s voice coming out of Pam’s mouth seemed just plain wrong somehow, making me feel like I used to feel when I was a kid and I’d run into a teacher in some out-of-school place like the grocery store or the town pool or whatever and I’d think to myself, “What’s wrong with this picture?” only to answer my own question: “Everything.”
    So, yes, everything was wrong with T.B.’s words, real or mock, coming out of Pam, but, like with those wandering teachers who wouldn’t stay where they belonged, it was nothing I could articulate to other human beings, certainly nothing I could ever properly articulate well enough to still sound sane.
    â€œWell, Pam,” I said, finally returning to her definition of Earth, “if you could ever just once tell me what it is you’re thinking from start to finish, it might make it easier for me not to get distracted or even completely lost in the details.”
    â€œDo I need to keep spelling out in so many words that nothing I’m about to suggest has anything remotely to do with binding your breasts?”
    I reflected for a moment. “Yes,” I finally decided, “you do need to keep spelling it out in so many words. Until we reach a point in this conversation where at least five minutes have passed without the words ‘binding’ and ‘breasts’ appearing together in the same sentence, you absolutely do need to keep spelling out in so many words that you’re not going to suggest that.”
    â€œFine.” She looked at her watch, started timing herself.“This is what I’ve been trying to suggest, if you’d only just let me get the words out.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œExcept for the breast-binding part, how would you feel about giving me your looks for a while?”

16
    â€œW ho are you—the devil?”
    It’d taken me longer than the five minutes Pam was supposed to be timing her success at not simultaneously using “breast” and “binding” in the same sentence—a success that had turned out to be a complete failure, I might point out, as evidenced by that last question of hers.
    â€œAnd, by the way,” I added, “wasn’t having me moderate my appearance what we’ve been doing all along here?”
    I don’t know why I was so bugged exactly. Maybe it was simply that I’d never felt she’d voiced her idea, her plan, in such cold terms.
    â€œNo, I’m not the devil,” she said, answering my first question and ignoring my second. “I’m your friend. I’m trying to help you find out if people like you merely for what you look like and not who you are. Besides, what kind of a devil would offer you a deal to make yourself look worse? It seems to me, that all the devils I’ve ever readabout only make people deals that will make them look better.”
    â€œYes—” I tried to sound sage and mystically in-the-know, but only succeeded in sounding like a complete and utter ass, even to my own ears “—but you might be the cleverest devil of all, the devil that does the exact opposite of what