Smile

SMILE

MARY MAGDELINE CARTER WAS BORN with something wrong with her face. No one saw it at first, but within the first six months of her life, her parents began to notice that she never smiled--she seemed incapable of it. Mary was not an unhappy child. To the contrary, she was perfectly delightful. But she did not smile.
She could laugh, she could giggle, but she did not smile.
Months went by.
At the end of a year’s time, doctors drew blood and conducted other tests and found that the lower portion of her face and jaw were lacking certain tiny muscles that are necessary for the act of smiling. Because Mary was not an ugly child in any of the other usual ways, the team of physicians consulting on the case recommended against surgery. For one thing, they said, the procedure was relatively new, and they could not guarantee its success; for another, some of the staff were not even convinced that smiling would make a difference. The family, on its own--in a separate decision (that is, for a different reason)--also decided against the operation: they felt that they could still love young Mary even if she didn’t meet all of their expectations.
And so, though the rationales were different, the outcome was the same: Mary’s face was left alone.
As she grew older, friends and extended family--and, of course, classmates--commented on Mary’s frozen look, her inability to show happiness in the conventional manner. When confronted, she’d just look back at her friends--or her family and teachers--with neither a smile nor a frown. She’d stare back blankly--and kindly. And sometimes ask a question of her own. A calm, direct question: Why do you hold these views?
Because she was able to articulate her thoughts with a skill much beyond her years, she never remained for long the subject--or the object--of ridicule. Of laughter or discrimination.
(Those reading this account should be cautioned about over-reading. There’s no symbolism here. Mary’s inability to smile was just a fact of her life, a natural law, nothing more. The same is true with her name.)
Throughout childhood and adolescence--and even into adulthood --her lack of a smile followed her wherever she went. But it was no serious handicap; instead, it just helped to define her more completely. For if her face revealed no genuine emotion, neither did it convey deception. And in some segments of contemporary society, honesty still goes a long way.
Mary’s inability to smile carried over into almost every aspect of her life. For one thing, she saw everything literally; she never spoke in metaphors. The sky never rained cats and dogs; it just rained hard--or heavily--or a lot. When she said that the sun was shining, the sun was shining; when she said that there was a fork in the road, there was a fork in the road. She spoke directly and clearly--and with a great economy of language.
Sometimes, however, this got her into trouble, for most people, whether they will admit it or not, do not really know how to talk. They say words; they mouth words. They construct sentences. Occasionally, they will even build a paragraph. But words and sentences and paragraphs, by themselves--or even together--do not a communication make.
Sometimes, when Mary’s friends--or ex-friends--speak, Mary will ask them what a certain word means: What do you mean by the word yes? What are you trying to say when you say the word know? Is there anything significant--or obvious--about the word I? Who is you? What about the verb to be? To breath? To eat? To be hungry?
The trouble came not with her friends’ initial responses, which were usually vague and indistinct--and often helpless and pathetic--but when Mary would pursue the issue further and suggest that perhaps they were not really answering her questions. Perhaps they were not hearing her questions. She’d ask for further clarity: No, she’d say, I don’t mean the word. Speak from here, she’d say, pointing to her chest--and then lower: to the gut. The center. The core. The source.
She continued with this line of questioning, which soon took on the quality of silence, which then took on the quality of sound, and which her friends still attempted to respond to as before: with words; with sentences; with smiles.
When Mary was younger--in high school and even in college--she’d, of course, had relationships--or rather, she had attempted to have relationships. But they never got anywhere; they never worked. They became something else--something that made no sense to her. They seemed "beside the point." For Mary believed that people put too much emphasis on things that don’t really matter, on things that she did not have. Or want. On things that she could–-and would-–not do. The truth of the matter was that even if she could have smiled, she would not have. For a smile always says the wrong thing. Always. No exceptions.
By the age of twenty-five, she had few friends. By thirty, she had none. She lived alone. She’d meet new people, as is almost unavoidable in today’s world, but probably because she never smiled (or worse, because she laughed and giggled without smiling) and because she always asked literal questions, the people she met tended to think of her as odd, and therefore they came to avoid her, much like the plague.
And so she lived alone--with her pets and her plants and her musical instruments and her cooking utensils. Which is to say: she did not live alone. For she lived with her pets and her plants and her musical instruments and her cooking utensils.
Mary is 52 years old now, and she can remember when she was 24, and 16, and 33. And eight. She can remember things when she was 43, when she was 44, when she was 35. And she remembers specific, actual incidents that happened when she was 21 and 18 and even as far back as when she was three. And even as recently as yesterday.