Scars

Suzette’s body is marked by several distinctive scars from her surgeries, each symbolizing her past isolation and fears that she is undesirable. The worst is from her first surgery. “The misshapen canyon of a scar had always bothered her, falling in a deep, wonky six-inch diagonal on the right side of her navel. Alex insisted it was part of her beauty, her strength. A marking of survival, of the suffering she’d endured as a teenager. She didn’t need any reminders of those lonely and disgusting years, of the enemy within or her own mother’s deadly indifference” (5). When Hanna throws hot coals on her and burns her face, leaving her with a wound that will likely scar, Suzette sees this as a deep betrayal by her daughter, and imagines how it will be a constant reminder of this new trauma.

Jewelry

Jewelry symbolizes...