My First Tattoo

The dot on my hand was given to me by one of my relatives. It
started at my grandmother’s house east of Red Scaffold out in the
country. When I was young, maybe six or so, I was playing
around in the house and my cousin asked me to sit down, so I did. He
told me to put out my hand. I asked what for and he said, “For a
little tattoo.” I was too young to know anything.

I sat still until he told me he was done. I watched him dip a needle
into a jar of ink and then slowly jab the skin between my thumb and
index finger over and over again. After he finished, I looked at my
hand and saw a dot the size of the BBs I shot at pop cans lined up on
the fence around my grandmother’s house. My hand stung as if it had
been struck by a bumblebee from the hive in the shack where my
cousins and I played.

As I grew up I didn’t worry about what was on my hand. I knew it
wasn’t anything to be proud of, so I just left it. Of course I discovered it
wasn’t coming off. The memory tattooed on my heart hasn’t come
off either.

Ten years have passed. I now know what’s good for me and
what’s not. Sometimes when I’m alone, I think about how I got my
tattoo and what it proves to have a tattoo.

At school I watch guys roll up their sleeves to show off their tattoos. I
watch basketball players run up and down the court with tattoos on their
biceps and the calves of their legs. At my school even some of the
teachers have tattoos, but not all of them do.

I guess it doesn’t prove much having a tattoo when you get it at the age of
six. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have that dot, but I can’t do anything about
it. It all happened a long time ago. Once you’re jabbed with ink, the
mark sticks with you the rest of your life.

Laki Toki