"Bullseye" by Julia F. Green

Bullseye

When I was a kid, I admired saggy breasts. Thanks to my uncle Freddy who left HBO on all day, I’d seen plenty of movie breasts — high and still, with pinkish little nipples — which I found distasteful. Middle-aged breasts were beautiful to me because the women who possessed them were wise, capable, and confident. When I grew breasts, I wanted them to be like my mother’s, loosely hung, with wide nipples, dark as fading rose petals.
My mother was 44 when her breasts became unmatching. The defective one was hollowed out, its insides replaced with a bag of saline solution that held the breast high, while the original model remained at its usual latitude. I visited her after the surgery, frightened by all the tubes and wires coming out of her. In pink satin pajamas bought especially for the hospital, she looked small and fragile, a tiny, wounded doll.
We had celebrated my mother’s fortieth birthday a few years earlier with a trip to see family in New York City. After dinner at my aunt’s apartment, the buzzer rang. At the door was a man wearing a trenchcoat and a mischievous grin, a boombox at his side like a briefcase. Everyone but Freddy looked surprised.
It was 1987. My sister was ten, and I was six; we were not whisked from the room, despite Freddy assuring everybody that he’d requested an R-rated performance. As the stripper danced and gyrated, my sister kept asking, Who is this man?
Confused, I quietly watched my mother, a serious, focused introvert who wore pantyhose and power suits to work and a leotard for her Jane Fonda videos. She was bright red, hysterical with nervous laughter as a young stranger thrust his pelvis and ran his fingers across her neck. That look on her face, a swirl of surprise and anxious delight, made me love her even more, believe she could withstand anything.
Thirty years later, I flew to New York City for my sister’s fortieth, which consisted of a fancy dinner, no strippers, and dancing at a place deemed appropriate for middle-aged women. The DJ was Jamaican, with short cornrows and low-slung camouflage pants that showed off the green boxer briefs that covered his cute, young butt. I admired the way he moved his body so freely. I was only 36, but I thought, God, he is so young, though maybe I meant he is so brave or he is so un–self-conscious.
In my 20s, I was a shell of a person — insecure, anxious, unsure of who I was or where I fit in the world. It took a decade or so for my sense of self to coalesce. Sometimes, in sad times, I wonder what I might’ve become if I’d taken the wheel of my personhood sooner.
But on the precipice of forty, I shook off regrets. I was chipping away at the reflexive sorry etched into every woman’s body. I spent my thirties amassing the courage to inhabit my values and boundaries, go after what I wanted, and say no to what I didn’t, which was a lot harder than my mother let on.
On my sister’s birthday, we danced past our bedtime, a sweet, thin line of sweat gathering on my spine as my heeled companions drooped like wilting flowers. Around one a.m., we drifted outside, my sister sharing a cigarette with her friend, the ember between them flaring dramatically with each drag. Their faces were close, exhaling smoke out of the corners of their mouths, gray clouds disappearing into darkness. Squinting, I could almost see the teenagers they once were.
Two weeks before my fortieth birthday, my uncle Freddy, who wore plaid with stripes and ate cheeseburgers for breakfast, died at age 86. Born in the Bronx, Freddy became a dentist. In the 70s, he went to Niger to work at a medical facility run by Catholic nuns (he was Jewish). Later, he opened his own practice where he offered free dental care to those in need and treated Mafioso and drug dealers who paid in cash. One summer, when my sister was about 12 or 13 and working in his office, he pulled something out of a patient’s mouth and held it up. “Princess,” — Freddy called all women under 50 princess — “this is the best fuckin’ bridge I ever made.” Freddy lived exactly as he wanted, embodying the ethos of zero fucks long before that phrase existed.
In the days before my fortieth, all I felt was old. As a kid, I’d watched my bathrobed mother slather her face in a dark-green cream, her blue eyes bright as lasers. After the mask had dried and been washed off, she stared at herself in the mirror and said, I’m old, her voice filled with surprise and regret. In the mirror, I saw the same lines on my own face, proof that my youth had ended, that I was boarding the unglamorous ship of middle age, sailing toward death.
I saw my mother’s mother’s breasts when I was eight years old. It was summer and after a visit to the pool, my grandmother lowered the straps of her bathing suit, folding it to her waist, revealing breasts that hung nearly to her bellybutton and swayed like pancake batter on a griddle. I never saw my other grandmother’s breasts. She died of breast cancer before I was born.
In the late 90s, I volunteered for the AIDS Memorial Quilt with many gay men who had survived the scourge but lost an unthinkable number of loved ones. Getting old is a bitch, one of them explained, but it’s a helluva lot better than the alternative. On my fortieth birthday, friends gathered around the fire pit for pizza and dessert, the best option mid-pandemic. I was grateful for the inability to do more. Free of the pressure to have the perfect birthday, I sat back and enjoyed the night, the company of loved ones. With luck, forty more years lay ahead of me, more time to practice disregarding what the world expected of me and focus on what I expected of me.
My mother’s original breast is in its 70s, continuing its downward journey, while her fake one has stayed at the same height for three decades and counting. Every year, my double D breasts get a little closer to the ground, each millimeter of descent reflecting another iota of wisdom gained and fear lost. If I’m lucky, one day my breasts will hang so low I can cart them around in a wheelbarrow. Statistically speaking, though, this will not happen — one of these breasts will turn on me, and we’ll have to part ways.
At my annual mammogram, a kind woman takes each of my breasts in her gloved hands, flattens it between two plates, tells me to hold my breath and not move. I keep still, thrumming with hope and fear, waiting for the deception, the desertion, grateful to be alive.

Julia F. Green

Julia F. Green holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop and teaches creative writing online and in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her work has appeared in The Citron Review, Lunch Ticket, The Laurel Review, Blue Ridge Outdoors and elsewhere. Learn more about her at juliafgreen.com.

Headshot: Megan Bowser

Photo Credit: Staff