It was two p.m. on a weekday, and she was in the city, in leather shoes that pinched, a hot polyester acrylic blend blouse that was tight at the armpits, and dark pants. The pants were the only thing that fit her fine. The paper she was holding was getting damp from sweat. It was a form for a clinic that she was supposed to go to. The third such thing today, to complete requirements for a job screening.
She wondered how many clinics in basements or windowless building units she would have to go to in order to complete this final hurdle of job application, how many forms she would have to write down her height, weight, and childhood illnesses. How many cups she’d have to pee in, how many times she’d have to hold out her arm for a blood sample. How many people, wearing white gabardine and carrying clipboards, she’d have to show her tongue and intone, “Ahhhh”; how many more times she would be asked to pull her pants down to—actually, she doesn’t know what they’re looking for when they ask her to remove her underwear.
So, on this visit, when the receptionist informed her that on top of the routine checkup, there was going to be a breast exam, she clenched her jaw and said, fine. Can you wait two hours? The female doctor just stepped out.
She’s had it with the waiting. After two hours, it would be close to the end of the workday. She would come out of that clinic just in time to battle it out with employed people at the transport terminal. She would stand in line with the rest of them for an hour and a half; squeeze herself in a van where she would reach a silent agreement with the person squished next to her about whose sweaty armpit should rest on whose shoulder; she would get off an hour later, at the stretch of the municipal road nearest to her village, where there was a long line for a tricycle. She hadn’t had breakfast or lunch. She had a little bottle of water some time ago that morning, but she had peed that out for the urine sample. She just wanted to go home.
“Why can’t that doctor do it?” she asked, referring to the vague figure in a white coat visible from the slight crack in the door.
“He’s a male doctor.”
“Well, does he know how to do it?”
The receptionist, like all the others she has seen in recent weeks, was impassive. She got up to talk to the doctor, then went back out. “The doctor will see you now.”
She fought the impulse to roll her eyes. She walked in and greeted the doctor, who could not be more than two, or six years older than her. Actually she couldn’t tell. She didn’t care.
“I see the only requirement you need to complete is the breast exam,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Are you okay that I will be doing
this? We have a female doctor. She will be back soon.”
“Does it make a difference if you do it?” She searched his eyes. He dropped his gaze.
“Okay, then. May I ask you to change into the shirt right there,” he said softly, gesturing to a loose, opaque shirt on a hanger. And because there was now a crush of job applicants just outside the door, he had no choice but to remain in the little cubicle as she changed, his entire body facing away from her until she sat back on the chair and said she was ready.
“If you could lie down here, please,” he moved to the examination bed next to his desk. She did as she was instructed.
“Put your left arm behind your head.” She did, her eyes never leaving his face. She imagined him taking a deep breath. “I will begin on this side now.”
She trusted herself to speak up if she sensed that what was going on was no longer a breast exam. She trusted that she could stop it immediately. But for now, his hands were firm, neutral, and thorough in a textbook kind of way. She looked at him blankly, as if all that he was touching was her body and the part of her that was attached to it was now out of his reach. His fingers were methodical. They remained in a specific area until they ran over every inch, and only then did he move to the adjacent area.
She relaxed, looked out the window, let her mind wander. Sometimes she didn’t think about him at all. Sometimes his hand moving over her breast was all she could think about. She had read about breast self-exams and tried it a few times in the shower. What he was doing so far seemed about right. She had always been too impatient to go through all the steps, so she was only realizing now how long an entire 15-minute exam might feel. He did not make eye contact—how focused he was on doing this right—except when she flinched after he pressed a spot too hard.
“Sorry, did that hurt?”
“It’s fine.”
She thought he paused and inhaled internally, before he inched closer and closer to her nipple, pressing around the areola. Was he beginning to look uncomfortable? In the end, the examination of her nipple—while all still with the barrier of the hospital shirt—was perfunctory.
Then he had to do the other breast.
She was then asked to move to a chair for the last half of the exam, and he pulled up a chair to sit opposite her. With his face level to hers, it almost looked like they were about to share a secret. His fingers moved across the front of her breasts and their tiny undersides, the deep tissue and the ribcage just beneath. He would not know, and she would not admit, that she had never been touched in this part of her body before. Never been this close to anyone before. Never experienced intimacy, for this was what it had suddenly meant to her. Somehow she hoped she would see a glimmer of human emotion. Her nipples poked through the shirt more now than when she had first put it on. It wasn’t because of anything he did, but now she was looking at him and trying not to be obvious about it.
He pressed a few more times, his expression and touch unchanged. Then he was done. She glanced at his pants before he could turn away. What was she looking for? She wouldn’t know what pants would look like if a man was aroused. She changed back to her clothes while he sat facing a corner. Then she stood in front of his desk as he wrote on her medical form.
What she wanted to remember was how she seemed to tower over him as he was hunched over his little desk. How she caught the almost imperceptible tremble in his hand as he wrote. How that potential employer farmed out the examination of her body, but, goddamn it, she was going to call the shots. But what she remembers is that she looked at his face, his fingers, his hand, and saw that both of them just wanted the experience to be over, as soon as possible.
