She thought about Elvis and wondered how much consideration he gave to the size of his nose. But his was a Jewish nose. Hers was just a big nose. She knew that the size of Elvis’s nose fitted into a larger scheme of things. It had a cultural space. It meant something. She thought, ‘If you’re Jewish and have a big nose it’s like being Barbra Streisand or Mel Brooks. It means that you have a history, that you belong. The shape of my nose is just a mistake. My problem is stuck right bang in the centre of my face, and it has no wider implications than that. My problem is my nose. I didn’t make the problem, the problem made me.’
It was so simple. It had to come off.
Late that evening she went downstairs into the living room and switched off the television. She stood in front of the screen—like a wonderful character from a film or a soap—and she announced firmly, ‘Either I have a nose job or I kill myself. I can’t go on like this any longer. I’ve heard that you can have one on the National Health. If you both love me you will help me.’ She swayed gently as though she were about to swoon, then gathered herself up and strode from the room like Boadicea approaching her chariot: a woman with swords on her wheels.
Rose made an appointment with their local GP the following afternoon. Layla took an hour off school. She explained her problem to the GP and he agreed to book her in with a specialist.
Five months later Layla met the specialist. He was called Dr Chris Shaben and was a small, vivacious, balding man with a crooked face and yellowy teeth. Apparently he had a very beautiful wife. His surgery was on Harley Street and the gold plaque on his door said, ‘Dr Chris Shaben, Plastic Surgeon’ in a beautiful flowing script.
Layla sat in his office and discussed her nose at great length. For the first time ever she felt as though she was actually talking to someone who cared, someone who understood, and best of all, someone who could do something. It was as a dream to her. Entering his surgery had been like a scene of recognition in a book or a film; that moment when everything falls into place. It was an ecstatic moment. Layla was like a newborn child finding its mother’s milky nipple for the first time.
It took a while to convince Dr Shaben that she was desperate and sincere. He said, ‘Normally we only do plastic surgery treatments on the National Health if the problem involved is more than just cosmetic, but I’m willing to make an exception in this instance, Layla. Although you’re young, you’re very articulate and intelligent. I realize that your concerns go deeper than mere vanity.’
Layla nodded. She said slowly, ‘For a while I tried to make myself believe that I had made the size of my nose into an issue, that the problem was to do with me, on the inside, not the out. My parents encouraged this line of thought, although my Mum has always been supportive, and my analysis did the same thing. But now I know that the problem is on the outside too. People judge one another visually; I should know, I do it myself. I want to be normal. I want to stop being on the outside, the periphery.’
Dr Shaben nodded and smiled at Layla. His bald head and short stature made him look like a tiny, benign, laughing Buddah as he sat hunched and serene in his big, leather, office chair.
Before the operation Layla abandoned her GCSE course work and concentrated instead on the leaflets, diagrams and information surrounding the surgery that she was about to undertake. She read how modern technology now meant that some nose operations could be undertaken entirely through the nostrils without any recourse to external incisions and unsightly scarring. The nose was chiefly made up out of bone and gristle, but was also extremely sensitive because of the large number of nerve endings at its tip. She tested this theory by smacking her nose with a pencil and then smacking other parts of her face like her cheeks and eyebrows. The nose was much more delicate. After the operation, a certain amount of swelling and bruising was to be expected.
Four days after her sixteenth birthday Layla awoke in a large and unfamiliar room. Her duvet was tightly stretched across her chest and felt unusually harsh and full of static. She was dopey. Her throat felt weird and dry. Her nose was numb but ached. She thought for an instant that she was dreaming her nose dream, that she wanted to put her hands to her face but her hands were restricted, yet after a few minutes she realized that she was in a strange bed in a strange environment. It was no dream, but her arms were restricted by the tightness of her sheets and blankets. She wriggled her body gently to create some room and worked her hands free. She placed them on her face. Her nose hurt. Her hands touched soft, filmy bandage and Band-Aid. It was done.
For the next five days her head felt light. Dr Shaben said that it was simply psychological, but she felt the lightness of a person who once had long hair and then cut it short, the roomy strangeness of someone who has had their arm broken and set in plaster and then has the plaster removed so that their arm floats up into the air because it feels so odd and weightless and light.
At first her face looked swollen and ugly. In hospital she wore no make-up and was blue with bruises. But she could see the difference. In the mirror her nose looked further away. Dr Shaben was pleased for her. He was well satisfied.
Throughout her stay in hospital, Rose had been in to see her every day. Larry preferred to stay away. Before she had gone in on her first night he had said to her, ‘Remember how when you were small I would sit you on my knee and bounce you up and down and call you my little elephant girl? You always laughed and giggled. It’s not like that any more. Now you’ve grown up into someone I don’t recognize. I can’t approve of what you are doing. God made you as you are. That should be enough.’
This came as a great shock to Layla. She had completely forgotten Larry’s pet name for her. When she heard him say it again it was like a blow to her face, a blow to her nose, making it ache, making her numb. It was a kind of violent anaesthetic.
She was being pulled in so many directions. Everyone had a different opinion as to the whys and wherefores. Rose simply said, ‘Do whatever will make you happy.’
After five days she came home. Although she was still slightly bruised, the mirror was her friend. Her three brothers greeted her at the front door with euphoric whoopings. Larry sat in the living room, watching the cricket. He turned after a minute or so and saw her, standing nervously by the door, her hands touching the bookcase for support. First he smiled, then he laughed, ‘Five days away, all that money spent, and look at you. No difference! You look no different.’ He laughed on long after she had left the room, but when he’d finished his stomach felt bitter.
Later Marcy visited. She smiled widely and hugged Layla like a real friend. Then she looked closely at her nose and said, ‘Maybe your nose looks slightly different, but to me you are still the same old Layla. In my mind’s eye you are exactly the same person. Nothing has changed.’ She thought that she was saying the right thing.
Layla sat alone upstairs in her room, staring into the mirror. She felt sure that she looked different. She felt sure that she was now a different person, inside. But the worry now consumed her that other people would not be able to see how different she looked. It felt like a conspiracy. She thought, ‘Maybe I’ve become the ugly person I was outside, inside. Perhaps that can never be changed.’ She felt like Pinocchio.
That night she had a dream. In her dream she was a tiny little elephant, but she was without a trunk. She had four legs and thick grey skin, but flapping ears and a thin end-tassled tail. But she had no nose. Because she had no nose she couldn’t pick things up—to eat, to wash, to have fun—all these things were now impossible. It was like being without arms. She kept asking for help. Her mother smiled and stroked her, but everyone else just laughed and pointed.
She slept late. When she awoke she felt