Zeroes

In this short essay, Slovene author Leonora Flis is both reduced to and saved by numbers while living as a foreigner in New York City.

- Leonora Flis

She remembered standing in line waiting to be assigned a number, to be measured, weighed. She felt so uncomfortable and so self-aware that her body shook intermittently. She began to shift from one foot to another even more restlessly. Her mind raced with uncomfortable thoughts. They pounded on the left side of her head and then crashed with all their force to the right. Probably a slight case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. These thoughts that she never let rest. Do you have the things they want, did you leave behind the things they don’t? Will the numbers be all right? It was awkward but also a little bit entertaining. The thought that she doesn’t weigh enough.

When she gets close to the scale, sharp talons of fear scratch at her brain telling her she is too invisible. She scopes out the competition. I cannot be that tiny; my long hair should add an ounce or two, she consoles herself. She lifts her head and glances without blinking at the boys and girls around her. “Well, come on, dear, get up on the scale,” a woman’s voice says. “My goodness, you’re light as a feather. I’ll let you through, but in first grade you’ve got to gain some weight, okay? Do they feed you enough at home?” she adds, half-patronizing, half joking. The curly, blonde-haired girl is so overwhelmed with joy she does not answer. She’s going into first grade! The numbers are just right; she had made it through the system that gobbles up numeric sequences and spits out charts. For a moment she thinks about the number she was assigned at birth. Her mother had shown her the white bracelet from the hospital. It had her name, weight, length, and ID number. All of which is replaced with a new number early that afternoon.