Objects: a tub of cream, for Eczema

As far as I can remember, there’s never been a time when I did not dream of becoming mysterious. But my skin never cooperated. It would project my feelings outward, like what felt to me radiations of shame that people could pick up from me.

I have eczema.

I used to have it everywhere. On my eyelids, my ears, my legs, my head. Everywhere. It would scratch, it would hurt. Depending on the days, the wounds would either ooze pus or develop scabs.

My mother brought me to every good doctor she could hear of in Albania. Once we went to see a doctor who was famous because he had practised for years in Russia. That and the fact that he was expensive gave him a certain air of prestige. We consulted him, only for him to tell my mother that I needed salt water and sun and to avoid humidity.

He added that “eczema” was the illness of the emotional ones. And that we could not do much to get rid of it. It would do its course, pretty much.

My mother, with the fierceness of a young mother, unbashed, was already planning to consult another doctor in North Macedonia. Our first trip abroad would have been for this reason. And that is when I witnessed the power battle of the century, my mother against my paternal grandmother. My paternal grandmother belonged to that generation of women in Albania who had no power all their lives, until they became mother in laws. Their law abuse. That kind of woman who was abused all her life in subtle or more blatant ways for being a woman. And for that, has turned into the most misogynistic creature on earth. Bossing around all their daughters-in-law. So logically she made a huge drama and convinced my father and my mother to let her bring me to a healer, “since those doctors did not work out anything.”

My mother, tired, gave in. That is how I found myself, aged 5, walking up a hill in central Albania, to be “visited” by an old blind lady who was a healer. Ahead of me was my grandmother, the most energetic woman I have ever met. Her fuel, hate and revenge. Behind me, my mother was blurting in a soft voice things against herself, “I have a degree, I have 16 years of studies behind me, and I am bringing my daughter to a healer”. Shaking her head in exasperation. All I remember of that healer is that she was all dressed in black, and had these watery eyes and a kind smile. At some point, she got out a knife, and she kept rolling it around on a plate covered in salt, murmuring words we couldn’t understand. Needless to say, my eczema was here to stay.

As a child, I kept thinking of what the doctor had said, “the illness of the emotional ones”. I did my math and figured out that if I manage to get rid of emotions, I would go to the root of the problem.

The year we finally got our passports for expatriation to Italy, my mother was advised by a cousin of a cousin of another cousin to buy a cream that helped a child she knew. My mother ran to the pharmacy. And that is how my longest relationship with a product started. The Betnovate cream tub. Over the years, the colour of the stripe has changed, and the format too. But it remains the single product that has ever worked for me. At some point, we found out it was to be bought with a prescription in Europe, and that doctors considered it too strong for me in Italy. It could cause asthma.

Well, what is sure is that I was vain since the day I was born, and I preferred some issues breathing to being constantly asked if I had been bitten by mosquitoes and seeing bewildered looks at my poor legs and arms. In Albania, people are very blunt. The concept of “body shaming is not there”. You will have your fat aunt telling you you put on weight. We are not high on the self-awareness department nor on discretion. So, I’d spend some summers with 38 degrees daily, in Albania, with leggings on.

My mother instilled in me the idea that I had to not give a single flying fuck and that I should spend a lot of time in the sea. Salt water would help my wounds, she recalled. That helped. For all the flaws I ascribe to the education my mother imparted on me, I am grateful to her every day for how much confidence she gave me in my body and my beauty as a woman. It might not be true, but to this day, if a man does not like my body, my first thought is that he is gay, and I love myself naked. Nobody can take that away from me. Years ago, precisely 10 kilos ago, an ex told me I was chubby and limp, and my immediate reaction was “I hope he can at some point accept his homosexuality”. But for years, as a child and young teen, my eczema was my shame, something to hide. My mother battled my shame with the “if someone judges you for an illness, they are ill in their hearts” mantra for years. And it worked.

Since then, since Spring 2001, one of my uncles or cousins has at some point run to a pharmacy in Albania to buy me a supply of the Betnovate cream. And then, he rushed to find someone who would be travelling to Italy to bring it to me in time. Someone at some point inconvenienced himself to bring me solace. That was community, perhaps the wealth of the poor. I felt its warmth while rubbing the cream on my wounds. Those men of my family, with their hardworking hands, full of calluses, bringing me this cream that would calm my pain down. That is “masculinity” to me; it is ingrained in my brain. Service.

But one year, all this slowly built up confidence was truly put to the test. I developed some huge, huge, huge scabs all over my tummy. It was like an explosion; I could not suppress it with the cream anymore. They looked like islands of scabs, and during the night, I’d scratch uncontrollably and end up with my PJ shirt attached to the pus and blood underneath. Often ruining some of my favourite PJs, the ones I got as presents for Christmas from the rich ladies my mom worked for.

Taking off my shirt was a super painful experience. One day, my physical education teacher found me trying to undress my t-shirt after class at the gym. I was getting late, and she needed to close the room. I will never forget the compassion in her face. 15 years later, I still remember her name and last name. She was one of those Sicilian teachers who’d come up North for a few years in the hope of being relocated back home. She stayed only a year with us. She was like a walking ray of sunshine. Long blond curly hair, bluest eyes and the enthusiasm of a human spring. Viviana, from that day, came to the end of each class with a natural ingredient ointment she would put on my scars and would slowly help me get the t-shirt off without ripping too much skin away. It was something that would have disgusted many, and yet she did that until the end of the year.

I will never forget what it meant to me. She gave me help without wanting to be thanked too much for it. She gave me help in silence. She would put the ointment on my scars and say nice, encouraging words to me. “Gioia mia, ahì ahì gioia mia”. Viviana loved me like you would love an ugly child. It left a mark on me. Those were tough years; my mother or father would experience humiliation daily and bring the heaviness of it back home. They developed the idea that the world was an ugly place, full of people ready to exploit you or fuck you over. And they liked to share it with my brother and me as a warning. Instinctively, I did not share their view, but I needed proof. Viviana gave me a proof. That humans can love ugly kids. That humans can be good to others. I have been collecting proofs of human dirt all along the way, but there has always been some other proof that wiped it out with the strength of a tsunami. A tsunami of goodness.

When Viviana left, at some point the next year, we went on a school trip to the seaside. Although my scars were getting better, I was annoyed. I felt alone with my shame, no longer able to share it with her. We were in Portofino, and now I had to swim and reveal my tummy full of bloody scabs to my peers. I look at the pictures, and I am always posing in a way that does not show my tummy. I found only one where showing my belly inevitably, I was getting out of the water.

(I suspect I gave it this filter back then, so one could camouflage the bloodied colour they had)

Now, a decade and more later, my eczema has almost disappeared. I seldom use my Bethnovate cream, although I always have at least one reserve tub of it. I haven’t stopped being emotional; I have not managed to suppress my emotions. In fact, I let it all out, more and more asI free myself from all the things I could not say.

But I have collected along the way people who were able to love a soul, and that has made all the difference for me. That is, I suspect, the medicine that dried the scars.

Vilma Djala