What Do Scabs Mean to You?

Of course I would read 'Scab Painting' by Yoko Ogawa, published in The New Yorker on July 20, 2023. This story is translated from Japanese by Steven Snyder. 

The narrator's twin brother died overnight in his sleep from a heart attack from a blocked artery. The narrator told a tale of the twin brother having a thing about removing scabs, and how deft he was at it even as a child, without ever causing blood or pain. He even kept these scabs to make a painting. I'm like... 'eiooowww, gross!' 

There was no age given to indicate how old the twins are. I don't even know if the narrator is a man or a woman till it mentioned "tomboy" somewhere. All we know is, their parents died young. So readers may assume that they're adults in their late twenties or mid-thirties. The twin brother has an anxiety issue about his lack of a licence in his 'profession'. However, he didn't need to be licenced. Apparent his profession is an artist of 'scab paintings'. Okaaaay.

Perhaps he felt that he, too, was an impostor, that everyone else had been given the proper documentation or an official badge, and he alone had no credentials. Perhaps he was convinced that the moment would come when his unlicensed status would come to light. And what would he do then? 

But the truth was that he didn’t work in a profession that required a license; nor had he ever pursued one that did. Still, his anxiety only grew deeper. This impostor syndrome shaped his personality, and it’s probably fair to say that it dictated the course of his life, though it never seemed to consume his soul. If anything, he was purified by it.

The narrator could only try to ease his anxiety and keep him fed, and take care of him as best as she could. By and by, we learnt that the brother's anxiety caused him to self-mutilate, by somehow causing injuries to his own body so that they form scabs of different shapes and sizes. Then he could wait for the new skin to form, he could pick at the scab and collect them to make his 'scab paintings' or 'self-portraits'. I was both spooked and sympathetic at the same time.

I think it’s possible that the scab paintings were my brother’s equivalent of a license, a badge meant to prove that his existence was not a mistake, that he had as much right as anyone else to be here. A badge he made by whittling away at his own body.

I didn't realize this story was meant to be a (fictional) eulogy till I got to the end. It was only then I realized that the brother might have been a hikikomori (ひきこもり), a social recluse. It's a very sad story, yet it spoke of the sibling's love for him. There was so little she could do to help him except to try to support his uhhh... hobby. And I don't know if it's better that he died of natural causes, before he could self-mutilate farther. 

In deference to me, my brother had huddled in a tiny ball in our mother’s womb, and then, as though in compensation, he had obtained enormous size. And yet his feeling that he lacked credentials prevented him from going out into society, and he spent his whole life locked away in his minuscule world. Still, I’m extremely gratified that so many of you have gathered here today on his behalf. 

I want to let you know that the chocolate box has been left by the door, and I’d like to ask each of you to select a scab portrait on your way out. I’m sure that my brother would be pleased if you would. My shy brother, my blushing brother, my whistling brother, my chuckling brother, my dreaming brother. . . . In those portraits you’ll find every expression that ever crossed his face. It would give me the greatest pleasure if you would keep them with you for years to come, as badges providing proof that he lived among us.