A guy I dated briefly once asked about my mother of pearl ring. Everyone knows a ring has a story. 

“I won’t tell you,” I said before I could stop myself. Then I corrected, saying I bought it off Etsy, but it was too late. I would never tell him the story of my ring, because to know and understand my ring was to know and understand me. If I told someone about my rings, about this ring in particular, it would signal to me that I trusted them, and they trusted me, too. And I had no interest in giving my trust.

The first ring I ever owned was from an Irish dance competition when I was eleven. Its Celtic knot pattern reminded me that I was Irish, that I was a dancer. I wore it every day until one afternoon when I put it in my pocket to play patty cake with a friend and never saw it again. Studying abroad in Spain, I bought an amber ring. It was my first time out of the country and the ring meant I was now a traveler and always would be. When I moved to El Salvador, I was advised that if someone complimented someone else’s jewelry, it was customary to gift it to them. I couldn’t risk that; as a compromise, I put it in my suitcase, to have close to me but not to wear. I never saw it again.

In Ireland I got a Claddagh ring, which I wore on a chain around my neck when I rejected the categorization of the four relationship statuses indicated by how the Claddagh is worn. Rings had never been about relationships for me; rings were about me. I didn’t want to make a statement about my status, to let everyone know right away if I was available, taken, engaged, or married. What if I was none of the above? When I fell for someone in an open relationship, the ring snapped. I rejected the symbolism. 

I waited for the ring to find me, for the feeling of fate and serendipity to make the ring mean something. I broke that rule at the age of twenty-five, when I purchased on the internet a rectangular mother of pearl ring, grooved with flowers, set in engraved silver. It was large and particular; not everyone would like it. It expressed, not me exactly, but a boldness I so needed at the time.

I’d been dating someone for about a year. When I was with him, he made everything a delight, an adventure if only we made it so. He was lively, generous, magnetic, and adored by everyone he met. I strove to be worthy of him. 

A month or two after we started dating, on my birthday camping trip, I realized something about a bump on my index finger. I thought it was a weird pimple or an ingrown hair. But no matter how much I messed with it, it didn’t go away. 

“I think this is a wart,” I said. My boyfriend took my hand in his, examined my finger with a prescriptive eye. 

“It’s definitely a wart,” he said, and dropped my hand. “That’s gross.”

There wasn’t much I could do about it in the moment. I’d heard that duct tape might help, but we were in the woods. So I laughed. He did not.

At home, I researched what I could do. There were many options, but none of them were guaranteed to work. Time was the only definite cure. 

I tried Compound W, but the protrusion, looking like a tiny, fleshy cauliflower, remained. I didn’t get around to going to the doctor and I couldn’t bring myself to call attention to the blemish by covering it with duct tape. I hoped no one would notice.

“You want to know what I don’t like about you?” the boyfriend said, months later. I did want to know; I asked him all the time. He refused to say anything bad about me, or anything good. I couldn’t tell if he liked me; my only hint was that he hadn’t broken up with me yet. And if he refused to tell me these things, he must be hiding some major dislikes. I had dozens of guesses as to what they might be. “Your wart. That’s my least favorite thing about you right now.”

We’d been kissing. He’d pushed me away when my wart accidentally grazed his skin. I knew he meant what he said.

“When you have a wart, you do something about it,” he said.

“But what do I do?”

“You go to the doctor and get it frozen off.”

So I went to a dermatologist. Because the wart went deep, nearly to the bone, he recommended a blister treatment instead of freezing. I did that. A blister blossomed underneath the wart. The blister popped and created a ring wart around the perimeter of the blister. The tiny cauliflower had become a not-so-tiny mountain range. When the doctor saw it, he said, Oh, that’s really bad. He prescribed me a cream that could take care of the new, larger wart. 

I no longer had insurance. The five-minute appointment cost me $287.

The cream looked like peanut butter. It burned through my skin, creating a raw wound that went so deep I was surprised not to see bone. If it hurt, that meant it was working. I was pleased as I watched my flesh sizzling over the course of weeks, because soon I would have one less flaw and all would be well between my boyfriend and me. But when he saw the wound he told me my finger was going to fall off.

So I went to a nurse practitioner. She said the best treatment would be to burn the wart. As she was cauterizing, she said, “What would you like to name the wart? If you name it, you can conceptualize it, and then you can fight it.” She believed in the healing power of the mind, that I could will my wart away.

“Beatrice,” I said. It seemed like an evil stepsister name.

“The goddess of beauty...Interesting choice,” the NP said. “You should buy yourself a ring. It will be a special ring, something you can use to fight Beatrice. Take control of your fingers and use it to overpower her.”

I didn’t know how much stock to put in that, but I was willing to try anything and I did want a new ring. So I broke my serendipity rule and spent hours looking online for my wart-repelling ring. It had to be my inner source of strength. Something just for me, to fight to take back my body, myself. I didn’t even ask my boyfriend what he thought of it. I didn’t care. It was the ring of my will. I wore it on my other hand to distract from the flesh-colored bandage I always wore.

All in all, I spent about $800 trying to get rid of my wart, trying to get my boyfriend to like me, or to dislike me less. In the end, it was time, and possibly garlic, that eradicated it. It disappeared without ceremony, and when it was gone, I didn’t tell my boyfriend. If I didn’t call attention to the wart having existed, maybe he would forget how much he’d disliked that part of me. We broke up shortly after the wart was healed, leaving a bumpy, circular scar in its place.

I continued wearing the mother of pearl anti-wart ring, carrying the secret of its meaning, as I grew to hate my ex and then thought I loved him again and then felt nothing at all for him. I wore it through a graduate course, two drafts of a novel, and more dates with people who never learned about the ring, people I never got close to, so they could never push me away.

I chose to be celibate for six months. I dated myself, became the sexless love guru for my friends. I ran a half-marathon. I felt like a pillar—strong, nearly impossible to topple. 

The ring, with its bulky secrets, held less and less meaning for me. It was no longer a talisman to ward off the judgment of boyfriends, or boyfriends in general. I didn’t want to wear it anymore, but I couldn’t find a replacement that felt right. So I kept wearing it, because it was my rule to always wear a ring, and what if I lost myself without it?

I don’t remember taking the mother of pearl ring off, but one day approximately a year after the wart became a scar, I became aware that I owned my fingers, with or without rings, with or without blemishes. In an unmemorable moment, the ring, its floral engraving worn smooth with countless hand-washings, had been put away with my necklaces and half-pairs of earrings. I hadn’t faded away or turned into someone else. I didn’t feel less myself. I even felt lighter without its weight.

Rings had always been a personal reminder, but the world asked about them and expected an answer. Without a ring, I was myself, but no one knew it, until they knew me.

In that moment I didn’t commit to memory, I was probably leaving the house to go out with friends and slipped the ring off my finger, just to see how it felt. I think I stepped out into the night and rode my bike to meet my friends, no longer feeling the pinching of flesh between the ring and the bike handle that had caused a callus on my palm. When I arrived, my friends recognized me, despite my bare hands.