the veil as a screen with nothing behind it
when her head was down the veil hung loose at the same vertical angle as when her head was up, only now it was perfectly smooth and untextured, a smooth white screen with nothing behind it
Context
When Joelle drops her head the veil stops conforming to a face and becomes pure blank surface — a smooth white screen with, apparently, nothing behind it. The image catches the theme's dread in an object: a face that has become a screen that transmits nothing, the human features that would let you read a person replaced by a blankness onto which anything (or nothing) might be projected. [sweep · shared-ground disability-deformity]