The Girls

by Lori Lansens

  When I first started getting headaches it was once every few days and they weren’t bad. But the headaches have gotten worse and they’ve been more frequent and last week my left eye started to blur. Obviously that’s not good. There’s no MRI machine in Leaford or Chatham so we had to go to Toronto. The train was sold out. The bus is cheaper, so that was a bonus, but I get sick on the bus more than the train because of the fumes. All the way to Toronto I’m thinking, Don’t puke—brain tumor—don’t puke—brain tumor—don’t puke—brain tumor. Then a man got on at Woodstock and sat downwind of Rose and me and the guy was wearing so much aftershave I did puke. I’d forgotten to bring a clean shirt, and Rose wouldn’t let me borrow her spare blouse. Fair enough, because she knew I’d probably puke at least one more time and next time it might be on her shirt. But at the time I was mad. So we didn’t talk the rest of the way there. The taxi driver in Toronto took us the long way to the hospital, and the cafeteria was closed for renovation. Then the prognosis from Dr. Singh. Inoperable aneurysm. All in all a fun-filled day.

  I don’t know what to say. Maybe that’s why I haven’t written.

  I imagine Rose has already said it all. So she’s already told you about seeing Dr. Singh and finding out that my sister was having headaches too. Really, really bad ones. And then finding out about the aneurysm. And that it’s in her brain. Not mine.

  Rose never calls it by the right name: aneurysm. She calls it her “thing” when she talks about it at all, which is only when I bring it up. When I asked her to go on her computer and get as much information as she could find about brain aneurysms, she came back with two pages and said there wasn’t much information out there. I couldn’t believe that, so I thought about slipping Whiffer a note, but we’ve agreed not to tell anyone at the library that we are dying.

  I don’t want to ask Dr. Singh for information beyond what he’s already given us because he seemed bugged when I said I thought we should get a second opinion. But then again maybe he wasn’t bugged. Maybe I read him wrong. Rosie’s better at reading people and she says I’m paranoid. I wonder if anyone else thinks that.

  I call it our aneurysm. Six months ago I didn’t know exactly what an aneurysm was. An aneurysm is a weakened vein, which can be in your head or your heart or your stomach, which stretches like a balloon. It can stretch to the point where it leaks a little blood or it can stretch till it bursts open all the way and you can die. It can also put pressure on vital areas and cause other problems.

  Usually these things are operable but in our case the aneurysm is not operable. That’s the second opinion too, which we got yesterday. But I’m sure Rose has already written about that too.

  I expected to have Dr. Singh’s diagnosis confirmed, but I think Rose was hoping for a miracle. She hardly said a word all the way home. She gripped me tight, which she always does when she’s mad (whether she’ll admit it or not), and didn’t want to talk.

  When we got home from that first diagnosis, Rose wanted to go to bed. She always brings her laptop to bed so that wasn’t unusual. I fell asleep and woke up a few hours later and she was still on her computer. I’ll bet Rose wrote about a hundred pages that night. The next day she told me she had started to write her autobiography. Which is when I said that technically I didn’t think she could. In some ways that seems like a year ago, but it was really only a few weeks.

  If I look up from where I’m writing on my yellow legal pad I can see Rose in the mirror. She’s reading a book. I can’t read the title from here. It’s got leather binding. Shakespeare or a classic. She is frowning, which means she loves it.

  We have a lot of mirrors in our house. About ten times the mirrors that an average person would have. We have at least six mirrors in each room. Rose and I can’t see each other, so we use the mirrors to look at the other when we want to. Sometimes we even feel like we need to. Sometimes, but not often. Mostly, we don’t need the mirrors to know what the other is thinking. I know if Rose is angry because of the way her eyebrows tighten and pull at the skin of my temple.

  We fight more when we don’t look at each other, even if it is only through the mirror. Sometimes I catch myself staring at Rose, forgetting that we’re joined.

  Staring is a fact of life when you are a conjoined twin. I think especially when you’re joined at the head, because that’s when people really go Oh my God! Imagine that! It’s not as weird to Rose and me as you’d think. Aunt Lovey used to tell us that we were lucky because we were rare, and we shouldn’t mind when people stare.

  Dr. Kitigan (the second opinion) said the same thing Singh said. The aneurysm could erupt virtually any time. In Rose’s next breath or in our sleep tonight or in a month. Or two months or three or six months. But likely not seven. And most certainly not eight. That’s what Singh says. Most certainly. Most certainly not eight. I asked him point-blank, Are you saying we only have six months left? He didn’t answer right away because, even for a doctor, these things are hard to say. Then he said yes. Six months. At the most.

  Rose reminded me it’s the same for everyone. No one knows the precise moment of his or her death. That’s why we should carpe diem (enjoy today because who knows about tomorrow). We don’t know what to expect with the aneurysm. Most of the symptoms will be Rose’s. But we share a major vein, so there are issues of fluid and pressure. I’ll experience more headaches. And continue to have some blurring vision. Or loss of smell. Or worse things, like blindness and loss of motor control. Or we could go on with mild symptoms, then just suddenly drop dead.

  We have three months to go till our thirtieth birthday. I never expected to see thirty, so I’m not gonna say I feel cheated about the length of my life. Still, it would mean something to me to turn thirty years old. The longest-surviving craniopagus twins next to us died at twenty-nine. Just being alive has sometimes felt like an accomplishment. I would like to reach a milestone like thirty years old. I would very much like to have that distinction.

  I’ve been praying lately. We didn’t go to church when we were growing up, but Uncle Stash and Aunt Lovey taught us about God. Rose says she’s undecided, but I believe, and I’ve been praying that God will please let us celebrate turning the big 3-0.

  Rose said that I should remember, when I’m writing, to write about my life, not just our life, and to share my own thoughts and memories of the past.

  So, here’s something. Like I said, Rosie and I grew up in the country in an old farmhouse on land near the river where the Neutral Indians had a fishing camp hundreds of years ago. After the earth was tilled each spring, we’d walk through the fields. (Just so you know, even though I don’t walk with my feet, I still think of myself as a walking person. Obviously I’m not in a wheelchair or anything. The best way I could explain it is to say that I feel like I borrow Rose’s legs when it’s my turn to lead. There have been times when Rose has stubbed her toe or stepped on something sharp where I swear to God I felt it.)

  Anyway, we’d walk through the fields after Mr. Merkel’d been through with the plow, when the earth was really black and clean. You hardly ever saw rocks in it. So when you did see something gray or flinty or clay-colored, one out of ten times it was a very good arrowhead or a bit of pottery. On our side of the creek I found twenty-seven partial pieces, and one full piece, of clay pottery, hundreds of flints of all sizes, a dozen grooved stones and fluted points and ax heads, a traveling kit, and three pipes with animal effigies—two turtle heads and a bird. I also found a large bone sucking tube, which is really cool. It’s all under lock and key at the Leaford Museum (which closed its doors a few months ago because of no funds. I telephoned the lady from the Historical Society three times saying how I’d love to go visit the collection, but she hasn’t returned my calls). I wanted to keep the bone sucking tube. I loved the way it felt in my hand. It had a vibration. All the things I’ve found do. You hold this old thing in your hand, this stone or arrowhead or mortar and pestle, which was an everyday tool for a person from hundreds of years ago, and there�
��s something warm in it. Something alive. I wanted to keep the bone sucking tube, but Aunt Lovey lectured about how history doesn’t belong only to me. Uncle Stash was slightly more sympathetic, but he still made a call to the Historical Society and said we’d bring it to the museum.

  Rose and I were not allowed to look for artifacts on Merkels’ side of the creek where Mrs. Merkel might look out the window and see us searching. Aunt Lovey said it would remind the poor woman of when the whole town was out looking for Larry.

  Rose’s eyes aren’t as sharp as mine. She hardly ever found anything good. Sometimes I’d make her stop right in front of a piece of pottery or an arrowhead and pretend not to see it myself, so that she could be the lucky one. Rose is so blind. Or maybe she didn’t really care.

  (I just realized you might not know what a bone sucking tube is. It’s a tube made of hollowed-out bone, and the medicine men in the tribe would use it to suck the illness from whatever part of a person’s body it was in.)

  One time I found the top of a skull in the field. I didn’t know it was a skull at first. I was actually pretty excited, thinking it might be a ceremonial bowl. But then I saw the suture joints on the bone. Rose moved the dirt away with her foot so we could get a better look. It was pretty shocking to realize it was a human skull. There was this huge hole in it. When Rose and I saw the hole we both screamed, and Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash came running.

  Aunt Lovey was a nurse and she knew right away it was a skull. She got down on her knees in the dirt to examine it and saw that it was fractured. Uncle Stash bent down to have a look too, and he pointed at something inside the skull. Finger bones. Inside the hole in the skull. Aunt Lovey looked puzzled. Uncle Stash thought for a minute, then raised his hand to shield himself from an imaginary ax or hatchet, demonstrating how a person’s finger bones could end up in his or her skull. He was clever like that.

  We buried the skull very deep, six feet under, so the plow couldn’t turn him up again next year.

  I never did very well in school except in art, but I got an A on the project I did about the local Indians. Aunt Lovey had Native blood in her, which you would not have guessed in a million years. She was so fair. If someone had said she was Irish or Scottish or Welsh or one of those, you would have believed it. But, really, she was French, with an Indian great-great-great-great-grandmother. So my interest comes from two places. From my Aunt Lovey and from my home where we grew up.

  Rose and I went to school with a boy named Frankie Foyle. He lived a few concessions away from us. There was this huge mound in the middle of Foyle’s corn, about the size of a swimming pool. The mound was grown over with grass and had been for years. It was too much money to bulldoze it, so I guess Frankie’s father, Berb, didn’t think about the mound much one way or another. He just fenced it in and left it be. Then one day one of his big dogs dug up a bone. The dog brought this bone to Berb’s wife, and she got suspicious.

  Somehow Mrs. Merkel heard about the bone, and she thought maybe it was Larry. The police went out to Foyles’ and found more bones, all of them human, dug up from the grassy mound in the middle of Berb’s corn. So the police kept digging, and the forces from London and Windsor came and took over. The local police tried to tell the others that the mound on Berb’s property had been there ever since anyone could remember. But no one paid attention. More men came to dig, and more, and trucks and whatnot, and in the end they counted more than seventy skulls.

  They took Berb to jail while they investigated, and they discovered that the bones were similar to the skeletons found in a Neutral Indian camp near Rondeau. When they realized the hill in Berb’s farm was an Indian burial mound, they dug a deep hole and put the skeletons back in the ground and covered the hole with earth. The government and other groups got involved. And they even put up a commemorative plaque. But no one’s very interested in looking at a patch of weeds in the middle of a cornfield. And Berb’s known as a crazy, so you don’t necessarily want to find yourself alone in a field with him either.

  I don’t know if people were suspicious of Berb before the thing happened with the human bones, but after he got out of jail, his wife left him, and the whole town kept looking at him weird. Even Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash. And Frankie (his son who is around our age and who there is a whole huge story about which I don’t want to get into, but Rose will I’m sure) split his time between his father’s farm and his mother’s rented house, which just happens to be the bungalow on Chippewa Drive that Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash owned at the time. And where we live now. After a while Frankie started spending more time at his mother’s than his father’s. Even though Berb did not really kill anyone.

  Rose said to write about things that have been important to us. Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash. The museum. The library has been important. Our family history has been important. How boring!

  When Rose and I talked about what we wanted to do in the time we have left, I said I wanted to go to the Museum of Indian Archaeology in London. We haven’t been there since Uncle Stash and Aunt Lovey passed away.

  The museum has a huge collection of artifacts, and an exact replica of a longhouse that you can go inside. If Errol Osler is there, he’ll let Rose and me have a minute in the longhouse alone. That’s about the closest thing we get to a church. I think even Rose finds the longhouse to be a spiritual place. She never says no when I ask if she wants to go.

  Over the years of our going there, Errol Osler sort of became a friend. He’s a very interesting person who has clocked thousands of volunteer hours for the museum and he’s quite an archival genius, even though he never went to school for it. I love talking to Errol about my recent finds. He has a different way of looking at things. Even at me.

  It was Errol Osler who first told me about reincarnation. He was explaining how the Neutrals sometimes buried their dead children in the middle of the longhouse or along the busiest village paths because they thought the children’s souls could rise up into the belly of pregnant women and be reborn. Somehow that made sense to me. I talked to Aunt Lovey about it later, and she said she believed in reincarnation too. Aunt Lovey and I were a lot alike in that we believed our souls could be reborn. And we both thought dreams had significance if you could just figure them out.

  I have a recurring dream about losing my sister. I wake up relieved to feel her breath (even though it’s usually rank with garlic) on my cheek. Relieved like when I wake up from one of my shattered-teeth dreams and find they’re still in my mouth.

  I never dream about being separated from Rose. Never.

  When I was little, the only way I could fall asleep was if my sister touched my earlobe. I used to cry for her to do it. I called it Lolo for some reason. So I used to cry, Do Lolo, Rose, until Rose would rub my earlobe. Some nights she was too mad at me. Some nights she was tired herself and just didn’t want to. I would cry, or Aunt Lovey would persuade her, and Rose would do Lolo and I would fall asleep. But after a while, Aunt Lovey said, No more Lolo. She said it just wasn’t fair to make Rose responsible for helping me get to sleep, and I cried and cried and cried. Rose couldn’t stand it and she gave in almost right away, but Aunt Lovey threatened to duct tape her hand to her leg to stop her from reaching for my ear. Hearing that made me stop crying, and I didn’t ask for it anymore because I didn’t want Rose to get in trouble. Rose would do it anyway. Not for half an hour the way I liked it, but just a little tug on my earlobe after Aunt Lovey left the room. Just a little tug to say I love you. We also had this thing where I would put my freezing hands on her warm skin, and she’d say, Don’t take my warm. And I’d say, I’m taking your warm. I’m taking all your warm. It’s not as weird as it sounds.

  Dr. Singh said it will happen like this. The aneurysm will likely burst and kill Rose instantly. My death will be a little slower. My body will continue to pump blood into Rose’s, but hers will not respond and I will bleed out, into her. I’ll be conscious for a while. If I want to be. I have two syringes of Tatranax, one for my purse and one fo
r beside the bed, in case I want to expiate my death following my sister’s. I don’t think “expiate” is the right word, but you know what I mean.

  Tatranax will make me sleepy, then unconscious, then stop my heart. I can’t imagine it’s possible that my heart could continue to beat after Rose’s has stopped. (Rose said I should never say which doctor gave us the Tatranax syringe because technically it’s not legal.)

  I was going to write about Uncle Stash taking us to Slovakia after graduation, because Rose said to write about some of the things we’ve done and places we’ve been. That trip was a big one. Huge. Then again, I don’t know if I want to remember Slovakia. Actually, I don’t. And plus, it won’t even make sense without telling all the details of Grozovo, where Uncle Stash grew up, and the Slovak saints’ festivals and their culture, and how they are different from North Americans in a million ways.

  Rose said I could write the story about Aunt Lovey’s wedding dress, which is a simpler story to tell. I can’t write anything more now, though. I find this writing thing exhausting. This was my first time, and it probably will get easier, but if it doesn’t I’ll just do little updates or something.

  If I’m supposed to be writing to a friend it seems weird not to say good-bye.

  So good-bye.

  Birds & Feathers

  I have a clear memory of a trip to Philadelphia to see Dr. Mau when Ruby and I were about six years old. (Dr. Mau, the craniofacial specialist who examined us in Toronto shortly after our birth, had transferred to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.) Ruby says she has no recollection of going to Philadelphia. She claims not to remember the awful car trip and throwing up in my lap. She doesn’t remember being frightened by the strange albino woman who screamed when she saw us in the parking garage or our first taste of Greek food, because nothing else was open.