The Girl With Nine Wigs

by Sophie van der Stap

  Within thirty minutes I arrive at the hospital, sweaty, puffing, in distress. In front of the entrance are two benches. I sit down on one of the benches and cry in silence. It’s six thirty P.M. and the sun is shining, but I don’t feel anything. I’m wearing my winter coat.

  You would think that I would be used to all this by now. That I would know what she needs to hear and what she doesn’t. But I have no clue. Should I even be here? Should I act cool or be more like Chan and make jokes?

  At the foot of her bed, I watch how she slowly slips away, and I have no idea what to do. There’s less and less of Chan, and more and more of cancer. Why is it that she’s dying and I’m not? Is it just dumb luck? It bothers me that people who have no idea say that the right attitude will get you through. What would they say now?

  MONDAY, MAY 15

  TWO THINGS ON THE SCHEDULE for today: my scan at nine A.M. and then on to Chan’s hospital, just to be with her, to make stupid jokes that don’t make us laugh anymore.

  As I slide under the machine I think about my prognosis and Chan’s. “Wake up and smell the coffee”—that’s what they call this feeling. That’s how it feels to see your friend hanging over the toilet after you’ve been floating on air for a few months.

  “Hey, look who it is!” In the hospital, Esther snaps shut the file she’s working on and grabs mine, which is about a foot thick.

  “Love your hair like this.”

  “Cool, right? All my own, with a little help from L’Oréal,” I tell her. I decided to dye my short coupe blond and to leave my wigs home. She asks after all the new gossip. I smile and give her the rundown of the latest developments in my life as a single girl and debuting author.

  Dr. L approaches, but not to join in our conversation. He’s here to check up on my body, not my hair. Like a real doctor, Dr. L isn’t easily distracted.

  “How do you feel?” he asks me.

  “Good.”

  “No complaints? Stabbing pains, tingling?”

  “No.”

  “Are you having your scan now?” Dr. L might make my appointments, but I keep track of them.

  “No, just had it. So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Let’s not put that off. I’ll fit you in.”

  “Great.”

  “I like your hair like that.”

  “Thanks.”

  * * *

  On my way to Chantal’s room I pass by the morgue.

  Scary, huh? That I’ll be down here someday? Chantal’s words still give me goose bumps. What idiotic architect planned this hospital, anyway?

  In the chemo ward all the women have short hair, I fit in perfectly. There are some baldies and here and there a wig or a head scarf. Chantal has the thickest and longest hair of them all; cancer has a very good sense for irony. She’s on the fourth floor, wing C, room 1. The card slipped into her door reads EMERGENCY.

  She is lying in bed. Her friend Ellen sits next to her. I imagine the loneliness she must be feeling because she’ll be the first to go. She punctuates my thoughts by puking up her breakfast.

  “Show Sophie the magazine,” she says to Ellen.

  Her friend hands me a glossy magazine. “Page sixty-four,” she says.

  I turn the pages. A glowing Chantal, with the headline I HAVE TO LIVE THIS LIFE TO THE FULLEST. Chan and her life philosophy in the spotlights. Cancer really does sell.

  Chantal Smithuis (34) is terminally ill. She is expected to die from breast cancer within two years. She wants to give a voice to all those women who don’t make it. And to tell us how, to her own surprise, she is happier than ever.

  I look past the magazine pages to the sick girl lying in bed, drugged up with morphine and dexamethasone. Some happiness. I speak to her in a soft voice. She answers in a slow, rasping whisper.

  “This is what I was afraid of. Being admitted to this hospital.” She’s in the serious-cancer-patient hospital now. Although Chantal has been undergoing treatment at this hospital for a while, she has never been admitted overnight. “The beginning of the end,” she mumbles.

  I stay quiet, robbed of all my words. Ellen goes to get some fresh air. The room smells of chicken broth from the plastic cup that sits next to her hospital bed. She can’t keep it down. A continuous cycle of swallowing, heaving, and vomiting. Bile and exhaust fumes from the helicopter flying around in her head for the past three days. Thank God she has a room to herself.

  When the curtain opens we look up. A worried-looking face appears; wrinkled forehead, middle-aged. On his name tag is written a name and “neurologist.” A nurse behind him. The neurologist shakes our hands one at a time. Then his hand moves to Chantal’s shoulder, where it stays.

  “It’s not good news, I’m afraid. Metastases of the tumor have spread to your brain.” Doctors really don’t mince words around here. I swallow and look at Chan, the braver of the two of us.

  She’s pissed off. “Thirty-four,” she says. “I’m fucking thirty-four.” Her middle finger goes up. It’s the first time I’ve seen her cry.

  “We’ll have to start you on radiation straightaway.”

  “And then what? Will that get rid of it?”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  “Will it make me go bald again?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many metastases are we talking about?” she asks.

  “They’ve spread all throughout the head.”

  “Shit. That’s the third time it’s come back. I can’t believe how fast it comes. I was feeling so good these few months without chemo and now bam! It’s in my head.” She looks at me.

  “Where’s your notebook, Sophie? I thought you wanted to write a book about cancer.” Bam.

  I give Chan a kiss and tell her I’ll be back soon. The tram is already waiting at the stop and I run as fast as I can. During the whole ride I look outside the window and cry, cry, cry.

  TUESDAY, MAY 16

  ROB SITS WITH ME in the waiting area. I’m happy that he’s with me again. I follow the hands of the clock, watch the drawn faces of the people around me, wiggle back and forth on the uncomfortable plastic seat, and look at Rob. He squeezes my shoulder and gives me a kiss on my cheek. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes before I see Dr. L approaching. He’s smiling.

  I sigh with relief. The thing is, the fear didn’t leave my body together with the cancer. Now, without chemo, its sort of probation time: Is it really gone or will my body be full of swimming cancer cells again in a few months time? I wonder when the day will come that I don’t worry about cancer anymore, but about something mundain as paying the rent.

  “Miss van der Stap.” Outside his office I’m still a “Miss.” I get up, shake his hand, and will him to hold his smile. It works.

  “Well, it all looks fine. Some minor changes from the last images, but in all probability those are effects from the radiation. How are you feeling?”

  “Great. I feel great.”

  * * *

  I go straight from the good news to the bad news: Chantal.

  “How did your scan go?”

  “Good,” I say softly. It feels wrong to celebrate next to a head full of tumors. How do you tell someone who is dying that every day brings you closer to living again?

  “Oh, good, I’m glad.” She smiles. “At least one of us is clean.”

  MONDAY, MAY 19

  I READ THE NEWSPAPER and shamefacedly have to admit that I have no idea what the political cartoon I’m reading is referring to. Did I or did I not study political science? Where is my head at?

  Not in the newspapers, that’s for sure. My head is somewhere else entirely. I’m reminded of the distance between me and everyone else every day: My body is supposed to be back to normal, but my head hasn’t caught up yet. My tumors are gone. Now I’m a cancer survivor. It’s supposed to be the end of the story. But will it ever really be over?

  Chatting with friends in the pub, voting—for the female candidate perhaps, or maybe the Green Party this time?—meeting new frien
ds, old friends, men. Dating still doesn’t come as easily to me as it used to. Whether it’s Rob, Jur, Allard, or Tie Boy, it’s always complicated. I go through the motions. I get up, pull on my high heels, and stick on my lashes. I get attention easily enough, but that’s not what I’m looking for anymore. And love apparently is a whole different matter.

  TUESDAY, MAY 20

  I STAND IN FRONT OF a very fancy building on the Herengracht. It’s one of the mansions built by the nouveau riche of the eighteenth century. Today this neighborhood is home to our mayor, publishing houses, and important lawyers’ offices. I ring the bell; the door is opened via the intercom.

  “Good morning, I have an appointment with Mr. Spijkers.”

  “Your name, please?”

  “Sophie van der Stap.”

  “I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  The girl behind the reception desk shows me to a waiting area with black leather chairs. I sit down and inspect my surroundings with interest. On the table with newspapers I can see the magazine NL20. It’s an old edition, the one in which I report on the boat party where everybody was wearing wigs and I left as Cicciolina. Then there are books. A lot of books. I stand up to take a closer look at them.

  The hallway is made of white marble and tiles. These traditional Dutch tiles are called witjes. I know because my father likes to pass on his historical knowledge about our city everywhere we go. He always has a story, a history, whether we pass gables, street names, or churches. A few months ago we went on a church tour and ended up at one called Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder in the red-light district, hidden in an old, crooked canal house. The secret church is located on the third floor and is fully equipped: organ, balconies, stained-glass windows, and witjes. The narrow staircase and numerous visitors made me feel dizzy and tired, so we rested for a while on one of the church pews. Physically, I was a mess. What a difference I feel after only two months.

  “Sophie? Follow me, please.”

  The girl from reception walks ahead of me. She leads me up the imposing staircase, made completely out of marble. She stands still at a high wooden door.

  “Sir?”

  “Come in!”

  She opens the door and leaves me behind. I’m nervous. My hands are sticky, sweaty. Pam suddenly feels kind of warm there on top of my head. The temperature outside has risen to summer levels.

  “Welcome, I’m Mai. I’m happy you could make it.” After the usual exchange of pleasantries I take a seat. Again, I see books everywhere I look.

  “Well, I don’t need to say much. We loved your manuscript. It needs a little work here and there, but nothing major. We can publish in the fall. What do you say?”

  I look at the man sitting across me. He is as bald as I was a little while back. He has fierce eyes and a big grin on his face. He’s dressed elegantly in a crisp white shirt, suspenders, and a tailored suit. Although it’s immediately clear that he’s the one running the publishing house, there’s something relaxed about how he holds himself, with his hands tucked in his pockets. I give him a blank look, at a loss for the right words to say.

  “Um, that sounds great.”

  “Do you have a title?”

  “I was thinking Nine Wigs.”

  “Nine Wigs,” he repeats, shifting sideways in his chair to look out on the canal. Nine Wigs, Nine Wigs. He repeats it again several times and looks back at me as if he’s a doctor who’s examining me. “I like it! It’s intriguing. But what about The Girl with Nine Wigs?”

  I walk home along the canal with a freshly signed contract under my arm. “The Girl with Nine Wigs by Sophie van der Stap,” it says. It feels kind of super cool, walking home being that girl.

  EPILOGUE

  IT’S ALL REAL. All the words I’ve written, all the tears I’ve cried, all the pain I’ve faced.

  All the nurses, all the IV drips, Dr. L, all the visits to the ER, all the blood transfusions, all the white coats. Dr. K, the vomit buckets, the pills, the tubes, my fake boob, the wet T-shirts, the ladyfingers, the scans, the blood counts, Dr. N, the medical files, all the baldies. My own bald head.

  They are all real. Lance, Jur, Oscar, Marco, Chantal.

  All the cards, all the phone calls, all the visitors, all the flowers, all the care, all the love, all the sadness, all the worried looks. Those, too, are all real.

  Dad, Mom, Sis. So close to me the entire time.

  All the meditation attempts, all the organic food shops, all the tomato juice with lemon, all the green tea, all the beetroot, all the seeds and miso soup, a little Jesus. One hundred percent real.

  All the wigs, the last hairs I plucked painlessly from my scalp, the last of my pubic hair, which at first I left as some sort of statement but later pulled out. My scars, the destroyed arteries in my right arm, my trusty IV pole, my hospital bed. Real, real, real.

  Stella, Daisy, Sue, Blondie, Platina, Uma, Pam, Lydia, Bebé. Real.

  And now? I’ve been given a second chance. It feels so unreal but it’s the most real of all. I can’t wait to get up and start living again. First destination? Hong Kong.

  POSTSCRIPT

  Today I’m thirty-two, in good health, and no longer afraid that the cancer will return. All this makes it possible for me to look back at my illness as an experience that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on. But I don’t feel right saying that—cancer is not something to be grateful for. Not ever. The absence of people I dearly loved reminds me of that every day.

  Chantal passed away soon after my cancer went into remission, in 2007. It was our cancer that brought us together and connected us until the end. I was in complete awe of her courage facing death. Up until her very last day Chantal was full of joie de vivre and her own incredible sense of humor. She would surprise me with each visit. Either she’d ask about what I had been up to and joke that she had just come back from a long run along the river, or she’d be singing lame Dutch pop music. Even when she was fully paralyzed, she’d always look forward to her bath at six P.M. each evening, which the nurses would fill with rose petals and bath oil. I hated to see her dying; I hated the fact that I had been given a second chance when she hadn’t; I hated our cancer. I think I started to hate life, too, when a year later, against all expectations, Jurriaan’s cancer returned. He died at the age of twenty-nine. I can’t tell you how close to death I felt myself when I lost him. He was such a special and talented person. And also, he still was my dream guy. Some people tried to console me by saying that “God takes the best among us first.” That just made me even more angry. Fuck God, was all I could think.

  If there’s one silver lining to all this suffering, it is that it has brought out a piece of peace in me. My cancer put me more in touch with life. It took away my constant questioning of what life was about and replaced it with the knowledge that life is about love. I have never laughed as wholeheartedly as when I was ill or when sitting next to Chantal’s bed in her final days. I don’t mean just having a laugh, but those really good belly laughs that bring you to tears and make you feel alive. My illness taught me to embrace life and that actually just means to embrace joy and laughter. Suddenly I had all the time in the world; every minute was mine. I didn’t have to waste a single moment on things or people I disliked.

  Although cancer takes over your life, we still have the power and ability to turn it into something good—or at least something that is not all bad. This is something that my wigs taught me. They helped me understand that although the cancer was overwhelming, there was still space to create my own parallel reality: in my case, a girl without baggage or drama who just wanted to have some fun. My cancer was always there, when I woke up in the morning, when I fell asleep with tears in my eyes at night. But thanks to my wigs, there were more and more moments when I could say: “Now this is my time, cancer. I’ll see you again tonight, but for right now I’m going to go out and live.” I truly believe that in the deepest despair we can find refuge and comfort in our minds. Call it escapism or something else; all I k
now is that it helped me.

  This experience taught me to not take things for granted. But now that cancer has become a thing of the past, an experience I survived, I again have days when I struggle with life, days when I take for granted that I walk the planet and forget that once I wasn’t even sure I would make it until tomorrow, let alone to age thirty-two. For example, after all I’ve been through I should celebrate every extra birthday I’m given. But back to the living I’m also back to being a woman who doesn’t want to age.

  On difficult days, it does help me to think about Jurriaan and Chantal and all the others who were less fortunate than me. Somehow they console me, as much as they did when they were alive. At the very least, I owe them something.

  When I think back to what I’ve gone through what strikes me most is that my experience is not so much about cancer but about life, and living it. If you change one letter the word “live” becomes “love.” If there’s any message I’d like to pass on, this is it.

  Thank you for reading my story.

  Sophie

  Paris, June 2015

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey;

  Without her you would not have set out.

  She has nothing left to give you now.

  —C. P. Cavafy

  Thank you, Jan, for finding the writer in me. You knew she existed before I did. Thank you, Esther, for developing the writer in me. Thank you, Jaap, for all your literary support. Thank you, Hans, for your crucial advice. Thank you, Walter, for being so much more than my neighbor. Thank you, Jurriaan, for your too short existence. Thank you, Dr. L, for my existence. Thank you, Dr. K, for coloring the hospital for me. Thank you, Dr. N, for your calculations. Thank you Annabel for being the best of friends. Thank you Otto and Bebé for making me feel part of your family. And thank you, Mom, Dad, and Sis, for being my family. Thank you, everyone, for making my story possible.