by Karin Cook
“And Tilden has volunteered to clean up,” Nick concluded and winked at me.
“Cut.” Elizabeth hit STOP. She set the recorder on her lap and jabbed me with her elbow. I pinched her thigh under the table. When Nick wasn’t looking, Elizabeth punched me hard in the arm. But I didn’t make a sound.
• • •
On Wednesday, Ms. Zimmerman stopped me on my way to lunch and asked how I was feeling. She removed her dark-rimmed glasses, revealing a red indentation on the bridge of her nose. “Now, Tilden,” she said, quietly in a no-nonsense voice, “you may not realize this, but this kind of thing has an effect on the whole family. Have you felt the effects? Any pain?”
I shook my head and tried to listen. All the while, I was watching over her shoulder for a sign of my classmates. I wanted someone to interrupt, to make her stop talking.
“Sometimes it hurts those of us on the outside even more because we feel helpless. Sometimes we blame ourselves. Was it something I did? But it’s not.” Ms. Zimmerman forced a smile. “It’s nothing anyone can control. That’s what’s so hard about it.” There was a strange, faraway look on her face.
At lunch, the girls at my table suggested just the opposite. They all watched Charlie’s Angels on TV, had even adopted the hairstyles. They were looking for causes, for clues. Somehow, somewhere along the way, someone was culpable. If they could pin it down, they could prevent a procedure from happening in their families.
Jill Switt wanted to know if we had been drinking the water. Her reddish brown hair was brushed back in a Farrah Fawcett feather. “Do you have asbestos in your cellar?” she asked.
Susie Rhombus’s jet black hair was half-feathered, half-rolled back like Jaclyn Smith’s. She asked how much red meat we ate a week. She’d heard that hot dogs were particularly bad.
“And catsup,” someone added.
“And coffee,” Libbie Gorin chimed in from the next table. “Anything with caffeine.”
Jill continued. “Did your mother smoke? Did anyone around her smoke?”
Susie shifted in her seat. Her father and her two older brothers all smoked.
“Cigarette smoke is definitely the worst,” Christy Diamo added, tossing her stick straight hair—a longer version of the Kate Jackson wedge.
Jill wanted to know if I had been breast fed.
“Oh give me a break, Jill, that has nothing to do with cancer,” Samantha said.
It was the first I’d heard the word cancer. A slow panic grew inside me, like gallons of toxic tap water sloshing up and choking me. Grandma had once smoked. I had been breast fed. We probably did have asbestos in our cellar. If not now, then at one of those places down South. We’d been remiss. Other families drank bottled water. Ate cauliflower and broccoli. My eyes welled up.
The table got quiet. We picked carefully through our lunches. I willed myself not to cry by counting the butter pats on the ceiling. But the sight of Elizabeth in the lunch line brought my attention back. She waved from across the cafeteria. It was a low wave from the hip. Usually we weren’t nice to each other in public, and at school, we acknowledged each other only to point out what the other one was wearing that did not belong to her. But now, our eyes locked for an extra-long second before she clasped her fingers tight around the tray and headed for the milk cart.
In the girls’ room, I locked myself safely inside the stall, sat down on the toilet with my clothes on and waited. The smell from the green linoleum floors was of wet chlorine and muddy shoes. I heard the outer door open and slam. One navy Ked appeared under the bathroom stall, a smilie face on the toe. Samantha. She slid a large book wrapped in a plastic shopping bag under the door.
“It’s my mom’s,” she said. “Don’t let anyone see it.”
I pulled the book out of the bag and set it on my lap. Our Bodies, Ourselves, it was called. The cover was white with a large black-and-white photograph of older and younger women standing together, holding signs. Inside, was a collage of women with severe parts in their hair: women running, studying, hugging, jumping rope, crossing the finish line, doing backbends and self-defense. Slowly, I turned to the table of contents and realized that I didn’t know what I was looking for. I flipped through the pages looking at the diagrams and sketches of naked women, some with their legs spread wide enough to see their insides. There were photos of real women, unlike the paper dolls in the menstruation pamphlet. On one page was a picture of a bloody woman, dead on the floor of a motel room. On another, a woman with only one breast and a tattoo as a scar. All around me walls were turning, the lights buzzed. I put my head on my knees.
“Are you okay?” Samantha asked.
“Uh huh.”
“My mom says you could come with us to the movie on Saturday,” she said. “If you want.”
On Thursday after school, Nick left Elizabeth and me alone at the hospital with Mama while he went on some errands. Elizabeth brought Mama some keepsakes from her bedroom at home. She stacked fashion magazines on the windowsill and hung a sachet of potpourri from the IV stand. She filed and painted each nail on Mama’s hands and feet. I was jealous of her usefulness, and of her ease with Mama’s body. In her soft denim dress and bandanna on her head, Elizabeth suddenly seemed more like Mama than Mama herself.
I stared at Mama’s chest, but couldn’t see anything through the layers of bandages and hospital gowns. I had stayed up late the night before trying to read Our Bodies, Ourselves. There was a section on women’s breasts I kept turning to. But mostly the words washed over and confused me. I made a list of questions and fell asleep with the book open next to me.
“Mama,” I started, “is there a hole where they …”
“Not really,” Mama said. She tapped the place next to her and told us to sit down. “Girls, they removed my whole breast,” she said, “they had to—so the disease wouldn’t spread.”
“They did?” Elizabeth asked, staring suspiciously at Mama’s chest.
I waited for Mama to look at me.
“Do you have cancer?” I asked.
She nodded. “I had cancer. And I’m going to have a little chemotherapy as a follow-up,” she said, “just to be sure they got it all.”
“You had cancer?” Elizabeth asked.
“Don’t worry,” Mama said, “I’m fine now.”
Elizabeth released Mama’s hair from the ponytail holder and worked at the tangles with a brush. Her normally blond hair looked darker against the blue hospital gown as it fell around her shoulders. To keep it from tangling, she let Elizabeth and me practice our braiding. We each took a side, competing for speed and style, and held up our finished ropes like reins. Mama’s hair felt fine and cool as I let it slip between my fingers. I pulled tight across for a box knot and wrapped Band-Aids around the ends. We weren’t really looking at each other. Every time I caught Elizabeth’s eye, she’d turn away.
The door of the room swung open, startling the three of us. “You look like Bo Derek, Mrs. B.,” the doctor said, clutching his clipboard.
Mama blushed. He was younger and even more handsome than the doctor on The Love Boat. He had red, curly hair and blue eyes. His name was Dr. O’Connor. He wore a tie under his white coat. I didn’t know whether or not to like him. He leaned against the heater, crossing one foot over the other.
“There are some exercises I need to show you,” he said. “They’ll help you recover. Do you want me to go over them now or …” He looked at Elizabeth and me uneasily, then back to Mama.
Mama nudged Elizabeth and me off the bed, motioning us to sit in the chair by the window. We squeezed into it together and watched as the doctor demonstrated the exercises.
“Okay. First do this …” He took a deep breath in through his nose and let it out through his mouth. “Deep-sea diving,” he called it. “This will help maintain full lung expansion.” He tapped his chest and looked around for smiles. “Also,” he continued, “you’ll need to strengthen that right arm.” He opened and closed his fist in a pulsing motion. He waited fo
r Mama to try it.
She touched her thumb to the tips of her fingers, as if working a hand puppet.
“Very good.” He smiled and nodded. “I have an idea,” he said and turned to face us. “Do you girls have any Play-Doh at home?”
Elizabeth nodded her head, even though we didn’t; she hadn’t played with it since the second grade. She was always pretending in order to get approval or attention. This time Mama didn’t even seem to notice.
“Take a good amount and make it into a ball,” Dr. O’Connor said. “Then, squeeze it gently.” He cupped his hands together around air. When he was finished with the demonstration, he wrote something on the chart and clipped the pen back in his pocket. “These first two weeks are crucial to recovering your mobility,” he said and tapped Mama’s foot through the blankets. He turned back on his way out the door. “We’ll have you doing laps in no time.”
Mama tried to take a deep breath and let it out. “Want to practice with me?” she asked.
We spilled back onto the bed, breathing quickly and flapping our hands like so many frantic birds.
Friday, when we got to her room, Mama was gone. The sheets had been changed and the blankets were folded on the end of the bed; the steel pans and trays looked clean and especially cold. I froze, terrified. Something had gone wrong. Nick touched his hands to our shoulders and walked quickly toward the nurses’ station. Elizabeth stood against the windowsill eyeing the stack of cards near the air vent. The afternoon sun reflected off an adjacent room and made the windows appear hazy. Long, long, long minutes. Then, before either of us could say a word, Mama came in the door behind me.
“Surprise,” she said.
It hadn’t occurred to me that her absence could be a good sign. She had on sneakers and cotton stretch pants under her robe. Someone had pulled her hair back in a tight bun. Her face was all excitement and anticipation.
“I’m ready to go home,” she said, beaming.
Nick looked calmer when he returned, the head nurse alongside him with a wheelchair. Mama took her place in the chair while Elizabeth and I stuffed the edges around her lap with her belongings.
“What about the magazines?” Elizabeth asked. “And the flowers?”
“Let someone else enjoy them,” Mama said.
We left everything but the potpourri, which Mama looped around the nurse’s wrist almost playfully as she wheeled her into the elevator.
PRIVACY
Despite Mr. McKinney’s attempts at discretion, a week after the permission slips were distributed, everyone in school knew about “And Then One Year.” The secrets that the sixth-grade girls had been keeping, smug and grown up, were suddenly wielded against us. The lower grade girls were relentless. They spit out the names of each private part as if it were a dirty word. With every gesture, they flaunted their smooth, clean bodies and made obscene gestures at us in the halls.
Elizabeth quickly emerged as a leader. She stole my copy of Growing Up and Liking It and read it aloud to a mixed group at lunch. Everywhere she went, gusts of laughter rose up around her. Terms like vulva and fallopian tube became passwords for all the new clubs.
“She’s just jealous,” Samantha said, twisting her bandanna tighter around her head. So jealous became my defense; it didn’t really hide the humiliation, but could be used against younger girls and boys of all ages.
On the bus, Elizabeth joined forces with the same boys who had been tormenting her the week before. “Oily, pimple face,” they shouted at me and Samantha. “B.O.” They pinched their noses. “P.U.”
When we got to our stop, I stuck my legs across the aisle to prevent Elizabeth from getting off the bus.
“Give it back,” I demanded.
Elizabeth kicked my shins and pushed by me. The bus driver glared at us in the large mirror and waited before opening the door. We stood, pressed together in the little staircase, until the driver cranked the metal arm.
“I’m going to kill you,” I said.
Elizabeth took off running, the boys on the bus cheering her on from a distance. I chased her up the driveway to the garage where a group of TransAlt drivers were gathered over an engine. She ran behind the car and shouted, “Tilden has hairy pits.”
I turned my back and pretended to walk away. When I heard her come up behind me, I dropped my books and lunged at her feet, bringing her down to the pavement on the driveway. She fell hard, scraping one arm from elbow to wrist, and lay there for a moment, stunned.
Nick rushed out from the garage, kneeled by Elizabeth’s side, and wiggled her arm gently to see if it was broken.
I stood over them, watching. “I’m sorry,” I said. My pants were scuffed from where I’d hit the ground, but not torn.
“Go away,” she said.
I picked up Elizabeth’s books first, then mine, and stood off to the side. Elizabeth sat with her legs crossed and held her bloody arm away from her clothes while Nick picked a piece of gravel out of her hand. Lainey DeWitt brought out the first aid kit. She held the hydrogen peroxide in one hand, her long, painted nails curling around the width of the bottle, and poured it over Elizabeth’s entire arm. The wound bubbled, turning white then yellow, as Nick blew on it. He helped Elizabeth to her feet and wiped her tears with his grease-stained thumb.
All of the commotion in the driveway brought Mama to the back door in her bathrobe. She’d been sleeping; her hair was matted against one side of her face.
“What happened?” she asked, squinting at the afternoon light.
“She tripped me,” Elizabeth said.
“Now, now,” Nick said, “I’m sure it was an accident.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Is that true, Tilden?” Mama asked.
“Sort of …” I said. “I didn’t mean it. She stole something of mine.” I was frightened by the way Mama looked, but too scared I’d be punished to dwell on it.
“Go upstairs,” Mama said, “I’ll talk to you later.”
I lingered in the hall on the way to my room and listened to Elizabeth’s accusations over the running water. Nick said something about making a sling out of one of my shirts and made her laugh. The TV drowned out the rest of Mama and Elizabeth’s conversation. I turned to my homework and waited.
Two hours later, Mama knocked lightly at my door and popped her head inside. “Aren’t you coming down for dinner?”
I looked up, searching her face for some sign of forgiveness. “Is Elizabeth okay?” I asked and stacked my books at my feet.
Mama nodded, watching me.
“I didn’t mean to …”
“I know.”
She walked across the floor, to the edge of my bed, and placed the menstruation booklet on top of my stack. Her movements were slow and deliberate. She was out of breath from climbing the stairs.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
I shrugged, looking everywhere but at her.
“Do you want me to call Mrs. Shaptaw about the movie?”
“I don’t really want to go.”
“Of course you do,” Mama said. She tugged me toward her, bringing my head to rest against her left shoulder. When I hugged her, gently, I could hear the bandages and tape crinkle beneath her robe.
“Keep notes in this little book. We can talk about it afterward.” She handed me a pocket-sized calendar, one I could use to keep track of my period someday. There were extra blank pages at the back. “Elizabeth’s turn will come,” she said, “you just wait and see.”
On Friday, Samantha asked me if I wanted to spend the whole weekend at her house. She said her mother would take us to Friendly’s for ice cream after the movie, the way she usually did after band concerts.
“How come?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said and looked away. I watched her, hoping for her to look back. Something was weird. It wasn’t like her not to know everything.
While I was packing an overnight bag, Elizabeth came in my room and sprawled out on my bed. She had a square of gau
ze taped over her cut. I kept waiting for her to say something, but instead she sat there braiding the fringe on my pillows and kicking her feet against the bed frame. I wasn’t going to be the one to talk first. I swung the bag over my shoulder and headed for the door.
“Have fun,” she said, looking up at me at last. “You can tell me about it later if you want.”
As parents went, Ivy Shaptaw was a bit younger than most. And wilder. Ivy was spindly as a spider, with long skinny limbs and curly black hair like electrician’s wire. She had a way about her, always turning normal conversations into something funny, half secrets that would send Mr. Shaptaw from the room, his fist to his mouth, coughing. That’s when we knew it was dirty. She’d follow him out of the room, saying the thing over and over, until he bent around a corner, out of sight. When the guys at the lot talked like that, Mama called it innuendo.
But it wasn’t just her parents who indulged. Samantha’s brothers had made a peep show out of the Land-O-Lakes package and hung it on the fridge. The knees of the Indian woman were sliced off and pasted behind the package of butter she held up in front of her. The sides of that little box at her chest were cut free by a razor and bent up to show her knees, turned into breasts, with inked nipples. I couldn’t imagine the Land-O-Lakes lady looking like that in anyone else’s kitchen.
In the bathroom there was a deodorant bottle, that when opened the right way, would release a huge pink penis, almost leaping off its spring. You had to push hard on the tip to stuff it back in its jar. The Shaptaws had pictures of naked bodies, women mostly, out in the open. But one postcard, taped to the front of an old-fashioned scale in the corner of their downstairs bathroom showed fruit. From a distance, it was just a nice orange cantaloupe sliced open, but up close, its interior was dangerous: wet and red, the seeds making folds in an oval slit. Leaning hard against the opening was a banana, half out of its peel, the tip slightly curved. Wish you were here, it said on the other side.