Moonface

by Angela Balcita

  Consider the evidence: Six months after my first transplant, my mother sat in my aunt’s kitchen and spoke to her in Tagalog. I noticed how her voice lowered when I walked into the room.

  “She’s different, you know,” she whispered to Aunt Bella.

  I was passing through the kitchen, taking a break from the movie my cousins and I were watching in the next room. I stood over the sink and reached up to the cupboards for a glass.

  “She’s feeling better?” my aunt asked, looking at my mother over the lenses of her reading glasses.

  “Mmm . . . yes,” my mother said, “but she’s different.” She leaned in close, whispered to her. “She’s just like her brother.”

  I stopped pouring and listened closely from around the corner. “She quickly gets angry now. Short temper. She’s a bruja.”

  “Mom! Quit it!” I snapped.

  “See?” She raised her eyebrows and looked at my aunt, avoiding my glare.

  My mother had taught me Tagalog when I was growing up, naming the words for things I pointed to in both ways—in both English and in Tagalog. But I didn’t need to be skilled in either of those languages to know from her tone and her facial expression that bruja meant “witch.”

  “I’m being honest, not mean,” she said to me. “You get that way now. I think it’s in the kidney.” She was referring to my brother’s quick temper. She always said that he was quick to laugh, but just as quick to anger. This was true; his fuse was short. But I certainly wouldn’t call him a male witch.

  For the longest time, I didn’t believe her. But when I started feeling healthy and stronger, so unlike myself, able to run down the street, run like hell, with the energy and athleticism of my brother, I started to believe that something in me was changing. At a checkup after the surgery, I asked one of the surgeons quietly if my mother was onto something.

  “I know I could take on his kidney’s health, but could I take on his personality traits, too?”

  “That kind of thinking can get you in trouble,” the doctor said.

  But, with Charlie, I felt in trouble without that kind of thinking. This exchange seemed too carnal—too scientific, too strictly biological—without the idea that Charlie and I could be connected on some other level. These weren’t body parts that were made in labs or regenerated from orphan cells. These were living cells from living people. I had to believe that love could sweep in here, that there was a mystical factor involved in this exchange. That Charlie and I—not blood related, not even married—were going to be united by a greater force. Part of him would live in me, no matter what. I’d be with him. Forever.

  After losing my brother’s kidney, I thought for many months that it might have been something I had done. Was it my fault? Was I eating the wrongfoods? Drinking too much beer? Was I not taking care of myself enough?

  “No, it’s none of these,” my brother said on the phone after he heard the news. “Ten years—we had a good run.”

  I joked with him, “Well, if you’ve got another to give, I’ll take it.”

  He hung up the phone abruptly.

  Charlie kept telling me not to think too much about that stuff. “It wasn’t your fault at all. Sometimes things just happen. They make room for other things.”

  His mind was set that this was going to work, and I tried to follow his lead, but there always seemed to be something to worry about.

  “What will Charlie’s family think? They’ll think we’re not willing to help you, that we’re relying on other people to help you,” my mother told me once on the phone. At first, she didn’t like the idea of Charlie’s donation, her Filipino pride making her hesitant to receive help from outside the family.

  “Well, his mother tried to take his place, but he wouldn’t let her,” I told her.

  “Ay, anak,” she said. “Look at all these strangers trying to help you.”

  “They’re not strangers, Mom,” I said. “They’re like family.”

  “Well,” she said, thinking about it, “yes, but not yet.”

  In midsummer, I told Charlie that the dialysis treatments were beginning to wear on me. My appetite was decreasing, and my broomstick arms were looking silly in tank tops. He could tell I was getting anxious, so he suggested that we take a quick trip back to Baltimore while the hospital finalized our surgery date. We wanted to see Charlie’s newborn niece anyway—a nine-pounder who was quickly gaining more weight. “We have to see her before she weighs more than you,” Charlie said. We rescheduled my dialysis treatments so they fit snuggly around a three-day weekend, and we took off due east.

  I knew Charlie was excited to be back home, but I was a little worried about seeing his family and hearing what they had to say about him giving me his kidney. I knew they were jokesters, that the funny bone had passed down through the lineage, and that they protected members of their brood with their lives. If Charlie’s mother wasn’t enough evidence of that, take, if you will, my memory of meeting Charlie’s dear Aunt Wendy for the first time. She had shaken my hand, and then put that same hand over Charlie’s chest. “If you break his heart, I will hunt you down and I will hurt you,” she’d said. At first, I was too scared to look at her. But when she got a riotous reaction from other family members who stood nearby, I knew she was using those words for comedic effect. Afterward, she slapped my shoulder and gave me a hug.

  “Okay, I get it. Your family loves you,” I’d said to Charlie. I had known how Charlie’s family felt about his heart, but I was afraid to find out how they’d feel about me taking one of his other organs.

  “Don’t worry. You don’t have to tell them,” Charlie said. “I will. Just follow my lead. Trust me, they won’t think you’re an organ harvester.”

  “A kidney hog,” I said.

  “The Renal Reaper,” Charlie said.

  In the living room of Aunt Wendy’s house, we walked into a boisterous welcome from aunts, uncles, and cousins waiting in line to bear-hug Charlie and gently wrap their arms around me.

  “You look well,” Aunt Wendy said to me, looking at my face carefully. I wanted to believe her, but I knew that I was tired from the flight and probably looked so. Charlie’s grandmother stood behind me and brushed my hair with her fingers.

  “Hi, Grandma!” I said, turning around.

  “Look at that hair. Such beautiful black hair. Such pretty straight hair,” she said. “Come look at this, Wimpy.” She called Charlie’s grandfather over, and Pop, the bounding octogenarian, came to give me a hug.

  “Yeah. Pretty girl, ain’t she? You still got that pretty hair, too, Holly. Feel it!” Pop put Grandma’s shaky hand up to her head. Charlie’s grandmother was older than Pop, and not quite as quick as he was anymore. I was happy she remembered me. I watched the two of them as they remembered what she looked like years ago, her hair curly and less gray. Pop eased his arm around her as he escorted her back to the couch, and I could see where Charlie got his charm.

  Charlie and I lingered around the party separately, but I always kept one eye on his location, just in case someone were to ask me about the transplant. I wasn’t sure how I’d respond; I was hoping that it wouldn’t come up at all. I was hoping that we could explain our little exchange after it had happened, after both of us were in the clear. But it never came up, and I spent a large part of the afternoon holding Charlie’s niece Genevieve, a soft, sleepy bundle impervious to Charlie’s loud relatives. She burped in her sleep, wriggled in my hands, and tried to suck on the edge of my collar. She was the first thing that I’d held in a while that was warm and alive and full of life. I was staring at her tiny nose when I heard Charlie say, “I have an announcement!”

  The whole room paused and focused on Charlie.

  “You’re getting married!” Aunt Dayle called out. There were audible gasps of excitement.

  “No,” Charlie said, bowing his head in shame. The crowd looked disappointed. I knew they would be. They had been asking us for years now when we were going to make it official. We’d always dodg
ed the question in the past; I wondered how Charlie was going to dodge it this time. I handed off the baby to Charlie’s mother and stood behind him at the front of the room. I wasn’t going to let me him face the fire by himself.

  “My lovely Moonface here is in need of a kidney.” He grabbed my hand."And I am her lucky donor.”

  The crowd fell silent. This time, they seemed confused. “Wait, what?” Charlie’s uncle asked, seeming shocked by the news of my illness. “She needs a transplant?”

  “Yes!” Charlie said, pulling me closer to him.

  “And you said you’d do it?” his Aunt Wendy asked loudly, like he was out of his mind. “Why?”

  “I heard there would be drugs,” Charlie said, shrugging. His father cackled in the corner.

  “Jean, what do you think of all this?” Pop asked. He and the rest of the room turned around to look at her.

  “I think it’s lovely. But I was hoping they’d be married by now,” Charlie’s mother responded from the couch, trying to talk over the baby who was now crying in her arms. “Then it would be more romantic, wouldn’t it?”

  Charlie looked confused. “What do the two have to do with each other?” he asked.

  “It’s just more of love story, isn’t it?” Aunt Dawn asked, sticking with Jean.

  “Wait, I have an idea,” Charlie’s father said, standing up to address the crowd. “This is actually the perfect opportunity for a wedding.” He hunched over liked he was in a football huddle, and he was the one calling the play. His hands waved and directed how the action will go. “We wheel them in to the O.R., and once they’re both unconscious, we bring a justice of the peace. He makes it official, and when they wake up, they’ll be married, and transplanted. And none the wiser.”

  “Ugh,” someone from the audience groaned, rejecting the bad joke.

  “I wish I was being transplanted to India right now,” I told everyone. There were a few giggles.

  “Nah,” Charlie said. “Family members arrange marriages there, too!” Someone laughed harder, and I could see the faces of shock turning into smiles.

  “A priest!” Charlie’s grandmother yelled. “No justice of the peace. A priest!”

  “We could find him some black scrubs with a collar. We’d have to sterilize the Bible!” a cousin insisted.

  “But who’ll take the pictures? The nurses?” someone said.

  “We’ll have it videotaped.”

  “The wedding or the surgery?”

  “Whichever is more interesting! Both! We’ll keep both for posterity.”

  Charlie and I watched as the dialogue connected the dots across the room, each member of the family feeding off each other’s twisted idea of a joke. Charlie put his hands on my neck and massaged my shoulders, forcing me now to relax and watch the show.

  “See, Charlie, this would all be easier if you were married first. Then we wouldn’t have to be worried about the surgery and your nuptials.”

  “All right, wait!” Charlie said, as loud as his voice could get. “The truth is, I did actually set a date for our wedding.” His eyebrows looked serious. He put one hand to his side, picked up a beer, and looked into the glass. Everyone was hanging on, even the baby, who seemed to be holding her wailing until Charlie spoke again. I sat and waited to hear, too.

  “June,” he announced, pausing to build suspense, “of 2030!”

  “Come on!” The frustrated crowd yelled. The aunts in the back by the kitchen laughed and threw their napkins in the air, but everyone grew silent when Charlie’s sweet, frail grandmother stood up.

  “But Charlie,” she yelled, “I’ll be dead by then!” The mob roared.

  ACT II

  Chapter Seven

  The Inquisitor, The Pain Inflictor, and a Special Guest Appearance by the Blinding Truth

  Well, the transplant went off without a hitch, and without us getting hitched, the latter being much to everyone else’s dismay. I got my plumbing rewired to fit Charlie’s hardware, and Charlie got out of there with a hole in his gut. On the day of the surgery, there may have been more reasons to worry, like the danger I was putting Charlie in and if the kidney would actually work. But Charlie wouldn’t even let it enter my mind. This time, when they lined my gurney in the hallway next to my donor’s, there were no holy figure sightings. There was barely any fear in Charlie’s face or tenderness in his eyes as they wheeled him toward the double doors of the O.R. As they pushed him through, he only shouted out one warning back at me: “Look out for priests!”

  When I woke up, my folks stood over me and told me Charlie did fine, and that the first words out of his mouth were, “Is she peeing?” Before I could even crack a smile, Charlie walked through the door of my room, his left hand clutching the IV pole and his right arm draped over his father’s shoulder.

  “What took you so long, Moonface?” he bellowed. “I’ve been awake for hours!” He leaned down to kiss me with barely any effort at all.

  Now, three weeks after the transplant, he still doesn”t let anyone see the effects the nephrectomy has had on his body. “Nephrectomy, freschectomy,” he scoffs, even though, every once in a while, I’ll catch him jumping out of bed, then immediately regretting that he did so, holding his guts in place for a second before moving again.

  “Quit showing off,” I say.

  “Don’t want to disappoint the crowds,” he says. Sad part is he’s not kidding. We feel a little like celebrities now, keenly aware that our fame is spreading around town. An unending parade of visitors clues us in, streaming through the apartment delivering food and magazines and flowers. Our friend Maria had brought over a cardamom and cranberry pie. Beth called from clear across the country while taking a road trip with that media department professor she’d been seeing. The “Make It or Break It Trip,” she’d called it, testing how long the two could endure each other’s company. She felt guilty about not being here during the surgery, but I had told her that the surgeons hadn’t been wondering why she didn’t scrub in. Amy, another friend, had brought over a plant and watched quietly as we moved awkwardly around the furniture and as Charlie slipped out of character once and grimaced when he made room for me on the couch.

  Our parents stuck around for two weeks after the transplant, waiting on us hand and foot so we barely had to move. But now that they’re gone, I’ve noticed Charlie’s quick rebound from surgery slowing down. His activity during the first few days in the hospital was boundless, but that was probably because the anesthesia was still pumping through his veins. Now the incision seems to bite at his side more frequently, no matter how much he tries not to show it.

  After our parents leave, we venture out of the house for the first time down to another student’s house for a potluck. Charlie pauses on the corner of College Avenue.

  “Wait,” he says, looking down at the ground.

  “What? Did we walk too far?” I look up at him and try to gauge the expression on his face.

  He holds his hand over the dressing of the wound and breathes slowly.

  “It hurts, doesn’t it?” I ask. “Oh crap oh crap oh crap. I knew we shouldn’t have walked.” I look around in case there’s someone near to help.

  “I just need a second,” he says, and we sit on the sidewalk until the pain subsides.

  I stare at him, my eyes squinting at the sun behind the trees. “You look like you’re in pain, too,” he says, laughing a little when he sees me.

  “A little,” I say.

  “No, you’re not,” he says. “You’re supposed to tell me that you’re feeling better.”

  I would, but it seems too cruel to tell him so. Better to let him think we’re suffering together.

  I tell Charlie we don’t have to go to Erica’s. “Let’s keep going,” he says. “We’ll just walk slowly. You want to see everyone, don’t you? Show off that new kidney of yours.”

  He knows I do. I’ve spent the summer hiding from everyone else in town, trying to shield myself from the sad, apologetic faces most people make when
they see me paler and thinner than usual. I do want to show off my new self, but it’s hard for me to imagine enjoying myself at a party when Charlie is curled up in a corner unable to move.

  When we get to Erica’s, a room full of writers with small paper plates and glasses of wine in their hands smile to greet us.

  “You look completely revived,” Beth says. She is tanned and aglow herself. I see the professor in the kitchen talking to someone near the fridge.

  “How’s Charlie?” she asks.

  “Well ...” I say, taking my time and trying to find a good answer. I don’t know how to explain to her that while I might look like a hundred percent, I won’t feel that way until Charlie is back to himself.

  While I’m trying to think, Charlie jumps in and answers for me. “How do I look, Beth? Handsome as usual? Like I’ve dropped a pound or two around my hip region?”

  “If that’s what donating a kidney does to you, I might have to sign up,” says Richard, a writer from Missouri. He told us from the start of the process that he has always been in awe of Charlie’s “selflessness,” making Charlie blush at the word.

  “Donation? My arse! That femme fatale took it from me!” Charlie says, pointing an accusatory finger in my direction.

  “What?” I say, playing along, but really unsure what he’s getting at this time.

  He goes on: “So one night, Moonface says to me, ”Charlie, let’s have a romantic dinner.” And I say, ”Yes, darlin”,” thinking any night’s a good night to get lucky. She makes us a little pasta, pours us some wine, kisses my neck, and then after that, the whole thing gets a little hazy. The next thing I know I wake up, and I’m neck-deep in a bathtub full of ice. Pain is shooting through the left side of my body. Moonface is standing over me with a cleaver.”

  Some people chuckle at his outrageous yarn and at his theatrical performance.