The Goddesses

by Swan Huntley

  As the doorknob turned, I told myself to wipe the lament off my face and replace it with good cheer. But all of this turned straight to shock when she opened the door. Ana was bald. Completely and totally bald.

  “Oh my God,” I accidentally said out loud.

  Ana was not surprised to see me. “I knew you’d come,” she said, her eyes flat and no longer glimmering, and this meant that she was gone a little already.

  “Your hair.”

  “Chemo,” she said. “From the breast cancer. It’s still trying to grow back.”

  Well, it’s not trying hard enough! I wanted to scream. I was angry for her.

  “See?” She touched her neck. “I wasn’t meant to live. My hair has known that all along.”

  I swallowed the uncried tears in my throat as Ana took the flowers from my hand and simply said, “Flowers,” and took one passive sniff. “And what’s this?” She pulled at the orange bow on the cake.

  “Carrot cake,” I said, the words echoing in my head. It seemed so stupid to be saying carrot cake at a time like this.

  “I haven’t been hungry, but thank you.” She took the pan from me and set it on the low table by the door and plopped the flowers on top. On the table was a piece of paper, which she handed to me. “They gave me three to six months.”

  The piece of paper was filled with writing—in a decorative font because everything in Hawaii was more beautiful, I thought. The important facts were in bold. PANCREATIC. 3–6 MONTHS.

  “I bet I can make it nine,” she said, and there was a tiny glimmer in her eyes again, and I was very glad for that.

  I comforted her. “I’m sure you can make it nine,” I said, although I didn’t know if I believed her over her doctors. I wrapped my arms around her, squeezed her tight. “Oh, Ana.” I felt her fake breasts press into mine, and thought of everything she had already lost.

  “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” I was saying, rocking us gently from side to side, remembering her coconut smell, which was faint today. The hug felt more intimate now that she didn’t have hair. Like she was a baby. Like she really needed me now. But I needed her just as much. What was I going to do without her?

  I let her go. I took her hands. “What am I going to do without you?”

  “Nan,” she said sweetly, petting my hair, which I felt guilty for having. “You’re going to do whatever you want.”

  I nodded, maybe a little too eagerly, like this was a direct order.

  “You look good,” she said, her eyes going up and down me. “How much weight have you lost?”

  “Fourteen pounds, maybe.” I didn’t know why I’d said the maybe because it was definitely fourteen.

  “Good for you.” She put her hands on her waist, looked down at her body. “I’m probably going to lose a lot more than that.”

  Movement behind her on the floor. Black and white and it was Portico, slithering under the couch. I was frantic. “Portico’s out!”

  “I know,” she said. She seemed a little annoyed with me. I would calm down.

  I was still waiting for her to invite me in and she still hadn’t. “Do you want to sit in the Jacuzzi? Would that make you feel better?”

  “No,” she said, the sides of her mouth curling up. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  •

  We drove south. When I asked where we were going, she said, “Life is a journey, Nan, not a destination,” which was true, but also not an answer. I let it go. I wondered if I would have let it go if she weren’t dying.

  I reveled in the feeling of being back in the Jeep. The purple hood, the air rushing all around us, the way the seat really cupped you. I wasn’t hungry but ate a Red Vine anyway, for old time’s sake.

  I wanted to tell her about Chuck and the boys, but that seemed selfish now. She was dying. We should talk about that. “Ana,” I said, when we were going slow enough to hear each other over the wind, “are you scared?”

  “No,” she said, “it’s interesting. I don’t feel scared anymore.”

  I touched her bare shoulder. It was so bare without her wig hair on it.

  “Last time I got cancer, there was bargaining. But now—now that I know this is really it, there is no more bargaining. Now I’m just pissed.” Without thinking, Ana made the gesture of tucking her hair behind her ear, which was the saddest thing I had ever seen. She seemed to notice this, too, because she shook her hand out as if to tell it to stop doing stupid things. “I am so angry, Nan. I could fucking kill someone!”

  “I know,” I said, clutching my seat belt to make sure it was on because Ana was driving a little too fast now. A road to the left and we almost passed it and she said, “Wooooo!” and made a way-too-last-minute turn and my body pressed into the door and we might have only been on two wheels for a second. “Sorry about that,” she said when we’d made it onto the road.

  It was a skinny dirt road with tropical brush growing at the edges and it was deserted. On both sides, coffee trees were all I could see. And then there was something in the distance. A little hut. Oh, it was a fruit stand, just a lone fruit stand with no person behind it, and Ana pulled over. HONOR SYSTEM, CAMERA ENFORCED, the sign said. Below was a list of prices. The avocados only cost a dollar. “I want everything,” she said.

  I hesitated. “Okay,” I said, wondering why she wanted all this food if she had no appetite.

  But I was helpful anyway. I didn’t question her. I was learning it was hard to question someone who was dying. I carefully placed all the bananas and the mangoes on the floor in the back. Ana was faster and more chaotic. She tossed the avocados in from afar, making a little game of it. “Bummer,” she said when one missed and hit the wheel then rolled under the car. I got on the ground to find it. There it was, but I couldn’t reach. So close—my fingers touched it—but still too far.

  “Let’s go,” she said, and she sounded so sure that I abandoned the avocado immediately and got back in the car. I expected to find her counting out money to put in the box, but her wallet was right there and she wasn’t even looking at it.

  “Oh, I think I have some cash,” I said, which was a lie. I hadn’t brought my wallet.

  “We’re good,” she said.

  I stammered, “Wait. No. What? Not good.”

  Even as she peeled away, driving farther and farther from the fruit stand, I was still imagining us parked in front of it, fishing out bills. I kept expecting her to turn around. But she kept not turning around.

  “Ana?”

  “Yes, Nan.”

  “They had a camera.”

  “No, they had a sign that said they had a camera. There was no camera.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Oh, Nan.” She touched my hair. “I used to have this hair.”

  Part of me wanted to pull away, but a bigger part of me didn’t. “Why?”

  “Because, Nan,” she said sadly, or maybe she was just resigned. “Justice is the foundation of the Karma Factory.”

  I had to laugh. “The Karma Factory? Is that what we’re calling it now?”

  “Obviously,” Ana said, “and if I weren’t about to die, I’d make it into a 501(c)(3).” She sighed. “If I’m being punished for my sins, then other people should be punished for theirs. The man who owns that fruit stand?” She took her hand off my hair and put it back on the wheel. “Has owed me fifty dollars for the last three years. So I feel like the least he can do is give me this bullshit fruit.” She glanced behind her. “It doesn’t even look that quality.”

  “What does he owe you for?”

  “A back massage, but that’s not the point. The point is I am being punished and other people are not. It’s not fair. It’s not fair and it makes no sense.” Ana slapped the dashboard. “Now is the time for justice. We must give these people what they deserve. Since fucking Celia is apparently sleeping up there!” She stuck her middle finger up toward the sky. Then she repeated the line she had said on the phone, and this time I understood it. “You can’t bargain with God, b
ut you can sure as hell fight her.”

  What I thought: Ana is angry right now. Anger is part of dealing with death—did that come before or after bargaining?—and at some point the anger will pass and it will become acceptance, which I knew was one of them.

  Now was absolutely not the time to ask, but I had to. “Does this mean we’re not going to hand out sandwiches anymore?”

  “I’m dying, Nan,” Ana said, angrily scratching the top of her head.

  “I know, I know, I’m sorry I asked. I’m just—I’m sorry, it was selfish to ask that.”

  “But Nan, punishing people who’ve behaved badly is a good deed. It’s for the”—her hand made a sweeping arc—“greater good.”

  “I don’t know,” I said carefully.

  “I understand how you might feel confused,” she said. “But things change when one knows death is imminent. You just have to trust me. When you’re near the end of your life, this will make sense to you.”

  I couldn’t imagine devoting my last energies to anything beyond relaxing, but I didn’t tell her that. Because maybe I was wrong. Maybe I wouldn’t feel that relaxed if I learned I had three to six months to live. Maybe I was more selfish than she was, and maybe I only understood cancer from movies. All of which meant that I knew nothing.

  So I didn’t ask: Don’t you want to spend this time doing your favorite things with the people who love you? First because it sounded trite, and second because when I really thought about that, I wasn’t sure who loved Ana. Everyone loved her, of course, but they loved her from afar. I was her closest friend. Wasn’t I? Yes, she told me that all the time. I was her soul sister. I was the other half of the necklace. I was her somebody to lean on, and now she needed to lean on me, which meant I had to support her.

  “Don’t you trust me, Nan?”

  “I want to trust you, Ana,” I said, which wasn’t a lie.

  •

  When we got back in her house, I said, “I really think we should sit in the Jacuzzi for a little while. Just to take pause, you know?”

  “You’re right, Nan,” she said. “A pause is the answer. I’ve taught you well.”

  I hadn’t brought a suit, so Ana let me borrow her red one. I thought it might be too big in the bust area, but it fit perfectly.

  “That looks great on you,” she said when I emerged into the living room, wearing just the suit with no towel around my waist to cover me up because who cared about anything now? She was dying.

  The living room was a little messier than usual—the afghans weren’t folded like they usually were, but strewn haphazardly instead, and one was on the floor. Ana was lying on the low couch in her black silk kimono, threading Portico through her fingers and studying me. “You can have that suit when I’m gone,” she said in a businesslike way.

  I looked at her sadly. “Thank you.”

  She held Portico’s tiny face in front of her nose. Portico’s two-pronged black tongue glided in and out of her tiny mouth, and Ana kissed her.

  “Do you want me to put those flowers in water?” I asked. The flowers and the carrot cake were still near the door.

  Ana gazed in the direction of the door, her eyes coming unfocused. “If you want to.”

  I did want to. I wanted to be useful. I took the flowers and the cake into the kitchen. The counter was piled with the fruit from the fruit stand. The mangoes looked good. I opened the drawers, looking for scissors to cut the flowers. I couldn’t find any. “Do you have scissors?”

  “No, you can use a knife though,” she said.

  There were only two knives. A small paring knife and a huge butcher’s knife. I chose the butcher’s knife. The hacking sent stems onto the floor. Using this tool was a little more violent than I would have liked. I put the flowers in the clear plastic vase I found on top of the fridge, and then I tied the orange bow from the carrot cake around it.

  Ana was humming. At first I thought it was “Lean on Me,” but it wasn’t. It was a song I didn’t know. She stared straight out the window at the ocean, her arms splayed on the cushions. Beside her on the couch, Portico was as still as a hose. Before, I thought, before the diagnosis, Ana would have been stretching right now. Or doing something more lively. Maybe she would have been eating some of this cake.

  “Do you want some cake?”

  “Possibly,” she answered.

  “Good,” I said, “because I want you to eat.”

  I chose her prettiest plate. A maybe homemade ceramic oval in a happy yellow color. I cut the cake into cute little squares, and then I added some of the fruit, because if it was here, we should eat it. Banana and papaya and mango, sliced delicately with the paring knife. I took two forks out of the drawer and poured two cups of ice water and ripped two paper towels off the roll.

  I brought her one of the waters, looking for Portico, who wasn’t on the couch anymore. “Let’s go outside,” I said in my most uplifting voice.

  She took the water and sipped and said, “Okay, Nan,” and I followed her out with the pretty yellow plate of food, which reminded me of something. The way I had lovingly set the food on the plate—this was what I did for the boys when they were sick.

  Ana sat on the edge of the Jacuzzi with her feet in the water. The breeze pushed her kimono into her body so every contour was visible. Her firm, perfectly round breasts and the small mound of flesh low on her stomach. She stabbed a banana slice first, chewed it like chewing was a hard thing to do. But then I knew the food started to taste good to her because she kept eating. “This cake is good, Nan,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m so glad,” I said, stabbing a mango slice for myself.

  Ana seemed calmer now. Maybe the anger was passing. After a while she said, “I’m full,” and put her fork down. She stretched her neck and fingered her half of our necklace, looking out at the horizon. The water was calm today. No waves sprayed us.

  I felt the sudden urge to say it. Say it now, just in case. “Ana,” I said, “I just want you to know that I’m going to be here for you through all of this. And I want you to know that I love you.”

  She blinked. She looked straight at me. Her eyes were wide open and blank. “I don’t know what love is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I might know what love isn’t, but I don’t know what it is.”

  I touched my heart. This was heartbreaking. I didn’t know what to say.

  In a distant voice, not looking at me, she said, “Tell me more about your childhood.”

  “What do you want to know?” I brought one foot out of the water. Still the purple sparkly polish Ana had painted on.

  “Tell me more about your mother.”

  I laughed. “My mother?”

  “It makes you uncomfortable.”

  “No.” I stopped laughing. “It’s fine.”

  “Tell me how she killed herself.”

  I sighed the requisite sigh. “Pills. She overdosed.”

  A pause. “Who found her?”

  I said it quietly. “I did.” I looked away from her. She was staring too hard. I looked at the ocean, and it was so vast and so clean and this was comforting.

  “You did,” she said. I knew she wanted more, so I gave it to her.

  “I found her in her smelly chair. The one she sat in all the time. Toward the end, she never moved from that chair except to go to the bathroom and to refill her drinks. By the very end, she’d switched to boxed wine, the kind that comes with a tap so she didn’t have to move to get a refill. Next to her, she always had a drink, a bottle of pills, and the remote. On the day she died, she was drinking white wine. I remember that because she didn’t finish her glass. It was still almost full.” My neck burned. My shoulders clenched. “Anyway, I thought she was sleeping. I didn’t realize she was dead until I tried to wake her up later.”

  I had said the last part too fast and I was out of breath. My ears prickled, waiting for her response. I could feel her staring at me. I didn’t look up.

  “I’m sorry,” she sa
id finally.

  “Me, too,” I said, relieved the story was over. Before she could ask me anything else, I turned the conversation back to her. “Why are you asking me this stuff now?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. She seemed tentative, which was rare for her. “I guess I’m trying to figure out where I went wrong. Why did you go to college and find a husband and have two kids and I became a stripper who doesn’t know what love is? You’re healthy and I’m dying. You made it out and I didn’t.”

  “Ana, you’ve had a wonderful life. I mean are having. You are having a wonderful, interesting life. My life is boring compared to yours. And you’re not a stripper anymore, you’re a healer. You changed.” I was defiant. “You. Changed.”

  Ana shook her head. “It seems like I changed, but I didn’t. I was never healed. I became a healer to heal myself, but it didn’t work. You—you healed. I think you know what love is.”

  I could see her holding back tears now. She closed her eyes to stop herself. The breeze blew my hair into my face, which made me feel guilty again for having it.

  “It’s not fair,” she said, so softly I could barely hear. And then louder, “It’s not fair.” And then she dropped her head back and screamed, “It’s not faaaair!” When she looked at me, the sadness was gone from her face. The sun flashed in her eyes like two fireballs. She was back to being angry.

  “Maybe,” I began helpfully, “we can think of some of your favorite things, and we can spend the next few months doing those things.”

  “Like a bucket list? I don’t think that’s going to help,” she said. “This is a time for action, Nan. For justice. I will not resign myself to victimhood. I will deliver justice to this island with all the energy I have left until my flame peters out. And I’m going to do a great fucking job.”

  Ana stood. She stripped off the kimono and all she was wearing was underwear, and for some reason her fake breasts seemed so depressing to me, even more depressing than her bald head. She jumped into the shallow Jacuzzi with a splash and stayed underwater for a long time, almost long enough to make me worried, but then she popped back up again. She stayed very still, not rubbing her eyes and not blinking, and her skin was so pale and so new and so oddly unblemished, and other than her worried, angry face, Ana looked like an innocent baby in a bathtub.