Eating the Underworld

by Doris Brett

  By far the greater majority of stage 1as will only need surgery and be cured. Their cancer will never come back. A small percentage of 1as who only have surgery will experience a recurrence of their cancer. If they had initially been given chemotherapy as well as surgery, it is possible that fewer of them would have experienced that recurrence. This poses the dilemma: if most 1a women don’t need chemotherapy, then by routinely giving chemotherapy to 1a women, you are subjecting them to very toxic chemicals that may harm and won’t help them. Is it worth doing this to the majority of women in order to catch the small number of 1a women who will need chemotherapy? It’s a hard one to answer.

  The hospital recovery period is dotted with small victory flags. My bladder works smoothly when the catheter is removed. My bowels are back on line with equal efficiency. (I’m sure the hypnosis is helping with this.) The bandage is taken off my abdomen. This leaves me amazed to see that I really have been cut open and sewn up. It is astonishing to see the long line of black stitches; like a child’s sewing sampler executed on living flesh.

  It is disconcerting too, in another way, to see the concrete evidence of what has actually happened. On the one hand, it is one of the most intimate contacts anyone has ever had with my body. And on the other, it has been conducted in the most impersonal way possible—myself unconscious and draped, a mere body part, and everyone else masked, gowned and gloved. It is the most paradoxical of experiences. I imagine how disturbing it would feel if you had a difficult relationship with your surgeon. Entering into this intimate, total relinquishing of your body to another person’s hands requires an enormous leap of trust. And yet this experience, with its underlying emotional subtext, is spoken about in terms akin to entrusting your car to a skilled mechanic.

  The Lady Next Door

  The lady next door is having visitors.

  Their voices murmur

  like knitting, like the soft

  clicking of distance

  as the railway line speaks

  to the sun. They believe

  in the weather, that it is

  still going on out there.

  Their voices go backwards

  and forwards like the sea

  that I have invited into this bed

  with me, with its salt memories

  and old tongues

  that roll in on the night,

  tidal, swelling

  messages from the long,

  lost continents of health.

  I let them wash over me … Grandmothers talking,

  neighbours, aunts that I never knew.

  Outside, they continue to say, the weather

  is still going on.

  They are talking of light and shade,

  the summer rain, of what to do with tubers,

  Sarah’s plants, the niece’s cure,

  and what the ground really says

  if you sift it through.

  I only know the weather of rooms.

  Here in this temple of voices

  sounds float in with the doors,

  the odd drift, the wrecking sounds of illness,

  the day’s single eye

  clicking into night.

  At eight-ten, she has her daily appointment.

  I hear her footsteps, tentative

  at first, trembling

  from the night’s dark

  labour. And then

  she comes into view.

  She inclines her head gracefully—

  a slow, great queen

  and I see that she is guided,

  that she has roses in her mind

  drifting from the hard

  hospital ceiling, that the nurses,

  attendant as tug-boats,

  are only part of the circle

  shifting around her

  where she waves,

  the mother-ship leaving safe harbour,

  and makes her way upwards, stately, serene …

  Each morning, she goes out to meet

  the radium of love.

  The End of Visiting Hour

  Is when all the sets revolve.

  The flowers get up and change

  places. They walk on their thin

  green legs all the way up the curtain.

  Somewhere behind there is the forest

  where the sleepwalkers go at night,

  circling and circling, their eyes wine

  red, the tablets powdered on their tongues.

  The tree, whom I think of as my friend,

  stands at the edge of all this,

  guarding me, I think,

  from the witch in the corner.

  This is the one with the hook

  embedded in her nose.

  She laughs at anything,

  especially at me in the iron bed

  at the end of visitors’ hour

  listening to the footsteps

  tapping down the corridor

  always going home.

  After the Operation

  Some time afterwards

  you see the zip

  in your body and you begin

  to realise what really was done.

  You apologise to your body,

  you wish it to excuse

  such indignity,

  after all, it was to save a life.

  Your body says nothing.

  It trusted you,

  believed you would take care

  of it, steer it across roads,

  avoid fires, not approach

  strange men with knives.

  ‘No,’ you say. You lift a hand,

  your wrist comes into view

  pivoting on its ballet-bones,

  (miracle of miracles)

  ‘It wasn’t like that,

  I thought of you,’ you say,

  ‘before the operation. I pictured

  you opening, mysterious flower,

  and instead of intrusion,

  I thought “hands”, “healing hands”,

  the master gardener tenderly

  tending the plants.’

  Your body stirs. It’s getting

  interested. You think of all the slurs,

  the sullen chants and incantations

  you’ve poured on it for years—

  the workhorse, the slavey, the drear.

  And how it’s remained faithful,

  silently serving your needs,

  asking for little—some food and drink,

  a simple place in the corner

  of your syndicated life

  And how, all the while,

  and now you see it,

  is the daily miracle,

  wilder than flying fish or falling

  loaves, the thin exquisite

  sheath of bone and blood

  the pumping heart and lungs,

  the secret liver, the moss

  of tissue, the living

  muscle’s curve. Here

  are the networks of nerve—

  cathedrals under the skin,

  the whole waiting

  city beneath the lake

  that you wake to deeply

  at moonlight while the bells

  ring miracle, miracle …

  And because there seems

  no other word, you say

  it again ‘miracle, miracle’…

  and your body purrs,

  hums and begins to heal.

  ON THE LAST DAY OF hospital it’s time for the stitches to come out. ‘Will it hurt?’ I enquire nervously of Greg. ‘No,’ he says in confident, assured tones. A pause, while he grins, ‘It’s never hurt me.’ In fact they don’t hurt; it’s more like an odd, pinching sensation. Of course, the knowledge that this pinching sensation is due to thread being pulled through your flesh adds a certain frisson to the experience.

  One thing I notice over the week is that apart from Greg, none of the hospital staff ever mentions the word cancer to me. It feels odd to have the reason for my being in hospital cloaked in such silence; as if it is hid
den, unspeakable. I’m feeling buoyant and saved—I don’t feel a need to talk about cancer to the staff—but I wonder what it’s like for those who are struggling with their feelings and fears.

  At last, it’s coming-home day. Leaving hospital is as exciting as stepping into a new life. I’m thrilling with the anticipation of an ordinary shower and sheets that aren’t lined with rubber. And putting some distance between me and the all-pervasive scent of hospital disinfectant.

  Oddly enough, some years later, I am writing an essay on the hospital experience. I have been trying to put myself back there, imaginatively, but some of the scenes are blurry after all this time. I walk into my hotel room in San Francisco and am suddenly overcome by a Proustian flood of memory. The cleaning lady has just been and the bathroom smells exactly like my old hospital room. I run down the corridor after her and jab at her collection of bottles.

  ‘The bathroom—what do you use to clean it?’ I say, excitedly.

  She steps back nervously. She is used to nutcases in San Francisco. ‘I don’t know,’ she shakes her head. ‘Please, ring housekeeping.’

  I get on the phone to housekeeping. ‘I … I adore the scent of your bathroom cleaning fluid,’ I improvise wildly. ‘Could you tell me its name?’

  There is a startled silence. Clearly this is not a common request.

  It turns out to be a generic brand which sounds something like 1 2 3. I make a note of it and then promptly lose it. Still, I feel sure it will be waiting to surprise me in some other bathroom, in another time, some other place in the world.

  I’ve been experiencing drenching night sweats – partly a post-surgery reaction and partly my accelerated introduction to menopause. Because I no longer have ovaries, I have the express ticket to those menopausal treats of night sweats and hot flushes. The sweats and hot flushes are a drag (forget about wearing delicate silk blouses), but otherwise I’m feeling great. By six weeks post-surgery, I’ll be feeling fit, energetic and better than I’ve been in years.

  The day after I come home from hospital, Martin and I hire a video, Sommersby. We’ve picked it almost randomly from the shelves and it turns out to be a story about a man who takes someone else’s name and creates loving family links under his assumed identity. When a jealous neighbour threatens to unmask his deception, he chooses to die rather than reveal that he has been an imposter. The final scene is wrenching, as his wife begs him to admit his guilt so that he can live and not be parted from her. Watching the death scene does it: I have a sudden lurching encounter with the reality of how close to it I have come. I spend the rest of the evening in tears—an odd combination of fear, relief, horror and gratitude. Martin joins in. Amantha’s turn comes a few weeks later, when she unknowingly hires the video of Beaches, where the storyline involves a young woman dying and leaving her child motherless. Enough said.

  At home, in the early days after hospital, I’m still sore and geriatric in my ease of movement, but having a great time. I don’t do very much—I’m still on painkillers every four hours, still weak, and my walk is more of a wobble than a stride—but I feel terrific. It’s a cliché, but the world has never seemed so fresh. On my twice daily walks, I pause because I am struck with amazement at the sheer wonder of it. I am soaking in the sun, the sky, the leaves, the birds; everything that I took totally for granted before. I alternately read, write and nap for the rest of the day. I feel utterly at peace. I continue to be astonished at the marvel of my body. I see it growing stronger and younger every day. After all that it has gone through, it is quietly and patiently healing itself.

  I am finishing my poetry book. The third that stubbornly remained a blank during my writing-block months before diagnosis is turning out to be a poetic recounting of the journey through cancer. The writing is flowing. It’s exhilarating to be writing again. Like coming home.

  The only sour note happens a few days after I get back from hospital. A woman who has been a close friend for decades breaks off all contact, never to resume it. I have heard countless patients’ stories about disappearing friends but nothing prepares me for the shock. I am hurt, angry and bewildered—all at once.

  Another old friend also reacts oddly. Although we only see each other irregularly, we’ve always had the comfortable bond that comes from so many years of knowing each other.

  I ring her after I come home from hospital. She is shocked when she hears I’ve just come home from cancer surgery. ‘Why didn’t you ring me before?’ she asks. I explain that I didn’t want to worry her unnecessarily, but that I’m home now; the cancer’s been caught early and everything’s okay.

  ‘I’m so glad,’ she says and then suddenly, ‘I’ve just got something on the stove. Can I ring you back in a minute?’

  ‘Of course,’ I say and hang up. I never hear from her again.

  But in general, friendships are proceeding as usual. A couple of years down the track, I will realise that in fact they were never really tested during this first experience with cancer. It is all over so quickly and the outcome is so positive that I haven’t really needed much from friends.

  I make decisions about my life. I realise I haven’t been giving myself enough time to write. The books that I’ve written have been crammed into the minute spaces left in a week of intense, energy-demanding work as a psychotherapist. I decide to leave my consulting work at the hospital and keep only my private practice. I’m sad to leave my hospital work, but it’s also liberating to have more time to write.

  I resolve, too, to let go of the family issues that were distressing me before cancer claimed my attention. I am going to put it all aside, I decide. I imagine myself sealing it up in an airtight jar and stowing it away on the highest, furthest shelf I can find.

  The sun is shining, my book is on track and I’m feeling fantastic. We’re having an extended summer. The gravel shimmers like a houri when I walk on it; the trees are tremblingly green. I feel deliriously a part of it all; as if Nature, the living world, is carrying me along, celebrating with me.

  THE FROG PRINCE

  ‘Nature,’ said the head librarian, sweeping her hand towards the rows of ill-assorted glass containers housing ants, beetles and the mud of the local park. ‘The children are doing projects on natural science for Science Week.’

  One of the jars had a curious, oddly familiar shape. Rachel was just reaching out to touch it, when she suddenly shuddered and pulled back. She had remembered her own jar.

  Remembering it was like seeing a series of shots cut from a moving film.

  The eight-year-old Rachel being handed a jar, heavy with water (and something else?), covered with a tattered paper bag. Rachel carrying the jar, a few paces up from the path leading away from the creek. Rachel peeling away the wrinkled brown covering and …

  She is holding the ugliest, most hideous thing she has ever seen. It is moving, pressing its face against the glass directly where Rachel’s fingers clasp it. And suddenly Rachel is convinced that the glass is not there. That there is nothing between Rachel and the monster. She tries to tell herself to hold onto the glass. That it is just a frog, that it can’t get to her. But it’s impossible. She screams and drops the jar and runs.

  Even now, Rachel was embarrassed by the intensity of her response. The sheer repulsion, terror really, the creature had inspired. What had happened to the frog, she wondered? She liked to think of the jar breaking as it fell and the frog emerging; not being trapped in its glass bell forever.

  Frogs! That was biology, she thought. Science. Her fairy story for the week. ‘The Frog Prince’.

  ‘The Frog Prince’, Rachel knew, was one of the oldest of fairytales. It dated back to thirteenth-century Germany and had appeared in Britain three hundred years later, encompassing a variety of titles and forms. The stories began differently, but had a similar body and ending.

  The original ‘Frog Prince’ began with Rachel’s favourite first sentence out of all the fairytales: ‘In olden times, when wishing still helped one …’ And went on to tel
l the story of a King’s youngest daughter.

  Close by the castle in which the Princess lived was a great, dark wood. And in the wood, under the spreading leaves of a lime tree, was a well. The Princess came here often in her wanderings, to sit by the side of the cool fountain and play with her favourite toy—a golden ball. She would toss the ball up in the air and always, its glittering trajectory would curve it straight back into her waiting hand. Always, except once.

  The Princess had her hand outstretched as usual, ready for the ball to come to it. Instead, it flew straight past her little hand and off into the well. Shocked, the Princess rushed to the well to retrieve it. But the water was deeper than she imagined and dark, so that she could not see. She began to cry piteously, louder and louder and could not be comforted.

  Rachel remembered the horror of that jolt. She had been sailing along, expecting each day to come to her as surely and easily as a ball caught in the hand. And then she had missed. At the instant of her diagnosis, the day had swerved, sailed past her. And with it, a deck of days, trailing out behind it. All the days in the world that might not now be hers; soaring away from her, higher and higher.

  The Princess was distraught now, weeping as if her heart had forgotten how to stop, when a voice from the well called out, gurgling and deep, like the voice of water swelling. ‘What ails you, King’s daughter? You weep so that even a stone would show pity.’

  Startled, the Princess saw that it was a frog speaking. ‘I would give anything,’ she said to the frog, ‘my clothes, my pearls, my jewels and even my crown, if you can bring me my golden ball from the well.’

  But the frog was not interested in her possessions. What it wanted was more costly. The frog wanted her to love it. It wanted to be her companion and playmate; to sit at her table, eat from her golden plate and sip from her golden cup. It wanted to sleep in her little bed.