by Helen Ellis
My technician warns me, “Now, I’m gonna get up close and personal.”
She comes at me like a linebacker. Or a mom trying to get her kid into a snowsuit.
When it comes to mammograms, you have to give in and give yourself over to the technician. Don’t fight her. Go limp like one of those inflatable car dealership wiggly men. Hold your arms up and let her jiggle your breast into place.
I, personally, have tits made for mammograms. They are 36 DD naturals, buoyant and round. Haven’t had a mammogram? Picture putting a water balloon between two coffee table books made out of taxicab partitions and flattening that balloon until right before it bursts.
That’s how it goes if you have my breasts: Baby Bear in the Goldilocks story of breasts, breasts that are just right. But if your breasts are too big, they have to be squashed one section at a time; and if your breast are too small, they have to be wrenched from your torso in a torture akin to what we on the playground used to call Indian burns.
There is a new machine they use to test your dumb boobs, I kid you not, called the Genius. It was invented—I suspect—at the same time as “dense breasts.” The Genius takes 3-D pictures and Sheryl Crow is the spokesperson; but for my follow-up, I’m having a regular no-brand-name mammogram with a smaller squeezer. How small? Instead of coffee table books, picture that 1980s TV talking tub of Parkay.
Breast cancer!
Par-kaaaaay!
The technician says, “Now THIS is gonna hurt.”
I ask, “Why would you tell me that?”
She says, “What, you want me to lie to you and tell you it’s gonna be like lemonade?”
I say, “I most certainly do.”
She loads and locks me. It hurts so much I curse like a fourth-grade boy on a field trip. There’s maybe a foot between me and whatever button she presses to take the image of my breast, but bless her, she rushes to it. I hear a series of clicks. Even if I wanted to, I can’t turn to see what she’s doing behind me.
She says, “Don’t breathe, don’t breathe.”
If I breathe, I’ll blur the picture. If I blur the picture, she’ll have to take another picture. Another picture means more time in the vise.
I hold my breath. And, while it is only for a matter of seconds, it’s enough time for me to develop a conspiracy theory: the medical community is making money hand over fist off our fear of double mastectomies. So many of us are getting called back for follow-up mammograms and ultrasounds (a test in which your breasts are lubed up like Cinnabons and each is worked over like I used to work over a Centipede trackball). Next year, they’re gonna want a biopsy. I’m not gonna want to do it. I wanna go home.
My technician releases me.
As I put on my paper robe, she invites me to come around her protective screen to look at the inside of my breast. There are white specks behind the nipple.
She says, “See that? That’s calcification. We don’t know what causes it, but it’s nothing. It’s like soap scum. I’ll show this to the doctor and send you on your way.”
I hug her and thank her for being so nice to me and my dumb boobs.
And no, radiology technicians are not supposed to tell you about their findings or lack of findings, but here’s where getting a weathered technician comes into play. In my experience, older women have been empathetic because they’ve all found themselves in my exact literal position: getting called back for more tests when we’re as cancerous as Irish Spring.
YOUNG LADIES,
LISTEN TO ME
If you don’t know what to do with the rest of your life, make your bed. If you’re going to be a couch potato, at least fluff the pillows. If you can’t afford pearls, red nail polish is your best accessory. If you don’t have time to do your nails, smile and stand up straight.
Keep calm and check your carry-on bag. Wait patiently and read a book.
Texting a minute before you’re scheduled to meet someone to say you’ll be there soon is not being on time. Flip-flops are not shoes. Leggings are not pants. Dying your hair gray is not a good idea. And neither are those inner-arm, rib-cage, and finger tattoos.
If your friend tells you a secret about another friend, she has told another friend a secret about you. Just because someone knocks on your front door doesn’t mean you have to open it. If you have to keep telling folks you’re not sick, you are sick. If a deliveryman packs two forks, you’re overeating. If an item is 75 percent off, there’s a reason, so don’t buy it. If someone asks you a question that’s too personal, say, “Once, in college.”
Try to live a life worth impersonating by a drag queen. Name your Starbucks self Rihanna. Flash yourself in your mirror. Take as many bikini pool shots as you possibly can because Sarong City is closer than you think.
SEVEN THINGS
I’M DOING INSTEAD
OF A NECK LIFT
Contouring: Contouring means putting brown blush on my neck. And my jawline. Or where my jawline used to be. I take a flat-end brush and draw lines from my earlobes to my chin. Or where my chin used to be. I could also use a brown cream stick that looks like a glue stick. If they come up with a glue stick that glues my ears behind my head, I will buy that.
Anyhoo, I blend. It’s very important to blend. Blending the brown lines makes me look natural. “Natural” is Southern Lady Code for pretty without trying too hard. To me, in the eighties, Dolly Parton looked natural. Trying too hard would be getting a neck lift.
If I blend well enough, I’ll achieve a sort of smoke and mirrors illusion. My neck will look like a tobacco-stained cigarette pouch and my face a shiny clasp if I highlight with shimmer. These days, matte is out and illumination is in. We women are supposed to glow like those Cocoon aliens who skinny-dipped with Wilford Brimley. Good news: If you don’t know this movie or actor, you don’t need to contour.
Camera angling: When posing for a picture, I no longer say, “Cheese.” I say, “Higher.” I instruct the picture taker to hold the camera like a piñata. If he doesn’t understand my instructions, I scream them. “Higher! HIGHER! Hold the camera like a piñata!” If I want to be sophisticated, I’ll say, “Hold the camera like a chandelier.”
The photographer’s hands and arms should be up over his head like a charging chimpanzee’s. He should not be able to see the camera lens. He should tip his phone like an auction paddle and click.
My best angle is that taken by a hovering drone. Scroll through my albums and you’ll think I’ve been under NSA surveillance. But don’t I look gorgeous? All my face flesh has fallen back to reveal my bone structure. Just look at my cheekbones. And my neck. What neck?
Top-knotting: To top-knot, I spent two years growing my hair past my shoulders so I can now sweep it up onto the top of my head and twirl it into a ball like a ski-mask pompom. My hair ball can’t be too tight because then it looks like a bun. Buns are unnerving. People see a bun and fear I’m about to pull a ruler or hypodermic needle out from behind my back. A top knot should be loose but structurally sound, like a bird’s nest. People should want to cup it, to see if it fits in their hand. But if it’s too big, people will want to smack it like a Family Feud buzzer.
The point is, a top knot pulls my face up. Like bootstraps. My face is the boot. A top knot also draws focus away from my neck like a star on the top of a Christmas tree draws attention away from a tree skirt that is disheveled and lumpy from cats. My neck is the skirt. I don’t know what the cats are, but I’ll make an appointment with the good dermatologist and have them checked out.
Mock-turtling: Although it’s tempting to imagine myself as an ear of corn shielded only by silk, once I start buying “lightweight” summer turtlenecks, I can never go back. They make turtleneck swimsuits now too, you know. Lands’ End puts bikini bottoms and matching waterproof turtlenecks on catalog models whose necks are as firm and as long as Gr
eek Revival columns. The swim tops aren’t marketed as neck girdles; they’re sold as sun protection or “rash guards.” But turtleneck swimtops are rash guards the way Colgate travel-size vibrators are “electric toothbrushes.”
So until they come up with a turtleneck that doesn’t grip my throat like a compression sock, I’ll sink into a mock turtleneck like a bubble bath. A mock turtleneck is light and luxurious. Sometimes, I clutch the cashmere collar and bring it up over my nose so I can peep out of my sweater like a kitten over the lip of a teacup. Is there anything more adorable? I don’t think so.
Bread-loafing: As an alternative, I’m embracing the fact that my face and neck are beginning to resemble a slice of bread. As soon as I wake up, I look in a mirror and glop on positive affirmations like skin-care cream (or, since I’m bread-loafing, like butter): “Hey there, hot stuff, you want your face and neck to look like a slice of bread. Everybody loves bread. People love bread so much, they try and abstain from it. But bread is the great seductress. You, madam, are the Kate Beckinsale of baked goods. Everybody wants you at every hour of every day. Hubba hubba! Those aren’t double chins, they are more smiles.”
Getting handsy: Forget about my neck, I’ll focus on my hands. How often do I see my face anyway? I see my hands a heck of a lot more: reading, scrolling, loading the dishwasher, pulling an arrow out of an intruder—what have you—there are my hands.
Some say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but I say the hands are the tollbooths to beauty. I can Lipo (suck), Thermi (burn), or Kybella (acid-wash) my neck fat away, but there’s no plastic surgery for the backs of my hands.
So I moisturize, I sunscreen, I have age spots scraped off like barnacles. And I don’t wear fingerless leather gloves because fingerless leather gloves age you more than using your smartphone light to read a menu.
Antiquing: Screw all this, from here on out I’ll consider myself an antique lamp. I am worth something and polished. I may be fragile, but I’ve survived. I am a conversation starter. And I will never be too old to light up a room.
SERIOUS WOMEN
The New York Post nicknamed the twenty-two-year-old woman on trial “Womb Raider.”
She’d told everyone she was pregnant. Then she connected on Facebook with a former classmate who truly was nine months pregnant. She lured the victim to her apartment, then took a common kitchen paring knife and slit her throat, stabbed her fifty times in the face, chest, and hands, and then cut open her abdomen. She opened that flap of skin, removed the victim’s uterus, and turned it inside out on a bathroom floor like she was emptying a stolen Birkin bag. The baby survived and, for the next few hours, the killer claimed the baby as her own.
It’s my friend Meredith’s job to send “Womb Raider” to prison for life. And I am sitting in the back row of what will be a two-week trial to watch her do it.
Meredith is private about her work as a Bronx assistant district attorney. She says, “I don’t want to ruin anyone’s dinner.”
On the first day, she wears a skirt suit and leather kitten heels so shiny they look like they’re straight out of the box. She is petite and at one point will present evidence—a suitcase with the victim’s blood in it—that is nearly as big as she is. She will carry it in her arms like a gigantic teddy bear.
I want to clap and shout, “You go, girl!” or “Yasss, queen!” But I’m pretty sure that’s inappropriate. I’m struggling with how to behave because murder trials weren’t in my etiquette books. In this audience, one of these things is not like the others, and I am that one thing. I don’t look like family (African Americans dressed for church) or press (single women dressed for an Adirondack hike). I’m a middle-aged white lady in a blouse and tapered slacks. My purse has a notepad with notes about ghosts and cheese logs, double chins and Burberry coats. I write silly stories for money. When entering the courthouse, my hair clip set off the metal detector. I feel that detector buzzing all over me now: I am the woman who doesn’t belong.
This is a serious room with serious women.
The salt-and-pepper pixie-cut judge, who looks like she’s permanently had it up to here, looms down from her bench. The court officer enforces the rules—no texting, no talking, no food, no funny faces—like a headmistress with a handgun. Meredith’s co-counsel, a new mom, keeps their desk better organized than a Pack ’n Play. The defense attorney paces, a cougar in a cardigan.
The defendant enters with her wrists handcuffed behind her back. The court officer unlocks her, sits her down, and then takes a seat directly behind her. No one in the audience is here for the defendant. The victim’s mother—a pastor’s wife—sits with her husband and two adult daughters. Steady and ever present, she is the epitome of composure. God is her jury. I will never hear her speak.
In my notepad, I write to myself: You think you’re tough, but you are not tough.
Meredith is tough.
I met Meredith more than ten years ago in a card game. She is the kind of woman whose resting face is a poker face. Nothing rattles her. The woman is calm. And she’s not afraid to bet. Throughout the trial, the defense attorney will put her legal pad on Meredith’s table, object to her choice of words, and ask the judge to ask her to speak up. When I tell Meredith I’m infuriated that this woman is trying to get under her skin, Meredith tells me she hadn’t even noticed.
She shrugs. She says, “I’m missing that gene.”
Which explains why she’s so intimidating at a poker table. No matter what her cards, she makes it look like she always has the best hand. I can’t count the number of times I’ve folded to her.
Meredith gives her opening statements and lays out the facts. The charges are murder and kidnapping.
The defense attorney goes next.
This woman slinks like a cat who can predict death in a nursing home. I half expect her to rub her side against the jury box to mark it with her scent.
“Oh, she killed her,” she says. “She admits that she killed her.” But the defense attorney says the kidnapping charge is bogus. And the burden of proof for murder (intent) instead of manslaughter (she snapped) is on the prosecutor (my friend, Meredith).
This is a case about motherhood, madness, and murder. None of which I understand. I don’t have kids. And I don’t get it: I’ve never wanted a baby badly enough to do what this young woman did.
The first person to arrive at the crime scene was the defendant’s boyfriend. He walked into her apartment and found her sitting by a dead woman with a baby in her arms. He did not want to be there then, and he does not want to be here now. Under the scrutiny of serious women, he swears to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in a T-shirt that reads MAKE IT RAIN. He glares at his ex-girlfriend and spills out of the witness box like an angry beanbag chair.
The defense attorney tries to discredit his testimony by presenting him as a predator who’s been with the defendant since she was fourteen and he was twenty-one. He beat her, he choked her, he sat on her. He denies all of this, but admits that he cheated.
The defense attorney asks him how many women he saw while he was seeing the defendant.
He says, “Too many.”
She asks him why one of these women and his very own mother have orders of protection against him.
He says, “Misunderstandings.”
She asks him how often he had sex with the defendant.
He says, “Once in a blue.”
When I relay all this to my friend Erica, she asks me, “How could he believe he got her pregnant? How could he believe it was their baby? How could he believe she’d been pregnant if she wasn’t getting bigger?”
I say, “Every woman carries differently. And he’s a man.”
Erica asks, “What’s that Southern Lady Code for?”
I admit, “She’s fat and he’s dumb.”
I speak in code. My motto’s alw
ays been: if you don’t have something nice to say, say something not so nice in a nice way. The women in the courtroom aren’t concerned with being nice.
In my notepad, I write: I have no idea what my friend does for a living.
When Meredith calls me at home that evening, I vow to be direct.
I say, “Oooh, y’all had a HAH-STILE witness!”
Meredith puts me on speakerphone so her co-counsel can hear me. She says, “Please repeat what you just said.”
I do. HAH-STILE.
I am a New Yorker who has kept her Southern accent. Southern accents are disarming. Meredith laughs, and I’m glad I’ve made her laugh because I don’t think she’s laughed under the weight of this case for a while.
She asks me if I found the boyfriend credible.
I say, “Oh, he’s a son of bitch, but I believe him. She did it.”
I wish I was on her jury, but I’d never be picked to be on her jury because I know the prosecutor (my friend, Meredith) and, besides that, I can’t look at autopsy photos.
When the city medical examiner takes the stand, he is as threatening as a cartoon mouse in a three-piece suit and seems to be perfectly fine with that. The man is wee. There’s just no better word for him. He is also so Irish that he sounds like the Lucky Charms leprechaun. He lilts like he’s talking about pink hearts, green clovers, and yellow moons, but what he’s describing is the uterus, umbilical cord, and placenta, which arrived separately from the victim like a battery pack.
He describes the first photo Meredith enters into evidence as the victim’s palms—or as the Irishman pronounces them, “the PAMs,” like he’s talking about the cooking spray. He says, “There are defensive wounds on the PAMs.”