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Authors: Lucy Grealy
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away. Only then did I begin to realize how accustomed I'd grown to being taken care of. I hadn't even had to wash myself. And as much as I hated to concede any points to my mother, I knew I had become too passive. An ornate surge of grief came over me, too manifold for me to know what I was grieving for. Luckily I tired easily, and the weeping could go on for only a few moments. I wiped my eyes. Ashamed of myself, I went back into the room to help the aide gather my things into a red plastic disposal bag with WARNING: HAZARDOUS WASTE written in large black letters across it. My mother had taken my overnight case home early on because it took up too much room.
The new ward was laid out exactly like Ward 10, but it was filled with a different kind of patient. These were teenaged girls who giggled with each other and told jokes that I didn't get about the doctors, especially one Dr. Silverman, whom they all seemed to be in love with. One girl with long black hair and lovely dark eyes sang his name over and over again in a voice I told her was good enough to be on the radio. She looked pleased when I told her this. All of them were skeletally thin; knowing nothing of anorexia, I wondered what was wrong with them. There were no visible scars or signs of illness that I could see, apart from their weight. One of them was so thin she couldn't walk, and the others pushed her about in a wheelchair. Her arms were so thin that her elbows looked like giant swollen lumps, her hands like the oversized hands of someone who has worked long and hard for a lifetime. Though they were older than me, having already entered that mysterious, enviable realm of the teenager, they wore toddler-sized name bands, the only ones small enough to fit their delicate and fragile wrists.
I spent a week on the new ward, but I never committed to making friends there. Derek came up to see me once or twice, but then he too was discharged. My body started orienting itself toward home, feeling stronger and more bored every day. I still had sticky circles on my chest, remnants of the EKG, and my fingertips were covered with small black marks, scars from the daily blood tests, but my body was my own once more. Though I had looked at the scar running down the side of my still swollen face, it hadn't occurred to me to scrutinize how I
looked.
I was missing a section of my jaw, but the extreme swelling, which stayed with me for two months, hid the defect. Before the operation I hadn't had a strong sense of what I looked like anyway. Proud of my tomboy heritage, I'd dogmatically scorned any attempts to look pretty or girlish. A classmate named Karen had once told me I was beautiful, and by the third grade two boys had asked me to be their girlfriend, all of which bewildered me. When Derek had delivered my first actual kiss, his desire had taken me completely by surprise. On the day I finally went home, I felt only proud of my new, dramatic scar and eager to show it off.
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School was already over for the year. The endlessness of summer stretched out before me, temptingly narcotic. I wasn't allowed to go swimming because the scar on my trachea was still soft and fresh, a pink button on my throat, but I didn't really mind. I was a hero. Neighbors stopped me on the heat-rippled sidewalks to ask how I was. Evan, my closest friend from the neighborhood, and the other boys seemed suitably impressed with my hospital tales (I embellished heartily) and with my coup: I didn't have to make up any of the two months of schoolwork I'd missed.
One afternoon when Evan and I were playing an intricate game of jungle in his living room, his father passed through on his way to the kitchen. Pausing in the doorway for a moment, he turned and addressed me directly. I knew that his wife had died of cancer several years before, but I couldn't have imagined what went through his mind to now see a child with the same disease, the same prospects. He was the first person to mention chemotherapy,
The new ward was laid out exactly like Ward 10, but it was filled with a different kind of patient. These were teenaged girls who giggled with each other and told jokes that I didn't get about the doctors, especially one Dr. Silverman, whom they all seemed to be in love with. One girl with long black hair and lovely dark eyes sang his name over and over again in a voice I told her was good enough to be on the radio. She looked pleased when I told her this. All of them were skeletally thin; knowing nothing of anorexia, I wondered what was wrong with them. There were no visible scars or signs of illness that I could see, apart from their weight. One of them was so thin she couldn't walk, and the others pushed her about in a wheelchair. Her arms were so thin that her elbows looked like giant swollen lumps, her hands like the oversized hands of someone who has worked long and hard for a lifetime. Though they were older than me, having already entered that mysterious, enviable realm of the teenager, they wore toddler-sized name bands, the only ones small enough to fit their delicate and fragile wrists.
I spent a week on the new ward, but I never committed to making friends there. Derek came up to see me once or twice, but then he too was discharged. My body started orienting itself toward home, feeling stronger and more bored every day. I still had sticky circles on my chest, remnants of the EKG, and my fingertips were covered with small black marks, scars from the daily blood tests, but my body was my own once more. Though I had looked at the scar running down the side of my still swollen face, it hadn't occurred to me to scrutinize how I
looked.
I was missing a section of my jaw, but the extreme swelling, which stayed with me for two months, hid the defect. Before the operation I hadn't had a strong sense of what I looked like anyway. Proud of my tomboy heritage, I'd dogmatically scorned any attempts to look pretty or girlish. A classmate named Karen had once told me I was beautiful, and by the third grade two boys had asked me to be their girlfriend, all of which bewildered me. When Derek had delivered my first actual kiss, his desire had taken me completely by surprise. On the day I finally went home, I felt only proud of my new, dramatic scar and eager to show it off.
Â
School was already over for the year. The endlessness of summer stretched out before me, temptingly narcotic. I wasn't allowed to go swimming because the scar on my trachea was still soft and fresh, a pink button on my throat, but I didn't really mind. I was a hero. Neighbors stopped me on the heat-rippled sidewalks to ask how I was. Evan, my closest friend from the neighborhood, and the other boys seemed suitably impressed with my hospital tales (I embellished heartily) and with my coup: I didn't have to make up any of the two months of schoolwork I'd missed.
One afternoon when Evan and I were playing an intricate game of jungle in his living room, his father passed through on his way to the kitchen. Pausing in the doorway for a moment, he turned and addressed me directly. I knew that his wife had died of cancer several years before, but I couldn't have imagined what went through his mind to now see a child with the same disease, the same prospects. He was the first person to mention chemotherapy,
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