Read Online The Year My Mother Came Back by Alice Eve Cohen - Free Book Online Page B

Phyllis’s optimism: My cancer is stage zero and completely curable. I’m incredibly lucky. (Oops, don’t tempt the Evil Eye.
Tuh, tuh, tuh!
)
    â€œMy name is Jamal,” says a velvety and masculine, Caribbean-accented voice, rousing me from my prayer of gratitude. “This is Reggie. You can come in now.”
    Jamal is from Barbados, Reggie is from Brooklyn. Jamal is tall and muscled, Reggie is short and slight. They are both dark-skinned and handsome. I like these guys. I take off my robe and lie face down on a foam mattress with a hole cut out for my left breast to hang down, so that my heart and lung will be out of the line of fire when I’m nuked. I’m surprisingly unselfconscious about being naked from the waist up. The mattress is lined with the softest cotton sheets. The room is chilly. Reggie covers me with a warmed sheet. Jamal lays a heated blanket over my feet. Nice.
    â€œJust relax,” says Jamal. “Don’t try to help us position you.”
    Reggie and Jamal move me incrementally right and left, gently pushing and pulling my shoulders, arms, waist, back, ribs. Like a minimal massage, sort of sexy. I ask myself whether it’s ethical to sexually enjoy being handled by these gorgeous and (I assume) straight guys. Under the circumstances, why not enjoy the absurd sensuality of it?
    â€œDon’t move until we say so,” says Reggie, smoothing the sheet over my shoulders.
    Reggie and Jamal close the padded door behind them.
    â€œStay absolutely still for ten minutes,” says Jamal over the loudspeaker. “Radiation is commencing.”
    THE WALLS ARE gray, the lights are dim. A Handel symphony is barely audible over the fan and the intermittent electronic beeps and drones. I survey the room as much as I can with my left cheek pressed to the mattress.
    The radiation machine is a sleek robot, about seven feet tall, steely gray curves. A pivoting metal arm is the only movement in the room, precisely aiming radiation beams from many directions. It circles above me, pauses; circles to the right of me, pauses; circles below me, pauses; circles to my left, pauses. “Do not breathe so deeply,” says Jamal over the speaker. “It makes your chest rise and fall too much, and the radiation will miss its mark. Just breathe normally.”
    Breathing deeply is normal for me—thanks to all those years of clarinet lessons in my youth and yoga classes as an adult—so it’s an effort to
not
breathe deeply. Shallow breathing does not feel normal. I have to Zen the anti-Zen-ness of it.
    Ten minutes is a long time to stay absolutely still.
    A loose hair tickles my nose each time I inhale and exhale. For each one of six hundred seconds, it flutters over my nostril, and all I can think about is the hair, my itchy nose, and my fear of radiation, all of which conspire to make the minutes feel interminable. My back muscle seizes up.
Aarrgh.
Ouch. Itchy nose, sore back, itchy nose, sore back, nose, back, nose, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck . . .
    â€œYOU MAY MOVE about now, Ms. Cohen.”
    HOW COULD AUNT Phyllis have loved radiation?
    What would Phyllis do? She took a different route to her radiation treatments every morning, and watched the leaves change color. I’ll give it a try.
    THE NEXT DAY, I drop Eliana off at school before my appointment. Her friend Jojo runs up to her, and they skip into the building, arms linked, whispering and giggling. I forego the subway, walk to Central Park, and enter the Ramble, a serenely beautiful wooded area with winding paths, tall boulders, and hidden ponds. The traffic noise drops away. My ears ring in this unaccustomed quiet. Bird calls, the wind rustling through