her hands up to her neck, but she couldn’t move her arms. “I was so mad I wanted to kick holes in the sheets, but there wasn’t no use in that.” When my stepfather came in to sit and whistle his sobs beside the bed, she took long breaths and held her face tight and still. She became all eyes, watching everything from a place far off inside herself.
“Never want what you cannot have,” she’d always told me. It was her rule for survival, and she grabbed hold of it again. She turned her head away from what she could not change and started adjusting herself to her new status. She was going to have to figure out how to sew herself up one of those breast forms so she could wear a bra. “Damn things probably cost a fortune,” she told me when I came to sit beside her. I nodded slowly. I didn’t let her see how afraid I was, or how uncertain, or even how angry. I showed her my pride in her courage and my faith in her strength. But underneath I wanted her to be angry, too. “I’ll make do,” she whispered, showing me nothing, and I just nodded.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” I told her.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” she told me. The pretense was sometimes the only thing we had to give each other.
When it’s your mama and it’s an accomplished fact, you can’t talk politics into her bleeding. You can’t quote from last month’s article about how a partial mastectomy is just as effective. You can’t talk about patriarchy or class or confrontation strategies. I made jokes on the telephone, wrote letters full of healthy recipes and vitamin therapies. I pretended for her sake and my own that nothing was going to happen, that cancer is an everyday occurrence (and it is) and death is not part of the scenario.
Push it down. Don’t show it. Don’t tell anybody what is really going on. My mama makes do when the whole world cries out for things to stop, to fall apart, just once for all of us to let our anger show. My mama clamps her teeth, laughs her bitter laugh, and does whatever she thinks she has to do with no help, thank you, from people who only want to see her wanting something she can’t have anyway.
Five, ten, twenty years—my mama has had cancer for twenty years. “That doctor, the one in Tampa in ’71, the one told me I was gonna die, that sucker choked himself on a turkey bone. People that said what a sad thing it was—me having cancer, and surely meant to die—hell, those people been run over by pickups and dropped down dead with one thing and another, while me, I just go on. It’s something, an’t it?”
It’s something. Piece by piece, my mother is being stolen from me. After the hysterectomy, the first mastectomy, another five years later, her teeth that were easier to give up than to keep, the little toes that calcified from too many years working waitress in bad shoes, hair and fingernails that drop off after every bout of chemotherapy, my mama is less and less the mountain, more and more the cave—the empty place from which things have been removed.
“With what they’ve taken off me, off Granny, and your Aunt Grace—shit, you could almost make another person.”
A woman, a garbage creation, an assembly of parts. When I drink I see her rising like bats out of deep caverns, a gossamer woman—all black edges, with a chrome uterus and molded glass fingers, plastic wire rib cage and red unblinking eyes. My mama, my grandmother, my aunts, my sister, and me—every part of us that can be taken has been.
“Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood,” my mama sang for me once, and laughing added, “But we don’t need as much of it as we used to, huh?”
When Mama talked, I listened. I believed it was the truth she was telling me. I watched her face as much as I listened to her words. She had a way of dropping her head and covering her bad teeth with her palm. I’d say, “Don’t do that.” And she’d laugh at how serious I was. When she laughed
“Never want what you cannot have,” she’d always told me. It was her rule for survival, and she grabbed hold of it again. She turned her head away from what she could not change and started adjusting herself to her new status. She was going to have to figure out how to sew herself up one of those breast forms so she could wear a bra. “Damn things probably cost a fortune,” she told me when I came to sit beside her. I nodded slowly. I didn’t let her see how afraid I was, or how uncertain, or even how angry. I showed her my pride in her courage and my faith in her strength. But underneath I wanted her to be angry, too. “I’ll make do,” she whispered, showing me nothing, and I just nodded.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” I told her.
“Everything’s going to be all right,” she told me. The pretense was sometimes the only thing we had to give each other.
When it’s your mama and it’s an accomplished fact, you can’t talk politics into her bleeding. You can’t quote from last month’s article about how a partial mastectomy is just as effective. You can’t talk about patriarchy or class or confrontation strategies. I made jokes on the telephone, wrote letters full of healthy recipes and vitamin therapies. I pretended for her sake and my own that nothing was going to happen, that cancer is an everyday occurrence (and it is) and death is not part of the scenario.
Push it down. Don’t show it. Don’t tell anybody what is really going on. My mama makes do when the whole world cries out for things to stop, to fall apart, just once for all of us to let our anger show. My mama clamps her teeth, laughs her bitter laugh, and does whatever she thinks she has to do with no help, thank you, from people who only want to see her wanting something she can’t have anyway.
Five, ten, twenty years—my mama has had cancer for twenty years. “That doctor, the one in Tampa in ’71, the one told me I was gonna die, that sucker choked himself on a turkey bone. People that said what a sad thing it was—me having cancer, and surely meant to die—hell, those people been run over by pickups and dropped down dead with one thing and another, while me, I just go on. It’s something, an’t it?”
It’s something. Piece by piece, my mother is being stolen from me. After the hysterectomy, the first mastectomy, another five years later, her teeth that were easier to give up than to keep, the little toes that calcified from too many years working waitress in bad shoes, hair and fingernails that drop off after every bout of chemotherapy, my mama is less and less the mountain, more and more the cave—the empty place from which things have been removed.
“With what they’ve taken off me, off Granny, and your Aunt Grace—shit, you could almost make another person.”
A woman, a garbage creation, an assembly of parts. When I drink I see her rising like bats out of deep caverns, a gossamer woman—all black edges, with a chrome uterus and molded glass fingers, plastic wire rib cage and red unblinking eyes. My mama, my grandmother, my aunts, my sister, and me—every part of us that can be taken has been.
“Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood,” my mama sang for me once, and laughing added, “But we don’t need as much of it as we used to, huh?”
When Mama talked, I listened. I believed it was the truth she was telling me. I watched her face as much as I listened to her words. She had a way of dropping her head and covering her bad teeth with her palm. I’d say, “Don’t do that.” And she’d laugh at how serious I was. When she laughed
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