A Hole in My Heart (4 page)

It's the same every lunch hour. It's like I always choose the table with a
Do Not Eat Here
sign. Except I'm the only one who can't read the message. So I eat alone. Kids jam around the large tables of the cafeteria. But nobody comes to the table I sit at. I cram the food in, grab my binder, pitch my brown paper lunch bag in the garbage can, and go walkies. That's what I call it. I stride to one end of the school like I'm going to the library, round the corner where nobody is, make an about-face, and stride in the opposite direction. I am
soooo
busy,
soooo
important that I can't even stop to chat.

Every day is the same. Except today. And I'd rather have it normal. Today Dolores and her friend Trudy are around the corner where I usually turn.

“Hiya. Saw you in the park with some kids on Saturday.” It's Dolores, the one I call Black Hair/Kiss Curl in my head.

“Yup,” I say.

“Are they your brother and sisters?” Bobby pins holding her kiss curls in place, she's got the usual heavy makeup on that makes her look like, I don't know, a cross between a clown and a movie star. I would say prostitute but I don't think I'm supposed to know about that stuff. Imagine if I used that word in front of Mrs. Taylor.

“Could be.” I'm not sure why I don't tell them the truth. Is it because they'll tell everyone at school and then they'll all avoid me or talk behind my back? But then they already do.

“We've changed our minds. You can be our friend now. You can walk down Lonsdale with us after school. We usually stop for pop and a donut.”

“Some other time.” I walk on to the school library, find a table, and pretend to study. No one's there but the librarian, reading and munching on an apple.

• • •

It's after supper. The phone rings. I ignore Dad's yell from the basement. The ringing continues. I hear him thump up the stairs. “Hi there, Mary.” Pause. “Of course. Of course.” Pause. “Maybe that's a good thing.” Pause. “We look forward to it. I'll pick you up at the station. See you Tuesday night.” Then a clunk of the receiver on the hook.

“Nora.” Dad's voice goes up at the end when he expects me to come to him, chop chop. Fast fast. He's in the kitchen, reading glasses in one hand, stroking his non-existent beard with the other. The light from the dining room is glinting off his glasses onto the wall.

“That was sure short, Dad.”

“So if you could hear it was short, why couldn't you hear the phone ring and answer it?”

I open my mouth. My brain is not in gear. Again.

“Uh, I didn't want to.” It comes out snippy.

“Quit that, Nora. Why are you so bad-tempered all the time?”

“Me, bad-tempered? It takes one to know one, Dad. You're the bad-tempered person around here.”

If Dad had hair running down his neck and back, it would be standing straight up, like on a ferocious dog. Why does my mouth say such things?

“Don't talk back to your elders.”

“I'm not talking back. I'm stating the facts.”

“Well, I am tired of your being in the dumps all the time. Snap out of it.”

“I don't know why you say that. I make supper every night. I do the dishes. I help with the laundry and I'm only twelve. No kids I know do that much.” Of course, I don't know anybody here, but certainly Lizzie and my other friends in Penticton don't.
And what do you do most of the time,
my mind continues,
but stay in your room in the basement?

“Oh, never mind.” He waves his hand in front of his face like he's waving away an annoying mosquito. “That was your Aunt Mary on the phone. She and Lizzie are coming down next week for a few days. Lizzie has to have some tests.”

“Great.” I grin and fly back into my room, reach under my pillow for my Autograph book and read where it falls open.

To my friend Nora,

When you get married and live in a tree,

Send me a coconut COD.

Clara — hope you like North Van

Dear Nor,

When you get old and out of shape,

remember girdles are only $4.98.

Love, Molly Johnson

Remember, Nora,

Kiss beneath the garden gate,

Kiss beneath the rose,

But the proper place to kiss a boy ...

is right beneath the nose.

Cora

Silly, silly, silly. But I feel warmer inside remembering. I can see the pencil rub-out where Cora spelled my name with an
h
by mistake.

To my darling niece, Nora,

Oranges grow in Florida,

California, too.

But it takes a place like Penticton

To grow a peach like you.

Love, Aunt Mary

I smile knowing they will be here soon.

• • •

It's now Saturday and my second official time at the Quinns'. Last week we went to the park. There were swings, slides, a teeter-totter, monkey bars, and a sandbox. The swings are for big kids so I held Colin on my lap. Colin hollered, “Higher, Nor, higher,” while I pumped and pumped until it felt like we were going over the top.

But today it's pouring. Again. So, with bits of old clothes and material I'd rummaged from our basement, I'm making clothes for each of the kids' dolls, all by hand. Mrs. Quinn doesn't have a sewing machine.

Patricia's Raggedy Ann doll is called Annie and Maureen's is Rannie. I thought the names were cute when I first heard them, but now I think they're dumb and annoying. Both dolls live up to the word
raggedy
. I cut out a green skirt and blouse for one and plaid skirt and blouse for the other. I pin and baste tiny stitches as the girls look on, all eyes.

“When I've finished them, Annie and Rannie can share them, just like real sisters.”

“How did you learn to do that?” Patricia is always the one to ask the questions.

“My Mum. She made doll clothes for me when I was little and then showed me how to make them when I got bigger.”
Do you remember, Mum?

“Brixton wants a sweater.” Colin shoves forth his teddy bear.

“Sorry, I don't have wool for a sweater. And I'm no good at knitting.” I find some heavy brown material that was Dad's pants. “How about a coat? Will this do?”

The afternoon races by. The children are pretty patient as I invent outfits. When they get wiggly we play I spy.

“I spy something that's yellow.” The curtains in the kitchen.

“I spy something that's brown and green.” The carpet in the living room.

“I spy something that begins with
p
.” I say it like puh, not the name of the letter, so Colin is included. I'm thinking of the picture on the mantelpiece of Patricia and Maureen with an older girl. Maureen guesses the answer, but Patricia adds in a whispery voice. “That's our sister, Beatrice. She died.”

“Oh, that's terrible.” What do I say? Why do people die? It's not fair. “When did she die?” I poke fiercely at the cloth with my needle. “Ouch.”

“A while ago.”

I suck the flesh of my left thumb. Beatrice looks to be ten or eleven, and Maureen and Patricia, maybe four and five.

Colin clutches at me. “I'm not in the picture, am I?”

“No, pet, you're not.” I blink back tears and shove the coat for the teddy bear into my own bag. It will need sewing on a machine for strength.

“What's wrong?” Colin cuddles in close, gives me a hug.

“Nothing. Well, no ... yes ... well, really I'm thinking of my mum.” It's so hard to say. To say out loud. “She died too.”

“You don't have a mummy?” Patricia and Maureen fling their arms around me. “Oh, that's awful.”

“You must miss her.”

“I can't imagine not having mummy.”

I freeze. I shove the needle and thread into the sewing box and stand up. “Anyway, this is all the sewing for today.” I wipe my eyes with my sleeve.

Colin pulls at my legs. “Why doesn't she come back, Nor?” His voice is high pitched.

“Don't be silly, Colin. She's dead. Like Bea.” Maureen shoves aside his arms and gives me a big squeeze. “We miss Bea. At least, Trisha and I do. He was too little.”

“Will my mummy die too?”

“No, Col. She'll be around for a long, long time to help you grow up to be a big man.” I mentally cross my fingers. How do I say the right thing? “Let's clean up now and see if it has stopped raining.” I look at the clock. “Oh my goodness, your mum'll be home any minute.” I rush around picking up bits of thread and cloth, flinging them into the garbage can. The door opens.

“I'm home.”

“Mum, look what Nora made.” Colin runs to the door, holding up pyjamas for his bear.

“What a great babysitter you have.” She beams at me. I feel my insides warm.

“Mummy,” Colin pulls at his mother's leg, “Nora doesn't have a mummy, just like we don't have a big sister. They died.”

“Did she really? Oh, that's terrible.” Mrs. Quinn hands me my babysitting money. I shove it into my sweater pocket.

“Bye, everyone.” I want out as quickly as possible.

Mrs. Quinn grabs the door and closes it behind us, just as fast. She's on the front steps with me. The rain's bouncing off the sidewalks, running in currents down the road.

“Nora, dear. I can't imagine losing your mum when you're just a girl. But I do know what it is like to be a mum and lose a daughter. If you ever want to talk about it, I'm here.”

I paste on a smile. “Thanks, Mrs. Quinn.” Each drop of rain zings my face, bounces, splashes, and dribbles down. Is it only rain on my cheeks?

I open my umbrella with a snap.

It's Sunday supper time and I have to ask.

“Dad, what's wrong with Lizzie?” We've just finished eating heated-up, leftover roast beef and mashed potatoes Jan and Dot made last night. I cooked carrots to go with them. There will be enough meat for sandwiches for half the week. I like that. Dad unfolds his reading glasses and sets his newspaper to the side.

“You mean her health?”

I nod.
What else?
I say in my head. “I know you used to call her a blue baby. But what does that mean?”

Dad pulls his pipe from his pocket and tamps it down. “I could tell something was wrong right from the beginning, when she was first born. With my stethoscope on her chest, I heard an odd murmur, like a swoosh instead of the normal
kethud kethud
. I knew she must have a hole in her heart or have valves not working properly.” He sucks in as he lights his pipe. “The technical word for it is Tetralogy of Fallot.”

“Dad, why are you doing that?” I stare at the pipe. “You stopped smoking. You know Mum doesn't like you doing that.” His face blanches. “Didn't,” I add.

He puffs twice more and cradles the pipe in his hands. A curl of whiteness sweeps up and over his face. Why has he started smoking again?

“I was pretty sure that's what she had and I was worried for a whole month until you were born that there might be something wrong with you, too. I didn't tell your mother.” He twiddles the pipe in his hands.

“But Dad, Lizzie had an operation before. She already has a huge scar all across her front to right up under her arm. Didn't that fix it?” I ladle out Aunt Mary's home-canned cherries into two bowls and put the half empty jar in the refrigerator.

“Only a bit. That's all they could do then and even that operation was really new. They had only been performing it for a couple of years.”

“You mean she was experimented on?”

“Not really.” He tips the half-burned tobacco from his pipe onto a plate. The smoke wisps up. It has a sweet smell. “They had done lots of those procedures on animals and a few on children. I'm not sure how many.”

“So, what exactly did they do?” I slurp a mouthful of cherries and carefully spit out the pits onto my spoon.

“Because of the hole, the blood on the right side in the heart, which is low in oxygen, mixes with the blood on the left side, which is full of oxygen. Therefore, the blood sent to the lungs has more oxygen in it than it should.”

“What do you mean? I thought you want your blood to have lots of oxygen.” More mouthfuls of cherries. More pits piling up on the side plate.

“You do — going to the rest of your body. But the blood going to your lungs should have mostly carbon dioxide, so that when you breathe in, the oxygen from the air can get exchanged for the carbon dioxide. That way you continue to get more fresh oxygen in your blood.” I listen hard. The to-and-from directions are very confusing. “Then that blood goes back from the lungs to your heart and is pumped to the rest of your body. You want the blood that goes to your lungs to have lots of carbon dioxide in it, not lots of oxygen.” Giving the bowl of his pipe a few more upside down taps on the plate, Dad checks that it's completely empty and places the pipe in his shirt pocket. “Is that clear?”

“Not really.” I busy myself, removing the dirty dishes from the table. It gives me a chance for what he said to sink in. Maybe. I bring back the steeped tea and place the pot next to Dad's untouched dessert bowl. “But what did they do for Lizzie in her first operation?”

“They put in what's called a shunt. They separated a branch of one of her arteries here,” he runs his hand up his chest towards his neck, “and connected it with the artery that takes blood to her lungs. That artery didn't have much oxygen in it, relatively speaking, so they sent it back again to the lungs to get more oxygen.” He cups his hands on either side of his rib cage.

“You mean so she has more oxygen for her brain?”

“That's right. And everywhere else. When she had that operation, it was meant to help only until they figured out how to fix the major problem, the hole in the middle of her heart. What it did was give her time to grow bigger and time for surgeons to work out how to help her more.”

“Why haven't they done it before?” I push Dad's cherries closer to him. “You should eat your fruit, Dad.” I sound like my mother.

“Because they couldn't. They didn't know how.” He dives into the cherries. “But antibiotics and new operating techniques have been developed in the last little while.” His words come out garbled through a full mouth. “Mmmm. These cherries are good. I told your Aunt Mary when you girls were little, the longer Lizzie stays healthy and the longer she can wait to have her operation, the better. Even now they've only done a few operations in Canada, let alone here in Vancouver, like the one she'll need. It's still very, very new. Each year the surgeons get more skilled and each year the nurses, the other doctors will know more about how to look after her during and after the operation.”

“So I was right. They're experimenting on her.”

“I don't like to think of it as experimenting. But, in a way you're correct, because with each operation they get better. Then the chance for it to work the next time, on the next girl or boy, increases.” He wipes his cherry-stained mouth with a serviette.

“So this time they're going to open up her heart and sew up the hole?”

Dad nods. “I don't know actually how they do it, but yes.”

“Without this operation will Lizzie die?” I hate to use the
d
word but somehow I must.

“Let's not talk about that.” He wipes his face again, harder.

“Dad, I have to know, and I don't want it watered down.” It's like I have to hurt myself, jab the knife in. But that's better than not knowing.

Dad's face twists as he screws his serviette into a ball and rams it half under his dessert bowl.

“Yes, dear. Without another operation she will die. Sooner rather than later.”

I look across at Dad. Most of what he says I don't understand, like where the arteries are, where the carbon dioxide is. But this part, I do. The silence in the room is heavy. My ears roar and close in. My mind wants to close in too, but can't. How can Lizzie die? The air is thick and wavy, like looking through water. She can't die. She's young. She can't. But the Quinn girl did. Beatrice did.

I reach for the teapot and slide my hands up and down. It's warm and comforting. “You said she'll be one of the first to have it?” Dad nods. “Will they fix her? Will it work?”

This time he doesn't nod. “From what I've read, there's a good chance.”

“You mean, even if she has it, it might not help? She might be just the same?” He nods again. His face twists and pinches more.

“And what if it doesn't work?”

“Let's not talk about that, dear.” He gathers up his half-finished cup of tea and starts for the kitchen.

“No, please Dad. I want to know. I have to know.”

The cup plunks on the countertop. With a hold-on-a-second look on his face, he heads for downstairs. I don't move.

I remember how Lizzie never used to run and play. At the beach in the summer she read while, I jumped in and out of the water, swam for a while and then dripped down beside her. Lizzie sometimes paddled, ducked under, rolled onto her back, but she didn't swim, not out to the raft to dive off. She went back to her book instead. I always thought she didn't run or swim because she preferred to read. But now that I think about it, I did know it was about her shortness of breath and the scar on her chest.

“These are copies of the
Canadian Medical Association Journal
.” I startle. Dad's back with a thick book under his arm and several thin, magazine-like things, with pieces of paper sticking out from one end.

“When will she have the new operation?” I ask.

Dad flips through the journals, then leafs through the book. It seems to be some sort of medical encyclopedia. “Look here.” It's a diagram labelled “Circulation of the Blood through the Heart.” He drags his fingers on one side of the picture into an upper area that looks like the bag on our vacuum cleaner, then to a lower bag, and out what looked like pipes. “Blood comes from all of the cells of our body to our heart. It carries, among other things, lots of carbon dioxide that our body needs to get rid of.”

“Then it gets pumped to the lungs?” I point to those big pipes at the top.

“You bet. Those are our pulmonary arteries. They carry the blood full of carbon dioxide from the heart to the lungs. There we breathe in oxygen and that gets exchanged for the carbon dioxide. See.” He drags his finger along what looks like more pipes and back through other sack-like things. “Then it comes through this upper area, called the left atrium, down into the left ventricle, and out the aorta to all the rest of the body.”

“That's really amazing, Dad.”

“The amazing thing is that the heart has to work and pump the blood every second of our lives.”

“So where's the hole in Lizzie's heart?”

Dad points to the area between the two lower sacks. “Lizzie has a big hole — about the size of a fifty-cent piece is what they say — in the wall between the two ventricles, these two bottom parts.” He pauses again for me to let it sink in.

“Here?” I point to the line in the diagram running down the middle of the heart, then sit back thinking. “Oh, I see. So the blood in one side with mostly carbon dioxide could mix with the blood in the other side that has the oxygen.”

“Clever girl.” Dad smiles. I like it when he smiles. His freckles seem to skitter all over his face.

“But with Lizzie, the blood she sends to the rest of her body has less oxygen in it than it should, so she doesn't have the energy to run or jump or play?”

“Exactly.”

“How will you know when she should have the operation?”

“I told you. Every month they know more. Every month they're getting better at operations on the heart. The longer we wait, the better.”

“Yeah, but how would you know when she really has to have it. Like, she can't not have it or it will be too late.” My voice cracks.

Dad scratches his head and runs his left hand down the back of his neck. His dark, reddish hair has an occasional streak of grey. “Well, I suppose when she can't go to school any longer. Or can't walk very far without stopping. I'm only guessing. I'm not the specialist. I wish I were so I could help her more. But I don't think they would want to leave it until she couldn't walk at all. She might be too weak for the operation itself.” It's like he's talking to himself.

I think back to Lizzie's letter.
Don't you dare tell your dad.
But they're coming down for tests so the doctors will find out. I can't tell Dad. I'm sure it's no big deal.
It is, isn't it, Mum? No big deal?

• • •

Penticton

September 26, 1959

Dear Nor,

Why don't you write more often? I asked Vicki if you'd written lately. She said
no
. Is it that bad? If you're lonely, isn't it helpful to write? Or are you so busy with all your new friends and all the sports and stuff? I forgot you said there wasn't much in the way of sports for girls at your school. Is there something for girls to do, like a choir?

Mum did find out about me not being able to go up the stairs. Since then I've been fine, I told her. But she phoned the doctor anyway. I don't know what that means. I am more tired. Mum has to wake me every morning. And after school, I'm really slow walking up our long driveway. I have to stop and catch my breath. I let Dougie and Jack run ahead but I don't think Mum knows that.

I'm looking forward to seeing you. But not looking forward to being in the hospital. My memory of staying there when I was five is pretty vague. They cut me open all around my chest, and even low down on my stomach, to put in a shunt that's sort of like a pipe, they said, and fix some valves. You've seen the scars. But mostly I remember the loneliness of being left with strangers, even though Mum and Aunt Alice came every day. I remember a nurse with a large, wide-brimmed cap who swept in and out of the room like a boat in full sail. I'm sure she was kind, or at least okay, but I still can feel the fear. I wonder why.

But the bus ride to Vancouver will be great. I'll have Mum all to myself. I never get to be with her much because of the boys. We can read and talk and stare out the window. She says the leaves might be pretty in Manning Park. Sorry. You don't get to be with your mum at all. That was thoughtless of me.

Hope you're fine and all my worrying about you is for nothing. I will stamp this and send Dougie to the mail box.

Your favourite cousin (I'd better be),

Lizzie

PS I took
Anne of the Island
back to the library. I didn't finish it. Ooops, I think I told you that in my last letter. Or did I?