Skinny (18 page)
"Come on, I'll give you a ride home if you want. I just have to stop in at the office first, pick up some stuff for a story."
His jaw clenches and unclenches as he runs his hand over Giselle's paper forehead. "And, after, we could get some ice cream,
drop back in and bring G. some. We'll get her favourite, strawberry."
I squeeze her hand and kiss it.
"Stay with me today, Holly, I don't feel like being alone, what do you say?" He smiles slowly as if it hurts his face.
I pick a curl from the back of his head and stroke it. He turns and gives me a dead stare. I take my hand back.
"Sol, you need to sleep, you look . . . you look awful."
He says nothing, but pulls on a new, expensive pair of sunglasses that make him look like a fly-eyed rock star. I follow him
out, guiltily, leaving the wedding march behind, leaving Giselle entirely to her thick sleep. Fearful of all the noise he
and I make, so close to her.
Typically a vertical skin incision is required to perform thorough abdominal exploration because purulent fluid may be located
between loops of bowel for endometriosis, symptoms of which are: pelvic pain, dysmenorrhea, infertility, menstrual problems,
and dyspareunia.
Dear sweet Jesus. I only wanted a body like my sister's, strong and lean and winsome. Impervious to weather, impervious to
bending and bleeding. Okay, that's not true, Holly bleeds. I've seen the thick matted wads in the wastebasket; while I buried
mine in the bottom of the garbage can so no one would know I had my period, Holly didn't seem to care who saw what.
Holly always revels in the early days of it, slugging back a carton of chocolate milk and moaning on the couch until she goes
for an hour-long run, swearing it's the only thing that makes the cramps go away.
Me? I popped caffeine pills and fed on carrot sticks, devising ways of eliminating the problem altogether. Now all those bloodless
months seem to have caught up with me.
When I ask Holly where the clothes I wore to the hospital are, she makes a face and says, "I don't think you want those, G."
"Why?"
"We kinda had to throw them out."
"Why?"
Holly's face looks concentrated. She goes to the bedside table and pops open the small makeup mirror I'd asked Mom to bring
me so I could pluck my eyebrows. I haven't yet checked my appearance. Holly looks away when she hands it to me. And there,
staring back, is the lioness, with the same defiant look in her eye, the same heavy jaw, only less ferocious somehow. Airless,
bloodless, her head shorn of light.
Surgery exposes patients to four main risks: 1) the theatre air; 2) surgical instruments and materials used in operation;
3) the surgical staff in the operating theatre; and 4) the patient herself.
At night, the buzzing sound of the hospital keeps me awake. I can hear the gurgle of the boiler, the quiet laughter of nurses
at the desk, the coffee machine plunking cups down, not to mention all the wheezing machinery keeping us corpses alive.
At night the springs of the bed twist into my spine and cut into me. No matter which way I turn, it feels as if there is a
cigar being constantly extinguished in the centre of my back. But I'm embarrassed about asking for more meds.
At night the aching in my gut and bones is unbearable. I stare out the window, at the street lamps, hoping that they'll distract
me. The ache starts out hot, deep in the crevice of my centre, and expands out, wrapping itself around my intestines, and
then burns up out of my skin. It appears as sweat on the surface though, tiny tear like beads, a cold-sweat fever. Usually
I swing my leg out from under the eight blankets piled up on me and search with my toe for the cold tile floor. But I never
reach it.
Two days ago I tried and fell off the bed. I must have done a flip in the air or something because now I'm covered with bruises.
I lay there for about forty minutes before calling out to a nurse. I tried to get up by myself but the floor seemed just as
comfortable as the bed, so I stayed there shivering, applauding the hospital ventilation system for the arctic temperatures
it's able to maintain.
A nurse shuffled into my room and found me. She picked me up like a baby covered me in blankets and then she did a strange
thing: she kissed me on the forehead and stroked my head, saying my name over and over until even the burning pain faded and
I couldn't feel the bruises.
I used to be able to do one-handed cartwheels. On our dry summer lawn, with a Popsicle in my mouth . . . Holly finally taught
me how. I used to torment my sister by pinning her down and licking her face as she whipped her hair at me. I used to take
aqua-fitness classes with old ladies, just for kicks. After staying up all night studying for a biology exam, I once split
a twenty-six of Jack Daniel's with Susan and we showed up to an awful, boring-ass med party screaming, "Screw yew!" in a Scottish
accent, at the top of our lungs. There was a time when I had so many things to do that I couldn't remember them all and had
to write them down on scraps of paper. I used to go out for dinners with Sol and we'd hold hands and gaze at one another—The
Way That Young Lovers Do. Our voices were earnest and soft as we spilled wine on the white tablecloth and traded secrets.
These are now the memories of an altogether different person. I've traded my breath for phlegm. For cold-sweat fever. The
taste of steel and honey in my mouth defeats me.
Endometriosis is one of the main causes of infertility: 30 to 40 percent of women with endometriosis are barren.
Scrape scrape goes the knife. Scrape scrape goes my life. I am a human abortion. I am nothing.
I had to send Sol away today. In his reflection I could see my looks fading, the gripping sorrow in his eyes for its passing,
saying quietly, when he thought I couldn't hear him, saying, "Please girl, please get yourself together."
Vanity, a terrible beast, exists even in the most hideous of humans, this shell of a woman shrinking in her ex-lover's eyes.
He brought me oatmeal cookies. He ate one and I ate two. The doctor will be happy This means I can go for a walk down the
hall. Holly will take me.
There were days when I ran on nothing but a small crouching pain in my gut that ate me up from the inside out, and now it's
finally won. I guess I'm paying for all those missed dinners and periods, for all my thoughts of immortality. I'm a med student,
I know the rules of the body, energywise: put nothing in and nothing comes out. So, why, after so long of putting nothing
inside I have all this stuff pouring out? Where does it come from?
When Holly comes to visit, I ask her to bring my black jeans, some T-shirts, and a sweater. She looks at me curiously.
"Come on, I can only wear this fleecy robe for so long, I have to start getting dressed." Holly comes over and stands close
to my bed.
"OK, but you have to eat this." She hands me an apple and three more cookies. I look at her despairingly. Feeling sorry for
me, she pulls out her Swiss Army knife and cuts up the apple and we share it; she gives me really thin slices. There's a strict
caloric rule if I want to get off* the tubes: at least three thousand calories a day. I cut a deal with the doctor.
I pull my bank card out of my diary and hand it to Holly. "Take out a hundred dollars and bring it by tonight."
-Giselle—"
"Just do it!"
She looks at the card. "If you run away, you have to let me find you."
"I'm not going anywhere. Look at me! I just want to order some pizzas for the floor." I grin.
"You hate pizza."
She puts the card in her jeans and proceeds to crumble the cookie into her hand, feeding me chocolate chips with her long,
thin fingers.
A curette is used to scrape out the uterus.
Tonight a new dream: when I fall away, I fall into space, without electrodes pulling me down. Female hands stroke my body,
they move up and down, with gentle insistence, over my arms, legs, face. I know whose fingers they are, not Holly's, not Eve's.
They fold into me like wings, flutter against my side. They pull me up until suddenly I'm sitting up in bed.
Awake, finally, for the first time in days, I feel somewhat normal, or at least less foggy in the head and less achy. I pull
out the catheter and step off the bed. It feels like walking on the moon, only I'm steady, I don't fall this time: my bare
foot hits the cold tiled floor and I find the pants Holly brought, laid across the chair. I pull them on, cinch the belt tight
so they stay on.
—
There you go.
I pull out five twenties and my card.
"Thank you," I whisper, pulling on my T-shirt, not worrying about a bra because my breasts are so small. On the chair is Agnes's
purse, the golden chintzy one she gave to Holly recently. I open it and inside are Dad's monkey skull, a handful of chocolate
bars, and a tube of Agnes's crazy orange lipstick. I walk into the washroom, flick the light on but then catch a glimpse of
something so hideous my hand slaps at the wall.
—
Good girl. Don't need to see that right now.
—Oh my God. Oh my Jesus Christ. Have you seen what we look like?
—
I have.
I try to block out the image of the bony girl with green teeth who is supposed to be me. I grab the purse and focus on finding
some shoes. My search leads me to a pair of Hawaiian-print flip-flops that will have to do. I flip-flop around the bed with
them, trying to see if I can flip quietly; I manage a shuffling sound that may be mistaken by a nurse for an old man journeying
to the toilet. I'm so excited in my new clothes; I keep running my hands over my body, feeling its sharp edges.
—
The important thing now is not to think about your appearance.
The important thing now is to focus on the task at hand: getting out of
here.
—But where are we going?
—
It doesn't matter. 1 don't know about you, but I've just about had it
with hospitals. Let's finish this somewhere private,
—OK, I wouldn't mind a hamburger, actually.
—
A hamburger?!
I start trembling. We've come so far, now this. I sink to the floor, placing my palms face down. Now I've gone and made her
roar. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Now she'll never let me go. Feral and starved, all I can think of, though, is getting that blood
back somehow, getting some meat. I rub my collarbone; she sniffs with indifference but acquiesces, slowly evening out her
breathing. A lion, after all, likes her pound of flesh.
—Did I say hamburger? I meant cheeseburger.
Dear God, it's me Margaret (just kidding, it's Holly),
I
never ask for anything. I know I got kicked out of school. Sorry.
(And if you are reading this, if he is reading this, Hi Dad! Hi!) You did take him away and it's not a count against you or
anything like that, I'm just saying, it's been pretty rotten for me, Mom, and Giselle since he left.
But you know all about THAT and this isn't about him, it's about Giselle. If you could help her in some way I'd be really
grateful and go to church or pray or read to blind people or do whatever you want me to do (just let me know).
See, all I want is for my sister, Giselle Vasco, to get better and be a doctor or do whatever it is she wants.
Since you can read my mind anyway, I won't even pretend to make this a selfless act because it isn't. I just feel like no
one in this house can live their lives until she gets better and that it's taking my life, shabby and unformed as it is, away.
Also today my mother was on her way to work and tripped and fell on something in front of the house and she couldn't get up
and just kept crying and crying until I had to bring her inside and put her to bed and she couldn't go to work because her
ankle was twisted and because she thinks Giselle is going to die.
Plus, yesterday Giselle's hair fell out. Her long ropy blond dreads just sort of detached themselves from her head and it
was really sad to see and I tried to pull them all off the pillow and hide her hair while she was sleeping but she woke up
anyway, half-bald, and started screaming, "Am I in f—ing chemo!?" (sorry again) and then she started crying and crying, too,
just like Mom, over her hair, even though, as you know, lately she's had a lot more to cry about.
So if you could stop all the crying and let me know where I could put my sister's hair and/or make her better I'd REALLY appreciate
it.
Thank you for your time
Holly Vasco
P.S. I have always loved you.
. . .
I sit in the car with the radio turned up high while Sol double-parks and runs into the newsroom.
Giselle once told me that if Sol had the ambition he could easily end up being a section editor in a couple of years, if he
wanted, but that he doesn't really care.
"He's got a fear of success," Giselle told me, sucking on a lollipop in front of the television. "Which goes with a fear of
failure, you know, so he'll just stay in the same place forever. But at least he can do something, besides drink." Giselle
had this sort of untouchable look when she snorted that out, like she thought she was better than Sol. Her expression made
me want to smack her in the face, to really hurt her. It made me want to ask her where exactly she thought she was a-moving-and-a-shakin-to,
watching "Laverne and Shirley" reruns, wearing fuzzy zebra slippers, and eating Tootsie Rolls in her ratty underwear.
I snoop through Sol's glove compartment while he goes into the building. It's the usual stuff: registration, bolts, beer caps,
a stale cigarette, and a Polaroid shot of Giselle dancing at a club, with her eyes half-closed, singing into a beer bottle.
She's wearing a bright orange tank top, her dreads are pulled into a loose but neat ponytail, and she looks happy I wonder
who took the picture and try to think of the last time she went dancing and can't remember.
Then I see him through the glass, looking out the window across the clutter of news desks and monitors. The newsroom is on
street level, its windows are transparent, and the office space is open concept so you can watch all the busy media people
working from the street. Posed against this backdrop of people and activity, he seems strong, capable of making split-second
decisions—crack a joke, or pull a knife? His body is lean and solid, I've seen it bounce off his night-blue chrome car, seen
him crash affectionately against Giselle in a mock-tackle.
You should see your boy-man, G. He's just like you, toxic, addicted to the speed of his own destruction. What could you possibly
give him when there is so little of you left? While you sleep off the pounds he drowns his perpetual hangovers with pills
and, some days, he coughs blood.
Inside the building, I can see punchy, punky little women moving around handing out memos, people talking on the phone. I
imagine the din of typing, the office gossip, the sound of laughter, computer beeps, ringing phones. But Sol doesn't seem
to hear or see any of these things. Amid all the million little hurt and strained egos, the hacked-off human remains, bar
brawls and car accidents and office politics, he looks at me in the car, mouths the word "deadline," as if, for the first
time in his life, he knows what it means.
. . .
Energized by a good cry, three shots of whisky, and half a litre of orange-chocolate ice cream, we drive back to the hospital.
Sol's got a paper bag full of treats for Giselle: ice cream, stick-on tattoos, hair clips. Buying her things makes him feel
good, though I wonder what he thinks she'll do with pink barrettes now that she has only white and fuzzy tufts of hair. He
whistles a little, and, though the veins near his eyes are bulging out from crying, he seems OK for now.
"Hello," he calls in a falsetto, knocking at her door as he clutches the bag expectantly. "Where are youuuuu . . . ?" The
door swings open and reveals Giselle's empty bed. Her white twisted sheets lie in a heap to one side. Her intravenous has
leaked all over the edge of the mattress and makes a soft dripping sound as it hits the floor in steady drops.
A chubby little blond nurse sees us standing in the door and walks into the room. She notices the tube and starts to disassemble
the contraption.
"Ah, excuse me," I say, while Sol continues to stare at the vacated bed.
"Do you know where my sister is?" I ask the nurse, who is pulling the sheets off the bed. "She's supposed to be here."
"Your sister?" she says, putting her hands on her hips as if she is about to lecture me on sisterhood. "Is gone."