She

By M. Ingrid Wiese

She was ten. Her tiny little girl legs dangled from the kitchen chair, occasionally kicking me under her mom’s Formica kitchen table. She rested her elbows, a spoon in one hand and the other hovering over her Lucky Charms. She picked out the Marshmallows and popped them into the air so she could catch them in her mouth.

She was twelve. We swam together on the swim team. Her body was rounding through the belly and she was already taller than the rest of us. Despite her awkwardness at her changing body she remained the strongest swimmer on the team. We swam the relay together. I can still see her at the swim meet, goofing off during practice, her blonde curls bobbing in the blue water, her head falling back when she laughed. She dripped with sarcasm, bundled in her towel, licking her fingers and dipping them into a box of dry lime jell-o, waiting for our next event. We passed the time wagging our green tongues talking about the boys we thought were cute and what we would wear on the first day of school.

She was sixteen. Mom told me she had seen her out jogging along Gravelly Lake Drive. Mom said she had lost weight. Mom looked at her own thighs in the mirror, turning and sucking in her stomach, she told me, “she isn’t a chubby little girl anymore. She looked great.”

“I don’t remember her ever being chubby mom.”

“Well, she was fuller. Chunky. She had big cheeks. She was 'rounded'. But she has really slimmed down. She runs a lot you know. You should run. She looks fantastic.”

She was seventeen. Her sister Erika and I worked together at Tijuana Taco Shop. Erika told me that her sister dominated the track team and set new records for Cross Country. Erika bragged that her sister was training for the Olympics and their mother was super proud. On a side note, Erika confided to me her concern for her sisters recent dramatic weight loss.

She was twenty. Mom told me that she was sent away to a clinic because she wasn’t gaining weight. She said she saw her out running along Steilacoom Boulevard and she had looked like a ghost. She couldn’t believe those little legs were able to carry her frail frame.

“It was like seeing a corpse run. You could see all her veins, the blood pumping through her thin skin. She’s sick Ingrid.”

She was twenty-three. I saw her for a moment. She was walking behind her mother in a crowd. My boyfriend squeezed my leg under the table and raised his eyes towards the sickly figure. I barely recognized her. She wasn’t smiling. Her skin had aged her to a 78 year old woman with cheeks that cut caverns into her face. Her skin was pasty and white, her once bouncy blond curls had thinned into wispy patches of hair that she had pulled back in a small pony tail. She was wearing a designer dress and high heeled boots that gaped around her tiny ankles and only made her knees look smaller. She looked tired. She didn’t see me. She didn’t see my jaw dropped open. She just walked by quietly with her head lowered. It was only an instant.

She was twenty-nine. It was in passing that Mom mentioned she had died.

“Oh yes. Did you hear? She died. It’s so sad really. With all of us watching what we eat and worried about getting fat, can you believe someone could starve themselves to death? How dreadful for her mother. I can’t imagine standing by and watching my daughter die that way. I know she tried everything to help her.”

She would have been thirty. I try not to comment on the way my friends look, their weight or their appearance. Not when they look good, not when they look thin. Because I don't want to enforce the idea that my love for them notices these types of things. Instead, I try to tell them how happy I am to see them. I try to get them away, from the clubs and the gym and the pressured existence of Manhattan ambition. I try to laugh at their jokes, tell them how funny they are, engage their souls, and connect. I don’t allow the gym clothes to hide the reality that my friend is becoming too thin. So thin that I need to reinforce through my actions that boys, and party dresses and the pursuit of glamour, adoration and the thinness reserved for the naturally petite is not what will make us feel full. I try not to read those magazines. I try not to stand in front of the mirror too long.

I am thirty-four. When I pass by the news stand on the corner of 14th and 6th Ave, I see the little girls in their knee high socks on their way to school, standing on their tippy toes to catch a glimpse of the fashion magazines behind the counter. I see the photo of Isabelle Caro and her self starved body on the front page of the Daily News. I see the glossy covers of Us, InTouch, and OK magazine brandishing skinny little Hollywood starlets “dying to be thin”. I see their tiny wrists. I see their thinning hair. I see their sunken cheeks and protruding clavicles. I see her, tiny, little girl legs, dangling off the chair in her mother’s kitchen.

Close To My Heart (Memoir Contest Entry)

by Alison Hammer Winans

I was ready to take my clothes off after enduring a day of Philadelphia’s oppressive July 2007 heat wave. My shirt clung to my back, while my bra felt like a bridle, bit and saddle all in one, making red welts where it dug into my ribs. Perspiration trickled down from my right armpit, but the left one had not perspired since the surgery. Dumping the groceries in the hot third-floor kitchen, I kicked off my sandals, heading straight to the air-conditioned bedroom where my husband, Tom, greeted me from his computer. I tore off my sweaty outer clothes, then the bra, surely sturdy enough in construction to haul boulders or to be a slingshot hurling weapons of mass destruction. Slipping my silicone breast prosthesis out of my bra, I dropped it, smiling, in Tom’s lap.

He kneaded it absentmindedly like a sleepy kitten suckling, but then fully surfacing from his reading and noticing that I was nearly naked, he jumped up to appreciate my bare flesh. “Mmm, you still have plenty of squeezables,” he murmured, sliding his hands down to my buttocks, too large and saggy in my judgment, just perfect according to him. We kissed, and he stroked the left side of my chest, remembering to be gentle over my thin, pale scar and the ribs unprotected by mammary fat, “Mustn’t forget to give this side some attention.”

I sighed, “I love it when you do this, but I’m too hot to hug.” We laughed; it had been one of our jokes since the hot flashes started. I thought Too Hot to Hug sounded like a book title. He went back to the computer, and standing on tiptoes, I stared at my top half in the small mirror on the wall. My body smiled. One breast an open, droopy eye, while the lack of a breast winked at me, my belly button was the nose and the crease under my little roll of flab was the mouth. I pulled on a tank top and shorts, going without my bra, not minding if Tom saw me lopsided. I wiped the sweat off my prosthesis, stored it in the cardboard box with an inner plastic cradle to maintain its shape, and let my thoughts drift back to the time I acquired my first prosthesis.

* * * * *
We were temporarily living in rural Oklahoma in a new age community east of Tulsa. Ten days or so had elapsed since my surgery on June 4, 2002, when my left breast, along with a tumor the size of a golf ball, was dissected off my chest. I was wearing a pink paper blouse and sitting perched on the exam table in my surgeon’s office with my feet dangling in the air. The doctor pulled out the drain (a plastic tube inserted underneath my skin) and ripped off the small steri-strip bandages, smiling as she said, “You are healing faster than my patients usually do.”

Looking down, I said, “I can’t believe it, it’s so tidy and there aren’t any stitches.”

“They dissolve under the skin. You’re doing great, so you can start your stretching and strengthening exercises. I’ll write a slip for you to get a permanent prosthesis.” I’d been wearing a temporary prosthesis that was like a bag filled with fluffy comforter stuffing. It wasn’t very useful, as it tended to get squashed and misshapen. After hugging someone, imagine saying, “Excuse me while I reshape my boob.” I never did have the guts to say that though.

Because I had no medical insurance, I made an appointment with the American Cancer Society in Tulsa and drove there to be fitted for a donated prosthesis and bra. Two kindly women volunteers in their 70s, with grey hair, glasses and elastic-waist polyester slacks greeted me and took me into a back room with walls of cardboard boxes. They both had their mastectomies in the old days when everyone got the Halstead radical mastectomy, which removed muscles as well as the breast, leaving the chest hollow. Seeing that they were still around doing useful work gave me hope and inspiration. Closing the door, one said, “Okay dear, just strip to your waist.” Although I was forty-eight, I felt as if I was their granddaughter getting my first bra. Gesturing at my solitary breast, she said to her cohort, “Look, hasn’t she been blessed.” I wasn’t sure if I was blessed because my bosom wasn’t too big or because it wasn’t too small, so I just smiled at them. It seemed like a quaint Bible-belt phrase. I dubbed her Miss Blessed.

Her sidekick said, “Oh, you’re blessed indeed.” So experienced that she eyeballed me instead of using a tape measure, she continued, “I’d guess you’re a size 4 or 5.” I’ll call her Miss Fit. After some searching she found a size 5. “We don’t have too many that small. Most of the ladies here are bigger.” The beige-pink prosthesis had a plastic “skin” filled with silicone gel, the same goop used in breast implants and gel-filled bras. Miss Blessed folded it and stuffed it into the left pocket of a bra for me to try.

Looking down at my chest and also in the mirror, I thought it looked a tad bigger than the real breast. “I think a size 4 might be better.” There was no size 4, only the random sizes donated by all those big ladies. I pouted a little, and then remembered how lucky I was to be getting a free prosthesis when we had no money and growing debts. “Oh, I don’t mind, I’ll take this one. My left breast was always bigger than the right one anyway, so it’ll be the same as before.”

They tittered. “You look beautiful, dear. Now we need to find you a bra,” said Miss Fit.

I held the prosthesis in my palm—it was convincingly heavy, weighing about a pound—and squeezed it, glad that the silicone would be outside my body and not leaking inside me. “It feels so real and it’s even got a little nipple.” Then I held it by the top corner, letting it hang down, noticing how gravity altered the shape, creating a very convincing bottom curve. “It hangs just like a real breast. I love it.” What did disturb me though was a strong perfume odor impregnating the prosthesis, presumably from the previous owner, and I tried not to think about whether the prosthesis was donated because she died. I hoped she had simply gained weight.

They brought out a ghastly selection of bras, with prominent seams that puckered and pointed tips like in the 1950s, so substantial I understood why bras were called foundation garments. These could even support a house. They explained that mastectomy bras had to provide a lot of coverage to conceal the horizontal scar running from the center of the chest to the underarm, and to hide the prosthesis itself. There were no half cup bras or anything remotely sexy. “Do you have any that look more natural?” Of course they did not. But with my active lifestyle, I needed a bra with a pocket to hold the prosthesis, so that it would not travel and end up under my arm or fall out when I bent over. I picked over the bras and chose the best.

Miss Blessed said, “Now dear, remember to wash your prosthesis with soap and warm water, especially if you’ve been sweating, and when you wear it be careful that you don’t puncture it with a safety pin or jewelry, or the silicone will ooze out.”

Miss Fit produced a sewing pattern and instructions, in case I wanted to add pockets to my own favorite bras. And for an extra bonus, my jolly sisters in survivorship threw in a foam breast form that could be pinned in a swim suit. With my finances in a mess, I gratefully accepted their donations, saving me about $260.

Thanking them, I drove away wearing my new breast, sticking it out proudly when I got home. Tom gave it a quick squeeze saying, “Wow, just like the real thing. This gives new meaning to the phrase ‘putting up a false front.’” We wrapped our arms around each other’s slim bodies, giggling, as I told him about the cheerful volunteers and showed him the ridiculous cast-iron bra. He said, “Okay, where’s that sewing kit?”

When I was diagnosed, we’d been married only fifteen months, and the blessing that I did understand was being able to laugh or cry with him and to be totally accepted no matter what I looked like.

* * * * *
In our bedroom in Philadelphia, I smiled at the funny memories and reflected further on my relationship with my prosthesis and the choices it led me to make. When I had two breasts, I never worried about revealing a small amount of cleavage and did not have to be on guard when bending over. But post-mastectomy, if I bent over while wearing the prosthesis, the bra and its contents gaped away from my skin, and anyone peeking would see one normal breast, smooth contiguous flesh flowing into the cup, and one expanse of shadowy nothingness, a lonely chest wall separated from the fake full cup. Consequently, modest necklines filled my closet, no plunging necklines, no spaghetti strap dresses or halter-neck tops. As it would take a gargantuan stretch of the imagination to call me a fashion queen, these wardrobe limitations did not unduly grieve me. Besides, with all the time I’d spent hanging around ashrams, I was accustomed to dressing rather modestly.

What did impact me was not being able to discard my bra, and this frustrated me endlessly. I matured at university during the nascent women’s liberation movement, when droves of us rebelled against the fashion industry and male ideals of beauty, abandoning our bras, make-up and high heels. Before my mastectomy, I frequently enjoyed the comfort of going braless or, when I did wear a bra it was a minimal support lacy crop-top or some equally flimsy piece of lingerie, quite adequate to give natural support to my good-sized B-cup boobs.

Post-surgery, during the winter when loose jackets and layers of clothes covered up the difference, I got away with going for a hike in the park or even to the store without my prosthetic disguise. In the summer it wasn’t so easy—during the cloying humidity was exactly when I abhorred extra constrictive undergarments. My right breast jiggled when I walked, like breasts are supposed to do, and without a bra stood out a good inch and a half further than my left chest. It was difficult to hide. Usually in my life I’ve chosen comfort, but in this respect I was not willing to sacrifice my appearance for my comfort. It wasn’t that I felt less of a woman because of my loss, (although naturally I was sad to lose a part of my body I always liked); my neurosis has always been that I didn’t want to be different, to stand out and attract attention.

Think about it, have you ever seen a one-breasted woman walking blatantly on Philadelphia City Center streets? Imagine a lone mammary bouncing around, outlined by the clinging fabric of a summer top. Would I be brave enough to be the first one to do it, to be a trendsetter? I wasn’t that bold, but I wish I was. I never believed it when people said, “You could do it. No-one would notice.” But don’t people notice if someone has only one eye, one arm or one leg? Was I the only observant person who could count the number of breasts under a woman’s tank top? Summer was indeed the time when I wished that my remaining boob was like an aspirin on an ironing board.

Tom was reabsorbed in his reading, and I, grateful for our cool bedroom, put on some Ravi Shankar music with Sanskrit chants and lay down on the bed to relax. Drifting into reverie, I recalled the time when I listened to an inspirational tape about getting your life together, and the narrator surprised me by talking about the ways she knew she had recovered from breast cancer. One item on her list was that she no longer stared at other women’s breasts. “Oh good, I’m not the only one who does that,” I thought. But by that standard, I wasn’t yet fully recovered. My eyes were still drawn to other women’s cleavages. I envied women with perky little breasts who didn’t need a bra. I didn’t live as easily in my body as I used to. I couldn’t just throw on a T-shirt and get up and go. Or I could, but I would obsess about what others thought about my lopsided look.

People may wonder why I didn’t have reconstructive surgery to avoid all these issues. Nearly all the post-mastectomy women with whom I’d discussed the topic chose to have it. Periodically when I looked wistfully at other women’s cleavages and ease of dressing, I thought, maybe I could still have reconstruction. But I reminded myself why I made the choice that I did back in 2002.

* * * * *
It was early May, before the summer tick population exploded in the Oklahoma oak forest, so Tom and I were enjoying a walk looking for fauns and baby wild turkeys. As usual I wore my lavender cotton sunhat to protect my bald head. “Tom, y’know the mastectomy is in early June. I need to decide if I want reconstruction.”

“You could still have a spontaneous remission and not lose your breast.”

“Yes, I’m hoping and praying for that. But I need to be prepared for whatever happens. Some women really love their reconstructed breasts, but I looked at photos on the internet and they were funny shapes, blotchy and different sizes.”

“You wouldn’t want to go through the extra trauma to your body and end up with something like that.”

I couldn’t agree with him more. Coming from a world of natural medicine, having chemotherapy and considering surgery already put me in foreign and scary territory. Just having a mastectomy would be asking enough of my body. But I had to be informed of all my options. “I found out that one way of doing reconstruction is with an expander. It stretches the skin of the chest, and then they put saline implants under the skin. It sounds painful, and I wouldn’t want to live with something that’s not me under my skin.”

“It would probably be smaller than this luscious piece of flesh,” he said, slipping his hand up my tee-shirt. We stopped for a quick smooch by a white flowering dogwood tree.

“The other method moves a chunk of tissue from the abdomen up to the chest. Look,” I said, as I bunched up the flab of my belly, “If this were made into a boob, I’d have a flat tummy as a bonus.”

Tom always said the right words. “Ali, you’re such a svelte little thing. You don’t have enough fat there to match the other one, so your right side would need breast reduction surgery. Besides, the abdominal surgery would weaken your abdominal muscles and compromise your bad back.”

“You’re right. And the other option uses shoulder tissue, another place I don’t want to weaken. I don’t want to put my body through unnecessary trauma, so reconstruction isn’t for me.” I raised my voice, “But the alternative is to wear a bra and prosthesis all the time, or not wear one and feel like a one-breasted freak. What a hassle! It really pisses me off that women’s bodies have to conform to a certain image.”

“I support whatever you do.”

“I really feel that one surgery is enough.”

“You’re going to be just as beautiful without this lovely squeezable, but I will miss it.” Tom nuzzled me softly. As we held each other, the flock of wild turkeys came up over the hill, a good omen for my decision. Surely I could learn to love myself with only one breast.

* * * * *
As the music came to an end, I stretched out on the bed, pushed the memories aside and groaned at the thought of making dinner in the kitchen that was like a sauna. But it was too hot to get dressed, put the bra on and go out. I still felt that the decision to avoid reconstruction was the right one, appreciating that my prosthetic breast allowed me to hide my asymmetry, to pass in public as a normal two-breasted woman.

When it was placed in a good mastectomy bra, and I finally obtained comfortable ones with molded cups from my fitter in Philadelphia, you would have to give close scrutiny to notice any disparity. I silently chuckled on the occasions when the conversation led me to tell an acquaintance or co-worker, “Yes, I had a mastectomy,” and I saw their eyes dart, almost like a reflex, to scan my chest surreptitiously and then back to my face.

“I wouldn’t have known,” they said, or even funnier, “Well you’re looking really good.” Did that mean they saw the healthy glow in my cheeks, the light in my eyes or were they referring to my attractive bust line? And were they trying to figure out which one was false?

Some women name their prosthetic breasts. Mine is simply my boob. It’ll probably be my lifetime companion, although there may yet be times when I am brave enough to go without my boob in public. Would I say without reservations that I feel affection for my prosthesis? Maybe not, given my ambivalent feelings, but what I know as truth is that my prosthetic breast is, and always will be, close to my heart.

Japan (The beginning of Chapter 1)

by Alison Hammer Winans

When I was four and we lived in Tokyo, I was always happy to be outside, never lonely while surrounded with life unfolding and changing, the incessant whirring of cicadas, white butterflies dancing around the roses and camellias, brown furry caterpillars dropping off the Japanese pear tree, the constant movements of an ant column. I stared cross-eyed at the busy mass of ants, seeing it as a heaving, swirling reddish-brown carpet, then refocusing my eyes, I singled out one or two individuals, following their journeys as they touched feelers with ants coming the other way. Or maybe I was lonely, but was too young then to know it, as I said to one of the ants, “Will you be my pet?”

Sometimes I squatted for what seemed like hours on the shaded soil beside the chapel next to our house, playing with woodlice. With careful fingers I poked the many-legged creatures, heading off their escape and tapping on their bony armoring with twigs, testing how long it would be before they rolled up into a grey ball. And I would pick up the hard little balls, marveling at the tightness of their protection, rolling the crisp dryness around on my palms, not understanding that they curled up in fear. Then I put them down and waited, seeing how long it was before the ball unfolded, and quick legs tried to scurry away, until again my hand corralled the poor creature. It sounds cruel, but at the time I was aware only of curiosity.

From our partially westernized one-story house, my mother called. I passed the bamboo fence, jumping from stone to stone along the path, stopping briefly on the front step to sit on one of the grey stone lions, as I looked up at her. Her dark brown, naturally curly hair and soft blue homemade dress gave her a wholesome look, while the 50s style accentuated her motherly figure and well-defined ankles. “Come on, Alison, stop dithering. I can’t wait all day for you.” My parents were given a wardrobe of hand-me-down baby clothes embroidered with the initial “A” prior to my birth in 1954, which eliminated their plans to call me Rosemary. Hence I became Alison Mary. They were hard-up Anglican missionaries without the money to buy everything for their first baby. Even if they’d had more money, Japan, a war-torn country, was busy constructing its infrastructure, and the growth of the consumer economy was a few years away.

I patted my steed, whispering in the stone lion’s ear, “You’ll always be here, won’t you?”

My mother sat me down in the genkan, the shoe area, to remove my shoes before washing my dirty hands. Although there were wooden floors instead of tatami, traditional woven straw mats, we nevertheless followed the Japanese custom of wearing slippers inside. “I don’t want everyone tracking in dirt,” my mother said.

It was time for my lesson—she was teaching me, a fast learner, to read and write, because no English was spoken at my Japanese kindergarten. Both my parents took their responsibilities seriously to raise well-disciplined offspring with an academic education, good food and sensible clothes. A physics graduate, my mother put a scientific career on hold to support my father in his endeavors, instead getting a part-time job teaching English at a girls’ high school. I relished my lessons, making rows and rows of loops, patterns and letters, although I wasn’t always well-behaved enough for my mother, and in the solipsistic way of children, always thought I’d committed some transgression when the day came that my lessons ended. Looking back, it was likely due to the slow disintegration of her health.

After my lesson it was suppertime, eaten around the white triangular table in the corner of our roomy kitchen. From my place on the window seat, I waited for my father to come home. Although he had really wanted to be a missionary in China, a plan thwarted by the Cultural Revolution, he learned to speak Japanese fluently, throwing himself into teaching at the seminary on the outskirts of Tokyo, where we lived surrounded by small farms. Between the trees outside the window I saw him wearing a black shirt with his white “dog collar” and baggy grey trousers, racing home in a hurry. Such a busy man he was with all his extra jobs, being chaplain to the embassy, lecturing at the university and preaching in Japanese and American churches. But there was always time to greet his two little girls in a warm hug, “I hope you’ve been good girls today,” and later there would be a bedtime story.

The fifth member of our household was Granny, my maternal grandmother, who lived with us ever since my sister, Liz, was born. Widowed early in life, she was as much at home with a paintbrush and hammer as she was with a kitchen knife, a garden trowel or a baby. Capping all that, she was a retired seamstress whose hands flew making our dresses. Unlike my mother, she was earthy, gregarious and energetic saying, “No peace for the wicked,” as her thin lips turned up in a smile.

“Don’t ever leave,” I said to her.

“I have to go home when you are five, but you’ll come to visit next time you come to England.” There was the vain hope that my fifth birthday would never come. I always wanted to make time stop moving, but I turned five anyway and that was when things started to fall apart. I continued trying to make pets out of wild creatures. Twice I caught a butterfly and took it home, carefully putting it in the glass case that was meant for my Japanese dolls, but although I gave my captive grass, leaves and flowers, it died. After the second attempt I learned that lesson. I pestered garden snails the same way I did woodlice, poking, prodding, picking them up, and watching the slimy helpless body sucking itself into the shell. One day, I took a dozen snails home to my mother saying, “Can we keep them?”

Being a scientist and having grown up with a garden herself, she supported my explorations. “We’ll put them in jam jars with paper over the tops so they can still breathe.” They went in the spare bathroom three or four to a jar, with rubber bands securing the paper lids and overnight they ate through the paper, so that we found them halfway up the wall, behind the toilet, in the sink, even in the spare bedroom and my father’s study. “Oh dear,” said my mother, “I didn’t think about that.” It was a good thing it hadn’t been my idea.

Liz was my enemy, as a younger sibling would be, after giving me only two years and four months to enjoy the privilege of being the only child. Being unable to pronounce my name, she called me “Agon”—one more reason to hate her. We were so rigorously trained that most of the time we did not even think of getting into trouble—but we fought. We used to bite, kick, pinch, punch and scratch, and pull each other’s light brown curly hair. At the age of six when I started biting my nails, Liz, with her long nails, got an advantage in our fights.

Her other advantage was her “Mummy, Agon’s been mean to me,” little sister crying routine that used to get a certain number of yen docked from my pocket money whenever she used it. So it made economic sense to be friends. We were the only kids living on the seminary campus, besides two aloof Canadian boys (one called me a baby) and one young English boy, so as Granny always said, “Beggars can’t be choosers.” After all Liz was my only sister, and I had to admit that her big eyes, gray-green like mine, halo of corkscrew curls, and the way she carried her pale pink teddy bear everywhere did make her an adorable playmate.

There was plenty to do inside the house; we had dolls, jigsaw puzzles and trains. But the house was becoming a prison, with “Be quiet, don’t do that, stop running around, you’re not doing it right,” and so on. So I escaped to another world through my books or we went outside. Behind the chapel, one of our favorite play spots, we lay on the ground, arms and legs stretched out long, rolling like logs shrieking and giggling down the grassy hill. Beyond that was the sandy field where long grasses grew in the summer and we made secret hiding places. Despite a lack of adult supervision, invisible reins still attached us to the house, reins that stretched as we got older and ventured further. Liz and I roamed the grounds climbing trees and riding our tricycle, with one of us on the seat peddling and the other standing on the platform between the rear wheels.

During the hot, humid growing season, my father in long shorts dug up the bamboo shoots that grew wild in our yard, trying to catch them when the tip just showed above the earth. “Look, you see that? If you let it go, it’ll grow up to my knee by tomorrow and be too tough to eat.” We sat on the back step with the heavy foot-long shoots in our laps to peel off the layers of brown fibrous skin until we got down to the tender yellow flesh. My father cooked them in his creative specialties—sukiyaki and fried rice. This was around the time when he did most of the cooking and said to my godmother, “I have to be mother as well as father to the girls.”

On occasion, we would make the rounds of the seminary students’ accommodations, entering the two-story U-shaped building and going down the long corridors knocking on doors, hoping to scrounge sweet treats from the kind Japanese men. Maybe they said, “Iirashai (welcome),” and seeing our cute little gaijin (foreign) faces, “Doozo, doozo (please come in and make yourself at home).” And they would bring out bean cakes, tangerines, candy, white sugar on white bread. We would sit there politely stuffing our faces, bowing and saying, “Domo arigato,” lapping up the typical Japanese respect for children.

Then we lied to our mother, “Oh, we were just in the field,” as this was during her very restrictive diet phase that she also imposed on us. Her Canadian chiropractor told her to eat protein and starch at separate meals, to avoid white flour, white sugar and milk. In those days when environmental illness, chronic fatigue syndrome and some psychological disorders were not even named, this chiropractor was the only person who helped my mother.

We ate some weird but delicious foods like fresh carrot juice every day at supper, and my father rolled up chicken in fried tofu strips instead of making sandwiches for school lunches. For breakfast, as well as a handful of vitamins and the customary egg, we had wheat germ mixed with vegetable oil—crunchy and nutty, and yogurt. They kept a jar of hard candies on top of the highest cupboard, and doled out one each after lunch and supper. No more. No more puddings, only fruit for dessert. We could not even escape by going out for tea or a birthday party, as the host would have a list of all our restrictions. Liz and I rebelled secretly after getting off the school bus, buying small boxes of caramels with a Disney token in each box, that we ate as we walked up the hill from the village, Nakamachi, back to the seminary. We ended up with a great collection of Disney characters.

Granny's Garden

by Alison Hammer Winans

My maternal grandmother lived in a quiet suburb west of London, where she had a small semi-detached house with a long narrow garden. It was 1965, the year that I and my sister, Liz, also called this house our home. There was the privet hedge and wrought iron gate in the front, and a handkerchief-sized lawn flanked with beds of fuchsias, marigolds, roses and purple daisies. This was where Granny showed me how to squeeze the purple-red fuchsias so that they popped open. Here were the pale pink and white roses that she nurtured with manure, collected with a shovel every time the rag-and-bone man went by with his horse and cart. The outside of the house had, instead of brick, a façade of tiny pebbles stuck into cement like a cake covered with sprinkles. The pebbles beckoned to be picked off, but most of the time I restrained myself, just prying off a few here and there in hidden places. Around the side of the house a paved walk led into the back garden.

Way behind the house, I stood under the branches of the Victoria plum tree surrounded by honey bees and ripe plums like huge swollen raindrops about to fall. I plucked one, heavy with nectar that oozed out and hardened into a blob, rubbed it against my cotton frock and took a bite. The pale amber flesh melted sweetly in my mouth, juice running down my chin. I broke the large plum in half, sharing with Liz, who was on her knees looking for snails amongst the strawberries and rhubarb.

“Cooeee! Where are you scallywags?”

“Come on Liz, Granny’s calling us. We’re supposed to be picking plums. It’s crumble for lunch today.” I was eleven and admittedly rather bossy with my nearly nine-year-old sister. Lunch was always our main meal of the day, but today was Sunday, making it even more special. We filled the colander with dusky mauve fruit, then hugging it to my chest I traipsed back to the house past two of the four apple trees—tart green Bramleys for cooking and fragrant reddish-yellow Coxes for eating—past the small lawn and rockery made with chunks of the concrete air raid shelter that my mother and her parents had to sleep in during the war, when she was only thirteen and the Nazis were dropping bombs on London. My mother never talked about it though. I pestered her to find out that her father worked at the EMI factory before he died of a stroke, and Granny sewed shirts for a department store, and they kept rabbits down at the bottom of the garden to eat when they couldn’t buy meat. For sure the memories of that time were buried, even as tiny star-like flowers cascaded over the rocks, belying the trauma they represented.

Granny, with a cigarette hanging out her mouth and glasses perched on her thin nose, stuck her head out of the French doors asking, “Pick some mint for the potatoes, will you?” I put down the colander, kneeled and stuck my face into the clump of spearmint, breathing deeply, my mouth watering as I thought of new potatoes dripping with butter and the other dish that went with fresh mint—roast leg of lamb with mint sauce.

We burst into the matchbox of a kitchen with our offerings. The aroma of roast chicken and Yorkshire pudding was coming from the oven. Our family was probably the only one in all of England who ate Yorkshire pud with chicken instead of beef. I loved the way that the thin batter, when poured into a hot, greased baking tin and cooked perfectly, would puff up into a brown crispy surface surrounding the soft pancake-like center. We didn’t have expensive roast beef too often, so with our family custom we could eat Yorkshire pud once a week.

*****
Earlier the three of us had gone down the garden to the vegetable patch past the second Bramley apple tree. Granny dug up the tiny new potatoes with paper-thin skin that came off when she scrubbed them. We picked rough-skinned runner beans, carefully avoiding the red blossoms, reaching high to the top of the poles, looking under the leaves to make sure they didn’t hide and grow big and tough. Granny would slice them on a diagonal and boil them lightly, so that they squeaked when I chewed them. Then we gathered our supper salad makings—frilly lettuce, pale orange baby carrots, ruby-like radishes, green onions, beets to be boiled and dressed with vinegar, small firm cardinal-red tomatoes—and raspberries blushing like a glass of claret, to have with cream for dessert.

The raspberry canes grew way down at the bottom of the garden, where Granny’s big compost pile sat under the branches of the Russet apple tree, which had sweet fruit with coarse brownish skins. The shed where the next door neighbor kept chickens was the other side of the fence. I remembered the day when I stole two of Granny’s cigarettes, fags we called them, and hid behind that shed with my friend for our first smoke. They were Woodbine plain, the same at both ends, so we put one end between our lips trying not to make it soggy and then realizing that we had to suck at the same time as holding a lighted match to the other end. The hot harsh smoke made me cough, grabbing at the inside of my throat like a scouring pad, and I didn’t even try to inhale. Neither did my friend. We just let the fags burn down, practiced being cool holding them between our fingers, gesturing and trying not to breathe in the smoke. I never took any more of Granny’s fags, but now I understood why she was always coughing.

Nine months ago we returned from Japan to settle in England, so while our parents found jobs and a home, Liz and I stayed with Granny to attend my mother’s old school and finish out the academic year. We had hardly seen our parents during this time, only at Christmas and when they picked us up for boarding school entrance exams and mostly, I had to admit, I didn’t miss them. With my mother being sickly and my father working so hard, Liz and I were used to fending for ourselves, cooking and helping around the house when we had to and providing our own entertainment. Later in July, we would join them in Birmingham to get ready for boarding school. My mother, struggling with an undefined illness, said she could be a better mother if we were only at home during the holidays. I’d been reading all of Enid Blyton’s boarding school books, and they were so much fun with such jolly midnight feasts and high jinks, but I didn’t know what life at Walthamstow Hall was going to be like.

But mucking around in Granny’s garden made me feel so content. I loved doing anything with her, walking to the shops, going swimming, cooking and playing card games like German Whist, Old Maid and Beat Your Neighbor Out of Doors. I liked watching her do her hair, rolling up long strands with a gadget and fastening them with hair grips. She ended up looking like she had little grey sausage rolls above her ears and round the back of her head. She was always thinking of ways to delight us, like picking us up from school laden with bags holding our towels, swimsuits and a picnic of fresh rolls filled with ham and cucumber, peaches and slices of her Victoria sponge cake, for a surprise trip to the pool. Living with her was like being fed ambrosia.

*****
Liz and I set the table for lunch in the back room, putting out cork placemats and cloth napkins, knives on the right with the blade turned in, forks on the left and dessert spoons above with the handle to the right. Granny called me from the kitchen, “Alison, you mix up the custard powder, while I dish up.” I ran out, eager to do one of my favorite jobs. We hardly ate any packet foods, but I adored custard. My mother used to make it for me before she was ill. I sat down on the back step with a mixing bowl containing a heaped tablespoon of Bird’s custard powder, white with a pinkish sheen, a little sugar and enough milk for mixing taken from a pint, the rest of which was heating on the stove. I stirred, pressing out the lumps, dissolving the sugar and marveling at the transformation in color from white to deep egg-yolk yellow.

Meanwhile, Granny was in the kitchen filling the tiny drop-leaf table with food, carving the tender chicken, making sure to prevent fights by giving us equal amounts of golden crispy skin, dishing up bright green beans and minty new potatoes. “Quick, the milk’s coming up to the boil.” I jumped up, set my bowl on the counter and let her pour in the frothy milk, while I diligently stirred the thickening custard. Then the custard, now pale yellow, smooth and creamy, went back in the pan to stay warm. The plum crumble was baking in the oven, and Granny was cutting the Yorkshire pudding into large squares. We begged in unison, “Can I have a corner piece?” Gravy made from a Bisto mix was the final touch, the plates were full, and we were more than ready.

Granny took off her apron, uncovering her pretty flowered dress (she never wore pants). “We’d better say ‘grace’ seeing as it’s Sunday, and I didn’t take you to church. I don’t want to get into trouble with Daddy.” Momentarily I wondered if there had been times when she got into trouble with my father, and what she had done wrong.

As if we were racing in the Derby we chanted, “Thank you for the world so sweet, thank you for the food we eat, thank you for the birds that sing, thank you God for everything. Amen.” Then silence, save for small sounds of knives and forks clattering against the plates. Plum crumble was next, smelling toasty and fruity, drowning in silky custard. I never had any trouble cleaning my plate when I was with Granny. A thought crossed my mind—next month we would leave this oasis. What made leaving bearable was looking forward to visiting Granny for half-term, a long weekend halfway through each school term. I was relying on her to be here until I finished school.

For now, I simply sighed with contentment and a full belly.

Midwifing Into Death

by Alison Hammer Winans

To me, these words of the Sufi mystic, Rumi, ring true: “Our death is our wedding with eternity. What is the secret? God is One.” Rumi makes death sound ecstatic, and yes, I know that Oneness is our home. But how do I reconcile the aliveness of the spirit with the decrepitude of the body? How do I make sense of the fact that one day someone I love is here, and then they are not? How do I put into ordered sequences of letters and spaces the totality that was my friend, her life, her love and spirit?

I’ll begin with the day when Ayesha came for her Jin Shin Jyutsu session looking radiant, and I wanted to capture that image of her, like an earth spirit dressed all in brown with red hair peeping out pixie-like from under her brown and gold crocheted hat, one of her own exotic creations, because I wondered how much longer I would see her looking so alive. To her I simply said, “You look lovely tonight. I’m going to take a photo of you.” My computer noted that this photo of Ayesha sitting on my bed was taken on October 1, 2006. My memory noted that those were the good days, when she felt well enough one week to give me a massage in exchange for her session, and when each session gave her more energy to carry on living—selling her hats, teaching Dances of Universal Peace, doing massage, singing in the choir and all the other ways she spread her love.

We didn’t see each other in December. I was busy, and as for Ayesha, I found out later that she had been at home, not feeling well and not asking for help, because to do so would mean admitting that she couldn’t take care of herself, that she was losing control, that her life as she knew it was ending.

Then there was the day in January, I think, when I sat on Ayesha’s right side with one hand under her back, the other holding her knee as she lay on the massage table in the middle of my bedroom, and her cell phone rang with a call from her oncologist. As she listened, spoke and cried, I too listened with my ears and also with my hands, continuing the Jin Shin Jyutsu session, gently seeking out the places in her body where she was holding on tight, placing my hands there as if to ground her fears and anguish into the earth. Tears ran out the corners of her eyes and down into her ears as she cried, “The chemo’s stopped working. He’s going to try taxotere but it makes my hands and feet numb. If that doesn’t work, there’s only two more chemo drugs left to try.” She mopped up her tears with a tissue. “But one’s new, and my insurance doesn’t cover it. I’m allergic to the other one. I’ll be at the end of the road.”

I had to offer hope as well as Kleenex. “Or the taxotere will work as well as the last chemo did, and when it stops, there will be a new drug.”

“Yes, that’s a positive way to see it.” But then a deep sob escaped, like a bubble surfacing from a boiling mud pool, and she wailed, “There’ll be more times when I feel less like myself and then,” grasping her breath, “Then there won’t even be a ‘me’ and I’ll be gone.” My eyes were moist as I hugged her until she became calm. She dropped the subject. I continued the session, praying that balance and harmony would come through my body and into hers.

Ayesha, being a Sufi herself, saw death as union with the Beloved, with God. My yogic beliefs were similar—death was liberation from the body into the Supreme Consciousness. And both of us had used our spiritual practices with intent to experience the ecstasy of that union while we still lived. But how were we to reconcile our mystical beliefs with our naturally strong desires to live in our bodies? When I was diagnosed with breast cancer four years previously, I knew how it had been when the pure animal instinct of preservation emerged, and I wanted to do everything I could to hang onto my body.

* * * * * *

It was over two years ago when Ayesha and I first met at the Spiritual Songs Symposium, but even before that I knew of her, heard of her medical condition and financial difficulties. That night she led a group of Sufis, Jews, yogis, Christians and new age mystics in an Aramaic version of The Lord’s Prayer, singing and playing one of her drums. Seeing her bohemian look, dressed in flowing scarves and clothes with exotic prints and embroidery, I felt we would become friends. During the break, I sank into the sofa next to her, introducing myself, “I went through breast cancer by using chemo and surgery as well as natural medicine, so I thought we might have a lot in common.”

Quickly overcoming her shock at a stranger knowing her affairs, she warmed to me and confided, “Many of my friends think I shouldn’t be doing chemo. They think I’m avoiding the underlying issues that caused the cancer. They keep telling me about techniques and products that would heal instead of poisoning me, but…you know how it is, don’t you?”

I knew how difficult ovarian cancer was to treat successfully and that the chemo was almost certainly adding months to her life. “They don’t understand, because they haven’t been there looking at their own mortality, but I have, and I’m sure that you are making the choices that are right for you.” I flashed on my own diagnosis, when I was afraid that I would die soon, and remembering that, I built the foundation of our relationship on support and acceptance.

* * * * * *

As February moved into March, I saw Ayesha struggling, and I said, “Let’s schedule a session each week, and don’t worry any more about paying me back. You need a regular boost of energy.” The latest chemo had stopped working, and her belly was bloated like a seven-month pregnancy. When I ate my meals at home, I visualized Ayesha receiving the nourishment. But, she got weaker as daily nausea, vomiting and inability to eat created a downward spiral. Still, we both had genuine hope that she would recover from this setback.

On April 2nd she went into the hospital with a bowel obstruction. Although I knew her situation was critical, I still expected her to return to some form of life as she knew it. I said, “I’ll come and see you every day. You need help to get through this crisis.” But she never got back on her feet. Over the next two and a half months as she went from hospital to nursing home to hospice, I saw her almost every day and held the hand of this world traveler on her final journey while she lay surrounded with flowers, well-wishing cards and bright watercolor pictures painted by visiting friends.

How ironic that our friendship should develop as she was dying. One day I came in early as she was still sleeping and gently laid my hand on hers. A few minutes passed before she said, “That feels like a friend.” Unlike the often intrusive, depersonalizing touch of harried medical staff, the healing energy of my touch reached through her body tissues into her spirit and gave her back to herself. As I held her fingers and toes, Ayesha exhaled, flashing me one of her smiles like the morning sun rising in a clear sky, “I love this flow. I can feel all the fragmented parts coming back and all my energy lining up around my center.”

Seeing her every day, I became familiar with the realities of a dying body—sudden dry retching that brought no relief from nausea, pain that made her claw at the pillows, legs that were bloated like whales and then became bones with saggy skin, tubes that hung from orifices—but amidst all this, a downy fuzz started to grow from her bald scalp. During the forty-five days that she had a tube from her nose to her stomach, Ayesha had to suppress her tears because crying made her throat hurt. Day after day, I saw her suffering so much from the insults of a body falling into chaos, and I asked, “How did you get through it?”

“My commitment was to be present to each moment. That’s what I did, and I prayed.” She had told me that Sufis use a string of beads, like a rosary but with ninety-nine beads and a different prayer for each bead, so I knew that was what she was doing. I was in awe. Would I have the spiritual courage to be able to do that? That was before increasing amounts of morphine and the process of dying itself took her in and out of different worlds, away from being present with her body.

One verdant day in May as I visited her in the nursing home, Ayesha’s beauty struck me like a blazing star. She had given up hiding her baldness with a wig or hat. Her head was broad, smooth and very pale, and over the last six weeks I’d become used to seeing her bald. I said to her, “You look so elegant, almost like a monk with your brown shirt and prayer beads.” She scrunched up her face.

“I don’t like it. I always loved hair, especially my hair. I used to braid a long piece down here and twirl it with my fingers,” indicating her left shoulder and down her chest. “It comforted me.” Pointing to the back of her neck she said, “Sometimes I still touch myself here for reassurance. I’m glad I still have my eyebrows and eyelashes.” I remembered how she had concealed her illness from her students and clients until everything fell apart. But she hid nothing from me. We held hands, and as I looked into her large grey eyes flecked with green, we cried together.

I realized that I, along with all her other friends, was midwifing Ayesha into death, helping her to let go of her body, but this was no one-sided act of charity on my part. Twice, our talks turned into spontaneous sessions in which she counseled me on expanding my practice and improving the relationship with my husband, offering advice and prayers. Being with her was like being in a holy shrine where the beauty of the soul trumped the outer appearances, and the constant flow of friends and family was love in action. To the end, Ayesha performed her interfaith ministry bringing people together with music and healing and art. I benefited by being in the flow of so much love.

I remember the day; it was May 19th when, after using Jin Shin Jyutsu to relieve her daily headache, I sat next to her bed. I had an intuition that the doctor would not give any more chemo. Her eyes filling, she looked at me and said, “The doctors are giving up on me. They say I only have six weeks to three months.” We both cried. We held hands, reaching over the bars at the side of the bed.

Then there was the day when Ayesha floated in and out of dreams, and I sat with another friend beside her. Suddenly she opened her eyes and exclaimed, “Shemaya, shemaya, the light of the universe!” She waved her arms as if blessing us with the joy that radiated from her wasted body.

A week later, on June 18th, she left her body.

THE BAKST DRAWING

by Anne Kaier

“That’s fabulous,” murmured Alexandra, uncoiling her thin legs from the cast iron chair in my city garden. “Oh that’s wonderful. That’s just wonderful.” Oddly enough, she meant it. A good literary journal had just called to accept my new cycle of poems. Alex somehow escaped the schadenfreude that afflicts so many writers, including me. She stumbled a little around the terracotta pots, came over to my side of the table, and hugged me. Perhaps it was because she started out as my teacher, that she could look on another’s poet’s success with nothing but pride. Anyway, I knew I’d be grateful later that evening when I drank some wine and thought back on her praise.

It was mid-July. Marigolds filled the pots. Honeysuckle climbed the crumbling stucco walls. Back in her chair, Alex changed topics as quickly as a thunder shower changes the weather. “My niece, the one I don’t talk to, left a note under my door yesterday.”

“Oh?” Here we go again, I thought. Here’s Alex sick as the devil and she doesn’t talk with half her family.

“Yeah. Something about her boyfriend’s in Philly, so she came by.”

“That’s nice.”

“Oh it’s a ploy.” She leaned over to offer the cat some tofu.

“A ploy?”

“Yeah, to get back in touch with me.”

Great, I thought. Here you are sick with cancer and leaning on your friends, and why in hell wouldn’t you want to see your niece? I looked up and rested my eye on the neighbor’s mauve crepe myrtle which swayed over everything.

“So what happened with your family?” I asked. It was a risk. Alex didn’t like to be asked directly about her New York relatives - her father, Anatol, an artist who came to New York from France in about 1920, or her beloved mother, Blanche, the concert pianist. But I was willing to force her to talk, if necessary. Maybe my notions of family were different. You didn’t always agree with them obviously. But if you were dying, you tried to take the hand that was offered.

She cut into her tofu chicken with long, pointed fingers. “When Mother died, my sister – that’s Nancy - accused me of taking some of Mother’s things. Of course it was lies. All lies.”

“Your sister Nancy’s the one you don’t talk to?"

“Yeah. She’s this kid’s mother. The kid who left me the note.”

“So the kid wants to see you?” I scratched the back of my neck.

“Yeah. When she comes back to Philly to see her so-called boyfriend.”

“What’s her name?”

“Antonia. She’s supposed to be Tony Kushner’s assistant.”

I decided on a slightly oblique approach. “If I had a niece and I was sick, I’d want to see her. Especially if that niece worked for one of the best playwrights around.”

“Wouldn’t it make a great story? The note under the door step?”

I gave up. And yet, if Alex could think of writing a story about her niece instead of calling her, maybe she’d at least start thinking about her. Strange are the ways of writer’s minds. One thing might lead to another. The story might reveal a different niece to her, or a different sister, one whom she could call, one, I selfishly thought, who might come down from New York and help look after Alex when she got bedridden.

I doubted that she could get a new story actually written. Breast cancer was eating her chest. All fall she got weaker. By December she was in bed in the old wooden house that she shared with her partner, Liz, in working class Roxborough. When Liz was at work, Alex’s friends took turns cooking for her or sitting with her. I was one of the sitters because, somehow, I could. I could sit in the room with the dying woman, who by now barely spoke. Even when she was dying, I was glad to be with her. She was the first poet I really knew, the first to encourage me. She was heart and soul an artist. I’d do anything just to be around her. I just sat there in the wicker chair, next to the window overlooking Manayunk Avenue where busses racketed by. On the dresser sat a picture of Alex as a young woman in a Mexican blouse leaning over a child of about 10, her niece, Antonia. The picture stood in a 12 x14” silver frame next to an ivy plant.

I was fascinated by what I had heard about Alex’s artistic relatives. They seemed so different from my family full of lawyers and golfers, people who talked about the US Open and Republican politics, people who never read poetry and didn’t understand it when they tried. They inhabited my poems but after years of writing, I would never show my work to them. Alexandra’s family was different. Her mother was a poet, her brother a famous film producer, her sister a painter. To me this was a background of great riches, a place where an artist fit in, where children were expected to be creative. She hinted darkly that there was abuse in her family, but nevertheless she told me how excited she’d been when her first poem was published in a literary journal, how she’d brought the magazine to her father in triumph. She kept a framed copy of one of her earliest poems on the tangerine wall in her dining room in Roxborough. It had never occurred to me to hang my poems on the wall. “Yes, yes,” she said one day, “you should hang up the covers of all your books on your wall.” The smile on her face matched the gold in her spiky yellow hair.

Sooner or later, she did call her niece. Something moved her to. Maybe it was Liz. Maybe she knew how to influence Alex. They had been together for more than 20 years, years in which Alex had not been entirely faithful, but they stuck it out. A chiropractor who had trained as a nurse, Liz was direct, practical and a strange mate for Alexandra, or so I thought. Oh well, you never know what really goes on between two people. Maybe Liz got her to call Antonia. Somehow, Alex reconciled with her niece and her sister Nancy and they came down from New York for the funeral.

People deal with grief in different ways. After Alex’s death, Liz cleaned like a woman possessed. Then she started to throw things out. One night she called me gleefully to say she’d begun in the basement and carted out boxes of Alex’s stuff. I started to get worried. I knew that Alex had left her books, her papers, and possibly drafts of poems and stories up in her workroom at the top of their house. Alex had said that I could take my pick of her books after she died, so I called Liz back and arranged to go over.

A tiny, winding staircase led from Alex’s bedroom up to the stifling third floor study. This was the first time I’d been in to Alex’s secret writing place. Floor to ceiling steel bookshelves crowded even the middle of the small room. An old table by a small window held her computer, covered with yellow stickies. Layers of drafts and papers covered the table and lay abandoned on the floor. In one corner, a box overflowed with Alex’s journals. One dusty plant trailed over the edge of a bookcase. It must have been the remnant of one of Alex’s fung-shui experiments. I started to pull down handfuls of books and pack them into boxes from the liquor store. I jammed copies of Anais Nin, Adrienne Rich and Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood next to Jean Genet’s The Thief’s Journal. I took a copy of The Partisan Review for Summer, 1967. Officially, I was only entitled to books, but I also took papers and some tapes Alex had made during the women’s radio show she hosted in the 70’s. I wanted to save her interviews with Rich and other feminists. I thought it all surely belonged in a women’s history archive somewhere.

Where it didn’t belong was the trash. Liz had already thrown out most of Alex’s diaries, probably because she was angry at the nasty things Alex had written about her. As the afternoon wore on, I clambered down the steep stairs carrying boxes. My back was killing me as I loaded them into my little Ford Escort. Passing through Alex’s bedroom, I noticed that the photo of her in the Mexican blouse leaning over the impudent child had gone. Meanwhile, Liz and a sturdy friend emerged from the basement with arms full of canvasses on their way to the dump. I couldn’t worry about the canvasses; they were probably Alex’s student work from the 50’s. I had to save what I could of her writing. Upstairs in the workroom, I just began to push anything that looked important into my boxes. By about five o’clock on this humid spring afternoon, I came across an Oxford file of old papers including musical programs from Paris at the turn of the 20th century. These must have been Alex’s father’s things, I thought. In the thin light by the gabled window, I sifted through the file, turning over charcoal sketches and letters. At the bottom, I uncovered a splendid drawing cut out of a Paris fashion magazine in about 1912. It was a design for a woman’s ballet costume, drawn by the great Russian designer Leon Bakst who designed costumes for his fellow countryman Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, the most influential dance company of the early 20th century. The dancer would have been swathed in Art Nouveau swirls in bold patterns, colored indigo and blood red. It was beautiful, exotic, real. Alex’s father had brought it with his own hand, surely, from Paris. It would have been something that reminded him of Europe during all the days he labored over his commercial engravings in a dusty office in New York.

I wanted to frame the Bakst drawing and hang it on my wall. Its elegance, its finely drawn lines, the spidery red, the sheer exoticism of the thing entranced me. When I got everything home and had stored the boxes in my cellar, I took the drawing out at night and stared at it, propping it up on my crossed legs. I envisioned how it would look with a matte and a blue frame. But I was a good girl and knew my duty. These were Alex’s father’s things and as such belonged to her sister, Nancy.

Nancy came down from New York with Antonia on a bleak winter afternoon. We had arranged to have lunch in my place and then to go to the Barnes Museum, one of the few artistic treasure houses in Philadelphia. Nancy, a painter herself, had never been there. I was eager to show her the Matisses, the African sculptures, the Cezannes. Although I had met her at the funeral, I’d never really studied at Nancy’s face. When she came in to my yellow living room with Antonia, I saw how Nancy’s jaw was the same as her sister’s, the lines were etched around her mouth in the same way. I hugged her and shook hands with Antonia and invited them to sit on my well-worn green sofa. Antonia, now a young woman in her twenties, sat upright against the orange pillow from Uzbekistan and told me casually that she had been the child in the photo in Alex’s room. She said she’s taken the picture of her aunt in the Mexican blouse home with her to New York. Needless to say, I didn’t ask Nancy about Alex’s quarrel with her family or who did or didn’t take her mother’s things so long ago. But before she sat too long, I went down to the cellar and brought up the file of her father’s papers. I knew what she had really come for.

“Here they are. These must be your father’s.”

She took them eagerly and sifted through his letters and sketches and the musical programs from Paris, showing each to Antonia, who pushed her shiny brown hair behind her ear, entranced. Finally, we came to the costume design.

“Look at this,” I said. “It’s so lovely. It must be by Leon Bakst, don’t you think?”

“Dad must have got it in Paris, when Nijinsky was dancing. Long before he knew my mother,” Nancy murmured, half to herself.

I kept imagining the young, handsome Russian artist Anatol Grilikhes, sauntering down the boulevards of Paris in the age of Proust. Perhaps he cheered at the opening night of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring when the ballet’s intensely rhythmic score and erotic dance steps caused a riot in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Later that summer maybe he ducked out of the rain into a café like the Deux-Magots or the Brasserie Lipp across the street. It would have been one on the Left Bank, surely, for he was an artist and would normally have moved among artists. Perhaps he drank a beer or a small absinthe as he read his magazine. When did he decide to cut out the Bakst drawing, to keep it and bring it with him across the Atlantic? How did it survive in that sheath of papers? One never knows these things. I can’t say I was glad that Nancy had it. I didn’t want to give it up, but when she left with it that afternoon, I shook her strong, bony hand and it was Alex’s hand in mine once again.

A NEW PROJECT

by Alison Hammer Winans

Although job prospects in northeastern Oklahoma were lousy, I insisted we stay at Sparrow Hawk Village, instead of moving on in our search for a home. During my treatment, I wanted to be sustained by the stillness of nature and a community of loving, spiritual people. This unexpected change in plans forced our decision to fly to California and retrieve our stuff from storage. As we packed our suitcases, Tom said, “I’ll get a job and support us financially, so that you can put your energy into healing, instead of worrying about our debts.”

“I’m depending on you now,” I replied. He had not worked for eleven months, but I believed that he would keep his promise this time.

On our way to the airport, we stopped off at Dr. Smith’s office in Tulsa to discuss the result of the biopsy and how to proceed. Without speaking Tom and I sat hand-in-hand on the pink loveseat in her waiting room. It was January 14, 2002, twelve days after our first visit to the young surgeon. The initial shock had worn off, but I was still coming to terms with having a life-threatening illness and getting involved in western medicine. The diagnosis was “moderately differentiated infiltrating ductal carcinoma,” with positive estrogen and progesterone receptors.

Dr. Smith called us in and took the time to translate this saying, “The cancer cells started in the milk duct and then invaded the surrounding tissue. Your female hormones, estrogen and progesterone, helped them grow. They are different from normal cells but not as different as they could be – which would be a worse scenario.”

I liked the way she looked me in the eye and sat close to me. She welcomed and answered all our questions, but even more firmly outlined her ideas for a course of action. “Before we do anything else, I want you to have a chest X-ray, CT scan and bone scan to rule out the possibility of metastases. When breast cancer metastasizes, it goes to the bones, lungs, liver or brain, so all these areas have to be checked.” She continued, “If the cancer has already spread, I will not do surgery on the breast unless it has started to break through the skin.” Tom was looking at the floor, not saying anything, just like he did when we first came here. Unbelieving I stared at her, and tried to imagine it breaking through the skin. How could she say something so horrific? Seeing my look of panic, she quickly said, “Breast cancer is very treatable.”

I was starting to feel the train of events running away with me. I tried to assert myself saying, “I really don’t want to have those tests, but I guess I don’t have a choice if I want you to remove the lump.” Well I did have a choice—there were alternative treatments, but would they work? “Do you know how much the tests cost?” I said reluctantly.

“No I don’t but they are expensive,” she said. “Unfortunately Project Woman does not pay for these diagnostic tests.” The non-profit, Tulsa Project Woman, would pay all the expenses for my surgery as I did not have any insurance. Dr. Smith, in agreeing to work with them to help medically underserved women, would receive less than her usual fee.

I looked randomly around the room, at the photos of her young blonde daughter, at her daughter’s artwork, at self-breast exam pamphlets, seeing and yet not seeing. I said, “Okay, you can make my appointments.”

She concluded, “I’ll try to find an oncologist who will work with Project Woman. Remember that breast cancer is very treatable.” In spite of her optimism, I felt afraid and dismayed as we left her office.

Tom held me as I cried, “What will I do if it has spread? Am I going to die soon?” The medical machine was moving and carrying me with it into a totally strange world. Yet I was asserting some control and not just blindly going with what the doctor said. Having been immersed in the holistic health paradigm for over twenty years, I planned to do everything that I thought was important to maintain my health. Dr. Smith had said to me, “I’ll still work with you even if you use iscador and other holistic treatments.” Thinking that this meant she understood my position, I was disappointed to find out, many months later, that her notes for the first visit read, “She has been, she states, neglecting getting medical care.” That wasn’t how I saw it. She didn’t mention the doctor who couldn’t find the lump. And I had a mammogram that was a false negative, Then we lost our health insurance. So I tried Jin Shin Jyutsu, acupuncture, Chinese herbs, eating raw foods, cleansing my liver, homeopathy, my guru’s sacred ash, Chi Gong and healing in the Daime church. All these modalities were part of my medical care. Mind you, they hadn’t got rid of the lump and that was why I was here, putting my trust in Dr. Smith.

In the airport taxi I said to Tom, “It makes me so angry that medical procedures are about the only service that you have to commit to buying without knowing how much they cost.”

“The AMA, the insurance companies and the pharmaceuticals have got it all arranged. Do you know how they do it?” Fortunately we arrived at the airport then, so I didn’t have to listen to one of Tom’s long expositions. Why couldn’t he get a job as a teacher? He was always so excited to explain things to me. He would be such a great teacher.

We talked more on the plane to San Jose. “Alicat, remember the hymn by Mestre Irineu that says ‘The stars told me, everything in the world can be healed.’ You are going to be healed.”

“Yes, that’s one of my favorite hymns.” We sang together in Portuguese, “Eu subi serra de espinhos, pisando em pontas agudas. As estrelas me disseram no mundo se cura tudo.”

“We can find some alternative treatments to heal you so that you won’t have to have chemo and surgery. After we get my computer from California, I’ll search on the internet.”

“But Tom, a lot of those things are unproven and expensive and I’d have to travel to Mexico or somewhere. Besides, remember that the best way you can help me is to get a job.” I lapsed into silence. I couldn’t believe that I was arguing in favor of western medicine instead of against it. Maybe I was more of a scientist than I liked to think. Anyway I was going to try straddling both worlds, integrating western and complementary medicine.

Tom continued, “Jesus is the great healer. If you do have to lose your breast, Jesus’ healing would bring it back.”

“I wish I had your faith in Jesus. But seeing as I don’t, you pray to him, okay?” I didn’t want more of a rift to develop between us, although it seemed to me that Tom didn’t get the urgency of my situation. “My faith is telling me that I am doing the right thing because all the pieces are coming together—I’ve found a wonderful surgeon, my surgery is paid for and Sparrow Hawk Village is full of holistic healers. After one month here I already have friends, and I love the forest and river and wildlife.”

We arrived at San Jose, picked up my car and a UHaul van, and a week later were back at our storage locker in Tahlequah with all our belongings in one place. The morning after we got back, I drank my contrast—chalky, pasty stuff that was nasty and gave me diarrhea—before driving back to Tulsa for the diagnostic tests. I arrived at the hospital just in time to rush to the restroom, and then they made me drink more. The young lady at registration told me, “I don’t know how much the tests cost, maybe about $1200.” I was probably worrying more about the money than about whether the cancer had spread. I spent several hours there in surreal rooms with large cold steel machines, whirring noises, flashing lights and technicians in white coats. It was weird being at the hospital going through extremely high-tech tests when I didn’t feel ill, I certainly didn’t look ill, and it was hard for me to believe that I was “ill.”

That night, I dreamt a male doctor was saying that I wasn’t going to live long, because the cancer had metastasized and spread. I stood up, saying vehemently, “I’m not going to die!” I affirm that I am alive, I am totally whole and I am healthy.