Skinny (11 page)
Medical students will learn to obtain an accurate medical history that covers all essential aspects of history—including age,
gender, socioeconomic status, spirituality, disability, occupation, race, culture, and sexual orientation.
Some days it is as though I go from one madwoman to the next with only Sol in between.
Agnes and Holly are incorrigible lately.
Agnes has a preoccupation with sex, to put it mildly. It's quite unnerving; I have to dress in shapeless, baggy clothes or
else she thinks I'm turning tricks when she looks away. Last week a male patient asked me for a cigarette and Agnes's eyes
got all buggy, a sure sign that she's going to start in on me.
"Go on, go on and get him, I know you want to."
"Agnes, stop."
Mom's theory is that Agnes's third and final husband, Ken, was the only man who ever loved her, or failed to beat her like
the other two. But she's got to stop trying to break in to the men's rooms and calling the nurses whores, because they're
getting really upset about it.
And Holly. You can't even look at her sideways without her snapping at you. She's been moping around the house ever since
she went back to school. Think she might be in more trouble already.
Now, from my window, I can see her leaning lackadaisically on a rake in the backyard under the guise of helping Mom in the
garden, wearing only her bra and Dad's old pyjama bottoms. She is sucking on a chicken bone, a habit she's had since childhood
and that we have been unable to convince her to break. Mom is stooped under the lilac tree ripping weeds out and nattering
at her.
"For God's sake, Holly, put some clothes on, what you think this is? A harem? And take that thing out of your mouth. I cook
all day and then you go stealing the cat food. From now on if you eat like an animal I'm just buying Purina for you, that's
it! Purina sandwich . . . ha!"
She turns to pinch Holly's butt affectionately but Holly jumps away from her and sends the rake flying into the middle of
the yard.
"Don't!" she laughs as she disappears into the house.
Holly comes into my room without knocking, sits on the end of my bed, and flips through an anatomy textbook. She throws the
book on the floor and slips on one of my shirts.
"I swear to God, if you get that shirt dirty I'll kill you, and please don't throw my books around. Do you know how much those
things cost?"
"Relax!" she says, her face twisting into a little teenager-grimace. She extracts the bone from her mouth and holds it in
her hand, looking down at it. It's shiny and grey. She does not move or say anything for a while.
"Listen, you shouldn't feel bad about the race, you can still go to basketball camp."
"I don't want to go to that stupid camp."
"Holly."
"Well, come on, it sucks. Besides—" her face softens and she stretches out next to me "—I'd rather stay home for the summer,
now that you're home." She is still cupping the bone in her hand.
"What's up?"
"Nothing, I . . . nothing."
"Holly?" I run my hand through her hair instinctively. I stop, expecting her to flinch, or slap my hand away, but she does
neither so I continue. She looks up at me and thrusts her jaw out as she speaks.
"What do you and Sol do?"
"What do you mean, what do we do? What are you talking about?"
"I mean, you know, what do you
do!'
She turns crimson and I realize, incredulously, that she is shy.
Holly, who insists on repeating every disgusting joke she hears at school in a loud voice at dinner. Holly, who unfailingly
reports to me the thwarted sexual exploits of Jen and the rest of her teenage friends. Holly, the raucous and crass creature
who has always moved in her slim body with swaggering ease and immortal confidence, is shy. She is caught in her own inexperience
and longing, and I am, as usual, unprepared.
I feel like laughing although I know it is absolutely forbidden. Sometimes, like now, I get the feeling that there has been
some mistake, that Holly is the older one and I am the kid.
"Well, so, what do you want to know?" I say in what I hope is a sisterly way, sitting up and pulling my hand out of her hair.
"I dunno," she mumbles, the tips of her earlobes burning red.
"What it feels like, what you're supposed to do. All that stuff."
"You just act natural. When you're there, you'll know what to do. Don't sleep with anyone, Hoi, you're way too young. Is there
someone, someone you might. . ."
She burrows her head into her arms. "No one," she says as if she has just made a decision.
She gets up slowly, stretching as she does, recovering herself as she reinserts the bone into her mouth. I hear Mom screaming
her name from the backyard.
"Coming!" she bellows, her brow wrinkling as she returns to her irritated state.
"Yeah, so thanks for nothing."
"What? What do you want from me? Hoi?"
"How will I know what to do if you don't tell me?" she whines in a sudden panicky, accusing tone, before she thumps down the
stairs.
Clearly I have failed Holly, and myself, in some intangible way, as I always do when she tries to confide in me. As if in
my inability to transmit my experience to her, I had not lived it at all.
And all day her whiny little plea rolls around in my mind like a tuneless song that will not stop, no matter how loud I turn
up the radio.
Surgical approach to the heart: Vertical sternotomy is the approach generally used.
Dear Holly:
Heart lesson #3: post-heartbreak survival.
The heart is resilient, I mean literally. When a body is burned, the heart is the last organ to oxidize. While the rest of
the body can catch flame like a polyester sheet on a campfire, it takes hours to burn the heart to ash. My dear sister, a
near-perfect organ! Solid, inflammable.
Heart lesson #4: the unrequited heart.
You can't make anyone love you back.
Each type of neuron responds differently and has a different threshold for excitation; they have a wide range of maximal frequencies
of discharge.
After too much red wine and chocolate mousse, Sol takes me to his subterranean room. We lie on his bed kissing, our bodies
shaking with anticipation and sweat. My black dress tears as he leans in and then, as we undress and he moves into me, my
head gets whipped up in the familiar hot confusion of sex. It's ironic, but now one of the only times I feel connected to
my body, like I am in it, is when someone touches me. When he's finally inside, he reclaims his calm.
"What do you think about, Giselle? When I'm inside you?"
"Nothing," I say, smiling. "My mind is a high blank wall."
"Mine, too."
We sleep a little, and then, as the stained blue summer morning creeps under the curtains, Sol pins my shoulders to the bed.
He hovers over me, a shadow of a beard transforming his delicate face.
I have an appointment with my principal, Mr. Ford, a tiny nicotine-stained man. He gets annoyed with us for our slow responses
in church and spends at least an hour a week holding special school assemblies to bawl us out for not saying "Lamb of God,
have Mercy on us" quickly enough.
He also has rotten teeth and meets with every single one of us eighters in his office to talk about our "High School Career,"
to discuss whether we are taking the right classes, etc., etc. It's pretty much an excuse for him to talk about God with us,
to ensure that we will be good little Christians at St. Josephine's High next year. Besides getting suspended, and besides
math, which I'm failing, I have a pretty average record. I'm no nerd, like Giselle, but I do all right. But Ford has it in
for me, for some reason.
"Hello, Holly, well, that's nice of you to wear your uniform, seeing as you've missed the last two weeks of school." For some
reason, this makes me laugh so I put my hand over my mouth.
"Actually, sir, I started back a couple of days ago."
"Ah yes, Carl, Mr. Saleri, mentioned something about an incident in the schoolyard at lunch the other day."
I grin at him, remembering my promise to Saleri. I need to get through this meeting, Lamb of God, please. I promise to start
fresh next year. No fighting, no screwing around, no jumping off stuff (oh God) even if it means being the most stellar nerd
for most of next year.
Mr. Ford looks at me with his dinosaur eyes and says, "Mr. Saleri, it seems, worries about you and that's lucky for you, Holly."
"I know." I smile weakly, watching the seconds tick away on the wall clock next to the crucifix. Then I notice a small, cheap
frame of a brown-haired woman and a little boy with their arms around each other. I pick up the picture and study it.
"This your kid, sir?"
Mr. Ford gives me an irritated look but then his eyes soften, "Yes, that's Henry"
"Very cute, sir. How old is he?"
"Four, four and a half actually."
"You must be very proud."
"Yes." I put the picture back on his desk after wiping the line of dust away from the bottom of the frame.
"Sorry, sir, didn't mean to mess with your stuff."
"That's all right, Holly Now, as I was saying, I think you've been punished sufficiently for that
incident!'
He gives me a smile. How strange it must be to be so close to God and still so far.
"Well, I'm glad about that, sir, really. I'm sorry about everything that went down and I know that . . ."
He closes my folder and opens his shit-eating grin even wider. He seems to enjoy the sight of me twisting in my chair, seems
to think it's funny that Mr. Saleri worries. "Well, you're a smart girl, Holly . . . some would go as far to say a little
too smart to be caught brawling in the parking lot and jumping off fences."
I can't stop smiling now, it feels like my teeth might fall out of my mouth. "I know, I promise I'll be fine in high school,
sir," I say, standing up and shuffling towards the door. "I mean, I wasn't the only one involved and . . . " Remember, I tell
myself, no fighting, no screwing around, no . . .
"Not so fast, Holly. You see, there are some things I think we still need to discuss." He fans his palm to the chair across
from his desk.
"Oh?"
"Well, to be honest, I'm a bit worried about your soul."
"My soul, sir?"
"Yes, your soul. Be seated, Holly, it's not as if you're missing class or anything like that." The nicotine smell coming from
his mouth seems to get stronger, and, as if on cue, he lights a cigarette. I glance at the No Smoking sign on his office door
and at the small, yellowed crucifix next to it.
"As you know, I'm the principal of this school and I take special pleasure in watching you kids grow and learn. Well, I've
been watching you, Holly, for these past two years and I've really noticed something special about you."
"What's that, sir?" I have a feeling he hasn't noticed any of my wonderful hidden talents.
"Well, you're a sharp girl, as I mentioned, and you are very active in extracurricular activities and maybe this is why you
think you're better than everyone else."
"What are you talking about, sir?"
"I'm talking about exactly this, Holly, the tone of your voice right now, the way you are looking at me. You have what is
called an attitude problem, and I feel that it is my responsibility to let you know that in the real world, in
high school,
no one likes a show-off."
I sit up straight. My hands are drenched with sweat. I search my mind for things Ford might have seen to come to this conclusion
and, coming up with nothing, I look at him straight in the eye and finally stop smiling.
"Can you just tell me what this is about, Mr. Ford? Because I really don't—"
"This is what I'm talking about, your disrespectful attitude."
We sit in silence for an uncomfortable stretch; I give up on the idea of talking. I focus instead on the half-inch ash of
his cigarette and decide against telling him it's about to topple onto his tie.
"What is it about you that makes you think you're so special? I mean . . ." He pauses and flips through my folder.
I get a queasy feeling in the pit of my gut, thinking that this folder will follow me for the rest of my life, that this man,
this weaselly little God-fearing man, can write things in my folder that will affect me, and my High School Career, for the
Rest of My Life. But the not-snark, as Giselle calls it, the not-snark says:
Suck it up Hoi. Suck it up. Don't say anything. Don't ruin this
with your big fat mouth, please, Hoi,
and I wrestle down the part of me that wants to scream.
"Do you think that you deserve to be treated differently, Holly?"
I say nothing.
"Can you hear me, dear? Is your hearing aid on?"
"No sir, yes sir, I hear you."
"So why, why, Holly, do I see you rolling your eyes during closing prayers? Why do you think you may waltz in a good five
minutes after the rest of us have filed into class and are ready for morning prayers? Do you think you need a different set
of rules?"
"No, sir."
"Do you know what happens to people that think they are special, Holly?"
"No, sir." '
"They die in car crashes, in drug overdoses. You see, they never learn that they mean nothing at all. They think too much
of themselves, of their worldly needs, and they don't think enough about God."
The ashen colour of his skeletal face is slightly pink, he is beginning to frighten me. I'm afraid he might have a heart attack
but then he slows down, catches himself, and looks at me, sees me, for the first time.
"I have a daughter too, Holly, your age. She's at St. Mary's, so I know this is a hard time for you girls, that there are
many changes happening in your mind, in your body." He gives me an almost friendly look and whispers, "I know, also, that
you lost your father at a very young age, that things might be a bit more difficult for you without that guidance."
I blink at him as a single fat tear rolls out of my left eyeball and into my mouth.
That didn't happen, you didn't see that.
He looks at me as if he wants to say something else but decides against it. Then he rolls his office chair behind his desk
efficiently, switching into another person entirely. He butts out the filter of the cigarette that's been smouldering in his
grip for the past couple of minutes and dashes off his initials on the transcript in my folder. His hands are shaking.
"You may go now, Holly, I have other students to see."
I open the door a crack, trying, with all my energy, not to let loose the rest of the scratching wave of tears at the back
of my throat.
"How is your sister?"
"Fine. Terrific."
"Tell her I say hello. Is she getting married soon? I've seen her with, what's his name, Abraham?"
"Solomon."
"Of course, Solomon, that wonderful Old Testament name . . . Anyway, goodbye, Holly, and good luck to you."
God's luck to you. The world moves in slow motion as I roll my forehead against the cool, painted, concrete-block walls of
the corridor. I stay there for a while, pressing my hot cheek against the texture, breathing. Then I make my way down the
calico-coloured floors of the school, looking in every now and then at everyone inside their classrooms. I hear the gummed
sound of running shoes coming towards me and duck instinctively. It's Jen. She wraps her arm around my shoulders and gives
me a friendly headlock.
"So, how'd it go?" Her face is close to mine and, I think, for a second, how pretty she is even with two crazy ponytails coming
out the top of her head like geraniums and blue sparkles all over her face. Accessorized, Jen likes to call it.
I stare at Jen dumbly, but I don't need to talk, Jen knows exactly what happened.
"What? That crazy Ford . . . Look, don't worry about it, he gave me the same you're-going-to-burn-in-hell lecture. Once we
get out of this shit-hole place, it's all new."
"Right." That wave of scratching pain-tears comes back into my throat and my mouth and it's all I can do not to cry.
"You OK?"
"Yeah, fine," I say, struggling out of her hold.
"Listen—" she snaps a yellow, fluorescent wad of bubble gum in my ear. The smell of pina colada washes over us "—I got some
excellent news."
"What's that?"
Jen's got that mad-glee look in her eyes. "Listen, chickie, guess who Saleri said is starting for the final game of the season?"
"Me?"
"No, Magic Johnson, yeah you, and me, your left-hand man, Woman!" She gives me a big crazy smile and we start high-fiving
each other and jumping up and down, until we get too loud and someone comes out of the nearest classroom.
"You ladies have to be somewhere?"
It's Mr. Saleri. He's smiling a little bit, looking pleased with himself. The shiny open pores on his nose suddenly look great.
I want to kiss his pale mouth hiding underneath his little moustache. He leans against the doorway casually as Jen and I pounce
on him.
"Is it true, sir? You're going to let me play?"
He clears his throat, almost shyly. "Jennifer seems to think we need you." Jen pinches me in the ass, hard.
"Ow!" I slap her hand away and she goes skipping away down the hall singing "We Are the Champions" and pushing her hands up
into the air.
"But. . . um, sir, have you cleared this with Mr. Ford?"
Both of us looked toward his office door.
Saleri shrugs. "Don't worry, I'll talk to him, you just make it to practice and keep doing your homework. Focus on your game."
He leans back on his heels, looks into his empty classroom and then back at me.
"Hey." He sticks his hand in my hair awkwardly, like a hairdresser, trying to arrange the short little tufts in front into
some kind of order.
"You OK, Holly? Something upset you?" I get the feeling like I got. when my nose was broken: the snotty, teary smell of pain
crunching my sinuses.
"I'm just fine, sir, thank you," I whisper, walking away from him backwards, giving him a silly little smile as he waves at
me like a sad clown and goes back inside his empty classroom.
. . .
As soon as I get home from school I crawl into Giselle's bed. Her head's propped between two large books on her desk. As she
reads stuff, she draws a picture of a skeleton, absently, then scrolls in the muscles alongside the bones and then, using
her ruler, she makes lines coming out of different parts and writes down the names of the parts. She then draws a heart from
memory and labels it quickly: left ventricle, right ventricle, aortic cavity. She does it mindlessly the way some people doodle;
Giselle's known the name of every bone and everything since forever. She's in a mood, all quiet and inside herself and has
got bags under her eyes. She stares at the tiny skull Dad gave her when she was a kid. Besides her schoolbooks and her mauve
silk dress, it's her most prized possession. I lie on her bed, sniffing her pillows. When she starts to shade in one area
of the heart, I lean over and pull on her sleeve to get her attention.
"What are you studying for?"
"Nothing really, just reading, so I don't forget everything. What's up with you?"
So I tell her, first, the good news, about the game, about Jen and Mr. Saleri, then about Ford, his tie, his smoking, the
picture of little Henry that made me almost like him. The words come out quicker and quicker till I get to the part where
he tells me that I think I'm better than everyone else and the stuff about my soul and drug overdoses and people dying in
fiery crashes. It all gets so mixed up in my head snot bubbles drop out of my nose while I try to explain and then I'm gasping,
and Giselle sits next to me on the bed and pulls my face to her bony shoulder. I bury my eyes in her long, scratchy hair.
"Hey, hey! It's all right, Holly, shhhh . . . what an asshole."
"Ow."
"What is it?"
"My nose hurts, Giselle."
"I'm sorry, honey, don't cry, please."
"Do you think I think I'm better than everyone else?" I spit out.
"I don't know. Do you?"
I shake my head as she smooths back my hair. She holds my head in her hands, watching the tears stream down with a serious
look on her face.
"I know that you are better, at a lot of things, than most people, except math."
"I don't know." I stuff a pillow over my face.
"Sometimes it sucks, being good, because if you make a mistake, then everybody makes a mistake and if something goes wrong
it's your fault, it falls on your shoulders. Like a bad play, you know, timing, sports has a lot to do with timing, right?"
"Yeh, yeh, yeeess . . . " I blubber.
Giselle puts a Kleenex up to my nose and says, "Blow slowly."
"Ow." A little blood comes out when I blow into the tissue. Giselle inspects the goop in my Kleenex and, without missing a
beat, goes on.
"Here, take another Kleenex . . . Listen." She pulls her chair up to the bed and puts her forehead onto mine. "If your timing
is good you pass the ball to Jen, right? She knows what to do, she can tell you want to steal into the key, make a layup,
or shoot a hoopie, is that right?" I start laughing, sputtering liquid out from just about every orifice in my face.
Hoopie.