Skinny (16 page)
Many patients coming to surgery have associated nutritional disorders.
Something evil is happening to my stomach. That's the only word for it. It has turned in upon itself like an animal beaten
for so many years. Sheets soaked, cramps all the way up to my neck. The pain is bright and hot and numbing, fomenting in the
centre of my womb. The blood flows out of me like waves of loose ribbons.
—
This is the part.
. .
Shhhhh, I say. For once I'm the strong one. The pain ebbs and I feel myself rising.
—
This is the part where everyone says "I love you" and pretends they
mean it.
Every day I watch her frame shudder at the sight of food and the blue veins take root in her face. I watch her fade. Watch
her eyes grow darker.
Mom prepares Giselle's breakfast tray in the early morning. On it is a large plate of eggs, tomatoes, cheese, jam, toast,
yogurt, and a steaming cup of coffee laced with brandy and cream. She stirs sour cream into the yogourt to make it richer,
and adds an extra pat of butter on each slice of toast to sneak in calories where she can; she's been reduced to tricking
Giselle this way. I watch her silently, eating a piece of cheese, and when I take the tray from her hands she says, "No, I'll
do it."
"Please, let me, Mommy, let me talk to her."
Mom's hands clutch at the tray and then let go. A fat tear rolls out of one of her golden-brown eyes as she turns back to
the sink.
Giselle's sitting up in bed looking particularly white under her slight tan, as if she's been up all night. I sit next to
her and braid her dreads. She groans and picks at her eggs, and, after getting her to take a couple of bites, a sip of coffee,
some of the yogurt sour-cream concoction, and a couple of spoonfuls of jam, I give up.
I roll her over, sit on her back, push my hands into her spine, and start massaging her gently.
"So many people love you, Giselle, so why can't you, just a little?"
I close my eyes and start to rub her neck, but then I feel something wet and I look down at the bed and there's chocolate-coloured
blood soaking the sheets, the blankets around Giselle's waist, everything, soaked in it.
"Holy shit, Giselle."
I leap off her and run to the door, my pyjamas covered with her dark blood. "Call 911," she says without even lifting her
head to watch me go.
. . .
After settling Giselle in the back seat of the car, I sit up front and I sneak peeks at Mom, thinking, for the first time,
that she looks older. Mom's hands are shaking as she puts them on the steering wheel. The lines round her eyes and lips are
creased and her hair is floppy and grey where it used to be full and auburn. I think about a beautiful photo of my parents
that I found tucked in an old cloth-book in Giselle's bag that fell out (I swear) when I was sorting her stuff out for laundry.
Vesla and
Thomas, Canada,
it says on the back, in my mother's proper right-leaning handwriting. There were all these letters and official-looking yellowed
papers in another language. I tucked them all away into a white pillowcase. I'll bring it to Giselle later, maybe, if she
asks for it, or else maybe I'll keep the picture for myself.
The photo looks like it was taken at Niagara Falls. Dad's wearing his long brown coat, his hair is short, fifties-style, although
it's the seventies.
Papa, why are you always decades behind
and still manage to look so good?
Mom's wearing a red and black polka-dot dress, with a big sash across the front of her stomach, and is holding her large belly.
New immigrants, happy and exhausted, and a little proud, too.
Giselle, we will name her Giselle, after no one's mother.
What if it's a boy?
It's a girl, I know it is.
The falls are hazy white in the background; Mom and Dad are squinting from the spray, the sun. They are leaning together on
the rail and she's tired and striking, in an exotic heavy-lidded way. Looking at Thomas in that picture, I get a funny feeling
like I drank too much water and it can't make its way down the pipes of my stomach properly. It's nothing, or almost nothing,
the emptiness in the back of his eyes despite their happiness. It's nothing.
I turn around to look at Giselle in the back seat as she opens her eyes to see the blood blooming in swatches on her blanket.
Her pupils widen, they look so huge in her small white face. Then I remember how Giselle is one of those people who can't
wait for things to be over, even fun things, like concerts, or camping. I'm afraid she might just tear through her life without
ever enjoying anything, except this, except pain. Still, Giselle's misery is terrible and beautiful, like stained white cotton
dresses.
Intra-peritoneal haemorrhage results in a huge internal bleed which reveals the importance of taking menstrual/sexual history
into account when examining females of reproductive age.
"Intravenous! You're on intravenous?" Sol says, pinching the tube lightly.
The last time I was in the hospital being fed by a tube it kind of freaked me out, but it doesn't anymore. People act all
shocked about it, so I blink my eyes at them and manage a sick little smile but, really, the idea of having something hooked
up to me has lost its novelty.
Sol looks penitent, and I mean to reassure him, but when I try to whisper I discover there's a tube in my mouth making speech
impossible. He brings his face close to mine. I can see the-hairs in his beard growing in, covering the smooth white texture
of his clear skin. His breath is warm and his lips feel soft on my brow
"We're going to get through this," he says in his whispering way, like the time we hit a cat on the highway and drove it to
the nearest vet and Sol sighed all the way while it lay dying in the back seat. He takes my hand gently and I fall into sleep
before I can wonder at those tears, wonder at these new ones now.
The occasional case of endometriosis produces such intense symptoms in a woman who wishes to maintain childbearing potential
that bowel or bladder resection is necessary.
It's August, 5:00 a.m., the first summer without Dad and the three of us are trying to sleep in Mom's bed. The heat from the
floorboards is rising up and floating over me in hot unending waves, barely dispelled by the fan mixing up the air. From the
hallway, I hear Holly's child-feet beating out an uneven patter on the floor.
Thump, thump, bwaa.
Thump, thump, bwaa.
Of course, Holly's deaf in one ear; half the world is muted to her, so she doesn't even know she's waking us up. Mom groans
and rises, calling to her.
"Holly!"
Thump thump thump thump bwaa.
I pull a pillow over my head; the cool material is soothing for almost ten seconds before it becomes suffocating.
"Shut up!" I scream, throwing the pillow towards Holly's little silhouette, which has appeared in the doorway.
With the heat wave has come a contagion of lice that has swept the grade-one class. Holly's head has been shaved completely.
She ducks my pillow and rubs her hand over her little old-man head. Then the click of her turning her hearing aid on. Ah.
She tap dances for a moment, lifting up the bottom of the long cotton nightshirt she has decided to wear for this evening's
performance. I growl at her but collapse on Mom's lap, too hot to pursue my attack. Our bodies stick together in the shallow
air.
Mom yawns, and runs a hand through my long hair. "What are you doing, honey?"
Holly talks out the side of her mouth, like she's trying to be a wise guy: "Hopscotch."
"Oh, you're being a very funny-guy! You're coming back to bed now," Mom says, and, as if coaxing the cat from under the porch,
she pats the place beside her.
"OK, but first! A puppet show!"
Holly yammers with her hands in mouth shapes, an incomprehensible mesh of gibberish and cackling and high-pitched titters.
I look at Mom.
"Listen to me, I'm being very serious now, come back to bed or be quiet."
Holly stops and jumps on the bed, tearing off her nightdress. She sits before us, cross-legged, her arms folded against her
flat, naked chest.
"Mama," she says seriously, her head shining in the night, tilting towards the fan's breeze.
"What's a
Black Widow?"
She turns the volume up in anticipation of the answer.
The nature of pelvic pain caused by endometriosis is variable. Minimal endome in the cul-de-sac is generally much more painful
than a huge endometrium within the ovary that is expanding freely into the abdominal cavity.
Every night at the hospital it is the same dream: everything is quiet. I am in a small hole in the earth. A young man finds
me in the forest under the wet, mossy rocks. I'm wrapped in pink butcher paper, the kind that's waxy on the inside. I'm sleeping
and there's something sticky in my hand.
The man unwraps me and holds me to him. I'm the thing he finds to keep, me. My bony knees ache,
growing pains,
I think.
He walks, holding me like a baby, though I'm too big to be a baby. I am a child's size but light enough for him to carry with
one hand swinging free so he can pick up snails, suck them out. Salty and slippery, the snails flow down his throat like hot
shots of moist liquor.
The sky is partially blocked out by him, so I can't see his face. There is something between us, something I need to tell
him, but I still can't see his face.
I have your hands. See them? They are yours. You can have them back
if you want, I will give them to you and go without hands because I would
like to have you back in this world, if that is at all possible. I have your
legs, your shoulders. You can have those, too, if you need them. Your face
I'll keep for myself let no one see. It is the one thing of ours I will be selfish
about, and no, you can't have that back.
That is your punishment for dying, for leaving me alone with all these
strangers. You will be known as the man without a face
—//
will always
belong to me. I am you. And you are mine, so you can't already begone.
We walk into night not forming words or thoughts, just watching the dark map of browns, greens, and blacks turn the night
over, like erosion.
You make me feel like I'm in another country,
I want to say, but I fall back into sleep within my dream, into the crook of his arm, lulled by his steady, strong heartbeat.
Then I hear the first break, the crackle of dry leaves and stones pounding together; he lets go and I fall down on top of
a rock. I stumble, my knee raw and scratched. The throaty ache of a scream rides up my throat, but this time, when I open
my eyes, I see him walking ahead. I clutch at the mass in my hand and open it: nothing but pulp and blood.
I reel up and feel electrodes attached to my spine, forehead, and neck, inside my face. Black straps hold my body in place
on a stretcher as a gentle current of light passes through my body.
This is not a dream now but memory. Me, trying to open my mouth, to ask why, and when will it stop? Suddenly, Thomas's face
floats up in front of me, unconnected, just a head. He looks down at me curiously as he pumps me full of white burnt light.
I'm just back from visiting Giselle at the hospital and I'm sitting on the porch watching the neighbourhood kids riding their
bikes up and down the street when Jen comes skateboarding down the block.
She tips her skateboard up and shoves it under her arm. "You're coming tonight, right?"
At the end of the year, there's always a creek party where all the kids from St. Sebastian go to drink beer with the kids
from the high school until the sun comes up.
"Marco's going to be there, come on, Holly, I know you like him."
"So?"
She sighs. "Look, go tell your mom you're going to go with me. Better yet, I'll tell her." Jen pounds up the steps to my house
and yells, "Mrs. Vasco!" until Mom appears at the top of the stairs.
"Oh, hi, Jennifer, nice to see you."
"Mrs. Vasco, it's OK if I steal Holly away tonight, right? It's the graduation dance and all."
"Holly, why didn't you say anything?" Mom comes down the steps to give Jen a hug. Mom loves Jen, she thinks she's "feisty."
"What will you wear?"
"I could wear my black dress."
"No black dress. See, that's why I'm here, Mrs. Vasco. I'm giving her a makeover at my house. My sister's a hairstylist,"
she adds, as if this fact clinches the whole deal. Mom looks at me as I shake my head. "Well, let me give you some money to
take a cab home after the dance, Holly."
"Can she sleep over at my house tonight?"
"I can't. I have to go see Giselle at the hospital tomorrow."
"No, it's okay7, you go with Jennifer. I can go alone."
"Are you sure, Mom?"
"As long as it's all right with Jennifer's mother."
"Sure, sure," Jen licks her lips and rolls off in front of me on her skateboard as I grip Mom's arm for a second before tripping
down the porch steps in my untied shoes.
Jen's house isn't quiet like ours. She has one of those great houses with lots of traffic, food, and activity. I always like
going there for dinner and lunch and hanging out with all Jen's cousins and sisters.
"Hey kid, want some pesto?" Mrs. Marinelli asks, blowing me a kiss from the stove as a bunch of kids pull on her apron, begging
for ice cream money.
"We're getting ready for the dance!" Jen announces as she drags me through the basil-smelling kitchen and into her sister's
room.
Joanne was in Giselle's class in high school, they used to be friends. Giselle likes Joanne but always refers to her as "that
incorrigible gina." Joanne's spread out the contents of her makeup bag and laid out her curling iron and all her hair products
in front of the vanity mirror. The whole thing is making me really nervous, but Jen even has a solution for that, because
when I sit down in front of the vanity, she pours us each a glass of her father's homemade wine and proposes a toast.
"To playing basketball next year!"
"To getting out of St. Sebastian!" I offer.
"To looking beautiful," Joanne purrs, slicking my hair down with pink hair gel.
"So, let's have another glass of vino and then we'll head to the creek."
"We're not going to the dance?"
"No, wiener, we're not going. It's almost over anyway, but we
are
going to the creek party."
"So why am I wearing all this crap if we're not going?"
Jen grins at me, showing off her wine-stained teeth as she pats down her stiff, hair sprayed hair, trying to undo the damage
of her sister's curling iron.
"Quit whining, you look fantastic, Marco's going to be all over you. Besides, at least you don't have big hair."
I start giggling as Jen groans. She does have big hair, and no amount of patting down or rearranging can shrink it.
"You mess with that style, Jen, and that's the last time I do your hair!" Joanne shouts from the bathroom, insulted.
"You buzzed?" Jen asks, pulling a baseball cap on and throwing herself down next to me, among all the clothes and makeup on
her bed.
"My face feels red. Is this drunk?"
"It's close. I'm bringing another bottle down to the creek."
"Won't your dad miss it?"
"Naw, he has so much booze he doesn't even know what to do with it."
I sit up and stretch, feeling the soft edges of the world bend around me. Everything feels like it could be funny or far away
or sad. This must be drunk, too.
We shoot down the stairs screaming our goodbyes. I grab Jen's hand and run as fast as I can till there's grass underfoot.
Till we hit the park and jump down the dark ravine. Till we smell the smoke of a medium-sized bonfire lighting up the corner
of the forest, where people have gathered and have started drinking in the last shadows of the day Till we walk right into
the warm wind of summer and feel it, lifting up our arms, till I almost forget about Giselle biting down on the doctor's hand
with her half-rotted teeth.
. . .
Trashed. Jen is trashed, I think, as I watch her laughing, bending like a rubber toy at her waist and spilling wine onto
the ground. Jen introduces everyone swiftly: "Holly, that's Clive, this is John, my cousin . . . he's just here for some junior-high
tail."
There are about fifty people in all, mostly older kids, from high school. Someone's parked a beat-up old car in the ravine,
opened all the doors, and cranked up the radio. Aerosmith. No graduation would be complete without it, Giselle tells me later.
"Marco's here!" Jen slurs, jabbing a finger into the air before it falls on my shoulder. "Go talk to him!"
I look over to where the tall, long-lashed Marco is standing. He's watching the fire intently, surrounded by older high-school
guys. What Jen hasn't noticed, though, is that he's wearing a white shirt and dark dress pants, and that Kat, dressed to the
height of virginal fashion, is standing next to him. They've come together from the dance, and Kat's even wearing a white
orchid corsage pinned next to her left breast.
"He's
sooo
taken, Jen. Forget it, I don't have a chance."
"Whaddaya talking about?" Jen screams, glaring at the fire. "Get over there, you chickenshit!"
"Forget it Jen! He likes Kat." I grab the bottle from her and take a gulp. "I gotta keep my eye on you anyway, you lush."
Jen mumbles something I don't hear, then slouches down a little lower on the log and hiccups.
"So, ladies, what say we smoke this?" Clive says, exposing his white but crooked teeth. Clive looks so pretty, even with those
teeth. Jen calls him a stoner but he's beautiful, he looks like a child: little nose and big lips. And something about the
way he looks right at me when he talks sends a wave of nausea to my stomach.
"I don't smoke," I say, looking at Jen.
"Right, don't want to damage those perfect pink runner's lungs, eh, Holly?" he snaps, sticking the joint in his mouth and
tapping John for a light.
"How do you know I run?"
"Oh, I take a special interest in young athletes."
It seems rude or something not to accept the joint, so I take a little puff and then cough for about five minutes.
After we smoke, I send Clive and John to ask around for some water for Jen, who is beginning to look a little green, but she
gives us a confident thumbs-up whenever we ask how she's doing.
John and Clive come back with a Tupperware container of warm orange juice. Jen takes a big sip and spits it out.
"There's vodka in that!" Jen laughs. John snatches it, sniffs, and takes a gulp.
"I'm getting water," I say. "You jerks stay here and watch her."
As I walk through groups of people sitting on blankets, I pass a black, square-jawed dog, and meet its eyes. I feel flushed
from my chest to my crotch, as if there is a candle burning inside me. At peace with the dog, and beers, and fires, I smile
at a large girl with long dark hair who's trying to clean the dirt from between her toes. I feel like we're young and, because
of this, everything might be OK, if only I could find some water for Jen.
"Hey, Holly!" I turn, clutching the plastic bottle, as Clive trips awkwardly through groups of people: raver girls with sparkles
on their faces and platform shoes on their feet, boys with baggy pants, hippies, and people from the dance dressed in various
levels of formal attire. Everyone, except Clive, looks shiny. I notice how all his clothes, and his hair, are frayed at the
ends and dusty. When he finally gets to me he holds out his hands.
"Thought you might like some company. You going into the school?"
I guess.
"This way."
He leads me through the crowd, past the car, which is now blaring hip hop, and up a steep dark path. People are arguing about
what kind of music to put on next.
"Your school or mine?" He points through the high chain-link fence that separates St. Sebastian from East Tech.
"You go to East Tech?"
"Yessir." He kicks at the fence. East Tech is the last-resort school that specializes in woodworking, mechanics, and "vocational"
training—whatever the hell that is. It's the troublemakers' school. You always hear about cars being torched and boys stabbing
each other in the halls. There's a reason for the ten-foot spiked fence between East Tech and St. Sebastian. The teachers,
especially Mr. Ford, tell us the kids are rowdy, non-Catholic drug addicts. I knew Clive went to a public school, but not
East Tech.
"School's not my thing."
No kidding,
I think as he shakes the fence and begins to climb it. I hesitate for a second and then start climbing after him. He sits
at the top waiting for me, jiggling around a little, his jeans pulled tight against his bum. We walk along the other side
of the fence in the forest for a while in silence.
"You think the school's open?" I ask as we approach a set of orange doors, but really all I can think about is how a guy as
nice and calm as Clive managed to get himself into East Tech.
"Wait here," he says, before pulling out a small blade to jimmy the door open. He grabs the juice container from my hands
and disappears into the school.
At the top of the hill, after scaling the fence again, we pause to smoke another of Clive's skinny joints.
"So, how'd you get to East Tech?" I ask him.
He looks at me in the growing darkness before plucking the joint from his mouth and passing it to me. His eyes are soft but
untrusting. I take a long haul of the pinner, which has some trouble making its way down my throat and into my stomach.
"I yelled at a teacher in my old school. Well, I kind of more than yelled at her."
"What did you do?"
"This woman, this bitch, in grade nine, made me read
The
Kaisin in a Sun."
"A
Kaisin in
the
Sun."
"Yeah, whatever, anyway, she was really getting on my nerves, like pushing me . . . I just didn't feel like reading that day."
"So?"
"So, I don't know, I kind of flipped."
"Oh." I hand the joint back to him and look down at the hill. We'll probably have to slide down on our asses to reach the
bottom. It's really dark now. I can make out Clive's small nose and his fat lips by the heater of the joint. I contemplate
his prettiness, while trying to think of something cool to say.
"We have something in common then."
"What's that?"
"We both got kicked out of school."
"Yeah, John told me about that. Quite the little scrap you ladies got yourselves into." He grins, his teeth glowing.
"Yeah," I sigh, pretending I'm cool and refusing the last of the joint. "So, I figure we slide, ass first, down this hill."
"Just a second." He crushes the roach with his boot and grabs my wrist. Hard.
"You're so pretty, Holly."
I laugh.
He goes for my mouth but I turn my face and he ends up missing it and slobbering down the right side of my cheek. Then he
puts his hand under my chin and guides my face to his, and, even in the darkness, I see his eyes close as his face comes closer.
At first I'm nervous, our mouths are so dry from the pot, I can't even move my lips, or find the right way to kiss. But then
he finds me, he finds the warm wet place inside my clumsy mouth and pulls my body to his and I am up against his stomach,
my hands beneath the back of his shirt. I can't decide what to do next so I try to think of one of the old movies Sol took
us to see,
Casablanca.
The image of a suave Humphrey Bogart pressing up against Lauren Bacall. But as I relax into Clive's mouth, I remember that
it's only us, two flunkies, tumbling down the hill.
When we get to the bottom I jump ahead of Clive. My arms and legs are scratched up and there's grass in my hair and Clive's
laughing so hard he can't get up, so I run on ahead. Jen's safe, thank God, and she seems almost sober now. She still has
the baseball hat plastered on her head to hide her hair. I laugh when I see it. Someone has wrapped her in a blanket and she's
burping through sips of a huge Coke slurpie and singing along to "Hotel California" with a group of hippies by the dying fire.
Jen offers me a sip of her slurpie as she belches long and happily. I gulp down the Coke and instantly get a head-freeze.
"Ow, ow, ow." I lean my head against her fuzzy blanket, trying to recover.
"Where'd you two disappear to?"
"Just around. We got your water."
"Thanks." She arches her eyebrow: I look around the crowd and see Clive is on the other side of the fire. He's got his shirt
off and is hackey-sacking with a group of kids. Jen follows my gaze and then pokes me in the ribs.
"Hey, stop drooling."
"Shut up."
"Looks like . . ."
"What!?"
"I was going to
say,
before I was so rudely interrupted, that it looks like you found someone as freaky as you."