A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That (12 page)

“What's it say?”

“You're fine right now, Georgia.”

“I knew it,” she said. “I feel great. Nothing's wrong with me.” And then she was rummaging through her purse. “Fuck, no gum,” she said. “I need a mint or something.”

“I'm telling you to be careful with this one. You'll be treated, the symptoms disappear, everything's fine, and then it can come back. I'm not saying that it will, but it can—it's possible. If it goes to your cervix, you won't even know. You've got to watch out, take care of yourself. Don't miss appointments.”

“You should leave him first, Ella. You should pack your bags and go. It's your marriage, right?”

“Don't assume things.” Ella shook her head, pissed. “Your imagination astounds me,” she lied.

Georgia shrugged.

“Besides, I'm not going to take relationship advice from
you.
Come on, Georgia. Think about it.”

“Do you have any gum?” Georgia asked. “How about a mint?”

“Nothing.”

“What about a piece of candy?”

Ella patted her pockets for proof. “Nothing,” she said again.

“Damn,” Georgia said.

“Look, Georgia, you're okay now, but I want you to be vigilant.”

“I heard you.”

“I want you to stay on top of this—don't miss even one Pap.”

“Right,” she said. “Okay. I wish I had a mint,” she said.

11.

There were a half dozen ten-story buildings all in a row. There were palm trees and short green hills, ecology scholars and technical engineers, bat lovers and defenders of poisonous snakes. He'd been spending more and more evenings here, thinking things through, he said. He felt more at home at work, especially these last few weeks, he told Ella.

They went to building number 3 and took the elevator to the fifth floor. Jack punched in his code, and the glass doors opened for them.

And there, pinned to corkboards, were the bats he studied and loved.

Jack took her by the hand and led her around, introducing her. She knew he'd given the bats names. He'd spoken about them, calling them Candy and Rudy and Maggie at home, but it was different standing there, watching him coo, watching him talk to the dead bats as if they could hear. She thought about this and let go of his hand.

“Here we are—finally,” he said, pulling up a stool for her to sit on. He opened his arms out wide and looked around. “What do you think?” he asked her.

“It's intense,” she said.

“Let me get us some coffee. Let's have some coffee and talk about things.”

Jack left the room to make coffee, and after a few seconds alone with the bats, Ella was aware of her heart and lungs. She left the lab too and stood in the hall, waiting. She was thinking about the documentary he brought home months ago. The Livingstone's bat that was born in the Los Angeles Zoo a year earlier and had been rejected by his mother. The bat had to be nurtured by a human. Michael, the zookeeper, cared for the orphan bat. He named him Oliver. The bat had to be fed almost constantly, so Michael kept him in his bedroom. Ella imagined Michael feeding Oliver pears and peaches and tiny chunks of apple.

When Jack found her in the hall, he kissed her cheek. “I'm sorry I left you there ,” he said. “I should have—”

“It's okay” she said, cutting him off.

Jack carried only one cup of coffee. “I can't find the extra cups. We can share, right?”

“Okay,” she said, taking the cup from him, bringing it to her lips and taking a sip. The coffee was hot and perfect, with just the right amount of cream. They stood in the hall a moment and looked at each other before moving back into the lab.

Jack pulled out two stools and they sat down next to each other. It was a lot like sitting side by side in a bar, except that instead of rows of bottles above their heads there were bats behind glass cases. Jack picked up her hand. “Can you trust me, Ella?” Jack said. “Can you at least make an effort?”

When he said effort, Ella thought of high school math tests. She thought of gym class and running an extra lap. She thought of trying not to cuss or giving up caffeine. She thought of Sarah's lips on Jack's lips. She remembered Sarah's hand making its way into her husband's jeans. Ella remembered that the zookeeper Michael taught Oliver to fly.
How did that work?
she was wondering.
How did a man without wings teach a bat to use his own?

“I'll make an effort,” she said, and it sounded silly, like a lie, like something she could not possibly make.

Jack clapped his hands together like a kid and jumped up from the stool “Good,” he said. “Let me introduce you to Carmen.” For a minute she thought he had a secretary, a dark-haired beauty that he hadn't mentioned, but he took her hand for the second time that day and pulled her to the back of the lab, where Carmen, pinned like the others, hung behind a glass case.

“Livingstone's Fruit,” Jack said.

“So this is Carmen,” she said, relieved.

“Isn't she wonderful?”

And Carmen was wonderful, Ella agreed, especially her wings, spread out like a blanket, like a huge black fan.

12.

They stuck their brown lunch bags on a shelf in the refrigerator, right next to the samples that were waiting to go to the lab, the brown bags of gonorrhea and syphilis. In the common room they ate their sandwiches, sipped soft drinks, and discussed the girls of the day—this one raped by a quiet neighbor, this one left in a gutter by a boy she still loved, a boy Ella
better not
be looking at, she said, and this one, Georgia Carter, with an object stuck inside of her, way up high, so high that no amount of pull or tug or yank could release it.

It had been several months since Ella had seen Georgia, months since her condyloma had been diagnosed and treated, months since they'd had that argument about Georgia's behavior and Ella's marriage, and now Georgia sat there, looking at Ella as if she were any one of the counselors up front; it was a look she might have given Sarah, whom she obviously didn't like or want to know. “I think about you,” Ella said meekly.

“Yes, well,” Georgia said. She shifted on the metal stool, obviously unhappy behind their inadequate curtain. “Can't a girl get some privacy?” she said, sighing. She pulled a piece of gum from her blouse's little pocket. She popped it between her lips and chewed without inhibition; Ella could see the white stick bending and folding in her mouth.

She leaned forward and spoke to Georgia softly. “Can you tell me what the object is?” she asked her.

Georgia shook her head no.

Her weight hadn't changed since she'd last been to the clinic, so perhaps Ella didn't need to worry there. She'd cut her bangs, and they framed her face now. She looked funny to Ella, like an overgrown baby. Georgia noticed her looking and brushed the bangs with her hand. “I'm sorry about last time,” Ella said.

“Whatever.”

“I am, Georgia. It was wrong of me. I should have called you to apologize. I picked up the phone, in fact, I…”

“Stop it,” she said.

“Okay,” Ella said, leaning forward.

“It would have been
unprofessional
to call. You're only unprofessional to a point.”

“I'm sorry,” she said again.

Georgia muttered something under her breath that Ella could not make out. She sneered. Ella asked if she were here alone.

“I've got a boyfriend now.”

“Good,” Ella said, not sure if she believed her.

“His name is Jim. He's tall, seventeen. We've got the same birthday,” she said.

“Is Jim here?”

“He sells shoes—makes a lot of commission. He wants to take me away.”

“Where?”

“The mountains.”

“Is Jim here?” Ella repeated.

“Say what you mean—you want to know if he's okay with this, with the fact that I've got something stuck up there,” She motioned, to her pelvis. “Right?”

Ella shook her head.

“What you want to know is
does he still love me?”

“No,” Ella said, “I'm not talking about love.”

And Georgia looked at her hard and said, “Of course you're not.”

13.

At closing Ella gathered the speculums up like silverware, and after dipping them into the steaming water, stuck them in an oven to bake. Later, she'd bake sweet bread for a man she thought she knew, and even later, he would leave her, but not before giving her a germ or two of her own.

Years from now, he would stand with a new wife at the mouth of Bracken Cave. Inside the cave twenty million free-tailed bats would be hanging by their toes. At dusk these bats, pouring from the cave, would swirl and loop in search of blood.

Years from now, Georgia's condyloma would spread to her cervix, causing a cancer they would not find until it had eaten everything.

Georgia had a banana inside of her. Dr. Wheeler shook his head and smirked as he confided to them in the common room. It was lunchtime. Just moments earlier, Ella, so anxious to hear Georgia's verdict, grabbed the wrong bag from the refrigerator shelf. She sat peeking inside at the sample of gonorrhea on her lap. She quickly folded it closed and feigned fullness.

“It was months ago ,” Sarah whispered into her ear. “I'm sorry,” she said.

Ella nodded.

“I told you it wouldn't happen again and it hasn't. It's okay if he picks you up from work. I'll stay away from him, I promise.”

Ella nodded again.

“I'm sorry,” Sarah repeated.

“I heard you the first time,” Ella said.

“He's just, he's just …” she stammered.

“He's
just
my husband,” Ella said, louder than she had intended.

Dr. Wheeler looked at her. “What, Ella? Did you say something about your husband?”

“No,” she said. “It's nothing.”

“It was a banana,” Dr. Wheeler said. “A banana,” he repeated, looking at them. “Can you imagine a girl wanting something so badly?”

1997-1998

1.

I knew there were women who were proud of their mastectomies. I had a
DoubleTake
magazine open on my nightstand, left there purposely with the hopes that my mother would find it. A pencil ran the length of the magazine's spine, saving the page. Even though I knew photographs weren't going to affect my mother's decision, I wanted her to see these beautiful tattooed women—one with a colorful snake where her right breast had been, one with halos of red and yellow flowers circling both puckered scars.

My mom had started talking about reconstructive surgery, dropping comments about balance and symmetry into our conversations. It was summer, just over a couple of years since the mastectomy, just six months before her first recurrence, two years before I met Dirk or Rex, and my mother wanted her body back, she said—as if it, her body, had taken a trip or been stolen from her, and breast reconstruction would return it to its rightful place. I wanted my mother to wait until she'd been healthy for at least three years before deciding because I knew that the disease was most likely to recur within that window. I wanted her strong when or if it showed up, not recouping—but she wanted to get on with things. I believed that these things my mother wanted to get on with included meeting a new man, and I worried that her self-image was wrapped up in what was no longer hers—breasts, abundance, and probable health.

It was morning, a Saturday, and she stood in front of her bedroom mirror in a black one-piece bathing suit, white shorts, and tennis shoes, complaining, saying, “I'm out of whack, Rachel. I feel like I'm about to tip over.” The two of us had planned to have our coffee downstairs, sit outside on the sand, and play a game of Scrabble before it got too hot.

I stood in the doorway, towel over one shoulder, holding the game under my arm.

“Look at this,” my mom said, pulling at the black fabric where it dipped and wrinkled. She held the rubber breast in the other hand. The problem, she said, was that her remaining breast seemed bigger and was cumbersome without its match. “Look at it,” she said. “Look at me.”

I was looking. I did look. I looked all the time—when my mother was dressing or undressing, when she was stepping out of the tub, when she was sleeping. I had looked the night before, as my mother stood in the kitchen, ready for bed, saying goodnight. She held a steaming cup of chocolate. She blew into the cup and the vapor rose. I smelled the milk and sugar. Her hair, as they had promised, had come back in curls. When she leaned forward to kiss my cheek, I noticed the blue gown, the way it fell over her healthy breast, the way the silk wrinkled and dipped where her left breast had been, how it behaved like the black fabric my mother was now pulling on.

Unlike her, I wasn't thinking about aesthetics or symmetry, but time—the days and weeks and months out of her life that the reconstruction would certainly steal. “Think how stressful the surgery would be on your body” I said. “Are you ready for that sort of stress? Is your body ready?”

“Where are the beach chairs?” she said, irritated, changing the subject. “Are they in the front closet?”

“What did the doctor say—that it could take you up to six months to recover?”

“That's the worst-case scenario, Rachel. Why must you always think like that? How did I raise such a negative daughter?” She put the rubber breast down on her dresser and sat on the bed. “I need you with me.”

“Where else am I going to go?”

“No—I need you to support my decision. I mean,
if
I make that decision. I haven't decided yet,” she insisted.

“Yes you have.”

My mom sighed. She shook her head, looked at me. “You ever drink too much and not know where to put your feet?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, that's how I feel. I'm out of whack.” She picked the breast up from the dresser and placed it inside her bathing suit, filling the space. She stared at herself in the mirror a moment. “Let's go,” she said, turning, looking at the game under my arm. “I'm going to win,” she said.

2.

I went with my mother to Dr. Morgan's office for a consultation. The waiting room was plush, ridiculously so, I thought. I sat on the overstuffed velvet couch, my mother on a matching chair. The two of us looked at each other and said nothing. My mother gave me half a smile.

On one wall hung a framed montage, letters from happy patients, complete with pictures of body parts: a wallet-size photo of a man's profile, a five-by-seven of a blonde woman's taut stomach, and another five-by-seven of what looked like a teenage girl, bent over—all I could see was her navy blue bikini bottoms, her good thighs, and half of her face as she twisted herself at the waist and neck to smile at the camera. Her position looked painful, and I wondered how long she had to hold it, to bend like that, before someone snapped the picture.

A marble coffee table sat in the center of the room. Several unlit candles in exotic holders were scattered about. In one corner stood a lavish fountain with water pouring from a cherub's outstretched palm. A framed sign on the coffee table read:
These candles are decorative. Please do not light them.
A candle without the possibility of light, I thought, is a trick, like a breast that's really a stomach, misplaced fat and skin.

Next to the cherub was a magazine rack that stretched the length of the wall. I got up from the couch and went to the rack. Every magazine I'd ever heard of was there, as well as several unknown to me. I picked up
Cosmetic Surgeon
and flipped through it, pausing at an article titled “What's Looking Good Worth to Los Angeles?” I continued flipping and found one that interested me: “At Risk, In Need.” The piece was about American surgeons who dedicated time to third world countries. Mostly, they fixed cleft palates.

I sat on the couch with the magazine open across my lap. I glanced at my mother, who was reaching inside her bag, searching for something, then looked back down at the magazine. Several pictures of children with serious eyes and deformed mouths stared up at me from the pages. One small boy appeared shaken, his dark eyes huge and surprised, as if he'd looked in the mirror and couldn't believe it himself. I was thinking about the boy, his cleft palate. I was thinking about my mother, how her boyfriend, a man she'd liked from school for years and had just started sleeping with right before she was diagnosed, abruptly stopped seeing her. I was imagining my mother tipping over at the grocery store, her body out of balance as she said, a shoulder falling into the canned pears or peaches. I was moving my tongue along the roof of my own mouth, thinking about that.

My mom pulled some dark green fabric from her bag. She held a needle up to the light and aimed. She threaded the needle and began to sew. It would be a dress or a skirt, that wrinkled pile of green that was in her lap, and I would forever remember her—making something pretty out of nothing.

I had just closed the magazine when an unnaturally happy and buxom brunette came into the waiting room, holding a clipboard, and calling my mother's name. “Elizabeth,” she said, “Dr. Morgan is ready for you now.” I put the magazine on the table and looked at my mother, who was folding the fabric and putting it back in her bag. She stood up, held the bag at her side, and asked the woman if I could join her.

“Sure,” the nurse said.

“Come with me,” my mother whispered.

“You want me in there?” I was surprised.

“Yes”

“You sure?”

“I said yes—but I want you to behave yourself.”

“I'm an adult,” I reminded her.

“Adults misbehave,” my mother said under her breath.

“I'll stay here,” I said.

“Come with me,” she said again.

The two of us sat quietly while Dr. Morgan prepared his slide show. I looked at the doctor's pockmarked face, wondering why he of all people didn't pretty himself up. Why didn't he skip one game of golf or elaborate luncheon and have that imperfect skin scraped away?

He showed us a slide: a woman whose face I couldn't see, just the thin, bland line of her mouth and hesitant chin—a woman with poor posture, a wrinkled belly, and two thick scars where her breasts had been. The surface was strangely flat; it appeared scooped out and hollow. I would have thought that to go in that far, to dig that deep, they would have damaged the woman's heart. It amazed me that the concave area could house any organ at all.

“This is the
Before
picture, obviously,” Dr. Morgan said, pointing at the woman.

In the
After
picture the woman stood up straight with her new breasts. The breasts were big and full, standing up like a teenage girl's, which only magnified the rest of her, all creases and folds. Again, I saw the thin line of her mouth, this time with lipstick, this time smiling.

“How fresh were the scars in the previous slide?” I asked the doctor.

“Rachel,”
my mother said.

“I'm just asking,” I said. “You don't mind if I ask, do you?”

“Fresh?” he said.

“Yes,” I continued. “How long had it been since the woman's mastectomy?”

“Double,” he said.

“I noticed that. How long had it been?” I repeated.

“Six months.”

“Wouldn't it have been a good idea to wait?”

“For what?”

My mom sighed.

“For what?” Dr. Morgan repeated.

“Until the area heals,” I said, though that wasn't what I wanted to say at all. What I wanted to say was:
My mother had a huge tumor in her breast two years ago and she's probably still sick. Under that handmade dress, she's probably dying, you greedy ass.
“Until the woman feels better,” I said quietly.

“That woman right there feels fine” Dr. Morgan said, pointing again. “Sometimes we team up with the cancer surgeon and take care of aesthetics immediately. As soon as the doctor removes one, I'm there sculpting another.”

“Like art,” my mom said.

“Exactly.”

“How's it done?” she asked. “And don't get too graphic, please. I don't need to know everything.” My mother smoothed her dress out across her legs and let out a little laugh. “I'm not my daughter, that's for sure—please, Dr. Morgan, keep the details to yourself.”

He talked about the latest procedure, taking fat and muscle from a woman's stomach. He jutted his chin at the screen, at the woman. “Here,” he said, “and here too. I take fat from here and make a breast there.” He pointed his pen at the woman's torso, first at her puffy belly, then at her sunken chest.

“Amazing,” my mom said.

Dr. Morgan smiled. “It's like getting a free tummy tuck.”

“A bargain,” I said, flatly.

“I could use one of those. Imagine how good my dresses will look then, Rachel” She smiled at the two of us and patted her small stomach.

“I'm imagining.”

“Maybe I'll have to take them in, do some alterations.”

“What about the nipple? How do you do that?” I asked.

“Well, we either take a bit of skin from inside the labia or—”

“Oh, my,”
my mother said.

“Or what?” I said.

“Or do without one,” he said.

“And how about pain?” I wanted to know.

“Demerol works well. You don't have to worry because your mother would be medicated those first few days—”

“So it's painful, then? It sure sounds painful. Skin from your labia, huh?” I looked at my mother and raised my eyebrows

“Well she'll be uncomfortable”

“Sounds
very
uncomfortable. I had a dentist talk to me once about discomfort,” I said. “Do you remember that dentist. Mom?”

My mom nodded.

I looked at the doctor. “I had an abscessed molar—he hit a nerve. Nothing
uncomfortable
about it.”

“We've got effective drugs,” Dr. Morgan said.

I shook my head.

“And remember,” he continued, “your mother has already been through a mastectomy, through chemotherapy and radiation.”

“Nausea, lethargy, pain,” I added.

“Yes, yes,” he said, as if we were agreeing.

“No,” I said.

“No, what?” he wanted to know.

“Nothing,” I said, realizing that we'd been talking about my mother as though she wasn't in the room, as though she was a small girl without an opinion. But she didn't seem to mind, By now she'd risen, from the chair and walked over to the screen. She stood in the slide machine's yellow glare, her back, shoulders, head and neck partially illuminated. She was bent over, intent, and so close to the woman's breasts that if she'd opened her mouth, she could have taken a bite.