Skinny (15 page)
Shock or angioplasty is required immediately to reinstate a stopped rhythm.
"You can't wear black to your grade-eight graduation!" Mom says.
"Why not? You wore black to Aunt Judy's wedding."
"That was different."
"Why?"
"I was in mourning. Stop moving, Holly, or I'll stick a pin in your leg."
Vesla has Holly in a silken, raglike dress, with a floral print. She is trying to figure out how to take the waist in so that
Holly's torso will be vaguely visible.
"Why don't you let her wear my dress?" I hang on to the edge of the doorway, framing the question in a mild voice. Feeling
weak, I sit down on the laundry hamper to stop my sudden swooning. This is the first time I've acknowledged Holly since the
fight. She shoots me a grateful look.
"OK."
Mom gets up and spits the pins out of her mouth; a gesture of letting the operation go.
Holly rips the dress off as she skips out of the room.
"Thank God she's graduating."
"Of course she is, she only missed a week of school."
Holly clears her throat from the hallway.
"Do you have shoes?" I yell.
"Oh! Shoes." We hear her darting into my room. When she finally gets my shoes on, she slides into the room campily. I catcall
and Mom lets out a surprised laugh. The long, tight, black dress is cut up the length of her left leg. She kisses the air,
swivels her hip, and then, sucking in her cheekbones, struts up and down the hall.
"Holly, you're a fox. Realty, you are," I say, laughing, thinking about how Agnes would react to the dress.
"Too much." Mom shakes her head. And as Holly plucks a carnation out of a vase and places it in her mouth, Mom turns to me.
"Is Sol coming to Holly's graduation?"
His name that has not been spoken, that we have not said in weeks. Neither of us. And now hearing it out loud, we both turn
to look at the sound of his name, like a car crash between us.
Failed hearts: Experienced cardiologists are able to assess organ damage immediately.
—
I told you so.
Causality. The law of cause and effect. What are the reasons? But there is no order. No who or what. No direct factors leading
up to the disappearance of my body either, though the lion-queen believes she has all the answers:
—
Funny that.
—What?
—
How all the men in your life leave you for Holly.
Medicine was once a clean, easy, causal science to me: identify the symptoms, locate pain, perform Woodwork, analyze urine,
take X-rays, then add it up, listen to your patient, proceed with a differential diagnosis. This is how I came to medicine,
why I preferred it over psychology. This is why I wanted to fix broken bodies, not broken minds.
You can never get to a person's mind. You cannot know the different deeds and missions of happiness; you can't tell a scream
of pleasure from one of pain. Sometimes, we can barely read pain. Neither a barometer nor a guide, pain can mislead us. Even
in the body, the laws of chain reactions can be false. This is why people always want a second opinion.
It is important to appreciate that the lessening of pain does not necessarily indicate the underlying condition has been resolved.
Walking around the well-tended grass at the graveyard, I think maybe I should become a pathologist. Mom pats the earth gently,
making a little lump around the new orange tiger lily she's planted at the base of Thomas's grave. She stays on her knees
for a little while, wiping the stone with a handkerchief, pulling weeds up from the earth, making order.
Holly hates "the stone," as she calls it, explaining, "That's not him, that's just the place where they put his body."
"I know, but what else are we supposed to do, Hoi?" We have this conversation every month, when it's time to go to church
and visit the stone. "It's for Mom, not for him, or for you, it's not for the dead, the dead don't care." Holly usually starts
to throw her clothes on the floor at this point in the conversation and complain that she has nothing to wear.
But I like the stone, it helps me keep things straight. The last time I saw him he gasped like an animal whose limbs were
being severed. After we came home from the hospital, my mother stared straight through us while Holly and I sat in front of
her, mini-zombies, staring right back. I think of awful wayward things: the heart-disease corpses we used to dissect in school,
their bulging arteries and veins, and then I think maybe becoming a pathologist isn't such a great idea after all.
I know Holly talks to him and sees him and has this real spiritual connection and everything, but it's different for me. I
like to preserve the image I see in the odd seventies photos of a handsome, grinning man with sharp cheekbones and polyester
collars. In photos his image can't wander, he can't become someone else.
My mind is an ugly place and I can let almost anything go to rot in there. And anyway, what would I say if he strolled up
to me, like he does to Holly? What in the world would I say? The sad thing is, I've imagined that too. I know exactly what
I'd say if my father came up to me in broad daylight, offering me some of his ghostly advice. I wouldn't even let him talk.
No.
So what? You remain the fucking ghost you always were to me,
I'd say, and then I'd walk away
Cervical dilation to allow an easier passage of menstrual blood in patients with severe degrees of dysmenorrhea may be helpful
in rare instances but is not generally recommended as routine.
I saw7 her today, on my way to the library, on an escalator in the university. As soon as she saw me, I turned and started
running the wrong way down the escalator, excusing myself and bumping into people. But she caught up to me, as she always
does.
—
What're you doing?
I felt the bottoms of my feet lighting up, on fire. I crashed through people, plastic bags split open, and books fell onto
the metallic teeth of the stairs.
"Watch it!"
—
Why can't you see that I'm all you have?
She comes to me, quietly, calm-before-the-storm serious, when she knows I can't run. In the middle of the night, when I'm
standing in the kitchen, trying to fill the gnawing gap in my stomach, she marches right up and starts her lecture:
—
just go to bed, you don't need food.
—But I do, I'm hungry.
—
We don't get hungry.
"We do get hungry," I say out loud to a yogourt container and a soggy bag of french fries Holly's left in the fridge. "People
get hungry and then they need to eat," I say loudly, trying to drown her out, stuffing Holly's old fries, the yogourt, a block
of cheese, and a piece of bread into my mouth, all at once. A plate of cookies, a hunk of steak from two nights ago, down,
down, down, as she gets louder and louder.
—
But you'll be different when you finish
}
you'll befat.
She marches me into the bathroom and unties my robe to reveal my proud little swollen belly.
—
Good Lord, look at yourself.
—I'm looking.
I see it protrude over my belt, the soft fold of skin, no longer concave and hard. I trace my fingers over it and think of
how Sol used to like to rest his head there and read the paper. I try to reason with her.
—People eat. They eat and work and love. That's what they do, that's what I do.
—
Not you. Not us, we are stripped clean of want, we move like lean
lions, we do not gorge, like you just did. . .
—But. . .
—
But nothing, ow. What's that?
Something hot and wet and foreign in my crotch. I strip down, find I am leaking.
—
Blood.
—Yes, blood, my first period in three years.
—
Goddamn you!
I kneel on the floor naked, blood snaking under me, warm and vile on the clean white floor.
Dysmenorrhea: the cessation of
menstruation.
The cessation of the cessation, the end of the end. She yanks my head over the toilet bowl and knocks it against the rim.
I encircle my growling stomach.
—
You'll clean yourself up and starve that a way, young lady.
—I will not.
My stomach feels distended. It knots as she grips me, shoves her fingers in my throat till all I've gulped is gone down, down,
down the bowl.
—
It's been a while since we pulled that old trick out of the bag, eh?
—Yeah.
I flush and scrub the toilet, the floor. Then I run water in the tub and lower my body into the scalding heat, see my skin
go pink when it touches the water. As the steam rises I place my hands over my no longer inflated belly and rest my head on
the edge of the tub.
—
You're so pathetic. . .
—I did what you wanted, just leave me alone now, please go.
Her jaws open, I insert my head between the shiny incisors, rest my head on her warm tongue before blackout—teeth crashing
down on my skull.
—
You knew it'dendup like this. I go when you go. That's the problem,
don't you see?
I'm playing pick-up with some older guys at the schoolyard when Roy yells, "Time out. Hey, Holly! Your boyfriend's here."
And when I turn to see what they're laughing about, I see him, his arms stretching over the diamond-shaped spaces between
the metal on the fence. And I'm embarrassed for him, looking so diminished somehow by the large grey fence that separates
us. I take my bandana off my head and retie it as I walk towards him. I hear the tinny sound of the basketball reverberate
in my head and feel the guys' eyes follow me to the fence. I aim my own eyes above the hill, beyond him, so I do not catch
a glimpse of his beauty or worry.
"Hi, Sol."
"Hi."
"There's nothing to say, there's nothing."
"I know, but I can't sleep, not even a couple of hours anymore and my eyes were hurting from not seeing your sister or you."
"I don't care! You never sleep! Jesus, you come here to tell me your eyes are hurting?"
I don't want to think about his damn eyes. I don't want to talk about them even though he is wearing the sunglasses Giselle
bought for him and I couldn't see his eyes if I wanted to. I remember him mock-complaining that the glasses were too dark.
But he was impressed by her gift, I could tell.
"How is she?"
"She's OK . . . " I pause, and then decide that, despite everything, Sol deserves to know the truth. "Actually, she hasn't
got out of bed for a week."
"She sick?"
"Yeah, sick. Listen, I gotta go, we're losing." I kick at a pile of gravel. One of the rocks bounces off Sol's knee.
"OK. Sorry, Hoi," he says, dismissing me. I look at him, open and shamed. Then he says something funny in a quiet voice, almost
a whisper.
"This one time we were walking in the park and there was a plastic bag on the ground with a cherry pie in it. She scooped
it up as if she just left it there and forgot about it and we walked some more and then sat down on a little hill. She ate
that whole pie. Didn't say, 'Gee, that's weird finding a pie on the ground' or anything, just opened it up like she bought
it herself, and ate the whole damn thing. No fork. No spoon, nothing. Just broke the crust with her fingers and started in.
Didn't even offer me some. Not that I wanted any. I don't like sweets. And I hate cherry-flavoured anything. . . ." He pauses,
kicks some more gravel, and then lights a cigarette and sighs.
"I think about her all the time. Can you at least tell her that?" he asks, stuffing his hands in his pockets. As he turns
and makes his way back up the hill, part of me is running around the fence clinging to his side and not walking back to the
court.
And that part of my heart, which is tangled and blurred and pawing at his back, is not breaking at all. My sister's heart
is not breaking either. I swear I didn't break it when I held it in my hands again.
. . .
The next day is Sunday and Mom and I spend an hour and a half pulling Giselle out of bed and trying to make her look presentable
for church.
"You promised me," Mom says through fuming, closed teeth, while yanking clothes off Giselle's floor.
"What?"
"You promised me this bullshit was over, Giselle." Mom grabs Giselle's arm and clutches it to demonstrate how thin she has
become. Giselle whips around with surprising strength, snatches the clothes out of Mom's other hand, and throws them on her
bed.
"Leave it!" she shrieks, hysterical suddenly, tearing herself away from Mom's grip.
At breakfast Giselle eats a piece of toast, an orange, and a soft-boiled egg, then says to Mom, "Happy?"
"Do I look happy, Giselle? I'm putting you back in clinic if you keep losing weight."
Giselle looks up at Mom, her eyes big, scared.
"No."
"Yes."
"You can't do that, I'm an adult."
"Really? Do adults have to be badgered to eat properly? Do you know any adults that need to be constantly monitored?"
Giselle gives Mom an icy look and snatches the last piece of toast from the plate.
"OK."
"No, I'm serious, this isn't a game, look at yourself. You look like-—" Mom says, pulling on her summer coat.
"All right! I get it. I'm eating, I'm eating!" Giselle yells, tears welling up in her eyes as she tries to swallow the dry
piece of toast as fast as she can.
By the time we get to church, Giselle looks almost normal although her hair is still matted and puffy at the back like a guinea
pig's and her tanned stick-arms are poking out of the blue dress Sol bought her when they first started dating, but she looks
better than she's looked all week. It's the first time she's left the house in a while.
Mom likes to go to church about once a month. "For your father," she says, though he never came with us when he was alive.
He liked to spend Sundays, instead, in his pyjamas, reading the paper and then, later, if it was nice out, puttering around
all day in the garden, by himself.
We all stand straight but Giselle's got the side of her hip pressed against mine and she's pinching me with her long slender
fingers, pulling at my skirt, trying to make me laugh or scream out in pain. "Stop it!" I hiss, arching my back even straighter.
"I said
stop!"
Mom gives me a dirty look.
When the priest finally settles into his sermon, Giselle collapses on the pewr like a drama queen and starts picking old pistachio
nuts from the bottom of her Sunday purse. She opens an old tube of lipstick and collects the fluff from the bottom of her
bag between her fingers. After prying a closed pistachio nut open, she offers me the green nut by pushing it onto my lap.
Mom stares straight ahead, ignoring her. I pick up the nut and chew it slowly, as the priest's voice takes me far away from
our small neighbourhood church.
I think about my dream last night where Giselle covered me with leaves and then snaked her hands through the musty-smelling
pile. In the forest we saw giant blue swallows, the size of watermelons, and bees so heavy with pollen they looked like they
were about to burst, but instead they floated harmlessly through the air and smiled at us with cartoon faces.
God, I don't know you, only in feelings like that dream. Dear God, I
try to pray but I always get distracted. Dear God, please help us, keep us
three together,
I think, falling down slowly in my head, in a pile of red and brown leaves with Giselle.
God? Should tell her about seeing
Sol? What he said?
The priest is talking about the time Jesus threw all those blasphemous people out of the temple and how Much Music and TV
are kind of like those merchants in the house of God. I open my eyes, see Giselle with her mouth open, slouched over the pew.
She looks thin today, too thin to hold up her long body in that blue dress. Giselle wraps her coat around herself, though
the church is humid. I meet Mom's eyes.
She's getting worse,
her worried look transmits. I promise myself to take Giselle to the park for a picnic tomorrow. Giselle's eyes wander over
the Stations of the Cross—her favourite thing about church. She stares at Jesus' Fall. Poor old Jesus, lugging that cross
around, falling all over the place and everyone trying to talk to him at once. Then Giselle kneels down before the pew, before
it's time to, and clasps her hands together like some pious little girl—her second favourite part of Church: looking pious.
I try to get back into my prayer, so I close my eyes. See, this is what always happens, I get lost, too lost in the world
to concentrate on believing, too caught up in counting Christ's ribs or Giselle's ribs or worrying about my shoelaces breaking
before Friday's game.
Dear God, forgive my sloth. Dear God I can't talk right now because
Giselle is poking me with her pointy little finger again and laughing into
her hands.
. . .
Giselle comes into my room at night when she can't sleep. Lately she's been on this quest to find out about Dad from me,
as if I know something she doesn't, even though she was older when he died. She picks up objects from my dresser: a piggy
bank, a sweat sock, a St. Sebastian ballpoint pen with a picture of a flying eagle on it. She contemplates each item and rolls
it around in her hand before putting it back in place.
She sits on my bed and pulls the curtains open a bit to look outside. Then she tugs my ankles into her cool palms and massages
them gently.
When it is late and I am half inside the womb of sleep, ready to part with the day, why, why is she so full of questions?
She wants me to tell her.
"Explain it to me."
"What?" I shift in my pretend-sleep.
"Why do you get to see Dad and I don't."
"I can't," I mumble.
"It's because he loves you more, isn't it?" She shakes my arm. Then she hides her face in her hands, says, "I keep dreaming
he's trying to do something to me. He straps me down on a hospital bed with all these wires, and attaches this machine to
me. Like he's trying to electrocute me. Like he's trying to—" She opens her eyes wide and stops talking.
"Nobody's trying to kill you, silly, it's just a dream," I say
Nobody. Except you.
"I didn't say that he was trying to kill me," she says slowly, turning to face me.
"I know, it's just that, well, you made it sound like that."
"He would never do anything to hurt me, right, Hoi?"
"Right," I say, holding her tired body up against the fading shadows of the room. "Never."