Skinny (17 page)
In well-run theatres the risk of infection from instruments and other materials is slight.
There were lights inside me in surgery. I joked with the anesthesiologist before I went under.
"Are you a heart surgeon?" I asked stupidly, drunk with my first heady, airless breath of the stuff. I'm one of those annoying
chatty and aggressive patients; I figure there's no other way to be under the knife.
"No, dear," the surgeon said as the nurse adjusted his glasses. "I'm a gynecologist."
Electroencephalography EEGs, are the most common tests for epilepsy diagnosis. The EEG records the electrical activity of
the brain; during seizures the brain's electrical activity is abnormal.
The black hole of anesthesia, the smell of hospitals barely masking vomit and blood; it all colludes in re-creating the memory
that runs like a surreal colourized movie over and over in my head. And now I'm certain that it happened:
I'm dressed, so nicely, in a flowered pink dress, white ballet leotards, and shiny black patent-leather shoes. Holly's with
a babysitter for my "appointment" today, so I have our parents all to myself. It's a rare day of indulgence for me: a trip
to the toy store and the book store. One toy and all the books I want and then a Disney movie. All efforts to forget, to erase
the smell of burnt hair and the shiny patches of gel on my back and temples.
My head's buzzing, filled with the sound of a
rat-a-tat-tat,
like a birthday-cake sparkler fizzing out. I
pop, pop, pop
so I hop, hop, hop, hop
on pop
—over puddles, my mother is holding my hand, leading me along the busy downtown streets after a quick spring rain.
Dad buys me a strawberry cone from a street stall to match my dress. He bends down on one knee to offer it to me.
"There you go, sweetheart." He pats my head. Vesla yanks me away, nearly causing me to drop my hard-won treat. I scowl at
her, smile up at his head, which has a hat on it. Hats are funny, I think in my child-head.
Hats are like socks for your head.
I study my perfect little black shoe as the cold sweet cream trickles down my throat.
"Are you satisfied?" She glares at Thomas, pinning her free arm to her side, refusing the plain vanilla cone he offers her.
He leans his head to one side, as if he thinks her question is absurd; the edge of his hat threatens to tip over like a sinking
boat. Then he nods and, walking away from us, begins to eat the melting ice cream himself.
"Hats are funny!" I scream. He stops to look back, his eyebrows arched high, before my knees turn to rubber and I sway down.
During an epileptic seizure, the EEG records brain waves—interictal brain waves—which may or may not show evidence of seizure
activity. Safe and painless, the procedure requires that electrodes be attached to the skull to record brain currents; however,
they do not deliver electricity to the scalp.
"Bring my medical encyclopedia tomorrow."
"What letter?"
"E."
Sphenoidal electrodes record electrical activity in the front deep sections of the temporal and frontal lobes. For this procedure,
a needle is inserted into the cheek and a wire is inserted into the skin.
Mom sits with me most afternoons, reading me magazines, filling me in on gossip at the hospital, and wiping my face with a
cold washcloth. I smile at her and try to look interested. I take the photo of Misha out of my journal and put it in her magazine.
She doesn't look up. Instead, she looks at the photo, studying his image. There is a vague resemblance between Misha and Thomas;
both have large jawlines, dark hair, and high cheekbones, only Thomas's eyes are a startling blue and Misha's are brown.
"Tell me the end of the story."
"I've told you already."
"I forget, tell me again."
A good physician places the safety and the best interests of the individual patient above all else.
Misha has Thomas cornered in the tiny wooden shed lined with garden tools. In the middle of the shed there is a small card
table with several chairs around it. Thomas is seated in one of the corner chairs, and Misha, the taller and stronger of the
two men, is wrapping coarse rope around Thomas's wrists, binding them together. Thomas kicks against the chair, pleading,
"Misha, I know you don't like me."
"Yes, you know that at least. I hate you. I hate the way you talk, the way you walk, the way you look at my wife."
"She's not your wife, not yet."
Misha pulls the rope so it cuts Thomas.
"You must tell her, you must tell someone, Misha, for the love of God, you've got epilepsy, there's medication. You can't
hide it, it's dangerous."
Misha cinches the knot; Thomas feels the burning in his wrists cutting right down to his bone.
Misha overturns the small card table, then he aims, and kicks Thomas square in the stomach. Thomas doubles over, feeling a
trace of spittle trickle down his cheek.
"You're to stay away from me, from Vesla, from my friends. I'll have a servant untie you and then you will take the next train
back to the city If I see or hear from you ever again I'll have you killed." Misha crouches over Thomas; their faces are close
enough for Thomas to smell the alcohol and dill on Misha's breath.
"But we can do something, we can treat you. The others don't have to know."
"I am sick of sharing secrets with you."
Misha rises and turns as Thomas wriggles out of the rope and leaps over the upturned table, but Misha has already slipped
out the door. Thomas stabs his hand into the space where the door is cracked open, between the small service where the light,
the forest, the world, leaks in. But Misha slams the door violently, crushing the top knuckles of Thomas's fingers. Thomas,
in too much pain to start screaming yet, hears the snap of a lock on the outside.
Later, when they've pulled Misha's body to shore, and the ambulance has come and gone, a maid arrives to unlock Thomas from
the shed and she screams when she sees him, sitting by the wall, cradling his broken fingers.
When he's let out, he doesn't go to comfort her, instead he runs up the hill, behind the house, towards the train tracks.
He crouches like a sniper, in a ditch, head throbbing, fingers numb. He runs again, his heartbeats double, then triple. He
stops at the top and rests, looking over at the illuminated house from which her wailing rises. He takes his pulse and thinks
of the unborn child, before rising and walking along the train tracks. And then there is nothing in his mind but the bright
hot fear of death.
The fact that a patient is going to die does not necessarily mean he should be operated on.
"He thought that it would ruin his career if the others knew. He thought Thomas was there to tell them—about me, about the
epilepsy, everything. Expose him. That's why he locked him in that stupid shed," she says, rolling my fingers in her palm
so hard it hurts.
"Maybe he thought Thomas would try to save him, Ma, maybe that's why he locked him in. Maybe he didn't drown by accident,
maybe . . ."
Mom pulls away from me and looks at my forehead, dragging her hands through my dry, stiff plaits of hair.
"I tried resuscitation, I breathed into him for twenty minutes. I tried everything. I'm a nurse. I—"
"I know, Ma, I know."
"Misha's career was the most important thing to him, and weakness, of any kind, was not tolerated among party members."
"Is that why?"
"Is that why, what?"
"Is that why you fell for Thomas?"
Mom cradles her head in her hands.
"Just tell me, tell me about it. I want to know, Ma. I just need to know. It doesn't matter if you cheated on Misha, now."
"I don't know how. One day we bumped into each other, at a park. We started talking. . . went out for dinner—Misha was out
of town—we caught up, gossiped about our little town. Your father seemed so free, you know how Holly has that quality, like
she doesn't care, about rules, what's next, about what she's supposed to do."
"Yeah."
"That's what Thomas was like. He couldn't schmooze, he couldn't pretend to accept all that
communista
stuff, he just couldn't."
"And you liked that about him."
Mom sees me shiver and pulls the sheet up over my knees.
"Yes, I loved that about him," she says almost defiantly.
"Because you didn't accept it either."
"That, and Misha had so many secrets, so many pressures
"And Dad didn't have any?"
"None, not like Misha anyway. No secrets, except for me."
There's a long pause and, somehow, I find the strength to lean over and hug Mom. We hold each other that way for a while,
not talking or moving, as if nothing came before this moment and nothing will come after it.
"Do you blame me, Gizella?" she asks over my shoulder, quietly.
"I can never know what it was like for you, so I can't, I can't judge you. I just need to know that you married my father."
"I did." Mom holds my head in her hands and examines my eyes. Then I get the image of the river in my head, pulling Misha
down, away, like a torn branch wrenched from a trunk, and suddenly, it hits me: she has no idea.
Giselle had to have an emergency operation called a laparoscopy. She has endometriosis, and what happens is the lining of
her uterus was growing all over the place where it shouldn't have been—in her stomach, on her ovaries. That's what was causing
her so much pain with her period.
After the operation, they wheeled Giselle back to her room and I sat next to her, watching her breathe. Watching her made
me sleepy so I slept too, for a while. I woke up because I heard someone in the room. It was the doctor, a young guy, who
was not much older than Giselle. He looked at her chart, although the only light in the room was from the hallway fluorescent.
I wanted him to go away; surely there was someone having a heart attack somewhere who needed him. I crossed my arms over my
chest and stood yawning over Giselle, who was still dead asleep.
"The stitches are tiny. A couple here—" he pointed to his belly button, poking himself like the Pillsbury doughboy "—and three
on her lower stomach. Her skin's still young. You'll barely be able to see a scar." He smiled.
I nodded and toyed with one of Giselle's IV tubes, untwisting it, thinking about the small, careful cross-stitching on her
stomach that would one day allow her to wear a bikini, shamelessly. I didn't have the heart to tell the doctor that my sister
goes to the beach fully clothed. But I knew if Giselle was awake she'd appreciate his handiwork, his skilful pale hands, and
the cream he would suggest she rub on it to speed healing.
"Good night," he said. "If she wakes up and needs anything, just call one of the nurses."
I smiled at him and he left the half-lit room for the too-bright hallway. Giselle's breathing seemed laboured. I closed the
door, turned on the small bedside light, and lifted her gown to examine the angry little pink scar the doctor seemed so proud
of. Hopeful is not what I should have felt then, looking at Giselle's ribs, her hipbones sticking out. Hopeful, her breathing
wasn't. Her weight, even with the clear white syrup food feeding her shell, was anything but hopeful, and yet something about
that tiny, almost seamless line spoke to me of hope. I memorized its hooked route on her skin as I watched my sister shift
in her sleep.
Maybe she was moving in a dream where summer, her favourite season, wasn't passing her by, where she had the chance to streak
into the water, her white skin flashing above the tiny waves between patches of lights, her body bending beneath the tow in
one easy triple motion: her arms kissing the sky, the rocks, and then lifting her to surface, afloat.
. . .
Agnes and I are waiting in the coffee shop that faces the mental hospital. Mom's late. We're taking Agnes to see Giselle today
Galaxy Donuts has a steady stream of homeless and crazy people who walk in and out demanding weird things they don't sell
at a doughnut shop, like roast beef sandwiches, while the Korean girl at the counter screams, "Watt?! Cream?"
A little girl is sitting on the floor next to our stools. Occasionally she gets up to wrap her legs around the metal pole
of my stool. Agnes mumbles about the poison in the doughnuts as purple jelly spurts across her cheek.
I tell Agnes about Giselle, about the operation. I tell her I'm going to be hanging out with her some days, when Mom has a
lot of patients to see. I also tell Agnes that if she thinks she's going to try that cigarette-swallowing trick, the one she
tried with Giselle, she's even crazier than anybody knows, because I know the Heimlich maneuver. I karate-chop the counter
to show Agnes my violent tendencies, that she shouldn't even
think
of messing with me. She bugs her eyes out and makes an expression I might mistake as rage mixed with respect. As Agnes gulps
down the last bit of dough and tries to wipe the white powder off her face, the little girl untangles herself from my stool
and starts pulling on my pants.
"Miss," she says, all polite-like.
"What?"
"Look." She points out the window at the huge, sprawling, grey mental hospital across the street. "That's where the crazy
people live."
I nod, hoping Agnes hasn't heard, but she's too absorbed in trying to light her cigarette.
"Do you know someone who lives there?" she asks me, watching Agnes's ashes float to the floor.
. . .
Instead of going to the hospital with Mom and Agnes, I go to the court to shoot hoops with Clive. It has become a ritual
with us: I shoot while he smokes up. We don't talk much; with school over, the only thing I have to talk about these days
is Giselle. And this makes me sad and makes Clive sad, so we try to talk about other stuff.
Later we'll go into the long grass behind the school where the yellow leaves have started to smell bonfire smoky, and paw
at each other's summer sweaters. Kissing so warm you feel like you are in the person's mouth.
Clive grabs the rebound off the board and tries a jumpshot. He dribbles out and offers me a drag of his joint.
"Just a small one."
"I had an idea."
"Oh yeah."
I know all about his ideas. Like hitchhiking up to my cottage sometime soon, like playing drums all day, naked, eating nothing
but melon and talking about Gandhi. Like fixing an old motorcycle and training me for a marathon.
He tries a layup, which he misses, and then elaborates on his idea, bouncing the ball towards me.
"We'll smoke pot with your sister."
I net the ball from the three-quarter point.
"Bingo, your getting that ball in the net was a check mark, like a shooting star." The confidence of the stoned individual
is truly amazing.
"That was no shooting star, you goon. We are
not
smoking with her."
"I think it would be great . . . She could relax, get the munchies, it's supposed to be really good for what she's got."
"I think it's a great idea, Clive, but we'll wait until she gets off the intravenous first. Okay?"
He doesn't say anything, just closes his eyes, acting all stoned.
I miss the shot and look at him. I stick my tongue out. He runs up and pitches his body at me, then places his forehead on
my neck, his hair falling down my shirt.
I think about how, since I've met Clive, I haven't cut or fallen or bruised myself once. I hold him up as the light summer
wind wraps his hair around my face, as if Clive was the girl and I was the boy.
. . .
I wait until I see Sol get his coffee in the cafeteria. I hide behind the steel doors. His hair is long and greasy, his beard
is growing in. I follow him to his car, watch him put three creams in his coffee, set it in the cup holder, and rev his engine.
He's taken to sitting by her bedside for hours, waiting, watching, holding her hand. He goes to her in the morning, before
work, arrives at about five and sits there till ten to nine. He talks to her like she's in a coma and I guess she sort of
is because she sleeps mostly. I don't know what he says: probably that he loves her, that he needs her back, who knows. I
don't know where this sleep comes from either; they're probably giving her drugs. Maybe she's just tired. The doctor said
everyone reacts differently to surgery, that the body repairs itself in sleep. He also said that since Giselle's so skinny,
and she lost so much blood, she needs extra recovery time and care because she's seriously weak and anemic.
When Sol leaves, I run up the stairs, two at a time, into her hospital room. I stare at her bones. You can make out the shape
of her skull around her eyes. Giselle's lost almost thirty pounds since last month. Last week she hit a new low: eighty-seven
pounds.
I walk around her bed, sniff at the bouquets Sol has brought her, prop up the card with the message "GET WELL SOON!"in gold
block letters, superimposed on the heads of fluffy white kittens, signed "Agnes." Jesus, Giselle, you know you're in trouble
when Agnes is giving you get well cards. I sift through the boxes of chocolates people have sent her, sucking on the caramel
ones and pitching the coconut ones in the trash. Giselle hates coconut. People are so stupid, you wouldn't believe it, sending
anorexics boxes of Laura Secord. I putter around the room making sure everything's in order, then I sit on the little green
plastic chair next to her bed and shake her.
"What?" She rubs her eyes.
"You look like hell."
"Thanks."
"You do."
"What's new?" She sniffs at the air and then gags, sticking her tongue out in a way that always makes me laugh.
"Listen to me, they scraped around in your gut."
She tries to sit up and winces. Then she puts her hands on her stomach. "Don't touch it!" I whip her hand off the stitches
and attract the attention of a nurse walking down the hall. She pokes her head in the room.
"Everything OK in here?"
"Great, thanks." I grin, then face Giselle again. "I'm telling you, this is serious."
"No more spicy food?"
"That's the least of your worries. Look, the doctor says you lost a lot of blood. You have to be careful. You have to eat,
Giselle, build up some reserves."
"So, I'm not dying?" Giselle smiles.
"How did you get so goddamn morbid?"
"I dunno. Ask Thomas."
She looks away for a minute, clears her throat, then asks for her diary.
"It's in the drawer." I make a move to pull it open for her, but then I let her struggle for a minute. She's too weak to sit
herself up and twist around to get it. Something sick in me doesn't help her. Finally something breaks in me, my sister breaks
in me, my fucking sister, looking so small, like the half-dead AIDS patients shuffling around downstairs, smoking cigarettes.
This, ladies and gentlemen, this is my sister. I hand the diary to her.
"You brought my books, too?" She's all lit up because we brought her doctor books: pages and pages of diagrams, charts, information
Giselle devours over and over. She's jealous, she probably wishes she could've operated on herself.
She opens up her diary to a clean page in the middle, then asks for a pen. I go out into the hall and beg the nurse for the
pink pen on a string around her neck and bring it back to Giselle. She writes furiously for a while and then pauses.
"The doctor said you can still have kids."
She looks at me sharply. "Bullshit. He didn't say that."
"OK, you're right, he didn't."
She looks out the window, and the way the muted light from the clouds hits her makes me want to take a picture of her. Even
though her face has sunken in, Giselle still looks beautiful. No wonder Sol sits here for four hours, counting the shades
of green in her face.
"I have a boyfriend," I say suddenly, not knowing exactly why. Giselle cranks out a toothy smile and closes her book.
"Tell me, tell me all about him."
. . .
When I get back from lunch, Giselle's sleeping and Sol's standing at the window of her room talking to the pigeons on the
ledge. I pull on his untucked shirt ends. He reels back and catches my elbow to steady himself.
"Hey, you scared the shit outta me," he whispers, his eyes bloodshot and leaking. He looks like he's wearing white powder
makeup and his lips are a windblown ruby colour. It looks like someone clocked him in the face but obviously he hasn't been
sleeping.
"What's today been like?" I ask, hovering over Giselle. He shrugs and looks back at the pigeon outside.
"I don't know." He paces the room.
"How're tricks, Sol? Besides this."
"Tricks are shit, Holly. I got schlepping coffees, copies . . . grunt work, a couple of leads, and this, I have this."
When he's not here, he's at work, or in his car, or at his dad's, doing Sol things: smoking, drinking, writing stories and
stuff for the paper, thinking about Giselle, worrying.
"How is it for you?" he says quietly, his red eyes on Giselle, who tries to turn in her bed.
"OK, I guess."
He steps back from the bed, grabs my hand, then pulls me to him and hugs me from behind. Hard. I smell the stale smell of
nicotine, sweat, and that sandalwood again.
He begins talking in my ear. "I remember the first time 1 saw you play basketball. Giselle dragged me to one of your games,
your arm was hurt."
"Sprained. I sprained it playing volleyball."
"Yeah, you'd just got your hair cut. It stood straight up, super short. You kept wiping your nose and screaming for the ball
the whole game. You shot well."
"Forty."
"Forty, yeah. The whole time she's sitting next to me yelling her brains out. I swear to God my arm was bruised she hit me
so many times saying, 'That's my sister, isn't she amazing?' You looked so cute in your green shorts, Holly, and that plastic
yellow basketball mesh. I didn't know who I loved more then, you or her." He laughs.
"Sol, you're a perv." I push him away.
I peer into his black eyes and see the reflection of who she once was. I see their could have been tomorrows flicker silver,
the ghost of her spirit throwing light all over the drab hospital room.
I see fields, open and wide with white flowers, the countries they would travel to, the wines they would drink, grenadine
spilling from their mouths, Sol blowing smoke into her mouth and saying:
"Oh, G! You're the most beautiful woman in the whole world baby you are all my best parts. I could crash like a gasoline fire
into your arms every night and no one could care but you and that would be a-okay with me honey, as long as we burn together
and not out tonight."
And in the blackness round his eyes I see the hard times, too, her hands flying up to strike his head, blood leaking from
it, her medication, his boozing, tantrums, fights, her, like this. I see them together, dressed as bride and groom, gritting
their teeth with laughter, moving forward in slow-motion time, while some great big brass marching band plays out of tune.
"Coming?" he says, offering his hand, breaking up the silent parade.
Giselle is tapping her finger on her sheet, as if she hears all this. Though it is only midmorning, Sol's spent. His body
goes limp as he trudges to the heavy green door.