1.
Keep it secret at first. Just don’t think about it. And you won’t, until it flicks and flaps in your stomach like panic. Like falling. Practice telling everything. Leak truth in emails. Cryptic hints like, “I’m having something biopsied.” Then, maybe, “a lump.” But it’s not a lump, she’d said. It’s diffuse, like a spider. You imagine a real spider, frozen, as if in clay or jade or stone. Pressed into you, embedded. It won’t budge. How did it get there? Years of smoking? Chemicals in the pool from years of swim team? Chemicals in the air? Toxins. The microwave. Plane trips. Ice cream. Frowning. Any or all nasty indulgences, standing up and raising a hand, winking, half smiling.
2.
Push everyone away as the day approaches. Even the ones you call to your side. After swimming, step out of the shower and look in the mirror and feel overwhelmed with sadness. Because this is your body and you want to keep it the way it is. You don’t want anyone to change it.
3.
On the day of, you resort to imagining crazy things to calm yourself. Like that you’re there to have your feet and tongue fused. Why? Because it’s not that bad.
You want only to be alone. Insist on being dropped off and left alone.
Register, then go to the waiting room where others having surgery are waiting. An older woman rudely asks what you’re having surgery for.
“I’m having my tongue fused to the sole of my left foot.”
She stares at you in utter confusion. A man across the room from her bursts into laughter. She gives a fake laugh.
“No, really,” she says.
“A lumpectomy,” you say. Because it’s true, you turn red. Feel the heat in your face and want to slap the old woman. She looks immediately sad for you.
Why do they not have you sequestered?
4.
They give you a hospital gown and some tights to change into. Also, some anti-slip socks. Take off the lucky sweatpants you’re wearing and carefully fold them. Think of where they came from: Dagny. The time she stayed over at your apartment and you stayed up almost all night drinking coffee and smoking and marathoning your fourth steps. You freeze to think of her. Her brown eyes that next morning, so clear. When she died, you put the sweatpants away. For this, you took them out, put them on.
5.
Listen to the anesthesiologist tell you that he will take care of you. He flips through papers in a folder, not looking at you.
“Promise me I won’t wake up in the middle.”
He looks up and smiles.
“I promise,” he says.
The heater attached to your hospital gown blows it into a puff around your middle, cushions you with warmth.
6.
Perched on the firmly padded, crucifix-shaped platform, she marks your body for cutting. The room is bright and cold. You can almost see your breath. Look down at her swift, black marks. A strange graffiti. Feel very nervous. Watch her face, her eyes trained on your torso, and fight the sudden, nearly irresistible urge to wrap your arms around her waist and lay your head against her breasts.
“Comfort me, I’m scared,” you try to say, but, “scared,” is all that makes it out.
She looks at you with an expression that reminds you of your own long dying. It’s just another day in the office for her.
“Here, rest,” she says, guiding you with her steady, blunt hands to lie back, stretch your arms out on the planks, where a needle comes toward your veins.
“I’m just going to give you a little something to relax you,” he says.
Ask: “Is this it?”
She says, “No, we’ll let you know.”
The cold, bright room disappears with a hiss, like a pierced balloon.
7.
Voices echo as though in a dome. Fight to open your eyes when they come close enough to touch. When your eyes do open, you find you can’t hold them open–they continually flutter back shut– and what you see in that flickering slide show confuses you. A corridor of bodies in beds to your left, as far as you can see. To your right, the same, like an elongated version of a hospital in a WW2 movie. “All the soldiers are down,” you say and close your eyes.
“She said something… What’d you say, honey?”
The voices again. Your throat hurts when you try to speak. Your mouth is dry. “I’m thirsty.”
“I can’t give you any water yet but I can swab your mouth.”
Nod. You know what this means; you remember when your sister was slowly coming out of a coma and you took little pink sponges on sticks, dunked them in water, then stuck them in her mouth, mopping up the mouth paste—nine month’s worth—the scars on her knees like gold embroidery in that light.
“What time is it?”
“5:45,” he says and touches your lips with a cold, wet sponge. Instinctively, your mouth opens like a baby bird and the minty sponge is swiped around. Feel surprised at how refreshing that feels. It was around noon when you went in. Just under six hours earlier was only a moment ago. What would it feel like after nine months?
When you get to the room and drink water, it’s like the only water you have ever drank. Your throat opens like a pleat in cloth and immediately you have to pee. Struggle up and to the bathroom. Sit on the toilet, basted in sweat, nauseated.
8.
The next morning, sit atop the paper lining of the doctor’s table waiting for her to come in. When she does, the expression on her face reflects the way you must look but just fleetingly. She smiles and goes about unwrapping you. Don’t look down, just watch her face.
She’s pleased. “It looks great! Do you want to see?”
She helps you down and to the mirror and there you are. A Franken-boobed you. So fragile, they seem, so pieced carefully together. A sheer bit of moonlight on the water’s surface. The smallest ripple might tear it all to bits.
“It was harder than I thought,” she says, looking quite proud over your shoulder. “I took out a lot.”
“How much is a lot?”
“Oh I don’t know,” she says, “about 150 grams.”
The number means nothing to you but it sounds like too much. A 150-gram spider has been removed from your boob.
9.
Back home, in the kitchen, you weigh things on the food scale. A rather large bag of walnuts weighs 140 grams. This makes you feel sick. Go lie down.
Lie on your back and breathe deeply. Moving from one room to another is extreme exertion. Sounds collapse around you when you sleep. Again. Your spirit drifts and swells, uncaught. If you dream, it will be of spiders eating walnuts.
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