The first challenge in a writing class designed to help me find my voice involved identifying characters and setting from a memorable time in my life. Using good old pen and paper, I described the second house I lived in and my older sister, who ruled her neighborhood gang like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, the female warrior I remember from television in the fifties. Although we were estranged later for many years, my sister influenced major life choices, from my career to my single adulthood.
I may have been only five or six, but I worshipped my sister and looked for ways I could be like her. In the process, I found ways I could not, because I didn’t have the same talents. I hoped proximity would allow me to absorb even traces of the things I admired. A five-year age gap between my sister and me, cultural mobility, and unknowns I can’t remember allowed us to drift apart.
Then my sister developed breast cancer. My yearly mammogram evolved into the most painful, degrading, frightening, “routine” exam. Her diagnosis reclassified me from normal to high risk. The dread grew exponentially every year as my appointment date neared.
Perhaps that explains why, while waiting for my mammogram this year, I developed a case of tunnel vision. Once I checked in, I sat in morgue silence. Stress percussed the beat of my heart inside my head. While others focused on their phones or tablets, the only things I noticed in my physical proximity were feet.
To my left, thin tan sandals with a jeweled strap over the instep hugged delicate feet with nails manicured a peach yogurt pink. The hem of white capri pants stopped the extension of lightly tanned skin to the ankle strap. To my right, cheap patent leather white straps arched from between the great and second toes to the back of sole of the flip-flop. Thickly applied, white acrylic nail polish made the toes look fake, like those of a doll I had when I was a child. Across from me, a “safe distance” away, two feet were ensconced in yellow hued suede ankle boots. Too hot for August. I thought.
I bent my left leg and rested my ankle on my right knee to inspect my shoes. When new, white canvas provided the background for white leather mountains capped by purple peaks. I used a skate hook to tie the purple laces tight enough to keep my right ankle from rolling outward, which it had done since 6th grade. The thick soles added an inch to my height and kept knee pain at bay. After a year of working out in these shoes, the white turned gray. The waffled tread on the soles flattened. Like a breast in the machine.
To my surprise, a man checked in for testing. He wore traditional black work shoes, laced, with the leather scuffed and bulging in places from wear. Because of his gender, I looked up, looked at his chest. He wore an ordinary light shirt with short sleeves and a button-down collar. His chest, flat as any other man’s, led me to wonder why he needed the same abuse as I or any of the other women did.
My vision expanded to body types. I’d read about the relationship between weight and different cancers. From a group of five, two were voluptuous and round as Rubens’ nudes. Two moved across the room, lean and lithe as small trees in a gentle breeze. I walked, sturdy, muscled, with a small spare tire, the middle woman, the one caught in the middle of chance, weighted by a positive family history.
A technician called my name. I navigated toward her. I thought of the day my sister beat up the boy from across the street. I remembered the day, years later, when I broke months of silence and called her. “Mom told me you had breast cancer. Tell me how I can help.” Statistics say one in ten women develop breast cancer. Had my sister intervened with Fate on my behalf? In some other dimension, had the great gamemaster in the sky pictured me and my sister in a circle with eight other women where my sister insisted “Take me”?
My mind wavers between cruelty and compassion; it replays the “what ifs” and reassures with platitudes, “Surely not you.” Because my sister is a survivor, I can imagine the worst and hope for the best. In my mind, she remains the warrior queen and gives me strength.
Leave a Reply