Forbidden Sister (22 page)

I didn’t sleep much Sunday night. No one from school called me over the weekend. I hadn’t told Chastity or Richard about Mama’s health problem. Richard had finally overcome his shyness and wanted to do something with me over the weekend, but I made excuses, telling him we had relatives visiting. It wasn’t a good time for me to develop a relationship with anyone new, anyway. As nice as he was, I didn’t have any warm emotions to spare, and I didn’t want to drag him into my difficulties. Chastity had remained aloof, and I continued to avoid her, especially now. Once she got wind of all of this, I was sure she would pounce, hoping that I needed her more than she needed me.

Maybe I did, but I wouldn’t admit that to anyone, especially myself. I knew that Aunt Lucy had called one more time to offer her services. Mama mentioned it as casually as she could, hoping that I had somehow changed my mind.

“I’ll be fine,” I insisted.

I knew she hadn’t told any of her family in France about what was happening. All weekend, I toyed with
the idea of calling Uncle Alain, but then I thought that if she hadn’t done it, she wouldn’t want me to do it. Maybe it would alarm people unnecessarily. On Sunday night, she went through some of the details for things she was leaving for me to do around the house and with some of our accounts. None of it was very critical, but I could see that it helped her to think of other things, and she was deliberately looking for activities that would keep me busy, too. Before she went up to bed, she pinned a list of important telephone numbers on the wall in the kitchen.

I was sure neither of us slept much. I played a little game with myself, a game Papa had taught me when I was very young. He told me that it was guaranteed to keep you from being afraid. As soon as something terrible began to come into your mind, you were supposed to count backward from one hundred, and with each number, you were supposed to think of one happy thought, one happy memory, or one thing you loved, such as chocolate marshmallow ice cream. The effort at association eventually exhausted you, and the creeping nightmares ran out of steam. He told me that these were the sort of mental games soldiers freezing on guard duty or captured soldiers might play.

I don’t think Papa ever gave up on the idea that there was always some sort of a war going on, whether with real bombs in Bosnia, the Middle East, or Asia or in everyday life. One way or another, we were always in training, always thinking about defenses, and always planting our flags of victory on some hill, whether the hill was real or in our imaginations.

I was sure that Mama would be the first to admit that she was in a battle. As we headed for the hospital that morning, we were like two soldiers in some army. Maybe we were Greeks marching to Philippi, Americans in landing craft approaching Normandy, or Englishmen getting ready to face the Spanish Armada. Later, no one who survived would seem credible claiming that he was not terrified. Honest ones would admit to it but be proud of how well they kept fear chained down. In my mind, fear was like an aggressive dog barking and lunging at us.

Staying with Mama did help her face the day, because she had to keep courageous as much for my benefit as for her own. She didn’t utter a single syllable of self-pity. She never shed a tear. She smiled at all those who were there to help her. She treated it all as if she had done it hundreds of times and kept herself looking bright and hopeful. One of the nurses whispered to me not to look so sad and worried. It wasn’t good for Mama. I tried hard to be as brave as she was.

“Be your father’s daughter,” I muttered under my breath.

I kissed her and wished her good luck before they took her to preop, and then I retreated to the waiting area. One of the nurses promised to keep me informed about how things were going. She said they had direct communication with the staff in the operating room. I got myself something to drink and went to sit and distract myself with magazines. Although there was a lot of activity going on around me, including the small children of other patients complaining because they
were bored and restless, people gathering to comfort one another, hugging and kissing, and medical personnel going to and fro, I managed to shut it all out by crawling into my own protective shell. I even lost my sense of time. At one point, I closed my eyes and sat back and dozed until I felt the weight of a shadow, someone looking down at me. I opened my eyes.

Roxy stared at me. “What’s happening?” she asked.

She was wearing very little makeup and had her hair pinned in the back and flowing just the way I had seen it that day I spied on her with Chastity. Although I would never call anything she wore conservative, she was dressed in a pretty but ordinary light blue jacket and an ankle-length skirt with a dark blue blouse. For a moment, I just stared up at her, digesting that she was actually there.

“Well?” she demanded.

I sat up quickly and looked at my watch. “She went in about two hours ago, I think. I mean, I don’t know exactly when they took her into surgery, but . . .”

She blew some air of impatience out through her lips and went to the desk manned by two nurses. I watched her get their attention. After she spoke, one moved quickly to a phone. There was something about the way Roxy carried herself, the air of authority she displayed, and obviously the way she spoke that impressed them. The nurse listened on the phone and then spoke to her. Roxy nodded and started back to me. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed
to me that even the restless children paused to look at her.

“What exactly did she tell you about her condition, the reason for this surgery today?” she asked, whipping and snapping her consonants and vowels.

“I told you. She said she had a small cyst and had to have a hysterectomy and . . .”

“C’mon,” she said, jerking her head toward the hospital entrance. “There’s a little coffee shop just down the street. This is going to take some time yet, maybe a lot more time.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

She glanced at me as if I had asked a stupid question and started out. I leaped up to follow.

“What did those nurses tell you?” I asked, catching up to her at the door.

“You were right to be suspicious. It is more serious than she’s told you. She’s having a radical hysterectomy, M.” She paused. “I know a little too much about it. One of my regulars just happens to be a surgeon, not working here in the city but a surgeon nevertheless.”

“What does that mean? What are you saying?”

She kept walking. I was practically jogging to keep up with her.

“What are you saying?”

She paused. “She doesn’t simply have a precancerous cyst or something. She has cervical cancer. The operation in a radical hysterectomy is quite a bit more involved. Let’s go in here,” she said, nodding at a
coffee shop. As soon as we entered, she asked me what I wanted.

“Nothing,” I said, impatient to hear more.

“I’m having a latte. Nonfat. I’ll get you one, too,” she said, and ordered at the counter. Then she led me to a table.

“What does this mean?”

“They remove the uterus, the cervix, the top part of the vagina, ovaries, fallopian tubes, lymph nodes, lymph channels, and tissues in the pelvic cavity that surrounds the cervix. That’s why I said she’ll be in there a while.”

“A doctor client told you all this?”

“After I asked him. Someone I knew had contracted cervical cancer, too, and he described what was going to be done. At the time, it was a lot more information than I wanted, but he was not a very emotional man. He treated everything like an operation, and I mean everything,” she added, raising her eyebrows in an obvious reference to sex. “Anyway, I was close to this friend, so I wanted to know what to expect.”

“How did it all go?”

“She lasted for about six months afterward, but she was a lot younger than your mother.”

“She’s your mother, too!” I practically screamed.

Roxy barely smirked. She looked away and then turned back, shaking her head. “It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she put off her own health issues to service the general.”

“What do you mean?”

“Avoided her annuals, whatever. He always came first,” she said as the waitress brought our lattes.

“Can’t you stop hating him for a few minutes?”

She smiled and sipped her latte. “Hating him is what kept me going, M. That was his gift to me. You think it’s easy to leave someone you don’t hate? I kept myself alive thinking I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of failing or dying. It worked. With a little luck, of course.”

“What about Mama?”

“
Je suis ici.
I’m here,
n’est-ce pas?
Bien que je préférerais être aileurs.
Even though I’d rather be somewhere else,” she translated. I didn’t need it, but I didn’t say so.

“How did you keep up with French?” I didn’t want to tell her about the day Chastity and I had followed her and Chastity had heard her conversing easily in French.

“Someone who helped me a lot after I left home just happened to be French, or should I say ironically was French. She’s technically my boss,” she added. She continued drinking her latte. I sipped some of mine. “Speaking of French, did she call anyone in France about this?”

“No.”

“Just like her not to look to any other family for help,” she said. “She’s still used to having him around, I suppose.”

“She has me,” I said, fixing my eyes squarely on hers.

She smiled. “Tough kid, huh?”

“Yes, I am.”

She laughed.

“I am!”

“Oh, really? What’s the biggest challenge you’ve had, M? A pimple on your chin, a boy you like ignores you, your boobs aren’t big enough?”

“They are, too,” I said, and she laughed again.

Then she paused to study me a little. Whatever it was, it brought another smile to her face.

“What?” I asked.

“That expression on your face reminded me of how upset you would get when he came after me. You did all my crying for me back then. Maybe just because of you, he was less severe.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t an angel, Roxy. There was a lot going on that I was too young to know about back then.”

“He talked about me, did he. Described my sins in detail?”

“Not often.” I didn’t want to stress how forbidden her name had become. “Almost never. Mama told me the most. Then he found out more about you himself. You had a coworker of his as a . . . what do you call them? Clients?”

“Get to the point.”

“One of Papa’s coworkers called and got you, didn’t he? You picked him up outside the offices, and Daddy saw you in the limousine.”

“How can I forget?” She looked away for a moment and shook her head. “The guy was pathetic.
Well, maybe he wasn’t as bad as I made him out to be. I couldn’t help it. Despite myself, I kept thinking about the way he looked at me.”

“Papa?”

“Oui,”
she said. “I got bawled out for how that one worked out.” She finished her latte. “Let’s go back. This isn’t going to be easy,” she warned as she stood. “Especially since it’s all coming more or less as a surprise for you.”

“I’ll be all right,” I said.

She smiled softly. “Maybe you will be. You look more like him than I remember.”

I followed her out.

We hadn’t had any heavy snow yet, even though it was early February, but the air felt like snow, cold and wet. Gray clouds had been shifting about all day, as if they had been playing tag with any piece of blue sky. It was finally completely overcast. I hugged myself. I could have worn something warmer, I thought, but clothing wasn’t on my mind that morning.

She looked up. “It’s supposed to snow lightly late today. Mostly flurries.”

I didn’t say anything. The last thing I wanted to talk about was the weather.

“I was planning on getting away for five days. St. Thomas,” she continued. “On someone’s private jet.”

“Planning? What happened?” I asked.

She paused and tightened her lips. “You happened,” she said, and walked on. I hurried after her.

We sat and waited for nearly another two hours before one of the nurses walked over to inform us that
Mama’s surgeon, Dr. Hoffman, wanted to see us. During the two hours we had spent together, Roxy hadn’t talked about herself very much, and I hadn’t felt like asking any questions. I was still feeling numb after she had told me what she had learned about Mama.

The nurse explained where we were to go. For the first time, I saw real fear in Roxy’s face. Just for a moment, she looked more like a little girl than I did. Then she either felt it or knew I felt it and tightened up again.

“Gird your loins,” she muttered.

“What’s that mean?”

“Prepare for the worst,” she said, and we turned down a hallway to an office. Dr. Hoffman was seated at a desk. He was still in his operating scrubs but bent over his desk writing. Roxy knocked on the opened door, and he looked up. I hadn’t met him before. Mama had kept everything quite secret and had never taken me with her to see a doctor of any kind.

Dr. Hoffman was stout, about fifty, with dark brown hair that looked as if it had begun what Papa would call a strategic retreat. I always looked at a stranger’s eyes to see if he or she was someone I could like. Dr. Hoffman’s hazel eyes were soft and, I thought, full of compassion.

“Which one of you is Emmie?” he asked.

“I am. This is my sister, Roxy,” I quickly added.

“Oh. She told me only to expect you.”

I could feel Roxy bristle, but why should she be surprised or upset? Mama didn’t expect her. Neither had I.

“Please,” he added, gesturing at the chairs. We sat. “I don’t know how much you two were told.”

“Practically nothing,” Roxy said. “She told my sister she had a cyst.”

He nodded. “Well, we’ll wait for pathology, but regardless, she’ll have to undergo chemo, I’m afraid. She came through the operation fine.”

“Be grateful for the little things,” Roxy muttered loudly enough for him to hear.

“Yes.” He looked at me. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

He smiled. “I have a fourteen-year-old daughter,” he said.

I knew he was just trying to make me feel better, feel comfortable, but Roxy would have nothing of it. “With a healthy mother, I imagine,” she said.