Out of the Woods (16 page)

For me, the moment came one morning in late October as I lay alone in a large dimly lit room, on the other side of heavy double doors emblazoned in yellow:
DANGER! RADIATION
. I was naked to the waist. My feet were strapped together with a large rubber band, my arms raised above my head, slightly bent at the elbow, my hands in stirrups just above my head. On the ceiling, backlit by fluorescent lights, was a lurid photograph of an island cove at sunset, mountains rising majestically in the background, all of it bathed in a kind of acid purple. The sound system came alive with some bouncy, banal 1970s song—it probably wasn't “Afternoon Delight,” the irony would have been too perfect, but it might as well have been.

It was my first of thirty-seven radiation treatments.

A few moments earlier, I had walked, more nervous than I knew, into the dark room, which was nearly empty except for a high, padded table and an enormous white machine that loomed over it, consisting, from my limited perspective, of a giant arm, at the end of which was a large lens that opened and shut at regular intervals, like a slowly blinking black eye. It was made of a shiny dead white plastic and looked evil and menacing, like a weapon that might defend Darth Vader's storm troopers in
Star Wars
.

I had climbed up onto the table and lain down, tense and expectant, until one of the technicians reminded me that I had forgotten to remove the pink wraparound hospital gown I had been given to wear over my jeans. “You forgot to take off your johnny,” she said.

That was when I had felt the first tickle of irritation that was only the fanfare for what was to follow. It was that word—
johnny
. It was such a stupidly cute word to designate the thing I wore, the thing that was an emblem of what was happening to me, one that erased everything distinctive and individual about the women who wore it, the increasing number of women, who waited their turn each day out in the pleasant waiting room strewn with sofas and easy chairs and small tables covered with magazines and half-done jigsaw puzzles, the women who were sitting there now, their bald heads hidden by turbans and baseball caps, and wool hats and scarves, the women with complexions grayed by chemotherapy and insurance worries and fatigue and pain. Women sentenced to wonder for the rest of their lives if what was happening to them was for the only time or only the first time. It wasn't a “johnny” we were wearing. It was the uniform of the prisoner.

What was wrong with me? I wondered, puzzled by my reaction to such a dumb little detail. I was not the shell-shocked neophyte of eight months earlier, reeling from the diagnosis. I was a veteran, of eighteen weeks of chemotherapy, of surgery and recovery, of countless waiting rooms and blood tests and bone scans. I was accustomed to hospital procedures and the emotional ups and downs. I thought I had learned to take it all in stride.

Besides, everyone, even the doctors, had said radiation was a cakewalk compared with the other treatments. “We like to think of radiation as chemo's kinder, gentler cousin,” a radiologist had told me. Veterans of breast cancer treatment agreed. Radiation made you tired by the end and it was a great gobbler of time, five days a week for seven and a half weeks, especially if you lived forty-five minutes away from the hospital, as I did. But that was it.

And so I had breezed through the initial, pretreatment preparatory session, when the technicians had mapped and measured the tumor site and then tattooed my chest with tiny permanent blue freckles that would serve as markers for the radiation beams. I joked about being transformed into a medieval map, the ones where the dangerous and unknown places were marked with the warning
HIC SVNT DRACONES,
this way there be monsters. And cancer was a monster, against which we had only these starkly primitive options: to burn, to poison, to slice away. With that thought in mind, radiation had reduced itself in my imagination to a mere inconvenience, one that entailed daily visits to the hospital, a minor sunburn, and possibly fatigue. But nothing like the nightmare of chemo. A nuisance, yes, but nothing more.

The three radiation technicians spent a great deal of time getting me into exactly the right position to ensure the accuracy of the rays, shifting me about on a sheet while I lay passively on the table, because misdirected radiation could permanently damage heart and lungs. Finally they were satisfied with the position—they would take some X-rays, they said, and then administer the radiation, which in itself would last only a few minutes. They left the room, closing the door behind them.

A whirring sound and then the enormous white arm swiveled around, its great black eye trained on my left breast. I shut my eyes tight and tried to breathe, but all I could think about was the position I was in and why it seemed so familiar. Of course: it was the position of erotic welcome, of a woman lying in bed, smiling at her lover. A wave of humiliation surged through me. I lost all perspective; it didn't matter anymore that I was lying on this table in this room of my own free will, and to receive a potentially life-saving treatment, that I was lucky to have such an option, that I had made a choice. All I knew in the place where I lived that has nothing to do with logic was that I was naked and exposed, that my privacy, the memories of the pleasure my body had both given and received, had been violated, mocked, and debased. The fact that I was not forcibly restrained, that I could have walked out of there at any point, only made it worse. I was a willing participant in my own humiliation.

Dissonant images clashed in my head—Goya's naked
maja,
the black-and-white photographs of French women who had slept with Nazis during the war and who, at liberation, had their heads shaved and their clothes stripped off, and were branded with the word
collaboratrice
. I thought of my own bald head and I fell apart.

My rib cage heaved and the tears ran down. I tried to remain still, but it was no use—finally the door opened, admitting the three now worried-looking young women and one very brisk doctor, who told me, with all the compassion of a codfish, to sit up and get ahold of myself, because I was ruining the X-rays. It worked, sort of. I hated her instantly, and hate is a much colder emotion. I lay back down, every muscle turned to marble. The technicians and the doctor left the room. I shut my eyes tight against the lurid violet photograph and the cold black eye that moved and whirred and blinked and finally it was over.

I stumbled out of the room in a blaze of tears, having shaken off the abashed young woman who had tried to help me off the table. Then anger temporarily gave way to mortification. I had always prided myself on my stoicism, at least in public, and now I was scaring twenty-year-olds. I couldn't look anyone in the eye.

During the drive back to Castle Dismal, there was a small, still-sane part of my brain that watched in wonder as I screamed myself hoarse, consumed by a rage I'd never felt before. It was October and Woodstock was filled with elderly tourists out to see the foliage. Normally the leaf peepers struck me as rather sweet and a little sad, dressed as they were—as we all seemed to be now—in their play clothes, old shanks protruding from baggy shorts, sagging breasts in shapeless T-shirts. That day I wanted to shoot them all.

Back at the house I went straight to the breast cancer discussion boards on the Web, and found some comfort there: other women reported reacting as I did, and for a little while I was tremendously relieved—I wasn't a lunatic, or at least not the only one. Then I got angry all over again and nothing—not my impressive collection of psychological and Buddhist self-help books, not the Chopin Nocturnes, not even the Rock himself—could make a dent in my rage until the double dose of Xanax kicked in.

 

T
he next day was slightly better. There was an older technician that day, a woman about my age, whose compassionate smile had a soothing effect. She told me that I didn't need to wear the “johnny” if it bothered me; I could simply remove my top on the table. I got through the session without crying. But as soon as I left the room the anger hit again, and I was blind with it. I sat in the parking lot, the special one for cancer patients, and did a crossword puzzle until I was calm enough to drive.

In retrospect, I can see that my anger was simply one tentacle of an overwhelming emotional fatigue that was almost inevitable after eight months of treatment. I had let myself think that the worst part of having cancer was over, and had felt the first quickening of a relief, which of course was premature. I was like a marathon runner who thinks she sees the finish line, only to find out she has five miles more to go. I had nothing left. It makes sense now, but back then my anger terrified me: it came from nowhere and I couldn't seem to control it. I needed help.

A few days later, I knocked on the door of a neat white frame house that sheltered under the hill behind it with the proprietary air of a cat occupying its rightful place in your favorite armchair. I was met at the door by a small, softly smiling woman who was to be my Reiki therapist. Joanne's white hair was tucked back in a bun and her blue eyes reflected a tranquility that could have calmed a cobra.

Joanne led me into a dimly lit room with the low ceiling and close proportions characteristic of very old New England houses. I took off my shoes, climbed onto a high narrow bed, and was soon cocooned under a heavy handmade blanket. There was no sound except for the creaking of old wood and the occasional scrabble of small creatures looking for shelter from the cold.

Reiki is supposed to work even if you're asleep. Advanced practitioners can supposedly do it over the phone. I closed my eyes and tried to meditate while Joanne gently placed her hands on my eyes, ears, and head, working her way down to my toes.

The session lasted ninety minutes. At first I felt only the warmth of Joanne's hands, and the impending hyperventilation I always feel when I try to concentrate on my breathing as one is meant to in meditation. But as I relaxed, I sank deeper into a state that was somewhere between sleeping and waking, what scientists studying touch healing call a liminal state, which is said to resemble spiritual trances or self-hypnosis.

Gradually all the emotion that had been roiling around and through me came to Technicolor life, assuming shapes that twisted and transformed themselves. The rage was a roaring, pounding wave, slamming into a rocky jagged beach. The anxiety was a rain of needles falling all around me. Then the scene changed. I was inside a dark warm cave, but glaring at me from the darkness was a weasel with sharp, bared teeth, poised to attack. I was afraid of the weasel, and my mind cartwheeled away from the cave through a jumble of other images until I finally felt safe enough to return. The weasel, much to my astonishment, was asleep. I wanted to touch him as he lay there, curled up, sleek and soft, but I knew that if I did, he would return to his saw-toothed snarling ways. Still, he did look pretty peaceful.

In my strange dream state, I kept looking for a place to be safe, while at the same time being vaguely aware of Joanne's hands placed on my stomach, and then around my knees. Eventually I left the cave and was standing on a hill looking into the woods that covered the slope beyond. There was the weasel, running in great looping circles. He was free, I thought, and I was thrilled. And yet, to my surprise, I was also sorry to see him go. He looked so alive. That's when I noticed that in my hand I held a long leash that kept us connected. I understood what it meant. The rage I had felt was scary, but it was also powerful; it had given me an energy I hadn't felt since the diagnosis. A part of me didn't want to let that go.

Joanne ended the session by cupping my heels and then my toes in her hands, which left me with a sensation of tremendous safety. Finally I opened my eyes and she handed me a glass of water. She asked me how I felt. I thought about it. I wasn't exactly a cup of softened butter, but I was much more relaxed. Having been given shape and form, my emotions no longer consumed me. I knew the anger was still there somewhere, but it was contained now. It wasn't me.

The next day's radiation session was easier. I was still anxious, and after three different people in the reception area told me to go to my “happy place,” I was cranky, but calm. On the table I closed my eyes, and this time I saw myself in a room that was not unfamiliar. Then I recognized it: it was the room in Castle Dismal I had planned to make into my office. In reality the room was filled with unopened boxes and bags, but just then I saw it as it could be—neat, orderly, a place to work and be whole. A promise of life after cancer.

 

I
n 1527, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish nobleman, set sail for the New World, one man among a grand armada of men intent on conquest and glory. He served as one of the king's treasury officials accompanying the conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez on an expedition bound for the northern rim of the Gulf of Mexico and the war with the indigenous population that would follow in its wake.

As they were approaching landfall, a great storm wrecked the fleet. What had begun as a well-supplied expedition of six hundred men and ten women eventually dwindled down to an epic struggle for survival by four men over the course of nine years in a vast and violent land.

Bad luck and their own folly plagued them from the moment they landed. Because the expedition's navigators didn't know where exactly the remains of the fleet had landed, de Vaca advocated they hug the coast and keep to a course that would establish their bearings. But Narváez was eager for gold and sent his men in the direction that rumor said it could be had. Both the land and sea forces marched into the immense Florida swamp, a nightmare trek that left them decimated by disease and their battles with inhabitants less than eager to be occupied. By the time the expedition reached Apalachee Bay, there were only 242 men. Hope, however, had survived.

Starving, wounded, sick, and lost, they decided to take to the sea. They slaughtered and ate their horses—an act of desperation that stole from them their very sense of identity, of what they had been born to be—caballeros, knights, set apart and above. They fashioned a bellows from deerskin, melted their stirrups and horseshoes, their spurs and shields, and turned them into nails and tools. With these they constructed five rough-hewn boats and set sail for what they thought was the coast of Mexico and the other Spanish forces they believed to be nearby. In fact, they were 1,500 miles away.