Promise Me (4 page)

Mommy was deeply offended by racial segregation, which persisted through the 1950s. She made sure we understood how wrong it was when we came upon restrooms and water fountains marked “White” and “Colored.”

“Think how you’d feel if that sign said ‘Jew,’ ” she said. “We don’t spend our money in a place that does that, and it’s our duty to let them know it.”

She didn’t want Suzy and me to participate in racially segregated play groups or summer camps, so she spearheaded the efforts that eventually resulted in the acquisition of 640 wooded acres that became Camp Tapawingo, a culturally inclusive oasis of unabashed Girl Scout power.

“When you see a wrong, right it.”

That’s Mommy.

I lived for Camp Tapawingo every summer. Suzy wasn’t much of a camper, so it gave me an opportunity to take the lead, and it was a powerful incentive as I trudged through each school year.

My first day of kindergarten, the teacher called my mother to report that I’d left the building, climbed a tree in the schoolyard, and refused to come down. Mommy hustled right over, and stood beneath the branch where I’d perched myself.

“Nancy? What on earth is going on?”

“This is stupid,” I told her. “They’re not doing it right.”

“Come down,” said Mom. “Tomorrow will be better.” But it wasn’t. It didn’t take me long to figure out that everyone else saw things differently from the way I did. I realized that I was the one not doing it right and assumed I was the only one for whom learning was such labor. Numbers turned to a tangle of hieroglyphics and barbed wire somewhere between my eyes and the back of my brain. Back then, there was no testing, no diagnostics to identify the way numbers knotted in front of my eyes. Lacking any other terminology, I diagnosed myself as
dumb
. I knew I’d have to work harder than everyone else in order to compensate for that—and to conceal it.

I loved how proud it made my father when I did well in school; that alone was worth the struggle. I was willing to work as hard as I had to,
but ultimately the effect of all that was a restless feeling that my nose would be forever pressed to the glass, that I’d always be double-tasking and still never quite measuring up.

It also trained me to think outside the box.

Daddy used to tell (with great amusement) the story of that particular Halloween. Mom had gone to Chicago for a national Girl Scout leadership conference. Dad had some important matter rumbling in his office, and Suzy and I were too small to go trick-or-treating on our own, so it was decided that she and I would stay home, staffing the front door and handing out candy to all the lucky little children with
nice
parents—children whose world had not collapsed into a wretched coal hod of inequity, as ours clearly had.

When the house was built, our resourceful dad had installed an intercom system at the front door, and equally resourceful, I hatched a brilliant plan just as a merrily costumed pair of trick-or-treaters skipped up to the door and rang the bell. Before they could shout the customary threat of extortion, I cranked up the intercom and mustered my deepest, most ferocious voice.

“
This is God,
” I intoned. “
Drop your candy and run.
”

Suzy’s eyes went as big as saucers. There was a shriek and hasty scuffling out on the front stoop. After a moment, I opened the door a crack and—victory!—the spoils were mine. I quickly gathered the scattered candy into the abandoned bags and clapped the door shut as my next victims rounded the corner at the end of the block. I repeated my brilliant trick, gathering bag after bag of ill-gotten treats until—

Ding-dong.

“This is God! Drop your candy and—”

“
Nancy.
”

There was a heavy hand on my shoulder. My almighty father. He’d come out of his office to check on us. When Mother came home in the morning, she was surprised to find a row of candy bags banked against the wainscoting in the dining room and me, waiting in shame on a side chair. Needless to say, she was appalled to hear what had happened, and after a resounding lecture on the moral consequences of envy, fear-mongering, and too much sugar, she sent me off on an all-day walkathon,
schlepping those bags of candy all over the neighborhood until I’d returned every single one to its rightful owner.

Beyond reinforcement of the single overarching theme of my upbringing—“Do the right thing”—I’m not sure I learned any great lessons from this experience, but I try not to mess with divinity. I’ve met such a wealth of good people in my time—sincere, faithful, salt-of-the-earth people from every corner of the world, every conceivable religious tradition—that it’s not possible for me to see any one cut-and-dried dogma that encompasses the human spirit. I have faith and doubt in equal parts most of the time. Having walked beside two popes and the Dalai Lama, I would never presume to question someone else’s vision of God, and I’m immediately skeptical when I hear a voice saying the big-world equivalent of “This is God. Drop your candy and run.”

For one thing, the Jewish faith doesn’t include any threat of eternal damnation. To my mind, Hell is a place where people don’t care about one another. Hell is the squandering of one’s life on Earth without any good purpose. I don’t believe cancer in general or Suzy’s death in particular are part of God’s plan. That puppet-master brand of theology removes responsibility from human hands, even as science persistently whispers that many cancers are caused by environmental and behavioral factors largely within our ability to control. I think God’s plan (or at least His or Her desperate hope) is that we, the great and industrious anthill that is humanity, will love each other enough to apply ourselves to the scientific effort and figure out how to solve this problem.

Likewise, I’m skeptical when any scientific voice—be it physician, researcher, or school of thought—makes any sweeping declarations of what is true or untrue, absolutely right or absolutely wrong, in the arena of cancer research or cancer care. I’ve witnessed the lifesaving value of both chemotherapy and prayer, mastectomy and lumpectomy, allopathic medicine and complementary therapies. The only singular truth about breast cancer is this: There is no singular truth about breast cancer. Our best strategy is to respect and listen to one another, share what we learn, reach across the aisle, and make women’s lives a higher priority than political agenda. Because I guess there actually is one absolute truth about breast cancer:
There shouldn’t be any
.

Fear is a powerful weapon, and the rationalization that it’s being wielded in the service of some imagined greater good doesn’t make it any less immoral. Waiting in shame for my mother to come home, I suppose I sat there rationalizing that too much candy was terribly unhealthy for those little children, so in reality, I’d done them a healthy good service taking it away from them. Similarly, there are those who assert that routine mammograms are “uncomfortable” and cancer awareness is “depressing.” There are still a few old-fashioned physicians out there who discourage women from seeking second—or third or fourth—opinions. In many cases, women would seek a second opinion but don’t have access to it because of restrictions in their insurance policy, dictated by someone who isn’t even a physician.

When Suzy and I were growing up, there were very few women physicians, and that undoubtedly contributed to the unwritten but unquestionable authority of male physicians over women patients. When a woman tried to assert some right of proprietorship over her own body, she was usually cowed with some variation of “I am God. Drop your candy and run.”

Mom was wonderful about teaching Suzy and me to respect and care for our bodies. When my weight topped a hundred pounds during second grade, she gently intervened. Enlisting the guidance of our dear Dr. Moffet, the kindly family physician who’d expertly cared for us since we were born into his hands, she educated herself on the matter, and without making me feel ugly or obtuse, firmly guided me in the healthiest possible direction. In addition to a balanced diet, she encouraged my interest in competitive swimming, horseback riding, and other activities that nurtured my sporty side.

As Suzy and I grew, Mom encouraged our independence. We were active in Girl Scouts and B’nai B’rith, various charities, and temple activities. I begged for riding lessons, and once I discovered what it felt like to fly along at a full gallop, there was no stopping me. Suzy rode too, but she rode like a duchess in a parade, while I turned into an unbridled cowboy.

One day when I was nine and Suzy was twelve, we arrived at the barn just as they were preparing to geld a beautiful yearling. As they eased the tranquilized pony to the ground, Suzy and I hung back by the fence, but when the veterinarian drew his tools from a leather bag and got down to
the business at hand, Suzy got horribly upset and ran away screaming. My initial reaction was “How silly!” but I realized later this wasn’t about Suzy being a wimp or wanting attention. My sister was excruciatingly tenderhearted, empathetic, and easily upset by any thought of violence or mutilation.

I, on the other hand, scrambled up a tree for a better view, fascinated by the entire procedure, and when it was over I peppered the vet with a thousand questions.
Why do they do that? What’s that thing? Will he be able to run as fast? Can I look in the bucket?
I tried to share what I learned with Suzy so she’d know it wasn’t just some random atrocity.

“It
helps
him, Suzy. He’ll be healthier and easier to ride and won’t hurt himself scrapping with other horses.”

Suzy wanted none of that. She covered her ears as if she could still hear the yearling’s frightened whinnies.

“Nan, don’t you know what that is? It means he can’t—you know.” She blushed pink, trying to think of a way to say it. “He can never have children. Don’t you think that’s sad?”

I was stumped. I’d been so fascinated with the basic mechanics of it that this aspect hadn’t even occurred to me. Daddy and the wranglers were eager to point out all the good reasons for doing it, but this had never been brought up in their explanation of the procedure. It was all efficacy, no emotion. (Balancing the two continues to be one of the greatest challenges in cancer care.)

While the event didn’t deter her from riding, Suzy was never quite as eager as I was to get to the barn. For me, riding was synonymous with joy, freedom, feeling alive. I learned everything I could about the history and science of horses, and knowing all that made it feel even more wonderful. It frustrated me that Suzy didn’t see it that way, and I worried a little that what it really meant was that Suzy was just plain
sweeter
than me.

“We have to go to horse camp,” I told Suzy when school ended the following summer. “It’ll be tons of fun. Please, Mom, can we?”

“We’ll see,” said Mom, “but Aunt Rose would like you girls to visit. I think it would be a wonderful adventure for you.”

“Just the two of us?” Suzy’s fork poised halfway between her plate and her astonished expression. “We’d go to New York City all by ourselves?”

“Dad and I would put you on the plane in Peoria, and Aunt Rose would be right there to meet you when you land at LaGuardia. She wants you to stay a whole week.”

Our father hushed Suzy’s and my joyful trilling at that, but not very sternly. Suzy was immediately buzzing with packing strategy and general enthusiasm, while I interrogated Mom about agenda and logistics. We couldn’t stop chattering about our plans as we cleared the table and did the dishes, imagining New York City as nothing less than the Emerald City, the only possible habitat for Aunt Rose, the most outrageously fabulous woman we’d ever encountered.

Suzy worshiped Aunt Rose because she was the epitome of fashion and femininity, stirring clouds of chiffon and perfume as she made her dramatic entrances and exits, filling the rooms between with flirtatious laughter and witty Hepburn banter. Men flocked and fell all over themselves in an effort to please and impress her, and she generally had her way when it came to everything from dinner reservations to travel destinations. I worshiped Aunt Rose because she was always in motion. Grand gestures illustrated her hilarious tales of passenger ships and love interests and African safaris. She was audacious, outspoken, and fiercely self-determined. She could do anything and feared nothing. Aunt Rose was barely middle aged and had already been married four times. (Daddy used to say, “Her husbands didn’t die, they escaped!”) She adored Suzy and me and brought us wonderful presents from wherever she happened to be. One summer she returned from Hawaii with hula gear and ukuleles for us, showed us a few island moves, and took pictures of us giggling in our grass skirts and coconut bras. Bottom line: Aunt Rose was
fun
.

At bedtime, Mom came to our room and said, “Before you go to New York, I need to remind you that Aunt Rose was very sick last year. She had breast cancer, and they did a mastectomy, which means …”

“We know what it means,” Suzy said brusquely. “We don’t need the details.”

In fact, I
didn’t
know and was intensely interested in the details, but Suzy obviously didn’t want the conversation to go that way. This meant one of three things: Either Suzy had heard something earlier and hadn’t had a chance to clue me in, or Suzy had heard something and didn’t
think I should be told, or Suzy had heard nothing and didn’t want to hear it now.

“Do you have any questions, Nancy?” asked Mom.

I shook my head. I had only a vague idea of what mastectomy entailed, but judging from Suzy’s response, I suspected it was something irredeemably brutal.

As our plane cruised over the water into LaGuardia, I nervously wondered if Aunt Rose would have the strength to make it to the gate to meet us. If she did manage that, would we still recognize her? I breathed a deep sigh of relief when we saw her standing at the end of the Jetway, slender and stylish and still very much Aunt Rose. She was as glamorous and animated as ever, madly in love with the man who’d recently become her fourth husband, and her husband clearly was crazy about her. We rushed to throw our arms around her, and she felt whole and warm. I felt sheepish and silly for thinking she’d ever be otherwise. If anything, she felt sturdier than ever, built up and tightly buttressed by the staunch whalebone corset that provided a functional prosthetic structure to her torso. At the time, I had no inkling of how unforgiving and painful that corset must have been; all I knew or cared about was Aunt Rose, standing tall, laughing out loud, and extending a strong hand to each of her nieces.