The Breast Sketch
It serves us so well.
And then it doesn’t. It doesn’t
obey, it finds new ways to remind us of what we are and what we are not. We are young, we are attractive, we are
mothers and grandmothers, we are human.
I sat upstairs in my home in South Lebanon. It was warm so it must have been summer. People were just waking up from their
afternoon naps. The sun was still up and
Rabab’s three boys were outside making noise and fighting. Billboards across the country sported images
of women’s breasts substituted by watermelons, peaches, cherries. Advocating self exams.
Rabab came up to talk.
Most people avoid my apartment, they know it is a place where I can go
to escape whatever is going on down below.
To be free of the need for interpreters and just look through my old
stuff, the things that have been left there over time by me and my
children. I go through these things when
I am there and contemplate a lot of things.
The material world, the time we’ve spent there, the time I want to spend
there in my old age and the place I am headed after death and ressurrection.
I remember one winter and it was very cold. I was still drinking back then. I’d go upstairs and the brothers would come
up and we’d drink. Wine and Arak. We’d laugh so loud there could be no doubt in
those below that we were not in control.
That day I’d taken the kids to the graveyard and we’d messed around by
the graves scaring each other, some of the graves collapsing, some of them
covered by photos in glass boxes. We
came home and my eldest was there doing her work for university. The propane heater barely kept the frigid
room warm even though all the doors that could be closedd were closed in order
to heat the smallest area possible.
I poured a gin and some coke and settled in for a nice
evening. The kids went to bed and by
then I’d had another gin or two. I went
to bed nice and cozy with my bedroom door open and my son out on the couch, one
daughter with me and the other secluded in the middle room.
I drifted deep into sleep…..when the visitor showed up. He’d been in my dreams before…just a shadow.
Once he took me to see my ancestors. The
kids still tease me about that night journey.
Porter Hopkins they say, Porter Hopkins, one eighth Cherokee as all
white people do. There are no white
ancestors so we have to make up some Injun ones. Common practice where I come from in Arizona.
In the dream I saw an enormous wave closing down on me. Inside of it were several children being
tossed around by the force of the tidal surge.
The visitor said, “Save them.
They are going to die.” I woke up
with such a start that my heart was going over 150 beats a minute. Not my normal but I woke up and there was my
son standing at the door saying his stomach was upset and then he vomited. I got up and cleaned him up, cleaned up the
floor but my heart still beat out of control.
I put him to bed in my bed and went to the kitchen to try to get control
of my heart that was easily doing 175 by then.
It just wouldn’t stop and I thought of the disrespect at the graveyard
that day where we’d fooled around to scare each other. Could that be the cause of my distress? I
thought about the gin and Allah punishing me for my indiscretion. I’d rather not believe that.
I heard my son get up again and moan a bit. He was stumbling out the door and I grabbed
him to get him to the toilet. He didn’t
make it though and covered the floor. I
cleaned him up again and he was so lethargic.
My heart completely wildly out of control. The guilt just overwhelmed me for neglecting
my children, teaching them wrong instead of right.
I returned to the bathroom and began to clean the mess. I knew something wasn’t right and knelt on my
hands and knees and began sobbing.
Sobbing for the sins, sobbing for the indecencies and the destruction
caused by my chemical abuse. Just
sobbing out loud.
My eldest came out of her room and asked me “Mom, what’s the
matter?” She seemed just fine. I told her, “go get your grandmother,
something isn’t right”. I didn’t want to
disturb her at 3 in the morning but was helpless to solve the problem. Just
helpless and losing control. Perhaps I
was going insane?
Em Melhem came charging up the stairs and threw open the
door. She said only one word and it might
has well been death. GAZ. Propane.
She threw open the windows and doors to air out the salon and bedroom
where my youngest two children still slept and would have slept for an ever if
not for the visitor in my dream who said, “Save them.”
It was years later and Rabab came in and we sat across from
each other in the kitchen. She already
had a left mastectomy. Her hair was back
and she was looking good. It was
over. She was a survivor. We both were. I had already apologized to her for my
indiscretions of years before when she was left to worry down below while her
husband and his brothers and I got drunk and laughed late into the nights. Apologized
for making her feel uptight, for being a good muslim, for being the kind of
person who could hold her tongue.
She wanted to talk to me about an implant. It was heavy on her mind and I suppose she
felt a little guilty wanting to look like everyone else, to stop stuffing her
bra or wearing baggy clothes. I am not
sure but I imagine it is the same for all people who have an amputation of a
body part. They miss the normalcy of
that.
I told her sure, they can take skin from your belly, your
back. They can tattoo you some nipples,
they can do wonders “nowadays”.
Suddenly, she asked me to see her. To look.
I said sure. I’m a nurse, I do
that all the time.
Rabab lifted her top to show me what was left. I swallowed so very hard. I was unprepared, I was honored and then I
was simply devastated. Just devastated
for Rabab. I didn’t cry though. I waited until she left and then called Pat
Porter, my brother’s wife in America who had already had implants, already been
there, done that and was doing fine. I
cried to her and could not contain my feelings.
She offered advice that I cannot remember now and it doesn’t
matter. There is no road map as they say
for such things. There are just no easy
answers.
