In the large, drab hospital waiting room, Leo sits with Annette and Emma. May is undergoing a spinal tap. A week has passed since her collapse.
Leo clears his throat, crosses one leg, then the other, refusing to look at Annette and Emma. He looks straight ahead, seeing nothing, remembering the other May, Annette’s younger sister, and how she looked toward the end of her life, her beautiful skin turned yellow and sickly, her eyes filmy and unseeing. He remembers, too, his own father, also dead of cancer, that violent, cantankerous son of a bitch, dying in a way even he didn’t deserve, incontinent, his face pinched and grey, his diapers full and foul, howling with pain, his body slack and crumpled, begging to be put out of his misery.
Leo fiercely wishes that he were free and unencumbered, with no depressed wife, no sick child. In a heartbeat, he would run off to Jamaica with Cookie Coke, and they’d make love all day under a hot, fruit-orange sun … eating coconuts and mangos … licking the juice from each other’s bodies … He would become apolitical, uncaring about the world outside their tropical paradise. He presses his lips firmly together, trying to hold himself in, as a great thunderous rage fills him—it is too late, much too late.
Sitting between her parents, Emma looks around the waiting room, with its dull, lima bean-colored walls, and notes a smell she doesn’t like, sour and sad, like old, decaying food, or Grandma Thelma’s breath in the morning, the few times she’d slept over. It’s not just this room that has that smell, it’s also the lobby and the elevators and the hallway of the hospital. It’s everywhere, eating into her skin, her insides. She sniffs her hands, her elbows; they reek, and feel alien to her. Will the stench ever come off, or is she permanently marked as a girl who’s been intimate with illness?
She doesn’t like anything about this hospital, although she’s heard her parents say to each other several times over the past few days that it’s “a part of Columbia University,” as though this is very important. It’s not like them to attach such importance to the status of a place, but they seem to need to reassure themselves of its stature in the world. Her father repeats how lucky they are that the doctors will treat May even though “they don’t accept our insurance.” It’s strange to witness him being genuinely grateful to anyone about anything, and Emma’s not sure she likes it … it’s weird, and a little scary, as if he’s being impersonated by an imposter who can’t get it quite right. His edge has been blunted, mostly gone.
She also doesn’t like one iota how cold her parents have been to her since Halloween. Her mother forgets to buy her Bosco and Hostess cupcakes, doesn’t strain her milk ten times, doesn’t greet her at the door when she comes home from school. Yesterday when she tried to show her father her new poem, Double, Double, Toil and Trouble, a poem about the nature of witchcraft, good and bad, he shrugged her off as though she had cooties, or worse, as if his love for her has disappeared along with his sharp edge.
Even worse, earlier today, when he picked her up after school, he barely looked at her. During the long, bumper-to-bumper car ride from the Bronx into Manhattan, as she stared up at the rainy, grey sky through the car window, trying to ignore the slight queasiness beginning in her belly—often the first sign of carsickness—he was completely silent, other than when he explained that they would meet up with her mother at the hospital, where May had just checked in to have a “spinal tap.” “The doctors,” he said, his voice low and tight, “are putting air into her brain, through a hole in her spine.”
How was such a thing possible, Emma wanted to ask, but clearly he didn’t want to be bothered with questions. She saw his anger in the way his blue eyes glittered like ice, and in the way he clutched the steering wheel, driving way too fast, cutting off other cars. She understood that May might be very sick, and that her parents were preoccupied. But still, she hadn’t done anything to deserve their anger. They couldn’t possibly know that she had wished for May to die; they couldn’t possibly know of the dark power residing within her, the witchery that had transformed itself from good to bad. Now that she has made May ill, she is simultaneously Glinda The Good and The Wicked Witch of the West; she contains them both.
In the car, en route to the hospital, Emma had moved as far away from her father in the front seat as possible, closing her eyes until bona-fide carsickness began. After that, she tried to focus on the parade of people walking quickly by, dodging cars, jumping over curbside puddles, trying to shield themselves from the rain with their colorful umbrellas.
Now, in the waiting room, sandwiched between her parents, she tries to picture what the doctors are doing to May. What if they blow too hard during the spinal tap, causing May to burst wide open like a balloon? Better not to think about it. Instead, she focuses on the uncomfortable chair in which she’s sitting: scoop-shaped, made of hard plastic, colored a sharp toothpaste-green. Her legs dangle, and her rear end is way too small for the chair’s scooped bottom; she feels lost and overwhelmed. She unwraps the cherry-flavored Tootsie Roll lollipop that she’s been carrying in the pocket of her skirt. She’s very careful not to make slurping sounds as she sucks on it, because her father and mother both hate when she does that, telling her it’s too “childish,” not the way a ten year old should eat. “Unbecoming,” her mother says. “Ridiculous,” her father says. Not that she’s all that inclined to slurp today, anyway, since this lollipop doesn’t taste as sweet as she expected it to. It tastes oddly sour, as if the stench of the hospital has permeated the candy.
She swivels in her chair to look up at her father, who’s supposedly reading the newspaper comics, but mostly he’s running his thumb back and forth along the corner of the page, not chuckling at Li’l Abner’s adventures in Dogpatch, the way he usually does. She turns to her mother on her other side, who’s sitting as still as a statue, staring straight ahead, her hands tightly clenched in her lap. Totally ignored and superfluous, Emma scrunches down further in the plastic chair.
Just then, another family enters the waiting room and walks to the other side: a mother and two children. The father must be the one who’s sick, and, as Emma tries to picture her own father—strong, invincible — shriveled and weak in a hospital bed, she inhales sharply and her throat feels like a knife.
One by one, the blond, blue-eyed family across the waiting room settles into a row of plastic chairs identical to the row in which she and her parents are sitting. They look like the Crowells, the only white Protestant family living in the projects, whom Emma doesn’t know all that well, although she finds nine-year-old Mary Beth interesting because during school-wide assemblies, she sits with her ankles neatly crossed and her hands folded in her lap, like a star pupil in an etiquette school.
But this other family neither dresses nor moves like the Crowells or anyone else in the Projects. The mother is stuffed into a fur coat even though it’s not all that cold. With her blonde, neatly pinned hairdo and high-heeled shoes, the mother resembles Kim Novak, May’s idol, and there’s something terrible about this fact, considering that May was dressed as Kim on Halloween when she collapsed. It’s like a sign from the God who doesn’t exist.
Emma moves her gaze from the mother to the brother and sister, who are whispering together as though they genuinely like each other. The boy, a teenager, is in jacket and tie, and the girl wears a crepe dress and shoes with heels that curve like musical notes. They both look ready for church, ready to pray, perhaps, to converse deeply with the Virgin Mary, who remains off limits to Emma.
Emma finishes the sour lollipop, and then pops a piece of gum in her mouth. Closing her eyes, she concentrates on the gum, expecting sweet juice to fill her mouth. But, it too tastes sour. Opening her eyes, giving up on the gum, she looks at the smudged windows that line the room, and wishes she were far away, in a place where she wouldn’t have to worry about being a Godless witch whose evil powers have felled her own sister. If her parents could hear her thoughts, they would surely call her superstitious and feel betrayed by her “irrational, weak thinking.” She glances once more at her father; at last he’s turned the page of the newspaper.
Leo is at that moment wishing that Emma would stop staring at him. Nothing he’s experienced in his life has prepared him for the blunt and naked need in his younger daughter’s eyes. He’s also completely unprepared for the possibility of losing his older daughter to a brain tumor—two morbid, terrible words that the doctors keep using. “Not definite,” they say. “But likely.” Words he’s waiting not to hear again, but fears he will.
Despite the old saying to the contrary, there are indeed atheists in foxholes, and he’s Exhibit A, with nobody, and nothing, to pray to. Inside, there is an emptiness. But do the truly religious fare any better when their children are ill? They pray to God that their children will recover, and some do, but many don’t. Supposedly, God calls those children to “a better place,” “a higher place.” But, by doing so, He has surely, and deliberately, ignored the parents’ prayers. Isn’t it worse to feel that God has deliberately chosen not to hear you, than to acknowledge that no God exists to hear you?
Annette, too, at that moment, is acutely aware that she’s all alone with her fear. She’s also aware that she has no energy right now for Emma, who’s swiveling around in her chair trying to catch her eye, even though it was Emma who first held May in her arms after she fainted; even though it was Emma’s screams that alerted the Pierces and the others. Maybe one day she’ll have the energy to thank Emma. But not today. Today every bit of her strength must be conserved; it must go to May. That is how it must be. Annette will not judge herself as a mother at this moment; any energy expended on herself is also wasted energy, energy needed for May, to keep her alive.
And that’s why Annette sits so absolutely still. And why, despite how uncomfortable she is, she won’t rise from this miserable chair and walk across the antiseptic, overly lit waiting room to the water fountain. Walking demands energy. And she has none to spare.
Besides, if she gets too close to that other family, they might attempt to start a conversation with her. How awful if they try to empathize with her, or try to take their minds off their own particular tragedy by making asinine small talk. The fear emanating from their bones might seep into hers, and her own fear is already more than she can bear.
It’s bad enough that she can’t stop herself from re-living all that’s happened since Halloween, from the moment that Mrs. Pierce, with a plaid apron around her waist and her hair in ridiculously oversized curlers, held in place by a riot of bobby pins, followed by Rosemary Mammano and Shelley in their trick or treat costumes, had knocked on her door. Or was it the other way around—was it the two girls who knocked first? And which of them was the one who said, “Mrs. Rosen, your daughter May is sick.” Sick—that’s the word she remembers most clearly, although in fact Mrs. Pierce and the two girls said a lot more, but the rest of their words are a blur. Yet she feels desperate to nail it down precisely: Who knocked on her door? Who took her hand and led her to the elevator? Who helped her out of the elevator at the third floor? Why can she remember the bobby pins in Mrs. Pierce’s hair, but not what she said, and whose hand she held? There is one thing, though, that’s not blurry, one immutable fact: She will never forgive Mrs. Taranto for leaving her daughter alone at that party with no adult supervision. Never. Of course, she will also never forgive herself for allowing May to attend the party when she knew Mrs. Taranto was an unfit mother.
Another fact: The instant she saw May, so helpless, her body twisted on the floor, her head in Emma’s arms, her migraine vanished.
The most astonishing fact: As soon as Emma moved aside, and as soon as she herself gathered May up in her arms, May instantly came to. “Mommy?” she cried, slowly blinking her crusty eyes and licking her blood-smudged lips, sitting up with great effort and awkwardly pulling her dress down to cover herself.
A gawking crowd surrounded them. Kids in costumes. Bonita Taranto. Marvin Ludwig. Mrs. Pierce and her unruly children, the five redheaded hooligans and their sneaky sisters. Even pitiful Mr. Roshansky, although he lives on the fourth floor, not the third, so that must be a trick of her memory. “Go away!” May had screamed at the crowd, finding the strength from who knows where. “Go away!” She was so ferocious, they all looked stunned and actually obeyed her, moving back slowly, giving Annette and her daughters some space.
At that moment, Annette hadn’t minded seeing May throw one of her wild tantrums in public, not one bit. Because it showed that she was fine, absolutely fine, that whatever had happened to her was a fluke, and therefore Annette had no reason to feel guilty for ignoring her daughter’s symptoms. But there hadn’t been any symptoms, not really, she reminded herself. After all, May hadn’t been losing weight, so Annette had been certain she’d been eating during the day at school. And May’s eye … had always been erratic, lazy. The doctors had told Annette long ago not to worry about May’s left eye. Blinking back tears, she held May’s hand tightly as they waited, Emma standing behind them, for the elevator to take them upstairs. Annette had refused to turn around, even then, to look at Emma. Emma, now an outsider, would have to take care of herself, at least for a while—for how long, Annette could not say.
That night, like a miracle—not that Annette believes in miracles—May really was fine. She took a bath and cleaned herself up. She came out of the bath looking dewy and fresh, sweeter than perhaps she’d ever looked in her life, like an innocent child, much younger than 13. In her pajamas, she had appeared serene, almost untouched by what had happened to her. She’d insisted on ironing Mrs. Taranto’s dress. Annette stood over her, her clenched fists balled behind her, biting her lip, terrified that May would be overcome once again by whatever it was that had felled her, that she would drop the iron and scald herself.
May, standing firmly at the ironing board, shook her head and said “No!” when Annette suggested that she do the ironing, not May.
Annette watched May’s arm go back and forth with the hot iron in her hand. “May,” Annette paused, swallowed. “I have to ask you again. Please … tell me what happened, what you remember …”
“I don’t remember,” May spoke flatly, eyes downcast, intent on her task, relentlessly ironing and smoothing the hateful black fabric. “It’s no big deal. Don’t bother me about it.”
And even Leo, who for once hadn’t balked when Annette had called him at work, and who’d rushed home early, didn’t insist that May give more details. He looked … what was the word … cowed. But Annette felt no sympathy for him. Too little, too late.
May hadn’t had any appetite that evening. At dinner she refused to eat more than a bite or two, despite the fact that Annette had served mashed potatoes with thick, dark gravy, and extra-rare, bloody steak, May’s favorites. But wasn’t it only natural that May would be mopey and out of sorts? She was clearly embarrassed by what had happened, by her friends seeing her in such a vulnerable state. And who wouldn’t be? Still, sitting across the table from her, Annette was certain that May’s eye was out of focus somehow, squinty and uncoordinated. But only for a moment, and then it seemed just fine again. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, to be alarmed by.
And, later that evening, May had grown sulky. But who could blame her for that? “I hate Emma,” she’d announced at dinner, watching as Emma took an oversized, second helping of the gravy-drenched mashed potatoes. Leo had thankfully ignored May’s outburst, and Annette hadn’t the heart to shush her, to tell her to be nice to her sister. For once, Emma hadn’t answered her back, had just chewed the potatoes, appearing thoughtful, her mind elsewhere, working her way through three large portions. Her faraway gaze was so intense, Annette wondered if she were composing poetry in her head. Good, that was a good thing. Let her live in her head for a while. Let her absent herself from the Rosens, and let art be her guide.
After dinner, Emma went with Leo to watch TV in the living room. That was the way it should be, since Leo couldn’t help with May. Let the family be more divided; again, sacrifices would have to be made. Emma had always been more his daughter than her own; this new configuration would just solidify it.
May remained alone at the table, watching Annette as she began to wash the dishes. The TV was so loud that Annette could hear bullets popping and horses whinnying. Yet, it was keeping Emma and Leo occupied, and that was a good thing. Annette poured soap into the sink, stirred it with her plastic-encased fingers, feeling pleased that May had chosen to remain with her.
Another noise joined the cacophony from the TV, as Annette scrubbed a stubbornly stained gravy bowl. A close-by noise. May, weeping, sobbing. Annette turned from the sink to look at her. “Bonita and Marvin were kissing right in front of me,” she sobbed, her mouth a gash of pain.
Annette stopped short in the midst of soaking the stained bowl, stunned by the sight of her thirteen-year-old daughter in such pain over some pishadink young boy, as her own mother might have called him. At least though, the mystery was solved: May’s collapse had been emotional, not physical at all—brought on by a broken heart. Relief flooded her; her chest grew large and expansive. She gulped air with gratitude and even gusto. So be it: Her daughter wasn’t the first female in the history of the world to lose her bearings over a man. Or, was that a rationalization because it was easier to think of May as broken hearted rather than ill? Surely, broken hearts healed more quickly than broken bodies.
Annette wiped her hands on her apron, checked that both faucets were turned off, and then walked quickly to the table where May sat sobbing. She knelt beside her and gathered her in her arms for the second time that day. “There, there,” she said, not knowing what else to say, wishing her daughter’s body wasn’t so stiff and resistant, wishing she were the kind of mother for whom it came naturally to hold her daughter. Their bond was no stronger than before, no more fluid and real.
“I’m tired,” May said, after a while, spine rigid as a soldier. “I’m going to my room.”
But all night, Annette couldn’t sleep. Leo, damn him to Hell, fell asleep instantly, his snores like animals screeching and caterwauling in the night.
The next morning, Annette rose from bed, having slept at most a few hours. In the bathroom mirror, she stared at the deep circles beneath her sunken eyes, sighed, turned off the bathroom light, and went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. A few minutes later, hair and nightgown both rumpled, May sat down at the table, staring morosely into space, ignoring the glass of orange juice Annette poured for her.
“May,” Annette said, not yet having discussed this with Leo, and not caring whether he agreed or not, “you need to see Dr. Davidson.” Roly-poly, bald-as-an-egg, Dr. Davidson, their family doctor, was a gentle, non-didactic soul, beloved by the whole family, other than May.
“I won’t go!” May picked up the glass of juice and emptied it on the floor, where it quickly formed an insulting orange pool.
Leo entered at just that moment, dressed in a white tee shirt that showed off his strong arms, and a new pair of crisp dungarees, bought half-price by Annette the week before at Alexander’s. Despite herself, Annette noted how good he looked, even as her whole body tensed because he would undoubtedly kill May, sick or not. Only he was allowed to spill drinks, throw food, break dishes, when enraged, no one else.
To Annette’s surprise, however, he said firmly, “You will go to the doctor, and you will clean up that mess.”
And that was that. He sounded like a man with good boundaries and clear self control. The seriousness of May’s situation had brought out the best in him, and Annette found herself hoping that this moment might be a harbinger of a long-term change in him, although she abandoned the hope as quickly as it appeared.
May narrowed her eyes, glared, but got down on the floor, and, on hands and knees, wiped the juice with her napkin, while Leo sat at the table and began eating his breakfast. Annette closed her eyes for a moment in silent gratitude that, for once, a beating had been averted.
Dr. Davidson’s office, on White Plains Road, not far from the Five and Dime, was on the ground floor of a small, drab, residential building. He’s done his best to make his waiting room cheery, filling it with thriving potted plants and photographs of tropical macaws, cockatiels, parrots, and mynah birds, aloft in the air, dazzling wings outspread. “I admire these birds,” he’d once explained to Annette. “They’re social, intelligent, beautiful.” Annette had guessed that he also envied them—for not having to spend their lives in the northeast Bronx, for having options he would never have.
May, who’d been sulking and silent since she and Annette had left the apartment, didn’t greet the doctor when he opened the door to his examining room, and waved her in. Annette had filled him in earlier over the phone, trying to control the trembling in her voice. She yearned to follow May inside, to be present during the exam, but May had said, icily, as they’d walked along White Plains Road, “I will only consent to the exam if you don’t interfere.”
Annette gloomily studied a photograph on the wall above the sofa of a bright orange macaw spreading its wide wings, and she was flooded with guilt, imagining May, at that moment, being poked and prodded and questioned by the doctor. She picked up a copy of “National Geographic” with a photograph of a fuzzy, pinheaded animal on the cover that apparently was called a “meercat,” but quickly put it down. Sinking deeply into the sofa, she felt grateful no one else was in the waiting room with her.
Finally, after an interminable amount of time, the door opened, and May, fully dressed, stalked out, her cheeks flaming. “Mrs. Rosen,” Dr. Davidson said pleasantly, bald dome shining, betraying nothing, “please come inside.”
Eyes downcast, May took Annette’s place on the sofa, as Annette noted how painfully swollen and squinty May’s left eye was. Today, there was no denying it.
Inside the doctor’s office, Annette sat stiffly on the edge of the firm metal bridge chair across from his desk.
He rubbed his round chin, and sighed, a loud exhalation that made Annette’s skin crawl. “There’s no easy way to say this. She may have a brain tumor. But, even if she does,” he leaned forward in his chair, and clearly hastened to add, “it may not be malignant.”
Annette looked down at her shoes, trying not to throw up, as Dr. Davidson continued to speak, outlining the steps that Annette and Leo would have to take. He stood, dismissing her, not unkindly, assuring her she could call him any time, handing her a slip of paper with doctors’ phone numbers to call, and she forced herself to open the door, and to walk toward May, who sulked and scowled on the sofa, looking, despite her scowls, so vulnerable and young and scared, with her crooked eyeglasses and her failed attempt at a sophisticated hairdo.
Now, a week later, in the waiting room of the hospital, Annette clings to the word Dr. Davidson had used that day. He had said, may, her daughter’s name, and therefore a lucky word. “Your daughter may have a brain tumor.” But, suddenly, Annette regrets more than anything, ever having given her child this name. What if the name is a curse, a death sentence? For her sister years ago, and now for her daughter. If so, then it is she, Annette, who is at fault. As always. Guilty of condemning her daughter to an early death. Simply by giving her the wrong name.
All this business about curses, what’s wrong with her? It’s all just idiotic superstition, the thing she rails against in others, and she, a rational human being who relies on empirical evidence, will not fall prey to superstition—or worse, madness. Perhaps her daughter’s illness will drive her over the edge. The Truth With A Capitol T is that, despite her predilection for Doom and Gloom, her daughter does not have a brain tumor. Her beloved, precious daughter, unlike her beloved, precious sister, is going to be just fine.