A few days later, Mom returned from the hospital.
“Be careful,” Dad said as he helped her sit at the kitchen table. “You’re still recovering.”
As soon as she sat down, Carmen and I gave her hugs and took the seats beside her. Dad poured her a cup of coffee and then went to the sink to rinse dishes, while Jimmy rolled a ball across the floor.
“How are you feeling?” I asked Mom.
“I’m tired, but I’m glad to be home.”
She wore a shirt that buttoned down the front. I couldn’t help glancing at her chest and noticing that the right side was flat now, just like an Amazon. Mom must have caught me looking because she said, “I’m going to get a special bra. A prosthetic.”
Carmen turned into Little Miss Factoid again. “It’s a replacement part, like a fake leg or a fake arm.”
“That’s right,” Mom said. “I’m going to have a fake boob.” She was silent a moment, and then she laughed. She winced as if the laughter hurt a bit, but the chuckles kept coming. Soon, Carmen and I were laughing, too. Even Jimmy joined in.
“Okay,” Dad said, his voice stern. “Quit laughing at your mother.”
“Oh, lighten up,” Mom told him. “They’re not laughing at me. We’re just having some fun. You have to admit that a bra with a fake boob is funny.”
“No, it’s not.” Dad turned from the sink to face us. “There’s nothing funny about cancer, about having to get…”—he glanced at Carmen—“replacement parts.”
Mom frowned. “I’m the one who’s sick,” she said, “so I get to decide what is and isn’t funny about my body. Isn’t that right, girls?”
Carmen and I didn’t want to take sides, so we kept our mouths shut.
“I’m just saying…” Dad began.
Mom held out her hand to hush him. He stared at it for a second before turning back to the sink. When I looked across the table at Carmen, I caught her biting her lower lip. I almost bit my lip, too. That’s how tense the room was. I wanted to lighten the mood, change the subject, talk about something fun and easy, like boys or Jimmy’s cartoons. I wanted to suggest we eat ice cream, fly a kite, or go to the movies. But when you’re sitting beneath the gloom of cancer, everything that’s not cancer seems silly. You wonder why boys or ice cream or kites ever mattered in the first place.
Dad finished the dishes and left the room. A few minutes later, I heard him vacuuming the den.
“Can you refill this?” Mom asked me, tapping her coffee cup.
I brought the pot over, poured the coffee. Mom lifted it, a bit awkwardly. She spilled some on her shirt. “I don’t believe this,” she said, all frustrated.
“Why are you using your left hand?” Carmen asked—a good question because Mom was right-handed.
Before she could answer, Jimmy walked to her and climbed onto her lap. He hugged her tight, making Mom grimace.
“Careful, Jimmy,” I said. “Mom’s sore, remember?”
She hugged him back but with her left arm only, and since Jimmy wiggled a lot, he slid off. He tried climbing onto her lap again, but she waved him off.
“Up, up,” he told her.
“I can’t, mijo. At least, not right now.”
“Up!” he cried.
Mom looked at Carmen and me. “My right side’s weak,” she explained. “When they took my breast, they took some muscle tissue too, so I won’t be using my right side for a while.”
Mom looked like an Amazon, but she didn’t feel like one. Not yet. I still hoped, though, that soon she’d feel stronger.
Jimmy reached for her again. She leaned over and kissed him. “I can’t carry you, but you can sit right next to me.”
“Gimme Mommy,” Jimmy said as he started to bawl.
Now it looked like Mom wanted to bawl, too. “Chia,” she said, her voice a little choked, “will you take him? I’m going to the bedroom to rest.”
As she walked out, Jimmy kicked her chair. “Mommy’s mad!”
I picked him up. “No, she isn’t,” I said. “She really wants to carry you, but she can’t right now. She’s sick, remember?” His whole chest shook with sobs. “She’ll get better,” I went on, “and then she’ll hug you and carry you and never let you go. I promise.”
At that, Carmen said, “I’m going to clean the bathroom,” and she hurried off. Carmen never volunteered to clean, so I thought an alien had taken over her body. Then I remembered her promesa. She was going to clean bathrooms till Mom got better. My sister could be a real brat sometimes, but once in a while, she did something nice.
I decided to follow her example and work on my promesa, too. I told Dad I was going to start training, and since he was so busy cleaning, I offered to take Jimmy. He loved being pushed in his stroller, even though he was getting too big for it.
“Come on, Jimmy,” I said, and he happily joined me.
We walked down the block, and by the time I reached the next street, sweat was dripping into my eyes and stinging them. My hands were swollen, too. I could tell by how tight my mood ring felt. And my T-shirt, this one with beetles and ants over a caption that said “You’re bugging me,” was getting damp. Was I crazy? No one exercised when it was near one hundred degrees. Then again, the promesa was supposed to be a challenge, so I walked on, refusing to turn back until I reached the major street at the end of our neighborhood.
When I got home, I took a shower in the sparkling clean bathroom. Carmen probably spent a whole hour polishing the counters and floors. I couldn’t blame her. Even though I felt tired, I went to the laundry room, sorted the darks and lights, put in a load, and dusted furniture while I waited for the wash cycle to end. In a strange way, cleaning made me feel like I was accomplishing something. Carmen and Dad probably felt the same way because they were doing extra chores, too.
Later that night, I heard Carmen turning pages in a book. The lights were out, and since she didn’t have her book lamp on, I knew she wasn’t reading.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Counting the pages.”
“What for?”
“I like counting things,” she said. “Did you know,” she went on, “that there are one hundred eighty tiles around our bathtub?”
“I can’t believe you stood there and counted tiles.”
“At first, I multiplied the number of tiles in a row by the number of tiles in a column. Then, I double-checked my calculation by counting each and every tile. And then, I triple-checked. If you don’t believe me, you can count them yourself. You’ll see. There are one hundred eighty tiles.”
“That’s amazing,” I said, my sarcasm as thick as the cheese on the pizza we ate for dinner. “I always wondered how many tiles there were. How can I ever thank you for enlightening me?”
She didn’t reply, but a few seconds later, I heard the rustling pages again. How annoying!
“Will you stop that?” I said.
“I’ll stop when I get to the end of the book.”
“Why on earth are you counting pages when they’re already numbered?”
“I told you,” she said. “I like counting.”
“But it’s ridiculous. No one who’s sane counts pages in a book.”
“Then I guess I’m not sane,” she said, getting out of bed and heading to the door. “Don’t worry. I won’t be bothering you anymore. I’m going to the living room to count in peace.”
She stepped out, and I almost said “good riddance” because without the sound of rustling pages and mumbled numbers, I could finally fall asleep. At least, that was the theory. For some reason, though, I couldn’t relax. Sure, Carmen got on my nerves with all her counting, but at least she had cleaned the bathroom. I spent a while resisting the urge to call her back, but eventually, my guilty conscience got to me.
I found her in the living room. The porch light’s yellow glow came through the window. Carmen was asleep with the book open on her chest. I shook her.
“Hey, Carmen,” I whispered. “Come back to the room.”
She opened her eyes partway, reaching for the book and mumbling, “Not finished yet.”
“You can finish tomorrow,” I said. “If you start early enough, you can count all the pages before you fall asleep.”
She nodded, and without saying another word, she followed me to our room.