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“Like she’s gonna tap dance for us all and put on a show.” She flashes one last, quick smile before disappearing into someone else’s room. So, with hope in my heart and appreciation for a good day, I turn again and use my free hand to rub along my still-healing wound. My femur pierced my thigh back in November during that annoying accident. Which means not only do I now possess a half-bionic leg and set off all the security beepers in the airport, but I also have this chronically annoying spot on my leg that itches and sends me mad when I’m alone at night.
My stitches have healed, and my physical therapist encourages me to use my leg as much as possible. The doctors had me weight-bearing—or, well, doing the best I could—within days of surgery. Because I’m young, they said. Because I’m reasonably fit, and I’m not all that heavy, though the latter has nothing to do with my eating desires and everything to do with the price of ramen these days.
Coming to a stop outside my mom’s hospital room I try, for just a moment, to get my nose twitching under control. I don’t like the smell of cancer. I know that sounds dumb, and I’m aware that sounds especially concerning for a woman readying to attend medical school. But this is a thing I’ve only discovered since her diagnosis.
Something about her changed. The chemo altered her chemical makeup, or the cancer did. Whichever poison is responsible, it changed her hormones, and so instead of her natural perfume scent I’ve always cuddled up to as I grew, she smells different now.
It’s an unpleasant, starchy, sterile scent that itches my nostrils almost as much as the metal plate inside my leg itches my soul.
I take thirty seconds to school my features and adjust to the smell, then I shake my shoulders back, slide the curtain open, and reveal myself to the woman I love more than anyone else on the planet.
“Hey, Mom.” I walk stronger, because I want her to see strength. I smile wider, because I want her to see happiness. I stride into her room and bring my cane along for the ride, setting it against the wall so I remember to take it out when I leave again, and then I come to a stop beside her bed and study the beautiful middle-aged woman who was the original jinx before me. “You look good.” I fix her blankets and press a kiss to her pale cheek. Her chestnut hair long ago fell out. Her lashes. Her brows. All of it is gone, but I have this magical ability to compartmentalize and remember who she was before.
Her eyes are a stunning concoction of brown and green and speckled blue, which might be my most cherished feature in myself, too. We both share the same thick, brown hair and naturally long lashes neither of us would dare mess with at a salon for fear of ruining what we were born with.
My mother stands,when she stands, at five feet, six inches tall. Like me.
And when she was healthy, she weighed in at a perfect hundred and fifty pounds. Which, realistically, with my wide-ish hips and generous C-cup chest, is what I’d weigh, too, if not for living below the poverty line.
“You look tired,” she responds weakly, but with a sweet smile and a hand that still takes mine and holds on. I stop moving and focus instead on her. On her chapped lips, but their volume beneath the dryness. Her unblemished skin, if you look beneath the paleness and obvious impending death.
Her fingers wrap around my wrist and hold on with surprising strength; that same strength is perhaps the reason behind Nurse Brenda’s good mood today. So, while my sweet mother has the energy, I reach out with my free hand and tug the visitor chair closer instead.
I’ve been in this room every single day for a month or more. Often, she sleeps. Many times, she’s too weak to open her eyes or maintain a conversation.
But not today, so I skip the mental to-do list I’ve come in here with today and instead take a seat and relax.
“You wanna chat, huh?” I unwrap her fingers from around my wrist, but only long enough to turn my hand and make us both comfortable. Then I link us again and lean my head back to settle in for what, someday, will be just a memory. “How are you feeling?”
“Pshh.” She makes the dismissive sound low in the back of her throat and turns in the bed to rest on her side. She’s all skin and bones now, guilt lancing through my stomach as she comes to rest on hipbones that have no padding left and on shoulders that must certainly ache. But she places her free hand on her pillow, beneath her cheek, and smiles. “How areyoufeeling?” she counters. “How’s your leg?”
“It’s okay.” I drop my free hand to my thigh and massage the ache I speak of to no one. “Gets a little itchy sometimes, but that’s it.”
“Yeah?” Her cheeks warm with a sweet pink that makes my heart thud faster. The pink is legions better than her typical sickly yellow. “Do you remember that time when you were…” she pauses for a beat and moves in a kind of shrug. “I don’t know, nine. Maybe ten? You wanted so badly for me to buy you that cute new bag everyone else had at school. All the girls in your grade had these purses.”
“The ones with our letter initial on the front,” I fill in with a grin. “They were lined in glitter stuff. And everyone who was anyone had one of those bags.”
“Yes.” She exhales a happy sigh as though replaying the day of our biggest fight ever brings her pleasure. “You wanted your bag so much, baby.”
“But we couldn’t afford it,” I remember. “It was so dumb. Such an ugly little bag, now that I think back. And no matter how much I whined for it, neither of us could pull money out of our butts and buy one.”
She sniggers, soft and breathy and hitching almost enough to make my heart ache. “I said you could work to earn the money,” she recalls. “I was picking up shifts at the hotel back then. Stripping the rooms and remaking the beds and whatnot.”
“You said if I helped you work those rooms,” I sniffle and refuse the emotional tears burning the backs of my eyes, “you said I could earn money. The bag cost forty-five dollars back then. Which is so much,” I exhale. “Such a dumb way to spend an income.”
“Yeah, well…” she doesn’t make a sound this time, though I’m sure, deep in the recesses of her soul, she’s laughing. “You wanted it so bad. And to your nine-year-old brain, it was the most important thing in the world.”
“You promised to match me dollar for dollar,” I sigh. “You didn’t have to. You didn’t even like the bag, and to us twenty-something dollars was still a lot. But you knew it was important to me, so you compromised and told me if I earned it, I could have it.”
“And what did you do instead?” she asks, knowing the answer already. “You got your bag, Aurora. But how?”
I drop my gaze, decade-long shame still washing through my veins, leaving me feeling like I’m about two-inches tall. “I asked Dad to buy it. Because I didn’t want to work for it. But I lied and told you I took the money from my money box.”
“You lied.” She grabs on to that one detail and smiles gently. “I knew then, Aurora, when you lied. And I know now.”
I bring my gaze up just in time to catch her focus on my thigh. “So…” She looks into my eyes. “How’s your leg?”
“It hurts,” I admit with a soft laugh, shaking my head. “It wakes me up sometimes and feels like someone is shoving a knife into my leg. But it’s not so bad,” I add quickly, to assuage her worries before she spends her good day obsessing over something dumb. “It’s only been a couple of months, so my body is still adjusting to the extra hardware. But everything is getting better every day.”
