House of Many Gods (23 page)

She took everything with her, his dreams, his silly habits. He was left a man without reason. After that, Nikolai thought only of dying, so full of rage, he wanted to take all of Russia with him. Instead, sleep became the major event in his life. For months he slept twenty hours at a stretch.

Then one day he woke and went into the streets, wanting to tell the world what they had done to her, what they had done to all the damaged children. He bought a new camera. And he began to film again.

W
HEN SHE UNDERSTOOD THAT HER TUMOR WAS MALIGNANT
, A
NA
did not cry. Nor did she eat or sleep much. She became like something from the future. Her surgeon, Dr. Lee, was sympathetic; she did not try for irony. But she shocked Ana with her recommendation. Although the tumor was only a Stage Two growth, she did not advise lumpectomy, but rather removal of the entire breast. Simple mastectomy. A phrase so oxymoronic, Ana laughed out loud. Then she leaned forward with her elbows on the woman’s desk.

“I’m a doctor, too. I read statistics. Survival rates for the two procedures are almost identical, as long as the cancer is caught in the early stages, and as long as it hasn’t spread to the lymph nodes. Which, in my case, it hasn’t. I want a lumpectomy. Afterwards you can blast me with radiation and chemo, to your heart’s content. If the cancer spreads, it will be my responsibility. But I will die in charge of my own life.”

“It’s your choice, Ana, but don’t you see …”

“Believe me, I
have
seen. I will never forget my Aunty Emma’s body after surgery. She was mutilated. Left for dead.”

“That was almost two decades ago. We’ve made enormous progress since then.”

“Well, like you said, Dr. Lee, it’s my life. My choice.”

“I don’t think it’s quite that simple.” She fell momentarily silent, then pointed to Ana’s lab results.

“Please look at these again. You’re right, the cancer has not spread to your lymph nodes. That’s the good news. But, your particular cancer
cells are highly undifferentiated. These are the most aggressive kinds of cells, which means …”

“…  they spread like wildfire.”

“Exactly. Which is why I’m recommending a simple mastectomy.”

She switched on a light box, holding up a chest X-ray and a CAT scan. “This patient chose to have a lumpectomy. She had highly undifferentiated cancer cells, like yours. Eight months later, a simple mastectomy was necessary. Then, the other breast. Within a year, her lungs … her brain …”

After a while, Ana spoke. “All right. Only, please stop calling it a ‘simple’ mastectomy. It isn’t fucking
simple
.”

Dr. Lee switched off the light box. “No. It’s not. And, how well you psychologically survive this is up to you.”

She tried to smile. “So. Do you think it will make me a ‘believer’?”

The surgeon sat down and clasped her hands together on the desk. “Religion doesn’t hurt. Whatever gives you strength, grab it. Use it. Because afterwards, there will be grief. You’ll feel mutilated, ugly …”

She paused, looked out the window, then continued.

“At first you won’t be able to look at yourself naked in a mirror. For a while, maybe years, you won’t even think of men. Then, because you’re a fighter, something will begin to happen. You’ll change your focus from what you lost to what you want to keep. Your
life
.”

Ana tried for humor. “I think I know the drill. Meditation. Exercise. I’ll develop a warped sense of humor, maybe become a full-blown cynic. I’ll give up men. Buy a dog who loves me unconditionally. Maybe take up sky-diving …”

Dr. Lee unconsciously pressed her hand against her own right breast. Ana saw for the first time that it was completely flat.

“Oh, God. I’m so sorry. How did you get through it, Dr. Lee?”

“The hard way. First, lumpectomy, which was too late. Then simple mastectomy. In time I learned to forgive myself. You will too. So many women blame themselves, thinking they should have been vegetarians, avoided caffeine, should have had more orgasms.”

She patted the flat place rather tenderly. “Losing part of your body alerts you to its beauty, its miraculous intelligence—how it goes on functioning without your conscious thoughts. You begin to really love your body. To honor it.”

At the door to the office, Ana turned back. “This may sound unprofessional, even maudlin. But, afterwards I want to see my breast.”

“Of course. Many women ask to see the postop photos.”

“No, Dr. Lee. I mean I want you to … give … me … back … my breast after you remove it.”

The woman stared at her.

“It’s mine. It’s me. I want it back.”

R
OSIE PUSHED HER SUITCASE THROUGH THE DOOR, KICKED OFF
her shoes, and stood barefoot in a
mu‘umu‘u
. In spite of periodic diets, her great height and weight seemed to suck all light and space from Ana’s small apartment. Her beautiful face broke into a smile, showing gleaming, taro-tough teeth. She spread her massive arms, engulfing her.

She’s here. I’m safe
, Ana thought.
Even if I die, I’m safe
.

Then Rosie pulled Ana to her side before a mirror. “My God, look at the size of us. A little tumor doesn’t have a chance.”

Weeks before Ana’s surgery, Rosie had begun to call on all the higher forces in the ritual of
kūkulu kumuhana
. She called on friends and family to fast and pray for Ana. Even her drug-running cousins in Halawa High Security Prison prayed. Now Rosie began her most intensive herbal healing.

“You are educated. You follow the modern ways of healing. That is good. You will do what they say. The surgery, the treatments after. But I am your elder, and now you will listen to me.”

Ana bowed her head. “I will always honor you.”

“From this time forward, we will begin to purify your body. No more whole food which slows elimination and therefore, purification. We will begin to starve the cancer cells. And how? The cancer cells know who they are. They will retreat from healthy cells. The healthy cells know who they are. When it comes time to
‘oki
—cut!—the parting will be clean. We will ‘o
ki i na make
. Cut out death.”

On the first night she walked Ana down to a secluded beach where the sea was mirror-calm.

“Now, cousin, kneel and let your knees remember
kou one hānau
. Your birth sands. Kneel so that
ka mahina hou
, the new moon, can see you are a red-soled girl of Wai‘anae. Let her bathe you from the crown of head to soles of feet, and four corners of the body while you pray.”

Ana knelt so that her toes rested in the sand. Then she opened her mouth and howled, breaking down doors her mind had tried to seal. Entering bright vacuums of pain.

Thereafter, each morning Rosie pounded the aerial root of the
hala
tree, squeezed out the juice and made Ana drink it five times daily. Three times a day she fed her seeds of whole papaya.

“Chew. Swallow slowly. Dwell on the journey of the cleansing seeds.”

At night before Ana slept, Rosie brewed her potent tea from
‘awa
root, the slightly narcotic tea for curing stress and grief. By the fifth day, Ana felt she was floating just above the ground, her body an empty vessel.

“I feel light-headed. Lighthearted. I feel … content.”

“Good. We have cleansed you back to innocence.”

The morning of Ana’s surgery, Rosie was there when they prepped her. And as they sedated her, Rosie bent and pressed her fingers to her eyelids, to her lips, her breast, and her
na‘au
, her gut, which was the heart of the healing mind. As orderlies pushed Ana’s gurney toward the operating room, Rosie followed behind, slapping the walls with ti leaves for safe journey. Her chanting was the last thing Ana heard.

“
Mauli-‘ola
, God of Healing. Hear me now! … 
Ē ho‘i ka ‘iwi I ha‘i I kona wahi iho … A pela no ho‘i I ka ‘i‘o o kona wahi iho … A pela me ke‘a’a olona, e ho‘i lakou me ko … Lakou wahi iho
 …”

Return to its own place the bone that is broken … and so of course, the flesh to its own place … and so, the veins, the arteries, the tendons and the muscles … each to their own places. Merciful God. Hear me now.

W
HEN SHE WAS WELL ENOUGH
R
OSIE TOOK HER HOME
.
P
AU HANA
time, traffic on the freeway crawled, until finally, they reached the coast. Women in crumbling slippers dragged wagons filled with artificial meat. Signs advertising, SPAM SPECIAL. ONE DAY ONLY. And lining the horizon left to right, rusted TV antennas, the unharvested crop of her valley.

They turned up Keola Road, and as tarmac disappeared beneath red dirt, Ana felt a softening—plants reaching out with green spatulate hands as if to take her in. Turning into their driveway, she heard music amplified across the fields, so loud their windshield seemed to vibrate.

Rosie shook her head. “Noah found old records someone left. He’s welcoming you home.”

They flooded from the house, their arms outstretched. Ben, aunties,
everyone. There were times Ana had thought she hated them, their endless tragedies and scandals. Absent fathers, come-and-go mothers, kids left behind like dog packs. She had hated the way the walls seemed to bulge, as if the house itself kept giving birth. She even hated the way her uncles’ fingers, stained with nicotine, left sordid yellow traces on their coffee cups.

But sometimes when she looked at them, there was nothing else. Each elder and child always engaged in some small task that made them unique and important, so that they survived another day with something quietly accomplished. Something that changed them each and all, made them better or worse, proud or ashamed, but left them engraved, and closer. Letting them enfold her now, Ana understood that without this family, her ‘
ohana
, the outside world was nothing.

It had been a drought-filled summer. At night she lay in her girlhood bed feeling the mattress as lumpy as bird bones, but sheets fresh and smelling of wild ginger. The dryness of the land was echoed in the parched, itchy feeling of the stitches across her chest. She squeezed her hands into fists, fighting the urge to scratch them. Instead, she drank Rosie’s
‘awa
tea and let herself relax and drift as one by one, her family appeared and tried to comfort her.

Rosie showed Ana big scars across her buttocks where she had sat on a barbecue grill. “Remember what my mama said. ‘Scars makes us interesting.’ ”

One-armed Ben came, bringing the smell of eucalyptus and kukui leaves. These he had twisted till their juices ran, then wrapped them round his stump when it ached, longing for its arm.

“Leaves help da stump fo’get,” he said, rubbing it briskly. “One day you going put leaves on yo’ chest. I going bless and twist dem fo’ you.”

He talked to her for hours, softly, as if wanting to be overheard, not heard. He spoke with exquisite politeness about her loss, and how to overcome that loss. He said such wise and noble things she could not answer, afraid she would break down.

“Remember, Ana, you get scared, no can sleep.
Waiho kenā I ke ākua!
” Take it to the gods.

At night she heard the family talking extra-loud, and when they slept they snored to beat the band, reminding her they were there for her. When she lay down they all lay down. She wondered if their lives would ever be vertical again.

Tito came, spinning his wheelchair into her room. Up close, his left hand still had an enduring “ear smell” from wiggling his pinkie in his ear
when he played poker. He was wearing a clean white shirt, so that his bronze skin glowed. He struggled to speak “proper” English for her.

“Ana. When I hear you get da Big C, I stood up from dis chair, took four steps, and punched one big hole in da wall. First time I walk in twenty years.”

He took her hands and squeezed them. “You going beat dis thing. You hear? You beat dis, I going walk clear to da highway fo’ you.”

They told her Noah could not come. Always discreet, he didn’t want to cry in front of her. But sometimes late at night he stood outside her window, and blew smoke rings into her room. Rosie’s girl, Makali‘i came. Now thirteen, she had reached the age of defiance and walked around with her shoulders hunched, ignoring everyone. Only Ana gained access to her conversation.

“Mama said you had an operation. You okay?”

The girl had always been devoted to her, and now seemed devotedly awestruck because Ana had her own place in the city. She was going to be a beauty, but just now she seemed timorous and clumsy, slightly overweight. Ana could see the craving for sexual grace, and attention.

“I’m going to be fine. How’s school, Makali‘i?”

“A drag. Everything’s a drag. I want to die.”

“No, you don’t. You want to finish school and come and visit me in Honolulu.”

She nodded vigorously, she smiled. But somehow her eyes did not participate.

Aunty Pua came with her pedantic cleanliness, her face sad and chalky like old eucalyptus leaves. Having forsaken the Christian Bible again, she sat gripping the KUMULIPO, the book of the Hawaiian Hymn of Creation.