The Girl With Nine Wigs (23 page)

But that same girl goes to the market in the morning. I see people looking at me; some even tell me they love my hair. From a distance it's all great, but seeing the fright in the saleslady's eyes when I come out of the fitting room and my wig is hanging down the back of my dress is less fun. It jerks me back to that nasty place where my disease scares people off. But that same disease has become such a huge part of who I am.

I see men looking at Bebé's or Pam's sexy blond locks, and I see them thinking about things I would rather not be a part of. I can't help wondering if they would be thinking the same things if it were Sue or Stella sipping green tea here at the bar. Or just me, brown fuzz on display. They don't know me bald. Bald in my bed, bald in the shower, bald in my white dressing gown, bald when my wig slips off as I pull my sweater over my head. What would they say to that? There's so much they don't know about me.

I live in a different world. That's my secret. And I keep it that way, because I don't like to talk about my reality. If I could just say “yeah I have cancer and you, what do you do?” I would but it doesn't work that way. I better hide it. It saves me a lot of disbelieving and scared looks.

Let them think I'm a blond bimbo who paints her toenails scarlet red. That I'm a carefree redhead drinking mojitos. A studious political scientist, as I sit in the library amid books with my hair pulled back. Let them think that's who I am. It's all partly true, but really, I'm just a girl looking for love.

 

TUESDAY, MAY 2

“
S
OPHIE!
S
OPHIE!”
A
N ANNOYING
nurse is shouting in my ear.

I open my eyes. Mom is sitting next to me.
Wow, I was really out of it.
Quite pleasant, that anesthetic. I hold my gaze on my mother until she comes back into focus. Suddenly I see her as she was two years ago. Her hair is gathered up into a messy bun, like it was then. She seems younger, less worried, and more herself. She's beautiful.

“How are you feeling?” asks the nurse.

“Like I want to sleep some more.”

“That's fine. No pain?”

“No.” I push myself upright and look for my bump. No more bump. Welcome to my body, strange dent. “Where did it go?”

The nurse brings out my port-a-cath. I've never seen it before. It looks different than I had imagined; plastic and white, not as sci-fi as I had imagined. I could have gotten it removed a little earlier but didn't feel any rush. Too sentimental.

“Can I keep it?”

 

THURSDAY, MAY 4

“
I
'M SORRY, GIRLS,
but this just won't be enough. You need about a kilo per person; you lose quite a lot after peeling.”

Annabel looks at the twenty white asparagus in her hand. Well, that's that. The scale shows exactly 1.3 kilos, and according to her mother, Eva, that's 700 grams short.

The asparagus are in season again. And this year I can comb my hair. It's dark and about two inches long, with a bit of a curl.

Annabel and I walk out, back to the vegetable grocer.

 

FRIDAY, MAY 5

S
IS HAS COME TO SEE
us for a few weeks. She strokes my arm with her soft fingertips, down to my wrist and then back up. She holds still at my scar. We're lying so close together that our foreheads touch. So close that Hong Kong feels only a wink away.

She tells me about the beautiful islands of the city where she now lives, about how they house so many people in such little space, how she feels the skyscraper she lives in moving when the weather is stormy. She tells me about the job she found and her bitchy boss, about a friend who won a marathon in the Gobi Desert, about delicious fried eggplant swimming around in a big bowl at a Chinese restaurant, about a market called the wet market and the horrible way turtles are treated, about how the Chinese are so much smaller than she is but still always seem to block her way. About hiking in the New Territories, how I can't imagine the beauty, hours of jungle and then a clear blue bay to dive into at the end of the trail. About a Chinese girl named Lucienne who she met at a dinner party and who I should meet.

She looks and sounds so grown-up. Living a grown-up life with her boyfriend in a faraway city, wearing elegant suits and heels. Her life sounds like a dream to me. And it confuses me. What am I doing here when the world is out there? But which world? Hadn't I just decided that my world is here, in between my loved ones?

Whatever it is, I can't wait to go and see it all myself.

 

FRIDAY, MAY 12

PINK RIBBON IT SAYS
on the bracelet I've just slipped over my wrist. In the bookstore we pass a pile of books on the way to the thrillers and bestsellers.
Help, My Wife Is Pregnant!
I read.

“That's supposed to be good, too, but I don't particularly want to read it.” Chantal walks straight on to another pile of books, one without pregnancies, ovarian tubes, or bibs. She must feel so lonely in a room like this with so many stories. Stories about falling in love, getting married, having babies, growing old. For her this is all past tense.

We have a drink on the terrace of the Café Pilsvogel. As I pluck at my pink bracelet I realize I'm missing my yellow one. Lost yet another. Yellow stands for a lot: Marco, Salvatore, and Lance. Pink is for Chantal, trapped in a body full of cancer. I won't lose this one; I made sure to get the smallest size.

Chan is drinking wine; I'm having tea. Chan has a great tan and beside her I look almost see-through. But she's riddled with cancer and I'm clean. As I work through the foodplatter in front of us, Chantal tells me she's been having a hard time seeing the point lately. Her cynical tone permeates everything she says, whether it's about foodplatters, doctors, or love.

“Nothing is fun anymore. I don't know what's wrong, but when I wake up all I want to do is go right back to sleep. Everyone thinks I'm having a great time because I spend every day sitting in bars laughing and joking around, but I'm only there because, really, I'm all alone.”

I take another bite.

“In ten years' time—if I make it that far—I won't be able to use my arm, the doctors told me. From the radiation.”

“Oh, well, luckily you won't be around by then,” I say.

“Sure you won't have a glass of wine?” she asks.

“No, thanks.”

“You know, I've been having the worst headaches lately. Sometimes they keep me up at night.”

“Are you worried?”

She shrugs. “I don't know. A few weird things happened this week.”

“Like what?”

“My friend Ellen came around last night, and when I went to open the door to let her in, I forgot how to turn the key. The same thing happened on the toilet. I forgot how to flush.”

“That could get dirty.”

Chantal doesn't laugh. Neither do I. “Have you gone to see your doctor yet?”

“She's on vacation.”

“So what, she has colleagues, doesn't she?”

“Yes, she does. But I'm seeing her on Thursday, I'll just ask her then.”

“Chan, that's a week from now, why don't you go before then?”

“I'll see how it goes.”

 

SATURDAY, MAY 13

I
T'S EVENING AND MY PHONE
rings. Chantal.

“Hey, honey, how is your headache doing?” I ask.

“Not good. It got really bad last night and I've been in the hospital all day. I rang Ellen and we drove over here straightaway. Waiting, waiting, you know how it is.”

“And?”

“Nothing. They don't do any scans on Saturday, so I have to wait until Monday.”

“They won't do an MRI?”

“I guess not.”

“Do you want me to come over?”

“No, thanks, I'm completely exhausted. I'm going to take a shot of morphine and go to bed.”

“All right. I'll call you tomorrow. Sleep well.”

 

SUNDAY, MAY 14

I
CALL
C
HANTAL IN THE
afternoon. No answer. I call again. Still no answer. An hour later I call again and Ellen picks up. Something's wrong.

“Hi, Ellen, this is Sophie. How's Chan?”

Silence, hesitation. “Sophie, Chan isn't feeling so great, she'll call you back later on this week. Okay?”

That's a bad sign. “Shit. Can I come by?”

“Well, we're just leaving.”

“To go to the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Shall I meet you there?”

“There's not much point. All she can do is vomit. She feels really bad.”

“Shit.”

“Why don't you take my number? You can always call me.”

As I take down her digits I feel my first tears for Chan fall onto the piece of paper. For Chan, who is dying. Right now? In a few weeks? Months? Years? Complete helplessness
.
I've never felt that so strongly before. Now I'm the one sitting next to the bed. So much has changed again so fast. I decide to go to the hospital right away.

Within thirty minutes I arrive at the hospital, sweaty, puffing, in distress. In front of the entrance are two benches. I sit down on one of the benches and cry in silence. It's six thirty
P.M.
and the sun is shining, but I don't feel anything. I'm wearing my winter coat.

You would think that I would be used to all this by now. That I would know what she needs to hear and what she doesn't. But I have no clue. Should I even be here? Should I act cool or be more like Chan and make jokes?

At the foot of her bed, I watch how she slowly slips away, and I have no idea what to do. There's less and less of Chan, and more and more of cancer. Why is it that she's dying and I'm not? Is it just dumb luck? It bothers me that people who have no idea say that the right attitude will get you through. What would they say now?

 

MONDAY, MAY 15

T
WO THINGS ON THE SCHEDULE
for today: my scan at nine
A.M.
and then on to Chan's hospital, just to be with her, to make stupid jokes that don't make us laugh anymore.

As I slide under the machine I think about my prognosis and Chan's. “Wake up and smell the coffee”—that's what they call this feeling. That's how it feels to see your friend hanging over the toilet after you've been floating on air for a few months.

“Hey, look who it is!” In the hospital, Esther snaps shut the file she's working on and grabs mine, which is about a foot thick.

“Love your hair like this.”

“Cool, right? All my own, with a little help from L'Oréal,” I tell her. I decided to dye my short coupe blond and to leave my wigs home. She asks after all the new gossip. I smile and give her the rundown of the latest developments in my life as a single girl and debuting author.

Dr. L approaches, but not to join in our conversation. He's here to check up on my body, not my hair. Like a real doctor, Dr. L isn't easily distracted.

“How do you feel?” he asks me.

“Good.”

“No complaints? Stabbing pains, tingling?”

“No.”

“Are you having your scan now?” Dr. L might make my appointments, but I keep track of them.

“No, just had it. So, I'll see you tomorrow?”

“Let's not put that off. I'll fit you in.”

“Great.”

“I like your hair like that.”

“Thanks.”

*   *   *

On my way to Chantal's room I pass by the morgue.

Scary, huh? That I'll be down here someday?
Chantal's words still give me goose bumps. What idiotic architect planned this hospital, anyway?

In the chemo ward all the women have short hair, I fit in perfectly. There are some baldies and here and there a wig or a head scarf. Chantal has the thickest and longest hair of them all; cancer has a very good sense for irony. She's on the fourth floor, wing C, room 1. The card slipped into her door reads
EMERGENCY
.

She is lying in bed. Her friend Ellen sits next to her. I imagine the loneliness she must be feeling because she'll be the first to go. She punctuates my thoughts by puking up her breakfast.

“Show Sophie the magazine,” she says to Ellen.

Her friend hands me a glossy magazine. “Page sixty-four,” she says.

I turn the pages. A glowing Chantal, with the headline
I HAVE TO LIVE THIS LIFE TO THE FULLEST
. Chan and her life philosophy in the spotlights. Cancer really does sell.

Chantal Smithuis (34) is terminally ill. She is expected to die from breast cancer within two years. She wants to give a voice to all those women who don't make it. And to tell us how, to her own surprise, she is happier than ever.

I look past the magazine pages to the sick girl lying in bed, drugged up with morphine and dexamethasone.
Some happiness.
I speak to her in a soft voice. She answers in a slow, rasping whisper.

“This is what I was afraid of. Being admitted to
this
hospital.” She's in the serious-cancer-patient hospital now. Although Chantal has been undergoing treatment at this hospital for a while, she has never been admitted overnight. “The beginning of the end,” she mumbles.

I stay quiet, robbed of all my words. Ellen goes to get some fresh air. The room smells of chicken broth from the plastic cup that sits next to her hospital bed. She can't keep it down. A continuous cycle of swallowing, heaving, and vomiting. Bile and exhaust fumes from the helicopter flying around in her head for the past three days. Thank God she has a room to herself.

When the curtain opens we look up. A worried-looking face appears; wrinkled forehead, middle-aged. On his name tag is written a name and “neurologist.” A nurse behind him. The neurologist shakes our hands one at a time. Then his hand moves to Chantal's shoulder, where it stays.