SoMa Literary Review

Chemo

By Camincha

Of course we know Jackie Kennedy didn't eat beans and tortillas after each chemo session.

AND WE ALSO know that in November 1993 Isabel Méndez had that horrible operation to remove the cancerous tumor from her lower colon and then session after session of chemo.

Alma had tried to caution her. She had started to say… Sitting at the kitchen table had pointed to the graphic details in the pamphlet Isabel had received from the doctor. Ghastly! How her body was going to be cut open. Alma feared for her friend.

They had been neighbors for ten years. Isabel was seventy, the age Alma 's mother would be, but she died when Alma was fourteen. Isabel's hospitality, her smile, had made it possible for Alma to tolerate the Pacifica weather. The foggy days in June, for heaven's sake! that depressed the heck out of her.

What-you-gonna-do? Isabel would laugh on the phone. Come on, let the computer rest. Come have a cup 'o coffee in my kitchen. You'll see, the sun will come out tomorrow. Alma had learned to trust her predictions. And then would invite Isabel when the sun shone again, how about a glass of lemonade in my backyard?

Coming back to the moment, the impending operation, Alma was overcome with tenderness for her friend. She has to be worn out although it doesn't show for all the layers of fat she carries, specially over her beltline. She does loves to eat, Alma sighed and started again, when you come home from the hospital you have to eat different, change your eating habits. Light meals, at night, especially.

Isabel looked at her. A smile on her lips. Not a broad smile—the sketch of a smile—as in, I’ll be polite. I’ll listen.

It didn't faze Alma . She kept on, drawing from her memory files, from all she had read, heard. Trying to make it short and simple, easy for Isabel to digest. After such an

operation, vegetables and fruits will be the best thing to eat at night. The vegetables steamed, not raw.

Isabel's smile was a real smile now. She liked to hear about what she could eat.

Alma continued. When you eat heavy, she was losing her thoughts, felt frustrated, tried again. When you eat heavy at night. Well, most heart attacks happen at night. Because people go to bed with full stomachs.

Isabel's face was serious now. She was pondering the gravity of the situation. The life-threatening horror, the operation, the long hospital stay that was ahead for her.

Alma was concerned for her, knew Isabel and family loved to eat. All were roly-polys, her husband, divorced son and grandson living with them.

Alma teased her often, the way you feed them! They'll never leave home!

Oh! Come on. I enjoy doing for them. And she smiled please with herself because she felt needed.

And they loved a good full dinner. At night, salads with creamy dressings high in cholesterol, dripping fat. Difficult-to-digest-beans, roast beef, pork chops, fried chicken. For dessert, pan dulce, pie a la mode, cookies that Isabel baked daily by the dozen.

And on top of eating so heavily, lsabel couldn't chew had to swallow everything. She had confided to Alma some months before that after years of neglect had finally started going to the dentist for root canals, extractions and soft, bleeding gums. Now, Alma thought, if that didn't cause it, certainly contributed to her cancer.

Your gums? Alma had said, knowing that the condition is called pyorrhea, when gums become soft, bleed a lot, infections set in. Do they bleed a lot? she had asked.

Surprised by the question, Isabel stared at her for a moment. Yes, well, sometimes. Shifting her eyes to the side she added, my trouble is the teeth are loose in the gums and food gets in there.

Feeling helpless, Alma had remained silent.

ISABEL SPENT THANKSGIVING at the hospital. She was most bitter about it. That day she was fed liquids, for goodness sakes! Intravenously, through tubes in her arms. Actually had tubes up her nose and inserted in every orifice of her body. Even in the center of the incision that crisscrossed her stomach, for drainage. And the healing didn't progressed as the doctors had led her to believe it would.

Isabel came home after the setback that kept her in an extra week. Altogether, two and a half weeks too long. She had lost weight. Thirty pounds. It was that stuff they fed me!!! she growled.

But only two days later Alma was shocked to find her sitting in her living room dressed in sweat suit and loafers. Concerned, she blurted out, what are you doing up?

Isabel quickly answered with relish. Me? I'm fine. I'm strong 'cause I'm eating my own cooking.

What did you eat today? Alma asked.

Isabel recited with an impish smile: For breakfast I had eggs, tortillas, cereal, milk. For lunch a burrito. For dinner potatoes, pork chops...

Alma , not wanting to upset her, said softly, but pork chops... for dinner? Haven't the doctors... ?

No. They say, eat anything you want.

Is too heavy. . . for night time, for supper. Alma was thinking of the pamphlet Isabel had shown her. Those awful true-to-life pictures in living color. The incision that went across the stomach. In her mind she could see her as she had been just a few days ago, full of tubes lying helpless in the hospital bed. And now two days after she comes home... !

Isabel raised her voice defensively, I have to eat, have to keep up my strength, have to keep alive!

The following week Alma found her in blue jeans shirt, heavy socks and her worn-out sneakers. An apron around her waist.

She is now cooking for the family again? Alma worried. Without even thinking, what did you eat today? Oh! she wishes she could erase her words. She dreads what she

is going to hear....

For dinner, I had tortillas and beans and ....

Alma almost fell off her chair. Beans, for ... dinner?

THAT WAS LAST December. This is May. Isabel has been seeing her dentist, has been having chemo once a week and is back to doing all her chores around the house, vacuum, washer and dryer, which means up and down the basement stairs, thirty steps each way. Shopping.

Are you napping after the chemo? Alma asked her.

No. It doesn't make me tired, lsabel answered. Anyway, who has time for napping? And seeing the look on Alma 's face continued, you gotta-do-what-you-gotta-do. I know. I know, the doctor said the same thing. But no… I just come home and go back to my chores. Usually when we get home it's time to start dinner.

And what do you have for dinner after the chemo?

Isabel looked at her as if she didn't understand the question. Then said impatiently, tortillas beans and....

That was it. Alma decided she would never ask again.

ON MAY 19,1994 the headlines hit the world JACKIE KENNEDY DIES.

Nobody expected it. She had been diagnosed in January with cancer. Had had chemo.

She had placed great hope on it and had been reported to say, “It’s not so bad. Chemotherapy is fine."

And after each session, arriving at her New York apartment to the trusting care of her nurse, her family, her domestic help, she would lie down and rest. Then in the late afternoon when told the cook needed to know, what would she like for supper? replied, barely lifting her head from the pillows, “No supper. Just a cup of yogurt."

Everyone said, she went too fast.

Also by Camincha on SoMa Literary Review:

Mi Madre, From the Mouths of Babes, At Night, Warmbodies: Yolanda, Man in the Shadows, Paradise Is Where You Find It, Daydreams, I Don't Write Anymore, What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You, Blue Eyes, I Love This Dress, Blank Pages, Warmbodies, Suburbia, Hope and Justice, The Sorcerer & Pussy cat, pussy cat

Camincha is originally from Miraflores, Lima, Perú. Today she lives in Pacifica and is the author of the novella As Time Goes By.