OneHate Happens
I mightve broken the official Guinness World Record for longest sulk in history. It started at 3:30 PM on Friday, as soon as I stepped off the schoolbus on the corner by my house in Short Hills, New Jersey. I dragged myself home and sank into the couch in what we called the den. The epic mope continued, unabated, until Sunday afternoon.
“Why dont you call someone?” asked Judy, my mom.
She didnt know that I had attempted to scrounge up plans.
“Hello, Mrs. Allen,” I said when Id called. “Its Valerie. Is Amy there?”
Muffled sound of the mouthpiece being palmed. Then Amys mom came back on the line. “Im sorry, shes at her cousins in Connecticut for the weekend.”
“Hello, Mrs. Bernstein,” I tried next. “Is Brenda there?”
“One second,” she said. The white noise of being put on hold filled my ear. Then, crackle, she came back on the line and said, “Sorry, Brenda went to the movies with her dad.”
I could almost see Brenda standing next to her mother, nodding approvingly while they conspired to lie to me. In all fairness, Amy and Brenda werent really my “friends” anyway (anymore). Once, wed pricked our fingers with a pin and declared ourselves blood sisters. But that was forever ago, back in sixth grade. We were in seventh grade now. Sixth-grade graduates from the five elementary schools across Short Hills and Millburn Township converged at the bigger, tougher junior high. Old loyalties suddenly irrelevant, the friendship deck was reshuffled. Amy and Brenda—skinny, cute, with shiny hair and clear skin—were among the queens of the new social strata.
I used to be cute. Then, the summer between sixth and seventh grade, my clear skin sprouted spots. My shiny hair frizzed. If Id ever been slender, I was now plump. I saw the changes in the mirror, and hoped no one would notice. They did. Amy and Brenda, fearing contagion, took one look at me in September and froze me out. In the hallways, when I said hi, their eyes turned to glass. It was as if theyd never known me, like we hadnt spent countless sleepovers at each others houses, mingled finger blood, and flashed our incoming pubic hair.
While twisting in the precarious social state of “between cliques,” I hadnt yet convinced a new crew of like-minded teen misanthropes to take me in. Calling Amy and Brenda that Sunday was an act of masochistic desperation. But the only thing worse than being snubbed by girls who hated me was hanging around at home.
My epic sulk tableau—girl flung on a couch, arm draped over face to hide the sorrow—didnt inspire Moms pathos. If shed had her way, Id be dropping and giving her twenty, or on the exercise bike, or chased up a tree by wild dogs, anything that burned calories.
“What are Brenda and Amy doing today?” she asked, looking down at me on the couch.
As far as she knew, my social standing was the same as last year, when Id been popular. I didnt dare tell her that my perilous fall from grace had been like stepping off the Empire State Building blindfolded. Id have sooner appeared on the cover of Seventeen magazine than tell Mom how right she was, that being ten pounds overweight had made me lonely and miserable, just as she predicted. Mom had been sounding the alarm for a while already, putting me on diets, weighing me weekly, yelling when I stole into the pantry for junk food that my scrawny older sister and athletic younger brother could scarf at will.
Even in her bleakest visions, Mom couldnt have dreamed just how bad things were for me at school. Not only had I been rendered invisible by my former friends, but a cabal of boys had chosen me as their favorite target of abuse. They circled me in the halls, knocked my books to the floor, snarled “beast” in my face. They oinked and mooed at my back. The bus trip to and from school? A hell ride of ridicule during which one or two boys could rally thirty kids to chant “pig” at me in unison. I swear sometimes the bus driver joined in. No wonder Amy and Brenda had dumped me. Associating with me would be a case of beast by association.
“I cant take another minute of you sulking on the couch,” said Mom, her impatience escalating by the minute. “Do something! Go run around the block.” When Mom reached the apex of frustration and flew into a rage that would have her screaming and crying for hours, my dad, Howie, called her Judy Black. By Sunday afternoon, two full days into my mope, Mom had reached Judy Gray levels. And the storm clouds were darkening.
“Whats this?” she asked, spotting the cellophane wrapper of a Twinkie Id stashed under a couch pillow. Crinkling it in her hand, she said, “Is this what youve been doing all day? Sneaking food?”
For her information, I had been very busy, actually, attending to important matters. If only steamy fantasizing melted fat. In my mind, adorable Carlo had been slipping his hot pink tongue between my parted lips for hours. Carlo was a new kid at school, still an outsider. Despite his golden nimbus of curls, his long tan legs and dimples, he was, like me, in need of friends. Maybe he hadnt sorted out yet that I was a total pariah. Or, if he had, maybe hed see beyond the Godzilla label and notice me, maybe like-like me, or even better, French kiss the bejeez out of me.
It was lust at first sight—and a geographically convenient one at that. Id seen the moving truck in front of the white house at the end of my block in late August. Carlo appeared on the street on his ten-speed later, like Apollo on a sun chariot, riding to New Jersey to choose a mortal mate. Even though Id barely spoken to him, I felt a rightful claim. Carlo lived so close. Hed practically been delivered to my doorstep. He was my reward, a taste of bliss to counterbalance the steady diet of humiliation I dealt with at school, and at home from Mom.
With a heroic grunt, I got off the couch. Mom asked, “Where are you going?”
“For a jog,” I announced. All the way to Carlos house. Maybe hed be hanging around outside. Maybe hed wave at me. Id stop to say hello, and we could have an actual conversation. Maybe hed invite me in for a Tab. Or whatever.
I changed into my tube socks with three bar stripes, navy gym shorts with white piping along the sides, a T-shirt from the Club Med in Guadalupe where my family had gone on vacation, and a pair of Pumas. In the late 1970s, America had fallen passionately in love with running. Alas, the innovators at Nike had not yet invented a sports bra. I was already stacked, so I could have used the support. Where Carlo was concerned, I thought my bust would be a boon. I imagined him ogling me as I ran toward him on the street, my feathered wings and boobs bouncing in sync, braces gleaming in the afternoon sun, his eyes popping, jaw dropping with dumb desire.
I hit the road, and was winded and gasping within half a block. But still, I pushed on. Dad, a Jim Fixx devotee, told me that running-related pain could be overcome. “Its mind over matter,” he said. “If you focus, you can train yourself to ignore the pain, or pretend it isnt there.”
Rounding the bend, I could see the post-and-rail fence that enclosed Carlos yard. I sensed him before I saw him. Just as Id hoped, he was outside, sitting on the fence, his long legs dangling temptingly. But he wasnt alone. Two girls were with him. Their three heads turned in my direction. Amy was on the fence to his right. Brenda sat on his left. Apparently, they were not in Connecticut or at the movies, but together, at the house of the beautiful boy whod arrived via golden chariot to my doorstep. A hitch in my bouncing breast, I realized with defeat that I hadnt been the only girl at school to notice Carlos blond lanky dimpled adorableness.
Theyd seen me. I couldnt turn back, run home, and hide. I had to keep moving forward. The adrenaline rush of seeing Carlo, and then the flood of cortisol—the fight-or-flight hormone—upon seeing Amy and Brenda, fired my pace to double time. Since I couldnt get away fast enough, I needed the speed, which, granted, was a relative crawl.
Feeling their eyes on me, I clenched my stomach muscles and wished I could hold my boobs to keep them from flopping. Carlo cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled at me, “Keep running!” The peal of Amy and Brendas laughter rang in my ears—red hot with mortification—far longer than I could actually hear it.
Huffing and puffing, I made a loop on the next block and ran straight home, up the stairs, and into my room. Mom was there, sitting on my bed, a pile of Hostess wrappers—some of them weeks old—on my blanket. Id been outside for all of ten minutes. She must have come up to my room the second I left and begun her search. Shed found my detritus quickly. Not gifted (yet) at subterfuge, Id merely crammed the wrappers into the back corner of my desk drawer.
She was crying, in Judy Black mode. “Why are you doing this to me?” she asked, crinkling the wrappers. Mom believed my weight was her problem, and that my stealing food was a crime I perpetrated against her. The truth? It totally was. I was a spiteful little sprite, every bite was a fuck-you aimed at her. But I still didnt want to get caught! That would mean a marathon session of accusations, ranting, raving, with Mom asking, “Do you want to be fat and miserable your whole life?”
Which was exactly what I got. All the while, I stood there in my shorts and tube socks staring at the daisy-shaped rug on the floor. When she finally left, I barricaded my bedroom door with a wicker armchair loaded down with stuffed animals. The door had no lock, sadly. I was terrified shed barge back in (“… and another thing!”) to serve me a second helping. I could hear her crying downstairs in the kitchen. Dad was comforting her, assuring her that she was a good mother. He would have said anything—and often did—to get her to stop crying. Managing Moms erratic emotions was a big job. Dad quickly ran out of comforting words, none left over for me.
I sat at my desk and found my red corduroy journal in the top drawer, right next to where the wrappers had been wedged. Instead of rummaging for trash, Mom could have opened the journal. If she had, shed have known exactly how much I appreciated her efforts to make me thinner/happier.
As an adolescent diarist, my anger was too raw and intense to own (in an Oprah sense), so I filtered the hate through an alter-ego character named Sal. She was the author of gloomy free-verse poetry and first-person howls of throbbing black angst. Lately Sal had branched out into third-person narrative, curdling stories of revenge against the boys who teased her and the girls who laughed along. Sal was bloodthirsty and savage. Nemeses were decapitated, defenestrated, eaten by zombies, vaporized by toilet bombs.
Just now, while sprinting home, I had plotted Sals revenge against Carlo. A massive sinkhole opened directly beneath his post-and-rail fence, swallowing him, along with poor, unlucky Amy and Brenda (they picked the wrong day to lie about being in Connecticut and at the movies). In her togs, Sal jogged to the crumbling edge of the hole and peered down to see the three of them clinging to exposed tree roots, screaming and begging for help. Sal fed a rope down to them, yard after yard, still out of their reach, until—oops!—the end slipped through her fingers. She watched it shimmy into the pit of endless darkness, cupped her hands around her mouth, and hollered, “Sorry about that … that … that … that…” The apology echoed and faded, just like Carlo, Amy, and Brendas futile cries for help.
Heh. The tale of vengeance had put wings on my Pumas for the loop home. But when I took out my journal to write it down, I was inspired to draw a self-portrait instead. I studied my reflection in the mirror that hung on the wall in front of my desk and put ballpoint Bic to paper.
I drew a reasonable likeness, with the center-part hairstyle, oval face, braces, and spots. One eye was Picasso-esque, larger and lower than the other. My nose was just an open triangle. The lips tight and straight. I would not be winning any junior artist awards, for sure. But I managed to capture a striking blankness, a void of emotional expression. The flat, intentionally two-dimensional quality represented my new ideal, a goal, the face I vowed to show the world from that day forward.
Mind over matter. I would train myself to ignore the pain and/or pretend it didnt exist. That was, it seemed to me, the only way I could possibly lurch forward, take another single step. If, by force of will, I could somehow hide my hurt and anger from those who inflamed it, if I showed no weakness, Id win. Id best them all.
Mom, and her constant criticism.
Dad, for not defending me and giving all his attention to Mom.
My sister, for being thin and perfect.
My brother, for being my moms obvious favorite.
The boys who tormented me.
The girls who rejected me.
None of them would ever know how deeply their words and actions cut. Theyd never see me wince. Id show nothing but blank ambiguity. My enemies would wonder, “Does she even care?” while I secretly wished them dead and dismembered. Years before Lady Gaga was born, I designed a poker face—cockeyed and two-dimensional—that would be my shield, protecting and preserving my dignity, which was all I thought I had left.
I made that vow as an adolescent in an emotional crisis. Upholding it for decades wasnt the brightest idea. But secreting my anger and hate became habitual, natural. I was good at it, too, and prided myself on being, for the most part, unflappable. That drawing was the foundation upon which I built my identity. I would be the girl, and then the woman, who played it cool.
I captioned the portrait, “Me, 12.”
* * *
During a recent bout of insomnia, I caught Woody Allens Manhattan on late-night cable and laughed at his classic line, “I cant express anger. Thats my problem. I internalize everything. I just grow a tumor instead.”
My psychic friend Mary T. Browne would probably say that it was no coincidence I happened to turn on the TV that night, at that hour, to that channel, to catch that line. It was prescient, to say the least.
My dad, Howie, a retired nephrologist, got tough with me in mid-April of 2009, telling me that Id put off a colonoscopy for long enough. I was forty-four. Hed just had his every-five-year probe, which had yielded a precancerous polyp. Since his mother, and my grandmother, Edith Frankel, suffered four bouts of cancer in her life—including two colon cancers—Dad had been urging me for years to get my ass to a gastroenterologist. In a spring-cleaning fit of appointment making, I scheduled the screening.
Let me just say, my colonoscopy was a joy from beginning to end (as it were). The day before, I couldnt eat. In lieu of food, I had to down a gallon of “Nu-Litely,” a sodium-flavored liquid best choked down with one hand holding the nose. This salty beverage made me “go,” a polite euphemism. (Ladies dont like to type the words shit and storm.) The instructions were to chug eight ounces of Nu-Litely every ten minutes for three hours, which had me going, and going, all night long.
When I arrived at the hospital for the procedure, I was instructed to leave a urine sample, which they would test for pregnancy. But I couldnt. The Nu-Litely had completely dehydrated me. The anesthesiologist refused to treat me unless I squeezed out a few drops. See, if a pregnant woman receives a dose of the knockout drug Propofol, the growing fetus is in danger of turning into Michael Jackson. God forbid. I swore I was not pregnant. My husband, Steve, had had a vasectomy a few months before. The anesthesiologist didnt care if hed had his dick cut clean off. If I couldnt pee in a cup, she said, the colonoscopy was off.
It was hard not to hate her. She was holding up the doctors schedule and compounding my anxiety. I spent an hour in the restroom in my paper gown, my finger under warm water, thinking of babbling brooks and trickling streams. The nurses hooked me up to an IV with a saline drip. Three pints later, no go. I was so self-conscious about not being able to pee (“never seen this before,” remarked a few of the nurses), my fear of the procedure, and what might be found that Id put an emotional block on my bladder.
Luckily, the day before the procedure, Id had some pretesting. According to the nurses notes—which took an hour to locate—yesterdays preggers test had been negative. The anesthesiologist reluctantly agreed to proceed. Then she demanded to know if Id done anything that could have resulted in a pregnancy the night before, when Id been sequestered in the bathroom, weeping softly, for eight hours.
Id already told her that Steve was shooting blanks. But I said, “My husband is very turned on by explosive diarrhea. Somehow, even in my weakened state, I managed to fend him off.”
To shut me up, she injected the Propofol, which was blissfully effective. I could see what Michael Jackson loved about it. I was out. I woke up later to see my mom standing next to my bed in the recovery room, the nurses telling her the hilarious story of my not being able to pee in a cup. Of course, as soon as I heard that, I felt every drop of the three pints of liquid theyd pumped into my blood. I slurred that I needed the bathroom immediately (because I hadnt seen enough of a toilet in the last thirty hours).
Mom had come to Brooklyn Heights—where I lived, and had the procedure—from Short Hills to escort me home from the hospital. Steve couldnt be there himself, because he had to watch Lucy, our younger daughter, ten, at the annual May Day spring dance at her school. Id been going to May Day dances since our older daughter Maggie, thirteen, was in preschool. This was the first one Id missed in ten years. The first time Id missed any school recital, concert, game, or dance.
Nice guy, the doctor. Mid-fifties, Jewish. He greeted Mom and me formally, as if he hadnt just snaked a camera up my rear. “I found and removed a three-centimeter polyp,” he said, “from your sigmoid rectum [!!]. Its already been sent down to the lab. Our pathologists will look at it and have a report in a couple of weeks. I can give you color pictures of it, too, if youd like.”
“Lovely addition to any family album,” I said, still a bit groggy from the drugs.
Mom, always quick to assume the worst, asked him, “What was your initial reaction when you saw the polyp? Did you think it was a tumor?”
“I really cant say,” he said. “It was flat, took some time to get it all. Just be glad its out. You told me that your paternal grandmother had early-onset uterine cancer and two colon cancers, correct?” Mom and I nodded. “And your father recently had a precancerous polyp removed?” Mom and I nodded again. “We should test your polyp for Lynch syndrome markers,” he said.
Lynch syndrome. It was an easy name to remember. After Googling, I quickly learned that Lynch syndrome was a genetic mutation of proteins that killed abnormal cells in the colon, rectum, bladder, ureter, uterus, ovaries, pancreas, brain, and several other organs. If my family turned out to have the aptly named syndrome, my likelihood of getting one or more of these cancers was sky-high.
I also learned—a little Google could be a dangerous thing—that “flat” polyps, like mine, were more likely to be cancerous than not. I wouldnt know for sure until the pathology report came in.
The very next day after my anal intrusion, I went to the gynecologist to have a hysteroscopy—or a camera inserted through my cervix for a sightseeing tour of my uterus, another high-risk organ for Lynch syndrome. Two scopes in two days. I learned a lot—mainly, that all my secret places were sprouting growths.
The doctor inserted the scope, and I watched the postcards from my womb appear on the computer monitor next to the exam-room table. “What is that?” I asked, pointing at what looked like a flesh-colored stalactite.
My doctor—nice guy, mid-fifties, Jewish—said, “Good eye. Its a polyp. Oh, look at that. Wow! Theres a whole nest of them! Lets get some pictures…”
I turned white. The nurse asked me if I was okay. I wondered if anyone had ever fainted with a camera in her vag before.
My gyn scheduled a procedure to have my uterus scraped clean of bumps, which took place less than a week after the colonoscopy, in the hospital operating room under anesthesia (more Propofol, yay!). Before that procedure, I had no problem peeing into a cup.
I could expect both pathology reports around the same time. Itd be another week of waiting and worrying.
* * *
Friends told me to be optimistic.
My attitude, though, was completely irrelevant to the outcome. My tissue samples were on a slide in some lab. Wishing and hoping would not magically alter their cellular structure. The polyps contained either normal or abnormal cells. If I cried myself to sleep every night, or watched Zoolander 24/7, it wouldnt matter. I resolved to ignore the scary situation until the results were in. But the strategy backfired. In a famous psych study from the 1980s, a shrink asked a group of subjects to ring a buzzer every time they thought of a white bear. He asked a second group of people not to think about a white bear, and ring the buzzer if they did anyway. Which group rang the buzzer twice as often? The “dont think bear” group.
I was a “dont think polyp” subject group of one. Despite my resolve, my thoughts returned to the image I saw on the computer screen. The gynecologists comment—“Oh, wow, a whole nest of them”—echoed in my ears.
It bears mentioning that I had previous experience waiting for pathology reports and grim doctors delivering bad news. My first husband, Glenn, Maggie and Lucys birth father, died of cancer nine years ago, when he was thirty-four. Our season in hell began in June 2000 with a sharp pain in Glenns back that wouldnt go away. He had an MRI that revealed metastases along his spine, multiple brain lesions, and the primary tumor in his lung. After five months of ineffective treatment, he died in November 2000. I became a thirty-five-year-old widow with two young kids. Lucy was still in diapers; Maggie, a kindergartener.
Glenn was a great man, and a good patient. He didnt complain, even if he was kept waiting on a gurney for an hour in a hospital corridor before radiation treatment. He rarely got upset about his disease, save for a few nights that were too sad and private to write about, ever. Between diagnosis and death, I couldnt recall an instance when Glenn got mad or raged at fate, God, or bad luck. By nature, he wasnt an angry person.
By nature, I was an angry person. Id been angry for thirty years. With increasing frequency, my poker face was cracking. I screamed “Douchebag!” out of the car window at drivers who cut me off. I hyperventilated on the phone with tech support, and had to hang up and run a mile to calm down. Judy Black style, I yelled at Maggie for leaving a major homework assignment till the last minute, and actually heard myself say, “Why do you do this to me?” Once, my friend Nancy checked her BlackBerry a few times while we were out to dinner. I said, “Thats rude, selfish, and annoying. How about this, next time we go out, Ill bring a book and sit here reading while you talk about your problems.” It was a snide overreaction that left us both stunned. We didnt talk for a month afterward.
Having seen so many episodes of House, I knew that emotional symptoms are often important diagnostic clues. My hysteria of late might have had something to do with my bumpy womb, or hyster in the Latin. My bilious state of mind could be related to the clogged intestine. But the bumps had been removed. The hate, however, remained.
* * *
The pathology reports were mixed.
Uterine polyps: Benign.
Rectal polyp: Abnormal cells found. The official diagnosis was carcinoma in situ, or Stage 0 cancer. The malignant cells were lazily lounging around, biding their time before rampaging throughout my innards. If Id waited a year to have the colonoscopy, my Stage 0 mass would have gone rogue.
The GI doctors face was more solemn than grim when he delivered the news in his office. “We also found microsatellite instability makers,” he said. “Its likely your family does has Lynch syndrome.” He described what I could look forward to, should the genetic mutation be confirmed, pending additional tests. Id undergo annual screenings of my bowel as well as semiannual probes of my stomach and urinary tract. Maggie and Lucy, who had a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting the mutation from me, should start getting colonoscopies at thirty. A nonsmoker, Glenn had been told his lung cancer was a “fluke.” That didnt fill me with comfort, considering the girls chances on either side of their genetic draw.
“The risk of uterine cancer for women with Lynch syndrome is sixty percent. The ovarian cancer risk is four times that of the general population,” Dr. Guts warned gently. “Screening tests for those body parts are unreliable. And since theyre particularly bad cancers to get, most experts recommend prophylactic hysterectomies for Lynch syndrome women at forty.”
My female bits were four years past their expiration date.
Not that I planned on using my uterus again, but I wanted to hang on to it just the same. As for the ovaries, which I was greedily milking for hormones, I was loath to part with them.
“Surgical menopause,” I said. “Ill grow old overnight.”
“Hysterectomies are controversial,” he said. “Some women decide not to have the surgery.” To help me make an informed decision, Dr. Guts gave me the contact information for a famous geneticist at the renowned Major Cancer Center in Manhattan. “Hes done a lot of research on Lynch syndrome and can guide you better than I can,” he said.
I felt handed off. “Ill call him.”
“In the meantime,” he said, “eat lots of fruits, vegetables, lean protein, and whole grains. Exercise at least three times per week for thirty minutes.” It was advice that, in my lifetime of dieting, I had never heard before.
I must have looked upset. “How are you feeling about all this?” he asked.
“I feel … angry,” I said.
“Understandable,” he replied.
“Im finding it hard not to hate everyone,” I said, opening up. “My friends annoy me. My kids drive me crazy. My husband snores, really loud. He disappears to the bar for hours and comes home late for dinner. Im a writer, and when…”
“A writer, really? Anything Id know?” he asked, suddenly brightening, which I found irritating as hell.
“Do you read womens magazines?” I asked. “Like to stay current on secret sex positions and miracle pore minimizers?”
“Um, no,” he said.
“As I was saying, when Im expecting a check from a magazine and its late, I want to punch in the mailbox. When I email my editor about it and she doesnt reply, I want to throw my computer out the window.”
“I see.”
“I even hate my cats. They clawed my lilac to death. I raised it from a tiny shoot. I really loved that bush,” I said wistfully.
He nodded, made a note in his chart, and said, “Id also strongly urge you to find a way to reduce stress.”
Doctors orders: The hate in me just had to come out.
Copyright © 2011 by Valerie Frankel