Positively Beautiful

by Wendy Mills

  “You asked me how I got cancer, and that was actually a very good question. After Memaw died, my doctor decided to test me for something called a BRCA gene mutation.” She pronounces it brackah. “The BRCA gene is responsible for suppressing tumors in breast tissue, and when it doesn’t work right, when it’s mutated … well, it makes a person prone to breast cancer. Me having cancer so young, and then Memaw dying of ovarian cancer … it just made sense for me to get tested. I did and I was positive for the BRCA gene mutation. My body doesn’t know how to fight off cancer in my breasts. That’s why I got cancer at such a young age the first time, and why it’s back in the other breast now. We think Memaw probably had it too.”

  She looks at me like I’m supposed to get something.

  I don’t.

  “Memaw had it? But she had ovarian cancer. I don’t get it.”

  “If you have a mutation in the BRCA gene, you are also prone to ovarian cancer. While Memaw never got tested for the gene mutation, it’s pretty likely she had it and passed it down to me. We’ll never know for sure, though.” She pauses, studying my face, then she sighs and continues. “There are many mutations of the BRCA gene, but I have one that is usually seen in people of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, which is unusual because we’re not Jewish. I know that my grandfather, your great-grandfather, came from Poland during World War II, so maybe that’s where it came from and he passed it down to Memaw. I don’t know. We’ll probably never know. All we know is that I inherited a gene mutation that makes it more likely that I’ll get cancer.”

  It’s not like I’m stupid. All this talk of ancestors passing down faulty genes finally sinks in. “Wait a minute, wait a minute …” My voice is shaky and my chest feels like it is pumped up full and tight with hot air. “You and Memaw … Does that mean I have it too?”

  Mom pats the bed beside her and I sit, because I can’t stand anymore.

  I get it now. I get why she didn’t want to tell me.

  Mom talks some more about the gene thing, telling me there is a good chance I don’t have it, and anyway I don’t need to worry about it, because it isn’t something I need to think about until I am older, she hated keeping secrets from me, she hopes I’m not mad at her, it’s hard being a mom and making the right decisions, and she loves me so very very much.

  We’re both crying by the end. I hug her knees because she is still in too much pain to hug her the normal way and she strokes my hair and says, “It’s going to be all right, I promise it’s going to be all right.”

  Chapter Nine

  Friday afternoon, I go to a bookstore. Usually I go with Trina, but she’s off with Chaz. I haven’t told her yet about the gene. It’s stupid, but for some reason I was waiting for her to ask what was wrong today at school. Like she’s supposed to be psychic and know. But we’re the Dorkster Twins, so yes, I guess I do expect her to know when something’s wrong with me.

  I grab a caramel macchiato and think about a muffin, and then decide on the muffin, despite the little fat ring I have rolling over the top of my jeans. I wander the aisles, finding the Health section, and flip though the books on breast cancer. Some of them look heavy and serious, some not, like Breast Cancer for Dummies and Totally Pink Mad Libs. I guess some people find breast cancer absolutely hilarious. Or maybe they just need a good laugh.

  Feeling dissatisfied, I find a comfy chair and pull out my laptop. I search “BRCA gene” and come up with a ton of websites. I start reading, and before long I want to throw up.

  Mom says people with this mutated gene are “prone to breast cancer.” She didn’t tell me people who are positive for the BRCA gene can have up to an 80 percent chance of getting breast cancer. How could she have left that out? She didn’t tell me a lot of women who test positive decide to lop off their breasts, and take out their ovaries for good measure, even before they get cancer.

  I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach. I sit, just breathing for a few minutes. A clerk comes by and I must have looked pretty terrible, because she goes, “Honey, are you okay?”

  Just read my fortune cookie, I almost say, and it’s a real bummer.

  “I’m fine,” I say instead, and she nods and moves off.

  Maybe I don’t have the gene. There’s a 50 percent chance I don’t, after all. But I keep thinking about little tumors gleefully growing RIGHT NOW while my stupid mutated BRCA genes run around in circles wringing their hands going I dunno, what do we do?

  I look back at the computer. I’m on a BRCA website, and I notice they have a forum for young “previvors,” which is apparently what they call people with the gene before they have cancer.

  I click on it, and most of the posts are from women in their twenties and thirties. They’re talking about getting their breasts taken off, perfectly healthy breasts, because they don’t want to worry about cancer. Some of them are talking about when to have their ovaries taken out because they also have up to 45 percent chance of getting ovarian cancer. Do I have time to have children? Will I go into menopause?

  I want to throw up again.

  I scroll through the messages back a couple of months, but nobody’s my age. Surely, there’s got to be someone like me out there who is worried about having the gene?

  I sign up using “Thissucks” as my user name. The cursor blinks over the comment section, and then I start typing:

  Life sucks, and then you die.

  Words of a wise Greek philosopher or a 1980s thrash metal band? You decide. That’s how I’m feeling right now. I found out my mom has breast cancer, and now that I may have this stupid BRCA gene that means I might get breast cancer. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to do. I’m sixteen and thinking about whether I’m going to have to cut off my breasts. Should I get tested? My mom says no, not right now, I need to wait. But I can’t stand not knowing. How do you live with that? How do you live your life knowing that you might have an 80 percent chance of getting cancer?

  I hesitate, then stab Send.

  I’m still shaking when I get home. Tiny trembles, aftershocks, that keep quivering along my skin in waves.

  I check on my mom, but she’s sleeping. The pain medication makes her tired.

  Settling down on the couch, I pull up my e-mail and am surprised to see several messages in response to my post on the BRCA website. I’m already starting to feel stupid for posting anything.

  I read through them, most of them from adults giving me encouragement but telling me I can’t get tested until I’m at least eighteen, and really I should wait until I’m twenty-one or even twenty-five, and to put it out of my mind until I’m older. I scroll through these impatiently. Really? I’m just supposed to NOT think about this until I’m at least eighteen? They don’t understand. They’re all ancient. They don’t know what it feels like to be sixteen and find out you might have to cut off your boobs.

  The last is from someone with the screen name “Ashley!!!”

  When I turned eighteen a couple of months ago, my mom told me I could have the BRCA mutation. My mom had breast cancer but is in remission. Her twin sister, my aunt, just died of it. My grandmother died of breast cancer five years ago. I have a little sister who’s going to be finding out in a year she could have this gene mutation.

  I got tested a week after my mom told me. I thought there was no way I could have it. I thought I was invincible. I’m the strong one, I’m the one who takes care of everybody else. I thought it would make my mom feel better to know that I didn’t have it.

  I’m positive. I have the mutation.

  Here’s the thing. I saw a dolphin jump the other day, flying through the air like she thought she could keep on going and fly to the moon. She crashed down in a big splash of water and then she did it again. You could tell she was having a blast. I started thinking: does she think about death? Do animals feel joy because they don’t think about death or because they live with it every day?

  I’m learning how to live with this. It’s not easy, but hey, nothing is.
r />   Chapter Ten

  Mom is sleeping when Chaz and Trina pick me up Saturday night. I wasn’t going to go, I really didn’t want to go, but when Trina called to say Michael had asked whether I was going … I decided to go. Mom spends most of her time sleeping, all doped up with pain medicine, so she won’t even miss me. I want to see Michael again but … couldn’t we just go to the movies or something?

  Trina gives me a Dorkster Twin fist bump as I crawl into the backseat, and Chaz grins at me. He’s dressed all in black, like some sort of ninja warrior. I can tell he really gets off on this exploring stuff. Even Trina has gotten into the spirit of the thing; she’s wearing a camouflage tank top with tight black pants and a wide black belt.

  “Hey,” is all Michael says as he slides into the backseat beside me a few minutes later.

  “Where we going this time?” Trina asks, bouncing up and down in her seat like a little jack-in-the-box. She’s holding Chaz’s hand and he looks proud as a peacock with new tail feathers, as Memaw used to say.

  “It’s an old prison farm in southeast Atlanta,” Chaz says, turning onto Candler Street.

  “You know, I grew up here, and it’s always like, really? when people visit and want to see Peachtree Street and CNN and the Underground and all that. I mean, who cares? This stuff is all so much more real,” Trina says.

  “I didn’t know death and decay was your thing,” I say sourly, and then wish I hadn’t. Trina throws me a hurt look and everyone is quiet for a while.

  I can’t help it. I’m not getting it. And it’s later this time, so it’s going to get dark while we’re there. Trina even packed a picnic basket, and Michael is carrying a cooler. The plan is to hang out at some dark, dank building long past sunset. F-U-N.

  I pat my bag where I’ve stashed my flashlight. I put new batteries in it, and I’ve only checked it, oh, about twenty times. It should work. I’ve also got my camera. I am looking forward to taking some pictures, if nothing else.

  Well, maybe there is something else I’m looking forward to. I glance at Michael out of the corner of my eye. He’s in jeans and a black T-shirt, with a dark blue bandanna over his hair. A tiny skull on a black cord hangs around his neck. The broody thing really works for him.

  He must have sensed me looking at him, because he turns with a stare as dark as coal. “Chaz says your dad left you a ’65 Mustang. You don’t drive it?”

  I like the way he doesn’t do small talk. He says what he wants to say. “It’s not running. It’s pretty cruddy and Mom wants to sell it since it’s taking up space in the garage.”

  “Maybe I can help you with it. I like working on cars,” he says.

  “Sure. I mean, yes. Anytime.” I’m flustered and he can tell. His lip does that upward quirk, and he turns to look out the window. I nurse the small glow inside me.

  “Michael is a genius at cars. Michael is a genius at everything, the jerk,” Chaz says. “He’ll be designing award-winning skyscrapers when he’s twenty-five, watch.”

  Michael shrugs.

  I see Chaz’s eyes in the rearview mirror and I can tell he’s about to say something else, but decides not to.

  Trina chatters away as the roads become increasingly desolate and the trees crowd close. Shadows flicker over the car, and I close my eyes, trying to tell myself, This is going to be all right. Just then, Chaz pulls off the side of the deserted road and jumps out of the car like the Energizer Bunny. Trina gives me a one-armed hug as I slowly get out.

  “You going to be okay?” she whispers. Her breath smells like peppermint and I can tell she’s just chewed a mint. Someone is expecting a kiss. I think about asking her for a mint, then decide not to.

  I nod. No, I’m not sure I’m going to be fine, but once again, I’m here. I can’t just sit in the car. Please, someone, next time, tell me to stay at home.

  We walk down an overgrown road through the trees, and the squat prison buildings come into view. They’re covered with graffiti and kudzu, and surrounded by a parking lot that is almost completely overrun with grass and bushes.

  “A giraffe and an elephant named Maude are buried here somewhere,” Chaz says, gesturing vaguely toward the rolling land around the crumbling remains of buildings. “This used to be the burying ground for circus animals that were too big to cremate.”

  It’s a warmer-than-normal evening, and the cicadas hum as the sun droops in the sky, the shine of its bloom dull and crimson. The faint roll of thunder in the distance vibrates gently in my chest and birds chirp merrily, at odds with the sincere need I feel to whisper.

  Leaves crunch under my feet as I follow the others toward a long white building with barred windows and no roof on the second floor.

  “Some bums caught it on fire a while back.” Chaz shakes his head, like anybody actually cares that half the decrepit old building burned down.

  We enter the building through the front entrance, covered by a cheery portico that not only protects the front door but an abandoned old boat as well.

  Nobody mentions the boat, so I don’t either.

  Inside are large open rooms, framed by banks of windows covered only with bars. Rusted pipes droop from the ceiling, and floor tiles slip and slide under our feet. A few small metal bunk beds lie on their sides and bloated water-stained paperbacks lie open as if waiting for someone to come back and finish reading them. The prison laundry is full of rusty washers and dryers, massive enough for me to crawl inside. A pile of what must have been fifty seat cushions molders in a corner, and thousands of sheets of paper litter the floor.

  I pick one up and read that Thomas West, born November 8, 1956, was admitted into the prison in 1987, in possession of “a wallet and one honest face.”

  I let the paper flutter back to the floor.

  “Check out the art,” Michael says, the first thing he’s said since we entered the building.

  It’s hard to miss the street art. Colorful spray-can paintings cover every available wall, full of big bubble letters and vibrant blues, green, reds, and oranges. Faces peer at us from walls, and strange vivid paintings sprawl the length of entire rooms.

  We stop at the entrance of a long narrow hallway, dark and dripping in the fading light. Someone has painted a man—boy?—dressed all in gray, crouching on the ground clutching his head in his hands. Above his head, it reads “I’m so ronery.”

  “Ronery?” Trina says. “What’s that mean?”

  Chaz laughs, a sputtering hiccuping sound. “It’s from Team America: World Police? He’s trying to say ‘lonely.’ I’m so lonely.”

  Trina slips her hand in Chaz’s, and he pulls her close. I busy myself with my camera. By the time I’ve snapped several shots, Trina and Chaz have moved off.

  Michael is still near me, by a wall. I walk over to him and see the paint is peeling off the wall, erasing the painted squiggles on top and revealing an empty canvas underneath.

  Without speaking, Michael heads down the dark narrow hallway and I follow. At one point, he stops and offers me his hand over a large puddle. The feel of his warm hand sends tingles through me from head to feet.

  We pass cell after cell, tiny rooms only big enough for one person. Each cell has a metal shelf attached to the wall for a bed and a rusty metal table, and some still have toilets.

  Michael heads up a flight of steps, and I hesitate. It’s getting darker, and the stairs look dicey. I debate turning on my flashlight, but instead hurry up after Michael, who is looking at a painting of a puffer fish in the stairwell.

  Upstairs, we go down another hall and Michael stops in front of a cell door.

  “This is my favorite,” he says.

  I step inside the tiny cell. There’s no door, but still it feels creepy. What grabs my attention right away is the picture someone has painted on the wall. It’s a bearded man in an orange prison suit, and the artist has painted him sitting on the metal bunk with his elbows on his knees. Above him are several lines, crosshatched, as if he’s been marking the days he’s been imprisoned.
A dialogue bubble reads “Mama Tried.”

  “I know that one,” I say. “My dad and I used to listen to old country-western music all the time. That’s from a Merle Haggard song. It’s about a kid whose mom tried her best, but he still ended up in prison when he was twenty-one.”

  Michael nods, looking faintly impressed. “I had to look it up. But yeah, that’s what it’s from.”

  I pull out my camera, but the cell is so narrow I have to back up close to Michael to get the shot. He could have moved, but he doesn’t, and I can feel the heat of him. I try to concentrate on the picture, but I’m distracted by his warm breath on the back of my neck. I wish I got a mint from Trina. My skin buzzes from the closeness.

  After taking several shots, I have no more excuse to stand so close to him so I walk over to the back of the cell and examine the green flaky paint that looks like some sort of surrealistic painting, all swirly and textured.

  “My mom never tried one goddamn day in her life,” Michael says suddenly.

  I turn to look at him, surprised by the bitterness in his voice.

  “My mom never wanted me, I don’t think. I mean, it was cool when I was a kid—I was like an accessory—but once I got older, all she cares about is shopping and drinking wine with her friends. I don’t think she even cared that much when my dad died, ’cause she got to spend more time doing what she wanted.”

  Michael looks away. I wonder what it would be like to have your dad commit suicide. I still feel guilty about my dad dying, and I know it wasn’t my fault. Logically, I know that, but it still feels like maybe I did something wrong. But Michael’s dad killed himself. How hard would that be to take?

  “I’m going to get into a school as far away from here as possible, and after I graduate, I’m gone. I feel like that guy.” Michael points at the picture of the inmate. “I’m counting my time, waiting to get out of prison.”

  I don’t know what to say. I hate it when I can’t think of anything to say. He’s opening up to me and I got nothing.