My Girls

I have loved my girls ever since I got them, maybe because I don’t have beautiful legs or a JLo butt. I’d like to declare my feelings of femininity come solely from my character, but I am not that evolved. When my girls arrived around the age of thirteen, they felt wonderfully womanly. I’ve loved them ever since. 

They were not too big, nor too small, although twice my girls were rather large. With each pregnancy and nursing, my bra size went from a 36B to a 40D. And while I wasn’t sure my girls could multi-task, they gave me immense, primal pleasure in their new role as literal nurturers to my babies. The new, large size added an element of intrigue for the woman part of me. That is, until they became complicated. One issue was teaching middle school. My homeroom class had thirty-nine students, twenty-eight of whom were boys. During one lesson, with my new bra size, I was leaning over to help a student, when another called my name. I looked up to see Ivan, jaw hanging open, eyes glazed and fixated on my cleavage. I had never had ample cleavage before, so the fact that leaning over produced a profound effect was completely new. It was then that I learned to pay attention to necklines and bend at the knees when helping a student. 

Exercising was another complication. After my first son was born, I was anxious to reclaim my body and go for a run. I put a sports bra over my nursing bra, looking forward to my usual route. But as soon as I started, I found my girls rising and falling in a disconcerting rhythm. They had a mind of their own. It felt like a betrayal. We did not resume our loyal relationship until they returned to an average size after I’d fully weaned Seamus. When I had Liam, four years later, I didn’t even try to go for a run until well past our last nursing session.

My girls and I enjoyed each other for many years until one day, my doctor’s office called to tell me I had to come in for the results of a biopsy collected after a routine mammogram. Oh, this can’t be good, I remember thinking. And so, on the eighteenth anniversary of my mother’s passing, my doctor, looking like she might cry, said, “You’ve tested positive for breast cancer.” My former husband, Jimmy, had also been her patient. He passed away only six months earlier after years of struggling with addiction. The last time she and I were in the examination room together, I had given her a copy of his death certificate and sobbed in her arms. 

“I can’t die now,” I said as I burst into fresh tears. “I just can’t.” My sons were in their twenties, technically men, but men could become orphans, right? 

She ripped a white paper towel from over the sink and handed it to me. As I blew my nose, she referred me to a breast surgeon who would give me more definitive information.

 I left the office and found myself on the sidewalk not knowing what to do. My first impulse was to call Jimmy who had remained my closest confidant even throughout our separation and divorce. But he was dead, and I cursed him out for being so. 

I stared up the hill in the direction of Seamus’s apartment building. Should I call him? Or tell Liam when I get home? 

No, I couldn’t tell them. Not now.

Should I call a friend? No, my friends were still helping me through the long, complicated process of mourning a loved one who had died so tragically. I could imagine them seeing my name on caller ID and thinking, I’m having a good day. Don’t want to ruin it, then letting my rings go to voicemail.

A middle-aged woman walked by while I was standing befuddled. I stared at her breasts.

Are they ok? I wondered. Has she had a mammogram recently?

They were quite large which made me nervous. How on earth could a mammogram make sense of all those cells? Another woman walked by and I stared at her chest, too. I searched every female chest for signs of trouble. Finally, I decided the only thing I could do was walk the three miles home, an activity I’ve used to alleviate mental dilemmas. About halfway down Broadway, I stopped to text my niece, maybe because I had to tell someone, and she’s the type who Googles everything.

Oh my god, she texted back right away. Have they staged it?

I had been in the process of selling Jimmy’s co-op. The use of staging as a verb caused me to imagine a tiny bouquet of flowers and perhaps a neutral-toned carpet arranged on my breast. 

I really don’t think that’ll help, I thought. 

I texted back, I don’t understand what “staged it” means.

Like how far along the cancer is, she replied. 

Oh, like what stage is it? Now I understood. No, the breast surgeon will tell me. I meet her next week.

Do you want me to come with you? she texted back. Someone should be there with you.

No, I wrote. No. I’ll be fine.

Then put me on speaker phone when you talk to her.

I sent the thumbs up emoji, even though I knew I would not call her, nor put her on speaker phone.

In the breast surgeon’s examination room, I burst into tears again. She opened a jar of steri-gauze pads and handed me a wad. Wiping my nose with the gauze ball, I said, “I can’t die now. My sons’ father just passed away.” I wanted her to write me an excuse note, like death was gym class, and I had my period. Corinne is more than willing to die, Death. But please excuse her for the next few years.

She asked a few questions about Jimmy as she examined me, studied my mammography films, then looked at me and said matter-of-factly, “You’re going to die, but not from this. It’s Stage one. You’re going to be fine.”

I could feel the vise grip loosening that had seized my breath ever since getting the cancer diagnosis. With the second swipe of the gauze pad across my nose, the tension mounted again as my relief turned to guilt. How many women get a different prognosis? Who am I to be so lucky? It felt disrespectful, indeed, downright selfish to get good news. My lumpectomy, followed by thirty-four radiation treatments, was a get out of jail free card. I slunk out of the office averting my eyes from the other women who easily might receive different assessments. 

I waited until the surgery was scheduled to tell my sons. Enjoying a rare family dinner, I announced after a game of Scrabble, “I have news. It’s going to sound bad, but it’s not.”

“Oh, that means it’s gonna be bad,” Seamus said immediately. 

“No, it’s just annoying. Can you repeat after me, ‘Mom has annoying news?’” Seamus, his wife Natasha, and Liam, studied my face. 

 “Please, just repeat after me.”

 “Mom has annoying news,” they acquiesced.

“I have breast cancer,” I said. “BUT—it’s Stage one. I’m going to be fine.”

I knew I was failing my sons all over again. Only a terrible mother would be diagnosed with breast cancer six months after their father died. I couldn’t save my marriage, I couldn’t save their father, and now I was telling them maybe I couldn’t save myself. 

“I thought something was up,” Liam said calmly. “You’ve been going to the doctor a lot.” 

All three of them sat quietly for a few moments. Then Seamus asked what was going to happen. What the plan was. I told him my friend Ann was going to take me for the lumpectomy. I’d be in and out the same day.

“Ann? No, Mom. I’ll take you and Liam will come, too. Why Ann?”

“Because you and Liam have to work,” I answered.

“No,” Seamus said. “We’ll take you. We’re going.” He poured himself another glass of wine. 

Natasha joined me in the kitchen out of my boys’ eyesight and helped me get dessert. 

“Can I hug you?” she asked, growing teary.

“Of course,” I said as she put her arms around me. “I’m going to be fine.” 

The lumpectomy and lymph node removals were performed at a Bronx surgery center. From the time I arrived until I was wheeled out twelve hours later, every person who worked there could not have been more loving. I know loving may seem like a strange word to describe hospital staff, but the tattoo-covered, Hispanic, male nurse who somehow knew I was cold and covered me with an extra-blanket, the Orthodox Jewish doctor who placed a long needle in my breast to mark the tumor, kindly saying, “Just don’t look down,” the head nurse who hugged me as I got into the wheelchair before I was pushed to surgery by a young, African-American nurse, all made me feel capable of surviving. 

Liam had stayed home to take care of our dog, but Seamus was at my bedside when I woke up from the anesthesia. I immediately burst into tears. I babbled something about being a failure, then apologized for crying. 

“Let it out, Mom. Go ahead, let it out.”

The surgeon arrived, still in her aqua shower cap, and told me everything went well and she’d see me in a few weeks. I could get dressed now. Seamus waited for me, then an orderly came with a wheelchair.

“Oh, I don’t need one of those,” I said, and promptly walked straight toward the wall, unable to control my direction. I sheepishly veered back toward the chair and sat down with assistance.

Once in the car, I told Seamus we had to stop by the store and pick up a television. “Watching television is going to solve everything.” 

“Ok, Mom,” he said, “We’ll go right to the store.” Then he drove me straight home where Liam was waiting to help me. I have no memory of that conversation. 

A month later, when the incision had healed, I met the radiologist to discuss a treatment plan. When I asked him why, as the youngest of six sisters, I was the only one who had ever had breast cancer, his answer was, “It’s random.” He said there have been lots of studies: genetics, a high cholesterol diet when young, drinking too much wine, but all we really know with certainty is, “It’s random.” I didn’t want to hear “It’s random.” I wanted to know if I had done something wrong. But there was no more talk of how I got it, only what we were going to do about it.

The first step was having a form fitting pillow custom-made to keep me still during treatments. The first technician I met, Phil, brought me into the treatment room and showed me two different jars of liquid. He explained that mixing them would cause a chemical reaction that would create a kind of Styrofoam material that would mold to my body. 

“This may be a dumb question,” I said, “but my breast is still swollen from the surgery. If the swelling goes down, will that mess up the pillow?” 

He paused for a moment. “Can I take a look?” I exposed the breast in question. He looked askance. “I kind of need to see the other one too,” he said, uncomfortably, as I revealed the normal breast in flasher form. He studied each breast, then said, “No. It’s not a big difference. Won’t be a problem.”

This would be the first of frequent discussions I would have with a team of all male technicians. Clearly, my girls and I were entering a new chapter. Phil poured the chemicals into a large, plastic bag, sealing it with what looked like packing tape. As the reaction went to town, I lay on the bag, my head looking slightly right, my left arm bent above my head. The position made me feel like I should have been relaxing on a beach. The narrow, hard table underneath the warm bag expanding and hardening to the shape of my body dashed that fantasy.

 Phil explained the inner workings of the radiation machine that hovered above me while the pillow continued to take shape. He showed me a cluster of thousands of tiny magnets. He explained the science which was fascinating, even if I didn’t exactly understand it. Jimmy would have and then explained it to me later in layman’s terms. I thought of him and how upset he’d be that I was going through this. I remembered him sitting in the examining room years ago when I’d had a scare. It was odd to lie there on the table with my husband in a chair, watching another man poke and prod my breasts.

At the next treatment, Phil was holding my paperwork and asked, “Who’s Boyle?” I had listed my son as my emergency contact number. I’ve always used my maiden name O’Shaughnessy, so the difference had caught Phil’s eye. “Oh, my sons’ father, my former husband, was Boyle,” I said.

“My wife’s uncle is a Boyle,” Phil said. “Jim Boyle.”

I skipped a breath. I just looked at him. “That was my husband’s name. He died last year.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” I said. “Me, too.”

We talked about our respective sons. Phil told me his son had been in a terrible car accident six months before. The neck and shoulder injuries prevented him from working, since he was a welder. 

“My husband was a welder,” I said. 

Jimmy, I thought, Are you trying to let me know you’re here with me? 

The following day, I met Rich, who administered two tattoos, one between my breasts, and another near my left armpit. Never having been tempted by tattoos, these two man-made freckles made me feel like a spy carrying highly sought-after state secrets. The small, brown dots allowed the technicians to coordinate the red laser beams traversing the walls in geometric patterns, the idea being to only zap what was absolutely necessary. Each treatment took three or four minutes and looked like a scene from a Pink Panther art heist. The long arm of the machine would swing around, at times looking like it might alternately pummel and crush me. I lay passively gazing at the dimpled plastic, thinking about Jimmy, our family, our boys when they were young, and how easy it had been to keep everyone happy. My thoughts shifted, to the present, imagining Jimmy’s spirit sitting in the chair next to the treatment table, our grown boys struggling to find their paths, while one of my girls was fried like an egg. 

Around the fifteenth treatment, my radiated breast turned dark brown. By the twentieth treatment, I dreaded the three minutes on the table. On the twenty-first treatment, another technician, Frank, studied my breast. “It looks very irritated,” he said, leaning in. Phil came around the table for a closer look. Their eyes met and I saw their concern. The darkened skin had black flecks. The nipple was bright red and tiny, white blisters had formed. 

“Are you uncomfortable?” Frank asked. 

“Actually, yes, it’s really starting to bother me.”

Frank gave me a cream used for burns and told me to apply it twice a day. I did and welcomed the immediate relief.

The subsequent treatments were bearable even while my breast swelled and my girls looked like the equivalent of two different colored socks. The three minutes of stillness with normal breathing—and nothing makes your breathing less normal than being told to breathe normally—found my mind playing the Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime, on continuous loop.  

On the last day of my treatments, I brought pastries from a local bakery and said my good-byes. Frank gave me a big hug and kiss on the cheek. “You’re gonna be ok,” he said. “Remember that. You’re gonna be fine.” 

Months afterward, I pulled from my coat pocket my ubiquitous wad of used tissues and a not so ubiquitous New York Blood and Cancer Specialists business card. Blood and Cancer Specialists took me aback. How’d that get there? I wondered. And then I remembered, Oh right, my girls. They’ve entered a new chapter. But they’re still my girls. The ones I’ve loved ever since I got them.

-Corinne O'Shaughnessy

Corinne O'Shaughnessy is a retired New York City public school literacy teacher. Her short story "Move On" was published in Talking Points, a publication of the NCTE, and her short piece "Appetite," will be published in 2020 in the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. She has also been a resident of the Millay Colony.