Follow-Up
At a Glance
Section titled “At a Glance”| Metadata | Details |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 2016-01-01 |
| Journal | New England review |
| Authors | Chelika Yapa |
Abstract
Section titled “Abstract”Follow-Up Chelika Yapa (bio) Her skin is the color of milk-tea but anusha wears it like an embarrassing birthmark that covers her entire body. She walks slightly hunched, her shoulders rounded and, these days, often with her arms crossed against her chest, as if she’s bracing against a cold, north wind. It started when Anusha had a drainage tube attached to her chest wall and the slightest movement made her wince. Or maybe it started earlier, when under anesthesia she folded her arms across her breasts—or so she imagines—a way of saying, “don’t cut me.” Or earlier still. When she left Kurunegala as a little girl and never learned how to love American winters. She never stopped feeling cold. She often worried that, at any moment, the prosthesis might slip out of the pocket in her bra and land at her feet like a defrosted chicken breast. But today she has to worry about something else more important, her monthly checkup. She looks at the clock on her microwave: 8:07. She has time before her 11:00 appointment. No need to rush. She notices more light coming through the kitchen window now that they’ve chopped the tops off the jacaranda trees. It’s criminal what they do here: water, fertilize, chop, hack. A farmer in Sri Lanka would be in heaven if he had this soil, this fertilizer, this water, this sun. Once, driving in Tustin with her mother, Anusha watched a team of workmen destroying one of the last remaining orange groves in Orange County. When her mother saw uprooted orange trees on the roadside still bursting with fruit, she sighed, “Oh, it’s like seeing a dead elephant. My heart breaks.” A sturdy line of eucalyptus trees protected the remaining orchards from frost and the Santa Ana winds. And beyond it were developments, tract housing all painted peach with terra cotta roof tiles, all identical. The repetition was maddening. Peach, she decided, was the color of fear. But she is part of it. Anusha’s one-bedroom apartment, where she moved right after she got her first job, is in one of those peach buildings. And she reminds herself of this as she gets into her car. She can see her kitchen window from the outside and on the windowsill is a dead plant, a croton. Anusha had bought this plant because its deep fuchsia, yellow, and green batik-speckled leaves reminded her of Sri Lanka. When her father had died suddenly of a heart attack, she had left for Wisconsin. Weeks later when she came back all her plants, including the croton, were dead. The only living things were two large black flies, big as bumblebees. She watered the croton and gave it a few drops of Miracle-Gro and said to herself, if this thing grows, if its leaves bud out, then there is a God. [End Page 18] Day after day, Anusha had watered and watched. She was hopeful, because she had seen forgotten potatoes sprout in her cupboard, tender green blades shoot out from meshed plastic bags that held soft, rotting onions. Even carrots had grown tiny leaves in the inhospitable climate of her refrigerator. But the croton stayed as black as the soil it was planted in. She continued to look after the plant in her kitchen window, searching for some signs of life. Then, after two weeks, she gave up. After signing in on the clipboard for her appointment with Dr. Erwin, Anusha notices her file on the receptionist’s desk and asks if she may please read it. “Sure, no problem,” the receptionist says and hands it to her. She sits by the fish tank of yellow-and-blue striped Emperor angelfish and studies the thick manila file that is all about her: microscopically, pathologically, surgically, medically. It is like her cancer horoscope but more than that; it is empirical. Her first pathology report begins, “The specimen labeled ‘left breast’ consists of a diamond-shaped piece of skin and breast tissue weighing 300 grams.” Anusha wonders about her tumor and how it grew. She imagines her breast was like an oyster, with…