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>She tells me I’m breaking up
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| Ronnie Gaubert @ Avatar Review |
Chad Simpson on his mother’s mastectomy and acts of obscuring @ The Collagist.
A week after her mastectomy, my mom’s head throbs. She feels every couple of minutes like she is about to puke.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )She thinks it’s the flu, which has been going around, even though she’s only left the house twice, for trips to the doctor.
I ask her what she’ll do if she has to throw up.
“I can’t hear you,” she says. “You’re breaking up.”
I have seen the incision, an eleven-inch gash that runs like a crooked smile from her sternum to some hidden place beneath her armpit. It’s pink near the stitches, tender-looking.
A couple days ago, when Mom asked me if I wanted to see it, it didn’t look like the kind of thing that could endure much retching.
I ask her again what she’ll do if she gets sick, and again she tells me I’m breaking up.
It’s not the connection. It’s the way I hold my phone—pointed toward my left shoulder instead of my mouth—while I pace around the downstairs of my house, from the kitchen to the dining room, to the foyer, then back to the kitchen. Over and over, I walk in this loop and talk into empty air.
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