Existentialism

The Blue Sun-hat

I dislike cemeteries and I dislike graves and I dislike that anything so cheerful as a tree or flower should be there to taunt graves with the comparison of life. The worst thing about them is the seeming complacency of the flowers towards the grave. When I see them, I worry not only about their objectivity but also about mine. There are some days when it’s so sunny outside that the stones are too hot to sit on, and I feel guilty for almost forgetting why I’m sitting there.

If I forget, it’s almost as if she had never been there at all. Mom and I know that Katya has barged into my room and demanded that I paint her nails. I know that she had stolen my books and wrapped them up nicely to give to me on my birthday accompanied by a card that read, “I think you read these books all redy. If you have then read them again.” Had a plane passed over my sister wrapping the presents, the pilot would never know. But I knew these things, which even Katya would probably have forgotten had she lived longer.

It’s ironic how it happened, because my mom had always been paranoid about cancer. We never even had a microwave because, “Microwaves have free radicals,” and so it always took twice as long to prepare food. Occasionally Katya was so impatient that she’d eat pizza frozen whenever she could get away with it. She hid all of the wrappers in the hole between the refrigerator and the cabinet—her secret stash of trash, which we found much later.

I hated that the doctor seemed so calm when we’d visit her. I was calm, my mother was calm, and the damned doctor was always calm. When we asked the nurse if we could speak with the doctor, we’d always say “Please” and “Thank you,” as if social convention could negotiate a kind of diplomacy between life and death. She was diagnosed with Wilm’s Tumor, and although for a couple of months she was stable, eventually an abdominal mass started to form in her stomach.

In the hospital room, her growing belly made it seem she was pregnant, and I wondered if anyone else walking by had thought that a seven-year-old was pregnant. I wished that she had a baby rather than a tumor, but with the tumor growing lumpier and grayer with every stay, I couldn’t ignore it but couldn’t imagine having it myself, either. I didn’t consider my sister brave, because that would be implying she had had some kind of choice—but no one had asked her “Are you going to be a brave girl and have cancer, or just be a normal seven-year-old?” It was injustice, but she seemed content watching T.V. and eating pizza. I myself felt resigned to it as well, and I had thought it over so much I was more afraid that I wouldn’t feel anything when she died than I was afraid that she would die. I was always watching Katya for any sign that she was alarmed, but she seemed mostly unperturbed. Katya never stared listlessly out of her window, and she complained more about the hospital food than anything else.

We finally bought much begged-for pizza on a Friday morning. When we got there she was sleeping and it was bright outside. Without the T.V. on in her room, there was too much silence and everything seemed motionless. The first thing I did was strain to hear the rhythm of her breath, although I could hardly see her chest rising at all and her belly was still. We waited for the nurse on the night-shift to check on Katya, and Katya then ate the pizza but her eyes were sleepy and I knew that if I moved close enough she would have that mild smell of sleep on her children have. She wanted me to sing from The Sound of Music, and I hated to sing in front of the nurse and while the door to Katya’s room was open but of course I couldn’t say no. At first, Katya sang along loudly, but she began to look more and more sleepy and I sang softer because her eyes were fluttering and slowly closing. We watched her for a couple of minutes and I remember looking up at the clock, which pointed at 10:56 a.m. My mom and I walked down the carpeted hallway to the car, not talking.

For breakfast that morning I had a bagel with cream cheese, and I spread it carefully so that the butter knife made smooth ridges on the surface. My mom was sitting at the countertop eating an apple, and the remains of some tangerine peels sat in front of her. The curtains on our windows muffled the morning sunlight, and my mom said that bay windows would have been much prettier. The phone rang but no one bothered to pick it up.

“Hi, we’re not here right now. Please leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Beep!”

“Hi, this is Karen from the UCLA Medical Center. Please call Dr. Lyoubov at your earliest convenience. Thank you.”

We drove back to the hospital, both anxious but quiet. We were informed that unfortunately Katya had passed away at 11 a.m. this morning, and they were so sorry for our loss. I looked at the nurse, admiring her blue earrings and I said, “Thank you, bye” and I walked down to the car to wait for my mom.

She didn’t come for an hour, and I sat cross-legged on the asphalt, thinking that I had been singing to her only four minutes before she had died. I had forgotten to check the sound of breathing and the moving chest last night—I had forgotten to be alarmed every time she closed her eyes. I had imagined it happening so many times, that finally when it did happen I couldn’t imagine it had.

I remembered when we first found out about Katya, and how when we went on vacation to Hawaii I would look at her brushing her teeth and imagine that there was no one to leave flecks of toothpaste all over the mirror, and that no one would yell at me for ripping grass up, which I was doing at the moment. I would look at her sitting next to me on the sand with her glinting hair and devilish laugh and imagine that there was nothing but sand there, and every time I was alone I couldn’t stop crying.

She was only six years old at the time, still young enough to undress at the beach with perfect impunity, and I wanted to know how a six-year-old thought about death. I wanted to ask but I knew I shouldn’t. I was 14 years old and old enough to know it was selfish to ask her just to comfort myself. What if my question incited fear whereas previously there had been none?

At that moment we were sitting on hot sand and trying to spare our faces in a tent of Katya’s creation. Two boogie boards, two beach chairs, and six white towels were enough to spare us from the unforgiving sun. I was trying to read a book, and although I knew the words in front of me were English, I didn’t understand any of it. She was considering me carefully and I was sure that at six she was much more shrewd than I had been.

“Katya.”

“What?”

I hoped that I wouldn’t alarm her.

“What do you think happens when you die?”

Katya smiled but her eyebrows creased and finally came the obvious answer.

“Well, you die.”

“No, but I mean what happens?” I wasn’t going to go any farther if she didn’t understand what I meant, but when I looked at her honeyed eyes I knew she did. She whimpered, pulling her blue sun-hat over her face, and I had to turn away because I had no hat to cover mine. [/pre][/pre]