The Girl With Nine Wigs by Sophie van der Stap

But today is an exception. Today is the day I meet Jurriaan.
    â€œJurriaan—”
    â€œPlease, call me Jur.”
    Must be a fellow-cancer-patient privilege .
    â€œWas it bad?”
    â€œYeah, you could say that. The chemo wasn’t working and neither was the radiation. In the end they managed to contain it.”
    â€œContain it?”
    â€œYeah. The doctors can’t quite explain it.… It just stopped spreading.”
    â€œOh. But is it gone?”
    â€œNo, it’s still in my body. Like I said, they can’t really explain it.”
    I tell him my diagnosis and what the doctors think my chances are. “I try to take it day by day, but…”
    â€œSophie, it’s rough, and it’s going to be a long process before you get better. You know as well as I do that one good scan doesn’t mean you’re healed. The best thing you can do is try to find some peace.”
    â€œMaybe, but I’m still terrified. Sometimes I can’t handle the fear. It gets so overwhelming.”
    â€œDon’t let the fear get to you. You can’t face everything all at once. Try to break up your fear. The fear of being alone, of dying; fear of the pain and of everything you’ll miss out on. Just the way you take your illness day by day, face your fears day by day. If you break it down and see each fear for what it is, you can overcome them.”
    â€œDid that work for you?”
    â€œYes, and it will work for you, too. You’re strong, anyone can see that. I’m sure you’ll get through this.” Jur makes it sound so easy. His dark eyes look at me intently. So intently that I lose everything around me and nothing else exists but him.
    â€œYou know, you can always call me. Even at night. I know what you’re going through.”
    After two hours Jur is the first to get up to leave. I could have stayed much longer, but I keep that a secret. I watch him as he crosses the now-deserted square. My heart is still beating fast from our conversation. I never expected a cancer buddy to come in such a nice-looking package. In two hours he took away all my loneliness of the past two months. I could eat apple pie à la mode with this guy every day.

 
    MONDAY, APRIL 4
    B ACK IN THE SEVENTIES, my father used his inheritance to purchase a run-down seventeenth-century canal house in Amsterdam. It soon turned out to be a good investment. He moved in with five friends and they all renovated it together, and now each of them has their own tile engraved in the hallway: Ton (my father), Raymond, Henk, Mark, Geert-Jan, and another Ton. Loes, my mother, was the last tile to be added. My parents’ romance started just a few houses down from ours, where Mom used to live before my father snatched her away from her basement apartment.
    Visitors compare our house to the house where Anne Frank was hidden because of all the stairways and unexpected corners, but it was still just a construction site when they fell in love. The staircases hadn’t been built yet, and the house was filled with construction debris. Every night they would climb three stories up ladders to the top floor and fall asleep on a pile of cement bags.
    The rest of the group moved out when my mom’s first baby bump appeared. Sis came, and three years later I was born, in what is still my parents’ bedroom. Sis and I were soon followed by three cats: Keesje, Tiger, and Saartje. Keesje was sent to a “petting zoo” early on. My parents couldn’t bear to tell their little girls the truth, even though that cat was meaner than mean. Tiger got run over when he was only three; cause of death: two collapsed kitty lungs. Fifteen-year-old Saartje is the survivor. Her sight isn’t as sharp as it used to be, and unfortunately she suffers from dementia, which could explain her poorly calculated attacks on passing Rottweilers.
    *   *   *
    Some colors just don’t match, but my