like a lump at all. A
lump
was a large and nebulous thing. What was inside her felt exactly as if someone had buried a pea—a secret pea, like the one the princess could feel under all those mattresses—only her pea was right under her nipple. The problem, as she understood it from the doctors she had spoken with so far, was that this pea might sprout and begin to grow, filling her body with pea plants, leafy and muscular, curling their little tendrils all around her heart, her organs, the twin engines of her lungs, filling her with peas, everywhere, until she was more pea than she was Rita. A walking invisible vegetable garden.
Had it not been for that little novel she had written two summers ago (accidentally, almost—while helping her mother clean out the attic, she had found all those old journals of her great-grandmother—it practically wrote itself), she would have never gotten the job. As for the breast cancer, it was mysterious to her.
Who had planted that first pea there?
she wondered. Was itsomething she ate? Something she breathed in? Something she drank that contained the smallest-ever particles of cancer pea?
“Spectacular,”
The New Yorker
had raved, about her book. “Absolutely,” said the oncologist, who had done the final and definitive test. “You’re hired,” said the dean of Arts and Science, at the branch college. And, with those words, her literary, academic career and her new identity as a cancer patient were born. Funny, she thought, how a teensy novel and some teensy words and a teensy pea of cancer could change your life so much, in ways both good and bad.
“Good morning, class,” she said, the first day she began teaching. She handed out the syllabus she had carefully put together. It had the reading list and the assignments that would be due, one by one, in a list down the left-hand side. One student put his head down on his desk after glancing over it and made an audible sigh, as if it was so much work he had already grown tired. Another asked: “Are
all
these books in the bookstore already?”
“Yes,” said Rita. “They are all in.” What did they think, these college students, that they would not even be reading any books in an English class?
The branch college was a small one in a very small town in a far-flung place, almost at the Canadian border. A place she had begun to call “the edge of the known world.” She thought she was like the Magellanof assistant professors, sent to seek out and colonize young minds with interesting thoughts here in the hinterlands—while simultaneously, inside her, a small colony of its own had taken hold. One she must stamp out with the help of the oncology department at the hospital in the new town.
“I’m happy, I’m happy already,” she had replied to her mother. It would be far too upsetting to tell her about the breast cancer. Besides, she thought if she could just keep it a secret, it would hardly exist, this little pea starting its life inside her. If she told her mother, soon everyone would know and it would give that little pea more legitimacy, its own cheering squad almost. In front of her class she wondered if anyone could see it, this illness beginning its life. Did it show itself to certain people, perhaps? Or make her seem vulnerable?
“We will read a book every two weeks. We will discuss them in class and then you will write two-page papers on each of them,” she said. “There will be a final.” She felt like adding,
Can you handle that?
After teaching she would head to the YMCA and sit for a long time in the steam room. She had the feeling it was cleansing her somehow, inside and out. Sweating out bad molecules, bad thoughts. Bad stuff (mood leftover from whiny students, evil cancer stress vibes) out. Good stuff (heat, water) in.
Happy, schmappy
, she thought, in the steam room. You could certainly not be happy when you had cancer,could you? The word itself had a sort of silly sound to it even. Happy. Like the
lump
was a large and nebulous thing. What was inside her felt exactly as if someone had buried a pea—a secret pea, like the one the princess could feel under all those mattresses—only her pea was right under her nipple. The problem, as she understood it from the doctors she had spoken with so far, was that this pea might sprout and begin to grow, filling her body with pea plants, leafy and muscular, curling their little tendrils all around her heart, her organs, the twin engines of her lungs, filling her with peas, everywhere, until she was more pea than she was Rita. A walking invisible vegetable garden.
Had it not been for that little novel she had written two summers ago (accidentally, almost—while helping her mother clean out the attic, she had found all those old journals of her great-grandmother—it practically wrote itself), she would have never gotten the job. As for the breast cancer, it was mysterious to her.
Who had planted that first pea there?
she wondered. Was itsomething she ate? Something she breathed in? Something she drank that contained the smallest-ever particles of cancer pea?
“Spectacular,”
The New Yorker
had raved, about her book. “Absolutely,” said the oncologist, who had done the final and definitive test. “You’re hired,” said the dean of Arts and Science, at the branch college. And, with those words, her literary, academic career and her new identity as a cancer patient were born. Funny, she thought, how a teensy novel and some teensy words and a teensy pea of cancer could change your life so much, in ways both good and bad.
“Good morning, class,” she said, the first day she began teaching. She handed out the syllabus she had carefully put together. It had the reading list and the assignments that would be due, one by one, in a list down the left-hand side. One student put his head down on his desk after glancing over it and made an audible sigh, as if it was so much work he had already grown tired. Another asked: “Are
all
these books in the bookstore already?”
“Yes,” said Rita. “They are all in.” What did they think, these college students, that they would not even be reading any books in an English class?
The branch college was a small one in a very small town in a far-flung place, almost at the Canadian border. A place she had begun to call “the edge of the known world.” She thought she was like the Magellanof assistant professors, sent to seek out and colonize young minds with interesting thoughts here in the hinterlands—while simultaneously, inside her, a small colony of its own had taken hold. One she must stamp out with the help of the oncology department at the hospital in the new town.
“I’m happy, I’m happy already,” she had replied to her mother. It would be far too upsetting to tell her about the breast cancer. Besides, she thought if she could just keep it a secret, it would hardly exist, this little pea starting its life inside her. If she told her mother, soon everyone would know and it would give that little pea more legitimacy, its own cheering squad almost. In front of her class she wondered if anyone could see it, this illness beginning its life. Did it show itself to certain people, perhaps? Or make her seem vulnerable?
“We will read a book every two weeks. We will discuss them in class and then you will write two-page papers on each of them,” she said. “There will be a final.” She felt like adding,
Can you handle that?
After teaching she would head to the YMCA and sit for a long time in the steam room. She had the feeling it was cleansing her somehow, inside and out. Sweating out bad molecules, bad thoughts. Bad stuff (mood leftover from whiny students, evil cancer stress vibes) out. Good stuff (heat, water) in.
Happy, schmappy
, she thought, in the steam room. You could certainly not be happy when you had cancer,could you? The word itself had a sort of silly sound to it even. Happy. Like the
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