The Adventures of Cancer Bitch

MORE MARCH 3. THE BAD DAUGHTER

44 chest for my job, but I would like to have it reconstructed because it would make life easier for me. My job is my writing. Even with chemo I’ll have to work. Like I said, I admired Cancer Vixen’s work ethic, and her mother yelling in the middle of the chemo room, as the nurse is sticking her daughter’s right hand over and over, That’s her drawing hand! MORE MARCH 3. THE BAD DAUGHTER Today I stood up my mother—my loyal, loving, 78-year-old mother who’d said she wished it was herself and not me who had the cancer. I was so frustrated with her for not answering her cell phone. She was awol, not answering at her hotel either. And then she called me around 2:30 from the Art Institute and said she would leave the museum at 4:30 and take a cab to my condo. I went out by myself for the first time, to the little café down the street, Emerald City Coffee, just before 4 and stayed a while, and kept calling her phone from the café to see if she had left yet. Then I called my home phone and there was a message asking where I was, that she was in my lobby and it was cold and she was disappointed I wasn’t there. I called her and got her, and she said she was going to just go back to her hotel. I said I’d be right there. I was two blocks away. In the meantime a neighbor let her in the building and offered to let her wait in her apartment. When I got there Linc had arrived home and let her in. She kept saying she was going back to the hotel, and I was angry and said I didn’t want to leave her out there but she said she was leaving at 4:30 and I thought she would call me when she left. And last time she’d called from the cab to say she was around the corner. Why didn’t she do it this time? All I wanted was a few minutes by myself at the fucking café. I just wanted to be alone and work, I just wanted to sit by myself in the café and write. That’s all I wanted. It’s my own fault for staying up reading Cancer Vixen, but I couldn’t fall asleep and took my penultimate Ambien and finally got to sleep around 1:30 or 2 and got up around 1 or so, but I was so angry too that she didn’t tell me where she was. We all calmed down and had dinner, and then she taxied back 45 to her hotel. I sat down to write in my office, and Linc kept interrupting me. I yelled at him just now, Can’t I just write? I want to sit and write. I feel nobody understands that about me. I don’t want people around me all the time. I just want people to leave me alone. I don’t want her coming here and saying she doesn’t feel comfortable because of the mess. I would like this place to be cleaner, neater, but this is the place it is. And I’m truly upset about this and not the black and blue flatness and puckeredness that is my left chest, because I’m not going to be upset about it, I’m not going to be like those superficial fucking girls who live for their cleavage, who won’t take tamoxifen because they might gain weight, and the reason they can’t gain weight is because their appearance is more important than their survival. I don’t want to be like Cancer Vixen who just thinks about shoes and hair. I want to be like Miriam Engelberg but she died. I’m crying. I’m crying for her because the one I want to be like died. I’m so sad that someone who was clever and like me died. I hate women who compete with other women, who slather you with compliments so that you won’t notice they’re competing because they feel you’re too dumb to notice. Because they think they are so smart and are winning the competition but part of that demands that you don’t know you’re competing. I am worried...