Sisters in the Wind(9)
My dad started chemotherapy after the second surgery. His nausea began several hours after each chemo treatment. The only food he was able to eat without vomiting was Bridget’s homemade chicken dumpling soup, which she brought over in a vibrant red Dutch oven.
I asked Bridget to show me how to make the soup and was surprised when she demurred by saying it was her only contribution. In fact, she did a lot for my dad—taking detailed notes at his medical appointments and organizing his medications in a daily pill box.
By then I had added her to my nightly prayers, reciting each helpful act I’d observed.
The day after my twelfth birthday my dad asked for my permission to marry Bridget and have her become my mother.
“My stepmother?” I clarified.
“Technically yes, to start. But I think it would be a good idea for her to adopt you.” He looked at his feet.
“What about my birth mother?” I wasn’t sure how adoption worked.
He coughed and kept his eyes downcast. “Well, your birth mother voluntarily terminated her parental rights when you were born.”
Voluntarily terminated sounded like an abortion. My dad had taken me to a Right to Life rally on the capitol steps in Lansing when I was eight years old. I’d held a sign that read I AM NOT A MISTAKE. I AM A MIRACLE.
Abortion was murder. Murder was a sin. So was lying or coveting your neighbor’s possessions. I knew the Ten Commandments and the beatitudes as well as I knew my multiplication tables and the four rules for using a semicolon.
I had a revelation while my dad waited for an answer to a question that felt more like an announcement. What if the commandments were listed in order of importance? After all, the sixth commandment was Thou shall not commit adultery, and the ninth commandment was Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife. The lesser sin was desiring the wife; the bigger sin was acting upon that desire. Bearing false witness, lying, was a sin, but it was a smaller one than murder, or not honoring your father.
So I lied and said I wanted Bridget to become my stepmother.
WHEN I WAS TWELVE
2002
After they married, I discovered what went into my stepmother’s homemade chicken dumpling soup. A garbage bag split when I heaved it into the trash can next to the garage. I picked up the items that landed outside the bin. There were two empty soup containers from a catering company in Charlevoix.
I didn’t understand why my stepmother had lied about making the soup herself. It wouldn’t have been a big deal to tell the truth. After all, I was grateful she’d provided something that my dad could tolerate after the chemo.
Instead of asking about the soup, I decided to stay quiet. My dad had been losing weight since his original surgery, when his diet had changed drastically. There were many foods he couldn’t eat: whole grains, anything with nuts or seeds, dried fruit or fruit with skin, smoked or fatty meats, and gas-producing vegetables. He subsisted on bland foods like white rice, unseasoned pasta, yogurt, mashed potatoes, and mildly seasoned tofu. He drank nutritional shakes every day. If I were to upset my stepmother about the soup, she might stop providing it.
We had to adjust to our new living situation. My stepmother was living with us now, having brought very few possessions with her. I’d never been to her apartment in Petoskey, but I pictured it as austere as a nunnery.
She slept upstairs in my dad’s bedroom but still used my bathroom on the main floor. My dad had asked for bathroom privacy. He irrigated his colon and cleaned his colostomy bag every evening. A two-hour process of flushing his colon while he sat on a folding chair in the walk-in shower. When I went online to research the process and take notes for my cancer journal, I learned that my dad took twice as long as what the medical sites described.
Having lived with my stepmother for a few weeks, I understood why my dad might have needed a break from her. She was everywhere. There was no escape.
She woke early to get herself ready and to “fix” breakfast for us. I wasn’t sure why she needed extra time. Her outfits were always the same. Preparing breakfast meant plating prepackaged hard-boiled eggs, single-serve yogurt cups, and breakfast bars and shaking the nutritional drink for my dad.
During the school day, I would hurry past her classroom to avoid conversation. In her math class, I never made eye contact and prayed to God the entire time that my stepmother would ignore me. By the end of the day, she tenaciously intercepted me before I reached my dad’s classroom. She asked about my day, which seemed harmless. But she used the information to show my dad how well she knew me. It felt like a disingenuous tactic. She never used the information to deepen a relationship with me.
My favorite part of the day was our quiet reading time after dinner. It was two hours of sitting next to my dad on the sofa, leaning against him while we read. When he wanted to get my attention, he would poke my upper arm while slowly saying, “Poke.” That meant he wanted to talk about what I was reading.
Sometimes I caught my stepmother staring at me with a curious expression. If I positioned my book just so, I could block her from view and pretend everything was like before.
Each night at eight thirty p.m. my dad patted my shoulder three times—which I translated as I love you. Then he went upstairs to irrigate his colon. I would say good night to my stepmother and retreat to my bedroom. Unlike my dad, I didn’t have my own bathroom oasis. She had mostly taken over the one we shared, leaving her written reminders about cleanliness. I found myself gagging at the smell of baby powder when I would use the deodorant she provided for me, but I worried about being seen as ungrateful if I asked for a different scent.