The Unwinding of the Miracle - Julie Yip-Williams Page 0,39

when I was denied all food for four and a half days so my bowels could rest to clear the small bowel obstruction, I obsessively watched PBS cooking shows on my iPad and drooled over David Chang’s fancy ramen noodles as I lay in bed weak from hunger. I vowed then that I would never shun food again.

I also posted on Facebook a photo of our new car, a small SUV, another stab at normalcy. It’s a considerable expense for something that we will use only two or three times a month, but we decided that it was a necessary part of moving forward with our lives, so that we could go hiking, pick apples in the fall, and explore cute towns on the weekends.

But behind those photos and the rush of activity, behind the smiles and my seemingly upbeat statements to everyone about how I was so glad not to be in the hospital, to be walking upright and to not be in pain, behind the pose, I was broken emotionally, more broken than I can remember ever being. Oftentimes, choosing fabric, researching cars, cooking a new recipe, all these ostensibly life-affirming acts felt like me clinging to a piece of wood in the vast ocean, acts of grave desperation that would only put off for a time the unavoidable truth and great inevitability, the truth being that I have cancer and the inevitability being that I will eventually die from that cancer.

I took my girls to two birthday parties one balmy weekend in May. The first was for one of Belle’s friends from school. None of the parents in Belle’s class know about my diagnosis. So when I stood there making nice with the birthday girl’s mother, a tall, beautiful woman living in a beautiful glass building on the edge of Prospect Park, everything made more beautiful by the glorious blue of the spring day, I wanted to scream at her, “I have fucking Stage IV colon cancer! Do you have any fucking clue?” The second was a joint birthday party for three of Mia’s classmates held at the carousel in Brooklyn Bridge Park with spectacular views of the towering skyscrapers in lower Manhattan as the backdrop. The parents in Mia’s class know about my diagnosis, so I was left to answer awkward questions about how I’m doing from people who may or may not care, so happily ensconced are they in the unblemished perfection of their own lives, or, if they do care, are afraid to pry. “Oh, fine. Just hanging in there,” I say vaguely. I want to scream at all of them, too: “This is so fucking unfair! I didn’t deserve this. My children didn’t deserve this!” But I keep these and millions of other bitter, angry, and unkind thoughts to myself. I don’t break social decorum, and I keep my fake smile firmly plastered on my face.

Unconsciously, I use the thoughts to form a wall around myself, a wall with which to keep the person I love most in this world—my poor, beleaguered, hurt, exhausted, terrified Josh—out. I lash out at him in anger; I push him away; I don’t tell him what’s really on my mind; the thoughts are too involved, too depressing, too sad, too imbued with guilt. I feel guilty for marrying Josh and ruining his life. I was the last girl Josh or anyone from his family expected him to marry when he was ten, fifteen, eighteen, or even twenty-five. Let’s be honest. He was born and raised in the true South, in the mountains of South Carolina, where the Confederate flag still flies in the state’s capital. He went to an Episcopal parochial school from kindergarten through twelfth grade and then the University of South Carolina for undergraduate and law schools. No one would have dreamed in a million years that he would marry a legally blind Chinese American girl born in Vietnam, raised in Los Angeles with the occasional ritualistic Buddhist tradition, and educated in the distasteful liberal and Yankee institutions of the Northeast. I can’t help but think that if he’d married a blond, Christian, southern debutante, then I and my illness would never have ruined his life. I know: if I hadn’t met Josh, then Belle and Mia would not be here, and they are our greatest joys. No one says that guilt is rational.

Josh is angry, too, angrier than I am. He lashes out at me, too, even though his anger is directed