The Five Wounds Read online

  “Are you sure there isn’t someone who can be with you?”

  Yolanda shook her head tightly.

  Dr. Mitchell nodded once. “Well. This is a serious diagnosis. Glioblastoma is aggressive. It’s uncommon, maybe one in every fifty thousand people, but when it hits, it works quickly.”

  Yolanda forced a laugh. “One in fifty thousand. Wish I’d been so lucky at the slots last night.” She’d never given much thought to her brain. When she thought of organs, Yolanda thought of her stomach usually, with its seething acids, or of her heart, always straining, always ready to be broken. Not her brain. “Can’t you just take it out? Don’t they have real good surgeries now?”

  “Given the location, total resection probably isn’t an option—it would almost certainly damage the brain tissue. I recommend we remove part of it to reduce pressure and buy you time, but glioblastomas have deep roots.” These roots, Dr. Mitchell explained, were tapping into the blood her brain needed. Yolanda imagined her tumor like a squatter siphoning electricity from neighbors with extension cords. She imagined the blood vessels thickening, tightening into a wicked net, choking off her poor brain until it spluttered and twitched. “They almost always come back.”

  There were, unfortunately, no good options, he explained. Treatments included radiation and chemo.

  Yolanda had heard on some commercial or other that humans only used five percent of their brain’s capacity. “What about that? What about my other ninety-five percent?” Wasn’t that enough to keep her alive?

  Dr. Mitchell smiled sadly, as if she were making a joke. But she wasn’t joking—she wasn’t!

  “So what does this mean?” Yolanda asked.

  “It means you’re dying.” He said this simply, gently, and Yolanda was grateful for his clarity. This was the one thing she truly understood since this whole rigmarole started. “With surgery and treatment, median duration of survival for aggressive tumors like this is a year, fifteen months.”

  “And without treatment?” Yolanda’s voice sounded very dry and calm to her ears, and she was proud of her composure.

  “No one knows the future, of course, but we could be looking at as little as five months.”

  Yolanda slumped, the paper crinkling beneath her. “I’m not good at games of chance. Last night I lost two hundred dollars in twenty minutes.”

  Dr. Mitchell smiled sympathetically. “Keep that sense of humor. It’ll be a blessing to you.”

  So: brain tumor. That was how she was going to go. No one in her family had ever died of such a thing. People in her family either lived forever, growing smaller and crankier, still baking and cleaning and hauling wood—take Tío Tíve, for example—or they died in some preposterous and untimely way: car accidents (Anthony), falls from roofs (Yolanda’s second cousin), overdoses (Elwin). These were idiotic, wasteful, hapless deaths, and they could, in certain retellings, be darkly funny. Never anything so bland and dreary as a body turning against itself, of resilient, inventive cells dividing industriously, spreading and conquering as in a game of Risk. These cells were the American Dream. They were the Sam Waltons of cells, the Starbucks, starting small and taking over vast swaths of territory, leaving destruction and foreclosures and empty storefronts in their wake.

  Because of the location of her tumor, Yolanda could look forward to loss of fine motor ability—goodbye typing, goodbye cooking—as well as of speech and balance and more primitive functions. Seizures. Personality change.

  In the end Yolanda slid off the table. She folded the cotton cover neatly, snapping it. Dr. Mitchell and the med student watched her.

  “I’m going home,” she told them both. “Back to New Mexico.”

  “I don’t recommend that. We need to bring in a neurologist and should schedule surgery and start a course of radiation immediately. We should operate now, relieve the pressure on the brain.”

  “I don’t live here!” Yolanda whipped her head around, afraid of being grabbed and wheeled away.

  “We can see about arranging for a medical transfer.”

  “I’m fine. I got myself here, didn’t I?”

  Dr. Mitchell looked at Yolanda, then stood, pushing himself up on his thighs. He ran a hand through his molded gray hair. “I can’t keep you here against your will. But I need to impress upon you the severity of your condition. I urge you to get treatment immediately when you get home. And no driving—coordination, cognition, it’s all affected, and the risk of seizure is high.” He left the room, the med student hurrying after. When Dr. Mitchell came back he was alone, armed with a sheaf of papers, including an AMA, Against Medical Advice, which stated that she, Yolanda Padilla, had been informed of the risks of her voluntary discharge and was operating with full knowledge of those risks. She would not sue Las Vegas Medical when her seizures set in.

  This was only the beginning of her medical journey, Dr. Mitchell said as he handed her a list of referrals in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. She should be in touch for as long as it took for her to find a doctor she trusted, and once she did, Dr. Mitchell would work with her team in New Mexico to sort out what was best for her. When he left, Yolanda flipped through the pages. On the last page, under the innocuous heading Further Resources, was “Hospice of New Mexico.”

  Yolanda dropped the packet on the examination table. When she rubbed her arms, she found that she couldn’t feel her palms against her skin. This was why they kept it so cold in here, she realized. So that people would be too slow to react with violence against the news, too numb to feel despair.

  Instead of telling Cal about the tumor, she paid a shocking amount for a dye job and dramatic jagged layers, packed her bags, rented an absurd convertible, and announced she was leaving. Poor Cal, baffled behind the steering wheel as she jumped out and slammed his truck door. He waited, watching from the curb as she went into the Hertz office, thinking she’d turn around, give him some explanation, and she did turn around, told him to just leave.

  How good it felt to be driving yesterday! Top down, phone shut off, map flapping crazily on the seat beside her. She was, for the first time she can remember, completely untethered to anyone. As she left Las Vegas, the Mojave spread wide around her, Yolanda combed her fingers through her spiky new haircut, feeling like a starlet, like the lovely title character in some movie about rebirth and reinvention.

  At first she truly didn’t think about her diagnosis. She sped over the blacktop as if her tires would stick if she slowed. Sage-scented wind caught in her hair, pressed her into the seat like firm hands against her chest. Higher crept the speedometer: eighty, ninety, ninety-nine, and then, for a moment, a hundred. The car trembled, buffeted by the wind, and Yolanda wondered if this was the kind of loss of self Anthony had been seeking all those years, driving fast, soaking himself in alcohol. It was exhilarating even to stop to pee in those dinky desert towns with their overpriced gas, and she found herself flirting with the grubby and slightly threatening men who seemed to be the only permanent inhabitants of these outposts. She could be kidnapped, Yolanda thought with an oddly light heart, murdered, left for dead among the sagebrush, and not a soul would know where she was!

  But the thrill had worn off, and the vast deserts began to feel just desolate. The landscapes changed, from sage and scrub brush to agave, briefly to dry ponderosa forest, then back to stunted prickly pear and yucca, but to Yolanda, it all looked dead. Her brain was heavy in her head, her tumor pushing against the walls of her skull. She put the top up, then down again, hoping to recapture some of her earlier elation, but now the air just felt thin and dusty and too bright.

  Finally, after a sleepless night in a motel outside of Shiprock, she is home, but she sits rooted, her hands still gripping the steering wheel at ten and two. Her armpits are damp, her sundress wrinkled, her gut hollow. The engine ticks.

  Near the steps, partially screened by her rosebushes (which do not appear to have been watered in her absence), another palm-sized piece of stucco has dropped off the cinderblock. The morning sun gl
azes the picture window with a wobbling reflection of piñon and piled white clouds and sky—and there is Yolanda herself, a blur in her red convertible—obscuring what awaits her inside: demands and expectations and drama that she is not ready to contend with, but that will, nonetheless, be dropped squarely into her lap.

  Soon, she thinks melodramatically, her reflection won’t be here, won’t be anywhere on this earth.

  Now, bursting out the front door, stomach huge, wet hair combed and dripping spots into her T-shirt, is Angel. “Gramma!”

  Yolanda arranges her face into a smile, steps out of the car to meet her granddaughter’s vigorous embrace. “Look at you! How are you feeling?”

  “Look at you! Look at your hair!” Angel cries, laughing. “Where were you?” Then Angel bursts into tears, and Yolanda is home.

  “ANYWAYS, I DON’T GET IT,” says Angel, her tone belligerent. She leans over the breakfast bar. “My thing is, it’s stupid, hurting yourself like that.” When Yolanda doesn’t respond, Angel pops her eyes at her. “Well?”

  Yolanda’s never seen Angel like this. Usually she’s sweet-tempered and ebullient, always kissing Yolanda’s cheek and reaching for her hand. But for the last hour, the girl’s been trailing her, full of indignation over Amadeo, certain of Yolanda’s agreement.

  Yolanda shakes her head, tired. “I don’t know, mi hijita.” She doesn’t have it in her, she really doesn’t. Her head is killing her, and she’s too tired even to be stunned by the news Angel has reported, that her son went and got himself nailed up there. Amadeo himself is at Easter Mass, another surprise. “I didn’t think he’d . . . go so extreme.” She’s impressed, actually, and thinks if he can apply that kind of determination to a job—any job—he might be okay.

  “He thinks he’s so tough. He’s just showing off.”

  “It’s an old tradition, honey,” says Yolanda. “A sacred thing.”

  “Maybe for other people,” Angel says. “He’s showing off.”

  Yolanda hasn’t even unloaded the car, and already here she is, with her head in the fridge. What was she thinking, after twelve hours of driving, arranging Easter dinner? Frozen meat they have, a five-pound bag of wrinkled potatoes. On the counter, a head of garlic has sprouted green scapes that arc toward the window. Sticky spills on the linoleum, the trash overflowing to the point that it no longer fits under the sink. The brown living room carpet is littered with gum wrappers and mysterious threads. Every surface is covered with abandoned soda and—she sighs—beer cans.

  Once, just once, Yolanda would like to have a perfectly clean house, every dish and glass washed and dried and waiting in the cupboard. It will never happen.

  Yolanda shakes out a new trash bag and starts clearing the refrigerator: slimy bags of greens, sour milk, liquefied tomatoes. She throws out whole Tupperwares, too, because she can’t bear to face their appalling contents, remnants of meals she herself cooked for Amadeo weeks ago. There aren’t any fresh vegetables at all.

  “Why wasn’t your cell on, Gramma? I tried calling you a thousand times.”

  “Bad reception in Nevada.” Please, she thinks, please just leave me be. Yolanda feels for the girl. The procession is startling, especially the first time. She presses the heel of her hand into her forehead. “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s an important part of who we are, and it keeps the men out of trouble.”

  Yolanda sees the hermandads scattered through the mountains as pure spots of hope, now that the communities are dwindling and drug-blighted. She’s glad her Aunt Fidelia isn’t here to see her son Elwin’s story reproduced over and over in houses all through these hills. Passing the syringe in a kind of communion. Sometimes three generations at once, slumped in their living rooms with needles in their arms, eyelids fluttering. Grandmothers with naloxone in their purses tucked among the used tissues and lipsticks and EBT cards. The Rio Grande Sun is packed with obituaries of young people: Died suddenly at home. Passed away unexpectedly. Entered Eternal Rest. She has always lived in terror that Amadeo might find himself on that path, is so grateful that he hasn’t yet.

  “There was blood everywhere.” Angel’s voice rises. “A kid shouldn’t have to see her dad like that. Why would you let him?”

  Yolanda takes in her granddaughter’s soft brown eyes, the stubborn jut of her chin. She’s surprised that Angel has somehow divined her role in the whole business. Yolanda didn’t just let him; she actually begged her Tío Tíve to give him a chance, a detail she prays never gets back to Amadeo.

  After his DWI in December, he stormed around the house and tore up all his citation papers so Yolanda had to call the courthouse to request copies, claiming to have accidentally thrown them away. She did it because she loves him and because she’d felt guilty; he accused her of lying about not getting his voicemail when he was arrested, and the fact is that she didn’t hurry down to the police station, that after she got his message the next morning she’d taken an hour to compose herself because she’d been so angry. At the station, she was apologetic and submissive around the police, as though she’d been the one driving drunk.

  “Please, Tío.” She stood in her uncle’s living room. Velvet sofa, gold-framed mirrors on the wall, a topless, armless plaster goddess on the sideboard; despite being dead for twenty years, her Aunt Fidelia is still a presence here. Her uncle’s country CDs and insulin vials rest among dusty plastic grapes in cut crystal bowls. She remembered being a child, playing Yahtzee with her beloved older cousin and Anthony in the back bedroom, their patience with her as she laboriously tallied the points. “Amadeo is like his dad, I think. In that much pain. Like Elwin.”

  Tíve grunted and pushed at the air in annoyance. “Your boy doesn’t have nothing to be in pain about.”

  “Oh, Tío. He lost his father. That’s a trauma for a five-year-old.”

  “Well, Elwin didn’t lose his father, and neither did Anthony. Those boys made their own problems.”

  “I guess we don’t always know what our kids go through. They were good boys underneath. Like my Amadeo.” She wanted her uncle to remember Amadeo as he once was: his black-lashed eyes and round open face, his easy affection. He held her hand until he was fifteen with such trusting ease. Even into his teens, he spoke to Jerry, his pet corn snake, with the tenderness of a mother. But she couldn’t describe Amadeo without making her uncle think of his own lost son.

  “Well,” Tíve grumbled, but then he took Amadeo out for burgers and made him a novicio.

  “Your father is a grown man, Angelica,” Yolanda says now. “He makes his own choices.” Yolanda’s tone is harsher than she intends, a tone she’s never, to her recollection, used with the girl before.

  Angel flinches, the hurt plain in her face. She stalks off to the living room couch and settles among her papers and folders.

  Yolanda begins to tackle the pile of dishes, cramming them into the already-packed dishwasher. She drops a ham in the sink to defrost, enjoys the solid weighty clank when it hits metal. Easter. As a child, she loved the candy and new dresses, the white shoes and short gloves. The hats with their white netting and ribbon flowers. But since then, the holiday has meant work. Eggs to hide, baskets to assemble, heavy dishes to cook.

  Growing up, Yolanda had felt rich in family, because she’d had Elwin and that dense network of cousins and aunts, everyone streaming in and out of each other’s houses, rooting through each other’s refrigerators, the women gathering to wrap tamales and sip their whiskey-and-waters. But her generation hasn’t been a productive bunch: a child here and there, dispersed all over the state and country. And Yolanda’s own children actively dislike each other. If not for Yolanda’s dinners, when would Valerie and Amadeo ever see each other? When will they see each other when she’s gone?

  “I am sick,” she’ll tell them tonight. Yolanda shuts the refrigerator and steadies herself against it. She cups her head, squeezes as hard as she can, but gets no relief.

  She catches herself in the mirror by the door. Yesterday, she loved h
er hair: its interesting purple-red hue, the way the stylist had gelled it spiky and mussed. But now it looks garish and artificial, and Yolanda herself, beneath it, is drawn and pale-lipped. She runs a finger along the crepey skin beneath her eyes, and the skin holds there, gathered where her fingertip had been, before slowly sliding back.

  On the couch, Angel frowns down at her notebook. Her hair is pulled into a ponytail, her legs spread, belly sagging between them.

  Having children is terrifying, the way they become adults and go out into the world with cars and functioning reproductive systems and credit cards, the way, before they’ve developed any sense or fear, they are equipped to make adult-sized mistakes with adult-sized consequences.

  She’s filled with sad affection for the girl, and also remorse. She should have brought presents. Oh, god. Angel’s birthday was on Friday.

  “Hijita,” Yolanda calls. “Do me a favor and bring my purse.”

  Angel gets up and makes her way over. “I like your haircut,” she says as she sets the purse on the counter. “I meant to say before. It’s very punk. Sorry I made you mad, Gramma. I forget you had such a long drive.”

  Yolanda touches her hand to her new short spikes and smiles at her granddaughter. “Oh, hijita, I’m not mad. Just tired.” Yolanda pats Angel’s hand, flooded with love for her. “Listen, about your dad, don’t take it personal.”

  Angel nods as if to shake the tears back into her head. “Tell me about your boyfriend,” she manages. “Is he nice?”

  “Oh,” Yolanda says lightly, grateful to her granddaughter for letting her off the hook. “He’s just a friend.”

  Angel’s eyebrows tip in real concern. “Did you guys break up?”

  “No, it was just time to come home. You know men.” Yolanda grins and bats away Angel’s pity. “Sometimes you need a break.”

  Right now, Cal is probably outside his trailer in the shade of his blue-striped awning, lawn chair anchored in the dirt. He’s probably trying to read the paper, calling friendly greetings to neighbors on their way to the park’s pool. He’d tell them Yolanda had been summoned home early by a family emergency, and he’d agree to pass on their good wishes.