Part 30 (1/2)
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CHAPTER.
27.
WINTER.
Becca finished her last round of chemo yesterday. She claimed it was at maximum toxicity, and I didn't doubt it. It seemed like the chemo was meant to kill everything except her. Sometimes she could barely lift the remote, and other times her head hurt so badly all she could do was silently cry.
School and life had been lonely, but not much diff erent than it had been over the summer. I worked, watched movies, helped my mom out. Talked to friends at school, but that was about it. When- ever Becca felt up to it, I went to her house. My mom had taken up making a diff erent ca.s.serole for each visit. I don't think Becca man- aged to try even one. The smell of her bedroom had evolved. In eighth grade, Becca went through a phase after her aunt Vicki visited the Ca rib be an and bought her a perfume called White Witch. Becca thought this was the coolest thing ever, never mind the nose- piercing smell. She managed to collect dozens of bottles and sprayed every- --1 thing she owned with the scent. Thankfully, she fi nally moved on to -0 -+1 105-54406_ch01_1P.indd 175 105-54406_ch01_1P.indd 175 4/17/13 8:58 PM.
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a new smell, one of Britney Spears's concoctions, but the White Witch bottles still remained in a box in her closet. The White Witch smell hung around too, and, I couldn't be in her room without fl ash- ing back to innocent dances and early curfews.
Her room smelled nothing of White Witch anymore. The smell was a combination of disinfectant, Jell- O, and puke. I won- dered if Becca could smell it. Or if her nose was immune to it, like how grandparents have an old person smell that I'm sure they're not aware of.
Some days the smell in Becca's room was so bad I almost sug- gested pulling out the old box of White Witch and coating the air with it.
I watched helplessly as she dealt with the side eff ects: constant nausea, puking, not being able to walk, not being able to see, not to mention the tubes and holes and weight loss and not wanting to eat.
Why did this happen? To Becca, and to anyone? Why can someone get so sick that the only way to get better is to make them more sick?
It's like the world's longest exorcism. It doesn't make sense that I can chat with someone live on a tiny screen, that governments spend bil- lions of dollars on war and mayhem, that actors make millions of dol- lars to just look pretty and skinny, yet no one can f.u.c.king fi gure out how to cure cancer without torturing people.
The other day Becca's mom said, ”Thank G.o.d” about some- thing. It wasn't anything important enough to remember or anything big enough to warrant divine intervention, but she felt the need to thank G.o.d, something she'd been doing a lot more of recently. Becca didn't hesitate to tell her mom, ”I don't believe in G.o.d.”
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she didn't believe in G.o.d would somehow make Becca cursed. If she could be more cursed than she already was.
”I don't believe in G.o.d,” she repeated.
”I suppose that's understandable, though I'm sure you don't mean it,” Becca's mom conceded. ”I'm going to believe in Him and keep praying for you.”
”That is just wrong, Mom.” Becca's mom had hit a nerve. ”What kind of G.o.d do we have to beg to make us well? What kind of G.o.d allows people to get this sick? And not just get sick, but have months of pain and misery? Is it some kind of vengeance? A lesson He's try- ing to teach me?”
”G.o.d gives what you can handle.”
”So it's a test? Let's see how much s.h.i.+t Becca can endure, so she can come out a better person on the other end? Was I that bad a per- son to begin with?”
”It's not just what you can handle, Becca. And G.o.d doesn't con- trol everything, but He can help us get through.”
I wondered if Becca's mom had always been this religious and I hadn't noticed, or if this was a direct correlation to watching her daughter disintegrate.
”I don't want to believe in a G.o.d who can help me because I can't believe in a G.o.d who would let something like this happen in the fi rst place.”
Becca's mom was shaken. Maybe she was holding on to the belief that G.o.d would save Becca. That if she prayed long enough and hard enough, she'd get better.
I didn't know what to believe anymore. Here I was, surrounded by death and sickness, guilty for the tiniest crumbs of plea sure --1 -0 -+1 17 7.
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I allowed myself: ice cream, horror movies, and the selfi shly selfi sh act of fi nding happiness in making Becca laugh. Where did G.o.d fall into any of that? I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want the blame, or the hope, to be on someone else. So I carried on, waiting for what ever was to come, with or without G.o.d's help.
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