#Memoir

Michelle Backer
Memoir

Phone rings.. “You are eligible for the COVID vaccine. Can you make it to twenty something blah blah blah Church Avenue tomorrow at three o’clock?” I jumped a little, shocked I had qualified for the vaccine in the first place. Surprised that I had mattered. “Yes, thank you, thank you!” I replied.

I opened my Lyft app to request a cab. Uber is an unethical company and I never use them but that’s for a different day…. Two minutes later a man whose name I could not pronounce arrived. I checked his license plate like I always do. All woman should do this; it’s not fair but it’s smart. We need to keep safe. I use extra caution when I travel as well. There are many beautiful parts of the world I would love to see, yet many are unsafe for women travelling alone. My own county for one. According to a 2019 Forbes article, “20 Most Dangerous Places For Women Travelers” America, nestled in between Cambodia and the Ukrainian, is ranked as the nineteenth. Nice. The statistics seem shocking, yet I know this is true based on my own experience as a girl and now as a woman. “Scoring badly on street safety, non-partner sexual violence and a host of gender inequality issues makes the United States particularly bad for female travelers.” This is why I feel justified checking a Lyft driver’s license plate and why I don’t allow my eleven year old daughter to walk the city streets with her friends, no matter how much she begs.

The Lyft driver was very dark skinned and I immediately felt bad. I didn’t want him to be insulted, yet it there was nothing I could do about that. I am sometimes quiet in cab rides, yet today I wanted to talk. I asked him how he was doing. He talked about current events and the impeachment trial for Trump. I haven’t been paying attention to the news these past few weeks since my world has recently become very frightening. “I am glad he’s gone” he said. He paused and in the silence my mind wandered out of the car window. Everything felt perfect in that moment. Tranquility. He continued, “The world was too stressful. All of this stress causes heart disease… and cancer.” My eyes widened and I jumped a little. “CANCER!” I have been trying to avoid this word all day.

The driver’s name who I could not pronounce was about sixty years old, thin and dark skinned; he spoke with a thick Caribbean accent. “I have a biopsy scheduled next month.” he said. I paused for a minute and looked down at my bandaged breast. “I just had a biopsy yesterday myself.” I blurted out. Once these words left my mouth I understood the reality of my situation. He looked at me in the rear view mirror and said, “You’re too young for cancer”. I responded with a chuckle, “Yeah, let’s hope”.

We continued to drive through the area adjacent to Ditmas Park and Prospect Park South named ‘Little Caribbean’. The mayor officially named it this just recently after years of reluctance to appease the Black Lives Matter protesters. This new name made me smile. I could hear the gentrifiers in the distance exclaim what a great of a name it was as they hold their BLM posters high for the world to see. #BlackLivesMatter. I can hear their whispering as soon as the lights go out and the curtain is drawn.Commiserating with one another in cafes while wearing yoga pants and eating avocado toast while the rest of us are hard at work. They talk about how fearful they are of crime. They share their fear about their property values going down considerably. They’ll lock their doors more securely at night, eyes glued to their Citizens Apps. They will wait for the gloomy day that will never come.

Most of the families in my neighborhood have a nanny. They are usually middle aged women from the Carribean. I am sure they were forced to leave their own family behind in order to send money home. Survival. I wonder if they cry at night about how much they miss their home and their families. I don’t think that many of these upper class white families can relate. The reality is that I am sure they do know, but simply do not care. Suffering. Unless you have suffered you can’t relate to the pain of the world that is all around us. Unless you’ve suffered there’s no way to understand. They advertise their sensitivity, their liberalism, post BLM signs in the lower windows of their 2.5 million dollar brownstones. I don’t think things have changed so much in the past century in our country. I think that we all know this is true, yet we don’t speak openly about it. Not until now. I used to watch these nannies when my own daughter was little, exhausted and sweating in the summer heat. I still can see the scars from the chains around their neck from over a century ago. They drudge along in the heat, raising a child who is not their own.

Infiltrate. I report back to my comrades about what I have learned as we strategize and plan for the next steps. We wonder how we are going to make it in this cold, dark city as we look into the abyss. Our hearts collectively race as the first of the month approaches as our bank accounts dwindle. We are going to make it as long as our platoon sticks together. We have awakened to our collective suffering. Revolution.

Back to ‘Little Carribean’. This name was so strong; gave me so much hope. A utopia in a sea of inequality and injustices. It is now a permanent marker. A bold exclamation to the social elite in the greatest city of the world: “Do what you want to us but you’re never going to all of it, not ever.”

Then there is me: a white female, desperately wanting to belong yet not sure to which group exactly. Versatile. Floating in limbo between the haves and the have nots. As a kid I only wore hand me downs. The zippers of my pants were always on the opposite sides. This never bothered me. I don’t think it would bother most children since this would be all they would know. It wouldn’t bother them as long as they were loved. Every child deserves to be loved. I don’t like talking about my childhood because I don’t want to upset people.

Anyway, back to the gentrifiers. I don’t get along with these types of people at all which is why Iove, love the name even more: Little Caribbean. I imagined them now trying to explain where they live to their friends. No longer can they say ‘Ditmas’ or ‘Prospect Park South’. No, now they would be forced to say “Little Caribbean”. It was a good name; strong and powerful. I imagined that if I was Carribean how proud I would feel. Everyone deserves to feel like this. Everyone deserves to have a home.Everyone deserves to belong. I often cry during holidays when I realize I have no family to celebrate with as I find myself alone.

I have the ability to create a family wherever I go. I like people feeling like they belong. People often tell me how much they like me. I don’t they can see how alone I am and how heartbroken I am.
This brings me back to my childhood. I am too old now to cry and scream and fight back; that’s not socially acceptable, so I choose to hold it in instead. When I was a kid I wanted to grow up to be a boy. Adults would ask me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I would answer proudly, “A boy!” They would exchange concerned, confused glances while I had a smile plastered on my face. Thinking about this today I am proud. This is how I figured I’d get some respect in this patriarchal world. This gave me a sense of power as a young girl. Had I been born a boy, things would have been different. The fate of my mother and sister would have been forever changed. I think this is what all girls go through as they realize what this truly means to be a girl. I think a sadness passes through them and they learn to adjust and figure out a way to gain power and respect. We are told we are equal, yet these are just the lies we are told. We all know deep in our hearts that this is not true. If we are going to make it in this world we search for ways to find power, whether it be through success, beauty, intelligect. We find it, we own it and it’s ours. I think all girls go through this realization, yet growing up in a home like mine being born a girl was a dangerous fate. I wanted nothing more than to be somehow magically transformed into a boy.

He pulled up at my stop: twenty -something Church Ave. I got out of the cab, thanked him and went into the clinic to get my first COVID vaccine. Hope. I exited the car and said goodbye to the man whose name I could not pronounce and who I would never see again. I wanted to thank him and tell him how much the conversation meant to me. I wanted him to know that even though I am white I am nothing like those white gentrifiers who I can’t stand. I wanted to apologize that those awful people exist in the world. I didn’t say any of this of course. I gave him a generous tip instead and I hoped he could somehow read my mind.

“Name 1” “Name 2, “Name 3, “Michelle Backer” I jumped up quickly. A group of us were shuffled into a room to wait to receive our Moderna vaccine. The fluorescent lights above flickered while none of us spoke. I was the youngest person waiting. I thought about how scared they must feel right now, knowing that people don’t care about the elderly much in our society. They are like ghosts, roaming the streets, reminding us of our mortality. “God, I don’t want to get old.” I thought to myself. I am a white woman with dark hair and green eyes. I was always told I was “Black Irish” whatever that means; I always thought that sounded awful. I believe it’s a mixture of Irish and Spanish or Carribean, perhaps Albanian. Many claim they are from the Spanish Armada. I think that sounds like something made up, but it’s a good story nonetheless. I think most people want to feel important. I want to feel special too. We all do. The woman to my left, an attractive Jewish, or perhaps an Italian American, woman I would guess of about sixty-five years old said, “Oh honey, are you OK? Those bandages on your chest?” I looked down and said, “Oh, I am fine. Just a small procedure.” She paused for a moment and said, “Oh, I am sorry sweetie. You must be so scared right now. I had a breast biopsy years ago. I was so, so scared. I know how you feel right now.” There was An elderly African American woman in the corner who was obviously irritated by the long wait for the COVID test. I was thinking how loud she was being and was hoping she’d calm down. She was arguing with the nurse and stopped mid sentence and interrupted our conversation. Nodding and smiling at us she said, “Oh, I will never forget the day when my daughter called me and said, ‘I have something to tell you mom.’” The elderly woman said, “I thought, to myself .. What, is she getting married?” She said her daughter said, “Mom, I have cancer.” I blurted out in a panic, “Is she still alive?” I knew how insensitive I sounded, yet I just had to know. “Yes, she is. She went through a lot and she’s fine now, but she lost her breasts.” The other woman and I smiled at one another with compassion as the elderly woman looked into the distance, reflecting helplessly on the memory of her child telling her she had cancer. The love of a real mother never dies. I have something else to worry about that hadn’t occurred to me until now: “Oh crap!” “What if I lose my breast?!”

“Michelle Backer” I was finally called to get my dose. I stood up and gave a gentle wave. We were all bonded in this instant. I realized that no matter what happened, even if I received news that I didn’t want, that I was going to be protected. I was going to be OK.

I remember watching my own mother go through this as a child. Breast cancer. I never liked her very much, so I don’t remember feeling bad. I wanted to feel sad, but I just didn’t. She must have been so frightened and must have felt so alone, much like i do now. A middle aged, breastless woman who society will cast aside. If I lose my breast then I will certainly lose even more power as a woman in this patriarchal world. I have always admired the Greek myth of the Amazons. I know these stories aren’t true, yet I wish they were. I can at least pretend that women like this did exist centuries ago. They would remove their left breast themselves in order to fire a bow and arrow more efficiently. Strong, resourceful and brave, these warrior women would be buried with their weapons. Maybe the Amazons removed their left breasts simply because they had breast cancer. If I am forced to lose a breast maybe I can pretend to be an Amazon woman then things won’t be so bad. Yes, I think this is what I will do! We have to find ways to make sense out of the senseless. Smithsonian states: “These quasi-mythical group of Bronze-age fighting women are best known in popular culture for their military prowess, hatred of men, and predilection for lesbian. But who were they actually? And is this evidence of their existence?”

I’ll have to do more research. I will start reading about them tonight. I have always read a lot ever since I was a child. This is what I loved about my childhood most of all… It’s something women don’t like to discuss openly. Breast cancer. It makes women ashamed and makes many men uncomfortable. Survivors often blame themselves. They are ashamed, therefore, suffer alone in isolation I’d imagine. I am not able to hide my feelings this way. I have always faced the world, no matter how horrific, with eyes wide open.

“I think she’s in denial” I would think to myself as a young kid. I would think this even before I understood what the word denial even meant. “Something is really wrong with her.” I would think out loud. I couldn’t believe this was my mother. ”Could I have had been adopted?” Every Sunday we would go to church. I hated it. Mary would sing LOUD and out of tune. I remember her breath would have a strong smell of stale coffee and Mary would have light pink lipstick on her dry lips. She didn’t seem healthy to me. She didn’t seem to take care of herself. I don’t think Mary had ever learned; I had doubted anyone had ever taught her. There was something very, very wrong with my mother. I have kept chapstick on my nightstand since I was a kid. Still to this day, I rub my lips together, moistened them then place the cap securely on while I turn to sleep. I don’t want my lips to ever be so dry and chapped. As I age they are becoming this way. All I can do is keep applying chapstick and do my very best each day.

I recently watched a movie, Paterno, about the Penn State scandal. Paterno, the beloved Penn State coach, was played by Al Pachino. The story was less about the child predator Jerry Sandusky and more about Paterno’s fall from grace. I wasn’t able to even read the story until recently since it was so triggering. Apparently everyone was coving up the sex abuse and turned a blind eye. The story ends with the Penn State coach, Joe Paterno, dying of cancer. Suddenly, quickly, about two months after this all surfaced and he was fired the beloved coach died of cancer. It seemed to me as if he had died of a broken heart. Would his cancer have disappeared, or would it have ever emerged in the first place had he told the truth and protected those young boys? Paterno was quoted before his death as saying: “It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.” I watched an interview with Jerry Sandusky’s wife Dottie after the film was over, Sad, pathetic woman. I almost felt sorry for you, yet there was a familiar look in her eyes. The same eyes as my mother. Selfish and sinister. She stood by her husband and, despite the facts, insisted he was innocent. She was more concerned about losing her husband’s pension and her economic future than the fate of these young boys. Disgusted, I turned off the TV and decided to read a book instead. There’s no point wasting time on people like this. For now, I sit here alone and type this out, speaking my truth to anyone who will listen. Alone yet at peace.

Will Cancer infect both me and my sister like it did our mother or will be lucky ones who will survive and who will beat the odds. The older I become, more and more I think we are both doing to be OK. I think we are both adults now with daughters of our own to protect and nurture. I think we have both made peace with our past in our own way. Unspoken. An occasional wink or a nod, a gentle smile. It’s our way of telepathically communicating to one another the painful words that we can not say: “The past it over and now we can be happy.” Just like that we part ways. Sometimes when I leave my sister I cry that night. I want to tell her how much I love her and how I wish our childhoods could have been different. Instead, we will go about living our busy lives and laugh together the next time we spend time together.

But he’s gone now. The father is long dead. We will we be forever haunted by the lives we have led, each deciding to go our separate way, choosing to build new lives. I am now forty three with a daughter of my own, divorced yet happy. I often think of my mother, now a very old woman, and hope that she is doing alright able to manage on her own. I hear that she is. I wish I could turn back time and that things could have been different but I can’t. All I can do is write this and hope that, despite everything, she knows that I have forgiven her; I have let go with love. And the End.. ? I am still waiting and yearn for my mother to one day call to say how sorry she is, yet this is just a dream. I am still not quite sure how my story will end. The door from my past will never close completely no matter how much l try. I think now that it is best that it’s left ajar so that the good childhood memories I have shared with my sister will live in both of our hearts for eternity. Embracing and accepting all of the pain, laughter and sorrow of life, I move towards my future at lighting speed with open arms, filled with hope and wonder at each new day.