She Ain't Heavy, She's My Mother Page 12

  “It’s cancer, son. Your mom has breast cancer.” And with that he broke down, as did I. I knew virtually nothing about the disease, as it simply was not discussed back then, but I knew it had to be very, very bad if my big, strong dad was crumbling. He handed the phone to Moozie.

  “Tomato, come over here,” she said. “I’m sure your mother would love to see your sweet face when she comes out of recovery. I don’t understand, she said the mammogram was benign, and now this. Oh God, why couldn’t it have been me?” she cried. “I’m old and she … oh, my baby, just come on over here.”

  Panicked, I fled the library and asked my buddies David and Gordon to tell my teachers that I wouldn’t be in class that afternoon as I had to rush over to the hospital. Jumping into my silver-blue Monte Carlo, I sped through the streets of Uptown New Orleans to Baptist Hospital, trying desperately not to cry. As a diversion I turned on the radio, but the Bee-Gees’ hit “Tragedy” was playing, so I shut the radio off with such force that the tuning knob broke off in my hand. Breathlessly, I made it to the information desk, got my mom’s room number, and took off quickly down the corridor, literally bumping into my cousin Debbie, now a nurse at the hospital, as I recklessly turned a corner.

  I was on the verge of tears. “Debbie, how’s Mom? Dad and Moozie were crying on the phone. What the hell is going on?”

  Debbie rolled her eyes, then hugged me, saying, “Oh, they are just overreacting, sweetie. Breast cancer is not necessarily fatal. Many people survive, and early detection is important. The doctors will know more in a few days, when the lab reports on the lymph nodes come back. Now hurry on up, they’re expecting you. Room 510, take a left out the elevator. And Bryan, keep your chin up and think positive.”

  Think positive? All I could think was my mother was going to die and why couldn’t someone just tell me she was going to be okay? I entered the somber hospital suite and was greeted by Moozie, Aunt Vilma, and Mom’s dear friend always known to us as Aunt Carol. She had made a hasty retreat from a luncheon at Commander’s Palace as soon as she heard the news and informed me that Dad was in recovery with Mom. Carol, still wearing her signature oversized picture hat, had passed by Chopin’s Florist on the way and had them create an enormous arrangement of roses and stargazer lilies, Mom’s favorite, which she was placing on a table when she caught my eye. She ran to give me a kiss, but as usual her hat required expert maneuvering before contact could be made. She said softly, “Darling, you are an angel. Say a prayer for your mother. Remember, all things are possible with God.”

  Then I noticed her friend Dotty Brennan making her bed, not with sterile hospital sheets, but rather with her own exquisite satin and lace-trimmed bedding. Above the bed was a big “Get Well” sign obviously purchased from the hospital gift shop, with a piece of posterboard taped underneath, saying, “We Love You Gayle!”

  Aunt Carol followed my gaze and said in her Virginia accent, “I thought the room needed some fixing, something to hopefully cheer your mother up. You know, a personal touch!” Carol, like my mother, was always trying to make others happy.

  Just then, Dad entered the room, his eyes glassy, and immediately walked over to me and hugged me so hard I thought I’d break. Just for a moment, I could feel him quake as if he would cry, but the moment had passed by the end of our embrace. Moozie, eager for news, couldn’t wait another moment before asking, “How is she, John? When can I see my baby girl?”

  Dad took a deep breath and then another, forcing his giant hands into his khaki pants. “She’s resting fine, she’ll be up soon. The doctors had to perform a radical mastectomy.”

  Both Carol and Moozie gasped as he continued. “They are hopeful that they got it all and that the reports from her lymph nodes will come back negative. Next week they want to perform a complete hysterectomy because there is a possibility that the cancer could travel there.”

  Dad just hung his head, and this time I hugged him as hard as I could.

  “Dammit to hell,” Moozie moaned, breaking down, “why not me? Why not me? I’m old.”

  Dad called Jay on the phone and told him the news. He made plans to be back in New Orleans soon. By then, Mom’s waiting room was filled with family and friends, including Oralea, who beckoned me over to her side. I had grown taller than her years ago, as her osteoporosis had caused her to hunch over. But she reached up and hugged me, saying, “Listen, Your Majesty, I know how much you love your mama, we all do. This ain’t gonna be easy, I guarantee, but we can beat it. I’ve seen it done before. I got your favorite red beans and rice waiting for you at home, now show me a smile … I mean it, show me your smile … Good, and keep it on your face every time you go in and see your beautiful mama.”

  Minutes later, Mom was brought back from recovery, still a bit groggy from the anesthesia and in shock from the unexpected news of her mastectomy. One by one, we went into the adjoining bedroom. When it was my turn, she said, “Hey, pumpkin, how’s my handsome young man?”

  Seeing her hooked up to drips and drains, with barely a trace of color in her face, was too much for me. Holding her hand, I started to well up.

  “Now honey,” she said, “don’t you fret, no sirree, I am going to be fine. When I was twelve years old I had a ruptured appendix, and peritonitis set in, do you know what that is?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, it’s poison, and it nearly killed me, but it didn’t get me because I had to be here to have you and your brother, and I’m not leaving until I’m done with you two, and that’s not for a long time. Now pet, I need you to be strong for your daddy. He needs you now, all right? Now give me some sugar.” With that, I kissed her forehead and left.

  More visitors kept arriving—the Brennans, the Nunguessers, the Watkinses, the Weilbachers—bringing wine and finger sandwiches, turning the waiting area into a bit of a cocktail party. I asked everyone questions about Mom’s future: Dad, Debbie, Aunt Mid, and Aunt Vee. But no one had any concrete answers, or at least not the ones I wanted, and it was driving me insane. “It’s in God’s hands” and “We’ll have to wait and see” were just not cutting it. I stormed out of the now-crowded lounge, down the fluorescent-lit, highly polished linoleum-tiled corridor to the charge nurse seated behind the desk. “Excuse me, my name is Bryan Batt, I am Gayle Batt’s son, and I need to speak with her doctor as soon as possible!”

  The nurse recoiled and stared at me, as if to ask, Who do you think you are?

  But before she could utter a word, I felt a gentle touch upon my shoulder, and turning around I came face to face with Dr. Sebastian, her surgeon.

  “I need to know, I need to know, and nobody has any answers. You are her doctor. Please tell me something, anything.”

  “Young man,” he said calmly, with kind authority, “this is not usually done, but since I know your mother would want me to, okay.”

  He put his arm around my shoulder as he walked me down the hall.

  “Now son, I am going to be honest. You are old enough for the truth. Your mother had a serious procedure, and we had to remove one of her breasts because there was a cancerous tumor inside. We also removed some lymph nodes for testing. If the lymph nodes prove negative, then your mother’s situation will be much better. I believe that we got it all and that the tests will come back negative, but we have to wait a few days for the results. Do you think you can you hang in there until then?”

  I nodded. “So if those tests come back negative, then she’ll be fine, right?”

  “Well, son, it’s not as easy as all that,” he went on. “You see, if those results come back negative, then there is a very good chance it didn’t spread, but there are other tests we have to do to make sure it’s not traveled to any other organs in her body. If all those tests come back negative, that’s good too. But the rule is five years cancer-free before patients are considered cured.”

  Dr. Sebastian was paged over the loudspeaker, and he patted my shoulder gently with his manicured hands before leaving me alone at the end of the h
all. What would I do if my mother died? Because of my father’s heart condition, I always feared that he might die, but I had never, ever thought about losing my mother so soon.

  TO OUR GREAT RELIEF, all the test results came back negative and her lymph nodes were clear. However, ten days after her initial surgery, she underwent a hysterectomy. Then, as if all of that weren’t enough, she had a subcutaneous mastectomy on her remaining breast. Mom entered the hospital at the pinnacle of feminine beauty, but within a month she walked out a butchered and completely altered person. No matter how she tried, she would never be able to lose the nearly twenty pounds she gained in the hospital due to the change in her hormone levels—and perhaps to the rich New Orleans food that friends and family lavished on her. All in all, she would never physically be the same again. But her face, her dancing, twinkling eyes and stunning smile, remained, as did her indomitable spirit.

  That spirit would be tested again and again in the coming years, years filled with more and more illness and fear. Mom underwent two grueling and painful reconstructive surgeries as well as three more resulting from her body’s reaction to the implants.

  Meanwhile, Dad’s heart continued to falter severely as he drank more heavily. Finally his doctor informed Mom that he was indeed killing himself with alcohol. Never missing a step, Mom sought a nearby treatment center in Baton Rouge, and twice a week we would drive for our coaching sessions on how to perform an intervention. Mom was fully prepared to leave him if he did not agree to go to the treatment center after we confronted him with how his drinking had negatively affected our lives. Fortunately, he agreed to go. And with only a few slips, Dad remained sober for the rest of his life. But it was indeed too late; the damage to his heart and other vital organs was irreversible.

  Two months after his release, just short of Mom’s two-year mark of being cancer-free, a tiny malignant tumor was discovered and removed just under the skin of what remained of her left breast. By this point Dad was in and out of the hospital constantly, a huge oxygen tank was kept in the den, and everyone in the household had taken a course in CPR. The recurrence of Mom’s cancer was the worst possible news. There are many words I hate, and although hate itself has become one of them, it appropriately describes my deep sentiments surrounding the words malignant, metastasize, and recurrence.

  Mom made a trip to the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for a complete evaluation, and upon returning she announced her plan to the family. She had stopped at Neiman Marcus in the Galleria Mall, and I was proud that without my help, Mom had selected a stunning ensemble all on her own. We all sat on the massive L-shaped chocolate leather sofas that faced the vintage brick hearth—Dad, Jay, Moozie, Oralea, and me—as Mom made her presentation with an air of confidence.

  “Okay, my loves, here’s the deal. The sweet doctors at M. D. Anderson ran every test possible, every fancy kind of X-ray, on every fancy advanced machine on the planet. And thank God, they could not find a trace of the cancer anywhere. That’s the good news … Hooray!” She shook her bejeweled hands over her head in a “praise the Lord” gesture. Whenever the phrase “good news” was used, I knew bad news was right around the corner. She continued, her voice as lovely as always but stronger and more determined.

  “I asked them what they would recommend for treatment, and the doctors said full radiation and chemotherapy. So I said, ‘Okey-dokey, let me get this straight. There is no cancer detectable in my entire body, yet you want to blast me full of toxic chemicals and radiate me to boot?’” She was on a roll, acting out the exchange both physically and vocally, imitating the Texan twang on top of her own lilting drawl.

  “‘Hm-hmm, that’s correct, Mrs. Batt.’ So I asked what they would have for me if in fact the dirty little rascal came back to visit again, and they said, ‘Well, then, we would have to use a lesser treatment.’ So I said thank you very much, and that I would let them know my decision. Now y’all, I have thought and thought about this. Maybe this tiny recurrence was a fluke and not related to the last cancer spell. Why pull out the heavy artillery now? Wouldn’t it make sense to bomb when attacked? So I’ve decided to take a pill that has been shown to help keep the kind of cancer I had at bay. But wait, there’s more. On the plane ride home, I sat next to a lady who was coming back from M. D. Anderson as well. We started to chat, and she pulled out small containers of her own food, and I asked her what it was. She explained that she was on a macrobiotic diet, and it had been proven that it helped fight cancer. She said that we are ingesting a lot of chemicals and preservatives in our diet that cancer just loves. She also gave me names of books to read and groups that teach creative and healing visualization and so on. So here’s the deal, I am going on that diet and I am going to every class I can and beat this. Then if one day I have to do the chemo, so be it—no Gayle!”

  She stopped and corrected herself as if admonishing a small child. “Take that back, take that thought back from the universe!” She reached out and grabbed the air in front of her and tossed the imaginary thought over her shoulder. Mom inhaled a big, deep breath and continued for a moment with her eyes closed. “You are a healthy and healing child of God.” She quickly opened her eyes wide, explaining, “That is what is called an affirmation. Cheryl, the lady on the plane, said it’s all about positive thinking and seeing yourself well, mind over matter. So that’s it, kiddos, I am now off to a little grocery on Esplanade called the Whole Food Company. They sell only organic and chemical-free food. I think we will have some free-range chicken tonight, and steamed vegetables and kale. Any questions?”

  Our mouths ajar, we could only look at one another in silent shock. “No? All righty, then.”

  She kissed us each as she made her way to the door, collecting her handbag and notepad from the plane ride. With each kiss we smiled slightly, not knowing what to say. “Family, I am off to the Beacon Bookstore, then to make an appointment at the Agape Center, and finally a pass by the Whole Food Company. Oralea, I’ll be back in about an hour and a half. Would that give us enough time to fix a healthy dinner? Oooh, and brown rice too?”

  Oralea nodded. “Oui, Madame, I hear you loud and clear!”

  As Mom hurried out the side door, Dad, stunned, muttered, “Jesus Anthony Christ.”

  Jay shook his head. “They obviously didn’t do a brain scan, because Mom has lost it!”

  Moozie and I sat completely still, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

  Oralea marched front and center, put her hands in her white uniform pockets, and grinned from ear to ear. “You gentlemen can say what you want, but Miss Gayle’s done put her boxing gloves on. That is the sign of a woman in love. She in love with her family and she in love with life and you just can’t mess with that, no way, no how. I guarantee, that lady is going to outlive us all, they are going to have to drag her kicking and screaming from this world. Oooooh, that’s my girl. Now excuse me, I got to make a few calls and find out what the dickery-dock is brown rice and how do you cook it!”

  AND SO IT was that Mom stayed faithful to her macrobiotic diet, bringing Tupperware containers of brown rice and seaweed to the best restaurants in town and continually perplexing waiters by requesting steamed vegetables and poached fish—Ĉreole cuisine blasphemy. Miraculously, it worked, but as always, with the good news came the bad. Dad’s situation continued to worsen. There were countless trips in the ambulance to the hospital, and he grew so weary of the ordeal. He was diagnosed with premature ventricular contractions, which would throw his weakened and enlarged heart into fibrillation, for which there was no treatment or cure at the time. Mom saw that we had a defibrillator in the home, and educated herself on exactly what medications were needed to stabilize him if such an attack occurred. Her desire to hold on to the man she loved was unswerving, and although he was finally brought home because he didn’t want to die in the hospital, she never surrendered her hope.

  Mom called all over the South and the entire country to find doctors who might have any trial or experimental treatm
ents. Nothing. The last attempt was to be a heart transplant; this rarely successful operation was the only possibility left. It appeared that there was a doctor in California who would perform the surgery, and Mom clung to that tiny sliver of hope with every fiber of her soul, but finally the call came that Dad was not a viable candidate. Although she begged the doctor to try anyway, it was to no avail. Mom then gave up, but not completely. She later told me that she ran into her boudoir and collapsed, crying, ranting to the heavens.

  “I GIVE UP, DO YOU HEAR ME? I GIVE UP! YOU WIN! There is nothing else I can do, so I am turning it over to you. I’ve done everything possible … It’s your will … not mine!”

  The very next day there was a call from Dr. Albert Hyman, a heart specialist from right there in New Orleans. He informed my mother that there was a new heart medication that was garnering great results, and although it had not yet been approved by the FDA, he was able to procure the drug for Dad as an experimental trial. There was a fifty percent chance it would work, with jaundice as a possible side effect. The medication worked, and for the next five years they lived as newlyweds. From being bedridden, he was able to take Mom to dinner, have weekend visits to the Coast with all their fun friends, and dance at the thirtieth-anniversary party Jay and I threw them on October 10, 1985. Given a similar high school home life, I wouldn’t blame a kid for running as far as he could for college. I chose to stay in my own backyard, and never regretted that decision.

  Our fraternal grandmother, Mom-ee, had passed away the summer prior, and left Jay and me a small sum to travel abroad. I had used a little of mine to move up to New York in September to pursue my dream of being an actor. So instead of a European tour, we chose to throw a lavish fête for our parents and reunite their wedding party. Knowing that Dad would not hear of such an extravagance, we decided to make it a surprise, but Moozie informed us that Mom would just have a fit if she didn’t have time to get the right dress, and that we shouldn’t do anything to suddenly shock Dad. So we compromised, and both Mom and Dad received the invitation when all their family and friends did. Dad called me, reeling. “Are you boys out of your minds? You can’t afford this kind of party right now; you are just starting out in life.”