Stage IIa
The famous doctor, who is highly skilled in optimism says, mastectomy is just not needed for my mother. He looks at her breasts, cups his hands in prayer to mean: these are god’s gifts. Rain falls as if god is moved and something the size of a glass marble moves inside my mother. Only this time it is not as simple as her sadness. On the way out, my dad collects his coat and courage, hand on his heart says, We are not worried at all, doctor sahab, about vanity, remove it if needed. Within five days, the city receives half its annual rain. Within a year from the visit, dad & I weave If-only sentences. What a shame they sound like compared to the hymns she sang, the little gods she tied around our healthy bodies. Was the doctor’s verdict a medical verdict or a man’s verdict on what a woman must have to look like a woman? Like inseparable drops doubts pool at our sills. We cry with the other not looking. And …