Smells like a pina colada, looks like milk, and tastes like
something with a higher chalk content than anything you'd order at the Silver
Diner. Best chugged in shots. Goes down best cold.
The flavors smile: vanilla, banana, berry. Just the
barium comes in tall white metal cylinders that look like they hold robot fuel.
***
The night you were diagnosed, I shivered till my agnosticism
cracked, and cried to the watchmaker to sicken me instead. My husband
walked in and said everyone's mom dies; that's life so deal.
So I got in my car and made the tires shriek. But I didn't
crash and I didn't get cancer, and I didn't find peace either. Damn
exurbs.
I came home.
***
Because I love you, I hope today sucks. That the
jackhammer MRI noise rattles your brain; that your arms ache in the PET-CT.
That way you might forget that the blurry tomographic
reconstructions of your innards are so the doctor-priests can peer at your
tumor, and prognosticate the length of your thread -- three months or three
years.
***
I come get you. It's sunny. You're drinking and
smiling.
I get a spoon.
Let me taste the barium, too.
Meera Jhala
The Joy Luck Club
Amy Tan