Monday

Eve

Lying on my back, bare feet in metallic stirrups, I stare at the faded picture pinned to the ceiling: Redwood trees standing watch over a winding road.

How much time has passed? I can hear a clock ticking somewhere and wonder whether it is my own watch, thought to be broken, buried somewhere in the depths of my purse.
Forgive me Father, for it has been approximately 1200 years since my last physical. I have had many sexual partners in that time. My periods are regular, heavy, with a good amount of cramping. I am acutely aware of a small lump in my right breast. It swells in small spasms, the timing of which I have yet to figure out. I wonder if I let it grow: will it push all of the old breast tissue out of the way or will it encompass it; ocean waves or rising tide?

Adam was the one who found this clinic: Family Tree. He turned on his computer and rode the Internet wave; no big feat considering the time he puts on that machine. I am staring at the picture of the Redwoods and remembering Adam on the winding road, naked as a boy, holding my hand. No computers and no ticking clocks.

The door opens slowly. I can hear the person on the other side looking at the chart the nurse has hung on the wall by my room:
Age:
Height: 5’2
Weight: a solid 130 lbs.
Family History:

The door continues to creep open and I pull myself slowly out of the Redwood forest.
The footsteps that come into the
room are too soft to be that of an adult.

“Ms. Wa…eea…ahhh.mm?” the female voice asks cautiously, as if she were sounding out the name in Cyrillic.

“Present”, I respond without thinking
She stares at my chart. Pushing her stylish glasses back up her nose and delicately putting her bobbed hair behind one of her ears, she assumes the position of the diminished professional. I shuffle around on the waxy paper, to remind her of the fact that my feet are up in the air and I’m already way past the point of introductions.

“Yes, I’m wondering why you left both the age and family history sections blank on your paperwork?” she pulls her eyes up from the clipboard and looks at me (or rather looks down). I can tell from her pink nose and cheeks, the icy Wintergreen breath, that she was the woman in the green parka I saw on my way in, smoking a cigarette behind the burning bush.

“Were you adopted?” she gently pulls the words out of her mouth, as if she knows exactly that I saw her smoking and we’re about to trade secrets.

My eyes try to soften back on the Redwood forest. The picture appears smaller to me now. I am aware of its flat existence amidst the sea of styrofoam squares. I can clearly see the yellowing edges and the crinkle near one of the pushpins. I can see the young doctor, after hours, afraid to return to her empty, cold 600 sq. foot apartment, coming into the room laying on the bed and firing up one of her Marlboro lights, drifting off to the coast of California.

“My family history is complicated. Do you know of the Sarmatian women, descendents of the Scythians and Amazons: warriors of the Far East?”
Our eyes lock, finally, and I can feel the lump in my right breast begin to throb. The snapping and simultaneous ripping of her pink, plastic gloves breaks the cloaked silence.
“Damn. They don’t make them like they used to” she whispers.