Sunday Storytime: The Tip

It is taking me a while to decide on a fake breast policy. When to wear it. When not to. It's kind of a tricky question, I realize now that I'm in a position to have to sort it out. There's a difference between looking nice, which I can do without it, and which has more to do with unwrinkled clothes, and looking. . .nice.

In theory, we think about looking nice for our spouses. But my spouse knows what the hardware looks like, so speak, so the illusion is kind of wasted on him.

Some days, I wear it just as a means of going incognito. You know, to be out and about in town as someone who's not deformed. But, really, people don't seem to notice that I am when I go out fake-less.

Meh. It's still a policy in the making.

Some things have happened to inform it, though. And the first is the feature of this week's storytime:

It has to do with Kwan, the deaf bagger at the Commissary.

Bear in mind that Gemma was speech-delayed until she was about 4 years old. You find this hard to believe, given that she's my daughter. But to clarify: It's not that she didn't talk a lot. We just had no idea what she was saying. So we all learned a little American Sign Language, and this is what kept us happy and sane before the speech came along.

So, when we met Kwan, the deaf bagger at the Commissary, we had a few things to say to her.

At the Commissary, baggers "work for tips only," but in exchange for the tip, your bagger wheels your groceries out and loads them into your trunk for you. No one asks you if you want a bagger. You're going to get one. Period. This is OK with me because it makes my life so much easier--I load the kids while the bagger loads the food. And you get whatever bagger is next in line at your check-out counter and, perhaps true to form on a military installation, there is a lady at the front of the line who tells you which counter you have to go to.

I never minded this system. But Gemma does. Since meeting Kwan a year a half ago, and signing, "Hi, friend" to her, and seeing Kwan's whole face light up upon seeing her, and the two of them hugging and then Kwan putting Gemma on the back of her cart and giving her a ride all the way out to our car--ever since then, Gemma insists on getting Kwan as our bagger. Either by ignoring the lady and picking Kwan's line, or getting up to the cashier and requesting Kwan by name.

Fast forward to the end of this summer, when I returned to the Commissary for the first time in 2 months to reclaim the grocery shopping chore from Bryan. It was just a few days after my port installation, so the left shoulder was sore. I still had my hair because chemo hadn't begun. And I was wearing my fake breast because going to my grocery store felt like the kind of event I wanted to get dressed up for.

As we headed out to the car, Kwan asked me where I had been all summer. I didn't know the sign for cancer. I could sign that I was "sick," but that didn't seem like enough of an explanation. Plus, in a few short weeks, I'd be bald and I hadn't decided at that point what my wig policy was going to be. Plus, and this was really the thing, if Kwan were a hearing person, I would have told her straight out what was going on. You can't hold back just because a person happens to be deaf.

We had gotten to my car by then. I used letters to spell out "cancer." Then I pointed to my fake breast. Her face was all horror and confusion. She knew I didn't have enough signs for her to ask where I was in the process. If I hadn't been wearing my fake breast, it would have been pretty obvious to her. But I was. In fact, I was looking very nice altogether and there was only one method I could use to explain the situation to her. I let out a sigh, held open my shirt collar and gestured for her to look down.

Oh.

She said she was sorry and that she would pray for me and the children. We finished packing up the kids and food, and we hugged and then she started back to the store.

I was just about to climb into the driver's seat when I realized: I hadn't given Kwan her tip! Doh!

She was all the way across the parking lot by then. I had no choice but to run after her. But the garment that holds my fake breast does not provide any sort of. . . athletic support for my real breast. And there was a newly installed port right above this real breast such that running made it all hurt a lot.

I was jogging down the aisle of cars, holding my real breast with my hand, calling, "Kwan!"--hoping that the customers walking right behind her would hear me, get my point, and stop her. Another bagger, an older black guy who has helped us before and who I knew to be a chatty fellow, called to me, "Oh, that girl ain't gonna' hear you! You got to go get her!"

Get, I did.

Just before she reached the store's doors. I handed her the tip and she told me I didn't have to do that. We hugged again. Then I trudged back to the car, my left shoulder screaming. Yes. Sure. I looked very nice, I told myself. And to what end?