Different
I was the only one in our house who called them Cancer Camps.
On the afternoon the letters of invitation arrived, “Seize the Day” in large sans serif font across the top of the orange paper, I didn’t say anything until later that night, when A was out of earshot and mum was taking a break in the living room, flipping through a magazine before it was time to start preparing dinner.
“Mum,” I began. “You know, A could go to the camp by herself. She doesn’t need me, they have camp carers - ”
Mum looked up. “What?”
“They have camp carers,” I repeated, “She’ll be fine. She’ll enjoy it better without me.”
Mum stared back at the magazine in her hand, then put it down and went into the kitchen. She took the cutting board and wiped it down, pulled out a knife and began chopping vegetables. “I think of all the other girls I know who would be so much more loving, and caring, and kind to their sisters if they were like A.” Chop, chop, chop. “You are so,” chop, “selfish.”
“That’s not true,” I protested. “I - ”
“If you don’t go, she’s not going.” Mum pointed the knife. I swivelled around: A had come back from her room.
“What’s the matter?” A asked, looking from Mum to me.
“Nothing’s the matter,” I said, still looking at my mother.
“Honestly, you just make me sick, the lot of you,” Mum waved the knife around. Two little coins of carrot slid off the board and rolled across the floor. “When I was a kid, we did the right thing for each other – ”
“I just thought,” I yelled to make myself heard. “I just thought,” I turned towards A, quieter this time, “That you might enjoy the camp better without me. You should have some independence.”
“’Independence,’” Mum mimicked. “Rubbish! You don’t think!” She jabbed the air. “So selfish!” Jab, jab. “Shouldn’t go to the camp at all, either of you. Giving A the wrong ideas, giving her itchy feet. She should be happy to stay at home, like Aunty Cathy was.”
Aunty Cathy was my mum’s all-time favourite disabled person, a 40-something year old woman who spent all her days making crocheted gift cards and saying rosaries.
“I don’t need to go,” A said. Mum drew a breath but A was giving her nothing, indifferently fiddling with the camp brochure that she had been poring over only half an hour ago.
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “You should go, A. I just thought you might …” I looked at her, trying to work out how to say I didn’t want to go without making it sound like I thought her biggest social event of the year was stupid. “I thought you might want to have some time with your friends.”
I stood up straight and looked at mum; she had her back to me now and was at the sink, the water on full bawl, twisting potatoes under the tap. “Everyone should have time with their friends by themselves occasionally.”
“So selfish!” Mum banged the potatoes on to the benchtop. I took a step back. “All you want to do is be with your friends. What about your sister?”
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to, Jackie.” A said. I tried to read her face, but she was wearing a stupid grin and kept flicking her hair out of her eyes, which was what she did when she wanted to act tough.
“It’s not that I don’t want to come. It’s just – oh, it doesn’t matter. I’ll go.” I flopped into the chair next to A. She picked up the brochure and passed it to me but I waved her away. “I read it before.” A took it back wordlessly.
“So selfish,” Mum muttered, but it was pure reflex. She knew she had won.
I stared at the dining table cloth. I could see A out of the side of my vision, peering at the small print of the camp brochure with her bad eye. After a few minutes I leaned over and, grabbing it out of her hands, I started to read aloud.
This year’s camp was going to be held on Stradbroke Island, which admittedly was kind of cool. I had never been there; my family hadn’t gone on an outdoorsy holiday since A got sick, which was before I could discern between holidays and other days anyway. A and I had been going on the Cancer Camps for four years already, since I was 13 and she was 16, which meant that this would be our last one: the cancer club was only for teenagers with cancer and their teenage siblings.
As I was packing, I told myself that it would all be fine. Whatever happened, it would soon be over. But as I folded A’s and my clothes, unbidden memories of past years’ embarrassments hijacked me. A, unable to keep up in conversations with the other cancer kids because they all had leukaemia, or Hodgkin’s disease, their minds still intact in a way A’s tumour addled brain hadn’t been since she was ten years old. A, in the dining hall at breakfast, jiggling her flabby bottom to the piped muzak, thinking that the smiles of the other kids were kind. A, standing in the middle of the girls’ bathroom, totally naked, her floppy breasts dangling over her big, round belly, calling my name at the top of her lungs because she couldn’t find her towel and I had stepped outside for a minute to get some air. I closed my eyes.
On the way to the island I stood at the boat’s edge, the wind whipping redness into my cheeks. A limped around, excitedly greeting the other camp goers, even the ones she didn’t know but thought she did. It was early on and everyone was being nice to her, not minding when she hugged them, laughing at her jokes.
Suddenly a voice said in my ear, “Check out the camp carer’s hair. Go on, look now!” I turned my head carefully to the right. Sure enough, there was a camp carer, a 20-year old new guy whose name tag read “Dave,” with a smiley face next to it that he had drawn in himself. He had clearly spent too much time with the hair wax that morning; with the wind blowing a gale around us, instead of naturally whipping about, it was moving backwards and forward like a bird’s beak nipping at the air. I stifled a laugh and turned to see who had spoken. He was a short boy, no more than 13 years old, with a freckled face and the tell-tale puffy cheeks and slow-moving eyes of a brain tumour. I was surprised: in my experience the first casualty of a brain tumour was a sense of irony.
The kid’s name was Roger and it was his first Cancer Camp. “Oh boy, are you going to love the group activities,” I told him.
“What are you talking about? Not…trust circles?” he said, shrinking backwards.
“Trust circles are for amateurs. These guys know things you can do with string and a piece of wire you wouldn’t read about.”
Almost as soon as we docked, we were summoned for our first workshop. All Cancer Camps followed the same pattern: a series of indoor and outdoor activities, designed to help us deal with the cancer in our lives. Using, you know. Crayons.
For the first activity, A joined Kathy and Jeremy’s group. Kathy and Jeremy were brother and sister, and both had cancer pretty badly. They were both in wheelchairs. Kathy had gone to high school until grade nine, but I couldn’t hold that against her on A’s behalf for very long because she was so nice to A. They knew each other from other Cancer Club activities like the pizza nights in between camps, and had even phoned one another up a few times. I had been suspicious at first: I had grown so used to people being nice to A out of charity or a sense of obligation, it took me a while to realise that they were friends.
I wasn’t sure what was wrong with Jeremy. He had a tumour too, but also spinal curvature which made his head sit right down low on his chest and gave his voice a squeaky high pitch. I had never really talked to him much: to be brutally honest, I found his physical presence mildly repulsive. I wasn’t mean to him, but I hadn’t gone out of my way to be nice to him, fearing that if I gave him too much attention he might get a crush on me and I would have to break his heart.
I sidled past their table and sat down next to Roger.
“Now everyone,” Cara, the head camp carer, was using her camp-caring voice. She clasped her hands together in front of her pink camp carer t-shirt and put on her camp-carer “it’s fine to have fun but there’s a serious side to these camps” face, as if we didn’t already know what the serious side was.
“I want you to be as honest as possible. Now, draw what you felt, using symbols, colours, whatever you like, of how you first felt when you heard about the cancer.”
“How dumb is this?” I whispered to Roger. He didn’t answer, but instead picked up the black crayon and twiddled it back and forth in front of his mouth. I looked at my blank page, then swung around to see what A was doing. Her nose was almost touching the page, which she was attacking with red and pink crayons, her fringe hanging in her eyes. She needs a haircut, I thought.
Rog took the pen he was fiddling with and solemnly drew a skull and crossbones on his pad. I looked on as he kept drawing: the outline of a jacket; a helmeted head; a guy with an unmistakable motorbiker’s beard. Finally he pencilled in “Hell’s Angels” underneath the skull. He ripped the picture out of the pad and handed it to me, grinning. I pocketed it.
“Excuse me, Dave,” he called out. Dave sidled over, hair slicked up in his trademark Astroboy peak. “I’m sorry, but I think this is a little too painful for me right now. I think I need – some time,” he said, looking up into Dave’s eyes, his voice dropping to a whisper.
“Of course, ah, Reg,” Dave pulled out Roger’s seat for him, his face a picture of understanding. “Do you mind if Jackie comes with me? I – when it comes up, my counsellor says I shouldn’t be alone.” Dave nodded. He was barely older than I was; this was probably his intern experience for an undergraduate psych degree. He looked at me pleadingly. I nodded, my face solemn, and stood with Rog, who leaned on my arm until we got to the door, where he whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”
We grabbed some fishing gear from the camp shed and headed to the dock. After a while we stopped laughing at Dave and the other suckers, and gradually let the plash of the water against the wooden pylons lull us into companionable peace. After about an hour, the sun about to set, neither of us had had a bite. Roger drew breath as if about to say something, and I got ready to laugh, when he jumped to his feet.
“Look!” he shouted. I looked and saw him, his face glowing with the excitement of a little kid, which, I realised, he still was. I followed where his hand was pointing and saw them: a pod of dolphins, flashing and surfacing through the sparkling, rippling water. The sun set behind them in a haze of red and gold over a clear expanse of ocean. I stood next to him and said nothing, the two of us watching until the dolphins made their way across the bay and out of sight.
The next day we had a full program of high ropes adventure courses ahead of us, designed to help us to “face our fears.” Rubbing my eyes, I shuffled my way along the food queue and piled my plate high, making the most of one of the best things about Cancer Camp: the cooked breakfasts. I had just arranged the eggs on the toast, first bite on the way to my mouth, when Head Camp Carer Cara asked for our attention. She stood for a minute as if unsure how to begin, twisting her hands instead of clasping them.
“I’m sorry everybody, but I’m afraid I have some sad news.”
I thought, maybe the rope course has fallen down and we won’t have to do it. A vision of sitting on the dock all day, shooting the breeze with Rog, not worrying about A because she would be hanging out with Kathy and Jeremy, began to form in my mind, and I held my breath.
Jeremy, Cara said, had passed away in the night. Kathy was in the carers quarters being treated for shock.
I put my fork down; I had been holding it all this time, the egg slipping back on to the plate in clumps. Half getting out of my chair to find A, I heard her keening cry. One of the camp carer’s went to her, a solemn look on her face. I wonder what sort of training do they have for this? I thought, watching her go. I sat back down.
After a minute of staring at my plate, listening to the shocked murmurs around me, I stood. It was only a few steps to where A was sitting and I began to move around the tables towards her. As I approached, her weeping grew steadier louder, a pulsating magentic field repulsing me from her general vicinity. I veered off and out of the hall. I kept walking until I got to the dock.
“This is really terrible, isn’t it?” Roger had sat down beside me. “I didn’t really know Jeremy, but I mean, I was just talking to him yesterday, you know?” His legs dangled back and forth over the side of the dock.
I looked out over the bay. I could make out the mainland: a line of brown and green in the distance. Watching the sun set over the water the night before, I thought, and it was really setting over land the whole time.
I had eaten dinner with Jeremy on his last night alive on earth. Well, I had eaten with A, who was sitting with Kathy, who was sitting with Jeremy. He and Kathy were both in wheelchairs, so they had to eat at a table end, which made them a bit removed from the others, so it was just us four. I hadn’t talked much, but I had smiled at Jeremy over my baked potatoes.
Thinking about it on the dock, I was glad I had smiled. I was glad the last action I had made towards him had not been one of turning politely away.
“Your sister’s taking it pretty hard,” Roger said.
“I know,” I answered eventually. I made no move to get up.
I wondered if Roger thought about dying. After all, he had a tumour too. He might be in remission at the moment, but he was closer to it than, say, I was. But as he continued to talk as if Jeremy’s death was something that could happen to other people, I realised, he doesn’t look at it that way. I watched him; his puffy face, his voice slightly sluggish from the drugs he and A, Jeremy and Kathy had all had to take at some point. I put my arm around him and patted his shoulder.
Roger nodded. “Thanks, thanks,” he said. I pulled my arm away and went back to staring at the water. Roger got up. “You going to come back?” he asked.
“Eventually,” I said.
Roger turned and hesitated, then said, “You know, some people need to be alone to deal with this kind of thing.”
He looked at me carefully. I knew he was trying to tell me it was ok that I stayed out here as long as I wanted, even though A was taking it hard in there, but I was no longer thinking about Jeremy or A. I was thinking about myself. How I was glad I had been nice to Jeremy yesterday, because now he was dead it would have been shithouse if my last actions toward him had been based on a teenager’s view of the world, on likes and dislikes. At the same time, all I could think was, how unfair it was that cancer meant you had to pretty much like everybody, including your sister, all the time; how you couldn’t treat the cancer kids like regular kids, no matter how much they wanted you to: not because it was kinder to them to treat them differently, but it was kinder to yourself once they were gone.
A few minutes after Roger left I got up and made my own way back. I walked slowly, trying to extend the minutes I had to myself. I breathed in the crisp, salty air and stared vehemently at ordinary blades of grass on the side of the path, trying to eke out meaning and moment from them while I was still free.
In the dining hall there were scattered groups talking quietly but a lot of people had gone off to other places, wanting to deal with the news in their own way.
A was still there. Her face was blotchy and red, and she had a snotty tissue in one hand. One of the camp carers was sitting with her, absently stroking her hand. A looked like she had cried herself out: she was staring off into space. I walked over to her.
“Jackie!” she said when she saw me. “Jackie, stay here, I need you!” she said and started crying again. I patted her shoulder and looked around, anywhere but at her face, which had just turned into a gaping maw, her chubby cheeks bulging out and distorted by her sobs.
My chair fell over with a loud clatter. A few heads turned. I didn’t stop to pick it up on my way out.
“Jackie?” It was Dave, standing right in the way of the light coming into the cabin from the doorway. You’ve got nothing new to tell me, I thought, watching him as if from a great distance. I had grown up with cancer. He was getting university credit to talk as if he had.
“Jackie, everyone deals with this kind of thing differently,” he said. I almost laughed at how similar he sounded to Rog.
“I know that,” I said.
“So, you take whatever time you need.” He stood, uncertain if he should comfort me or not, but I wasn’t crying. I hadn’t properly cried for years, not since I had fallen off a horsefloat in grade three and had to get nine stitches in my knee. Now that had hurt.
Finally he turned and walked slowly away, as if hoping I might call him back. I hugged my knees to my chest and pushed deeper into the bottom bunk of the bed. A’s bunk. There were other people here who could take care of her right now, I told myself. Wasn’t it enough that she needed me for everything else, from tying her shoes to washing her hair? There was something I had to keep for myself. I wasn’t sure what it was but I knew if I went in there and dutifully put my arms around her, she would hug it right out of me.
A little while later Dave came back, but only to tell me everyone had to return to dining hall. They had called all the parents, they said, and we were to return home early. I went back to the room to pack our things. I pulled out a clean jumper for A, thinking of how she had got cold on the boat on the way over.
“Here A, put this on.” A was still sitting in the dining hall, scribbling in a notebook. The camp carers had gone as had everyone else, to get their things ready. She didn’t look up.
“What are you doing? Come on, put this on.” I said.
“I’m writing.”
“Writing what?” I asked, trying to see. She covered it with her arm. “Is it a poem?” My sister wrote poetry back then, when she was still able to concentrate for long enough periods. “Is it for Jeremy?”
“No it’s not, Jackie. It’s too soon for that.”
“You should write something for him,” I pressed. “It would do you good.”
“No!” she said and pushed my hand away, holding out the jumper. “It’s too soon!” Her face had taken on a stubborn look and she guarded the notebook with her big, soft body. Her left leg, the damaged one, dangled off the side of the chair. I felt suddenly as if I was towering over her.
“Come on, you can write that later, put this jumper on now so we can get ready to go. I’ve already packed all your things,” I added.
She put her pen down and allowed me to shove the pullover down over her head. I pulled her right arm through, then eased it on to her sensitive left arm. When I was done, without a word she grabbed the pen and started writing again, hunching over the page. I thought of a prisoner protecting a pet cockroach from a more powerful cellmate: although the prisoner knows what will happen, she cradles that cockie to her chest until the bitter end.
I turned around and walked heavily back to the room, grabbing our bags and putting them out by the rest, ready for departure on the next ferry. Rog was sitting gloomily on top of his backpack. “Ready to go?” he asked.
“Yep,” I said. I stood, hands in my pockets, looking aimlessly at the cabins we had been staying in.
“Why do you do everything for A?” he asked suddenly.
“I don’t,” I responded, thinking of her messy hair, her unwashed face.
“Yes, you do. She treats you like a slave. ‘Pack my bags, where’s my towel, I’m cold,’” he said, mimicking my sister’s voice.
I stood staring at him, shocked. “She needs my help,” I said finally.
“Not that much, she doesn’t. I have a tumour too, you know.”
“It’s not the same,” I said.
“How?”
“Your tumours are different. They’ve had different effects.” I thought of how he and I had sat on the dock, chatting like normal people, whereas when I had conversations with A, I had to repeat what I had just explained 15 minutes ago over and over. I looked at Rog, his eyes with the same slight waver as A’s, and realised it was the only thing they had in common.
“It’s different. You’re different,” I said. I looked at him and, for a split second, I hated him for it; for showing up just how shithouse A’s situation really was.
“It’s just different.”
Rog didn’t say any more, just shook his head sceptically. After a minute I turned and walked back to the dining hall. A was still writing in her notebook. I slumped into a chair next to her. As she wrote I watched her, her head bobbing backwards and forwards, hair sticking out at weird angles. I had to fight an overwhelming urge to tell her to go and brush it. It’s not up to me to tell her that, I thought. I just have to look after the essentials, like, is she warm enough, has she been to the toilet. I tried to hold the distinction in my hands but it slipped right through. Responsibility for A was just a great big coat I wore, and it wasn’t as if I could cut off a sleeve or yank off a pocket: I had to wear the whole coat, or go cold.
I leaned forward and patted her hair down. She kept writing. I did it again, this time harder. “Hey, Jackie, stop it,” she muttered, absently waving my hand aside. I sat back, satisfied.
After about three minutes, she looked up again.
“Oh, hi Jackie,” she said. “Do we have to go now?”
“No,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll let you know when it’s time.” She nodded and went back to her page. I sat on, waiting for the boat that would take us both home.