Four Hundred Years Plus

Judith found it last week. She found a lump on the side of her right breast; it was larger than she thought it would be. When she was younger, she imagined that it would ache, that it would be noticeable and raised. But in the shower, it was a simple, solid presence right below the surface of her skin. But, even with all those years of preparation and visualization, Judith cried.

She cried in the shower for an hour and when she finally dried off, she dressed herself. Judith wanted to pretend it had never happened.

Judith had been feeling it grow; massaging the lump for the week since she had found it. On the seventh day, she had made a decision. She only cried for a moment after measuring the lump and then woke up Adam. Her eyes were only slightly red.

We cried out to Adonai,the God of our ancestors; and Adonai heard our plea and saw our affliction, our misery and our oppression, -Deuteronomy 26

Judith’s eyes were typically the color of pennies. Her hair reflected the same copper highlights against a background of mahogany strands. Adam loved playing with Judith’s hair. When they made love, he’d run his hands through it. He was crazy about how soft she kept it. Judith remembered her father saying similar things about her mother.

She guessed it was genetic.

Although Judith woke up two hours prior, Adam was still lying in bed. They had met each other at the beginning of Fall Semester. It was now May and she still hadn’t told him. But now Adam was beginning the conversion process. He had transcribed the first thirty mitzvot of the Torah onto index cards. Things had moved quicker than she had expected and the time had never been right.

He worked at the coffee stand near the building that most of her classes were held in. She was a Jewish History Major at Columbia and had a dependency on soy lattes. Especially soy lattes served by six foot tall, blonde men with broad shoulders and large, white, teeth.

Early on, the two of them started traditions. Tuesday became movie night. On Sunday afternoons, they jogged around the campus together. Two weeks after their initial date, Judith invited Adam up to her apartment. He was only her second lover.

It was now May. She had to tell him. With damp hair, Judith walked down the hall of her apartment towards the bedroom. It was morning; Adam was folded into her honey colored sheets. The white comforter had been kicked off onto the typically immaculate floor during the night. They were both poor sleepers. He had one sock on and his already unruly, blonde curls seemed alive with its bold twisting and mixed direction.

With his pale hair draping over his blue eyes, Adam’s features screamed gentile.

He didn’t know anything in particular about Ashkenazi Jews before meeting Judith. He wasn’t raised religious; his family didn’t have time for things like that. That’s why it was easy for Adam to adopt a new culture and new traditions. He was looking for a new family anyway.

Both of them had lost mothers. Maybe that’s why it had worked so well; maybe that’s why they fell so quickly. He decided to convert immediately after saying ‘I love you.’ A few internet searches and visits to the synagogue later and Adam felt ready. After his first meeting with her Rabbi, he bought both ‘The Ten Commandments’ and ‘Ben Hur.’ He had called her from the DVD store to brag.

After all, he figured he’d marry her. She was beautiful—they would have beautiful children. She was going to graduate soon with her PhD. She would teach ‘Messianic Studies’ or something of the sort and he would finally have time to return to school. He liked the idea of having a religious family. He wanted to learn Yiddish. The entire package deal appealed to Adam.

“Adam? Hey, Adam, are you awake?”

He clearly was not awake, but when Judith had made her mind up, there was seldom anything that could disrupt her. Adam tried to ignore the prodding. It was nine in the morning. It was Sunday.

She always made a large pot of coffee on mornings when Adam slept over. Their mornings were growing into a tradition as well. Coffee was the only extravagance she allowed herself. As she walked away from the bedroom and back into the kitchen, she awkwardly stared at the coffee cup that sat on the bar. Judith filled the cup and waited for him to wake up. The lavender mug was only one of the many items in the apartment that was coordinated with feminine flair. While Judith prepared his coffee, she was reminded of the many lifestyle changes that Adam had undertaken recently.

She was uncomfortable about asking him to make yet another adjustment.

In a way, Adam was constantly assimilating to Judith. There were slight changes he made as well as grandiose ones. Adam’s learned appreciation of flavored coffee out of pastel mugs was one of the trivial ones. On a daily basis, Adam washed his hair with her scented shampoo and proudly donned her pink bath towels. Judith knew that there were many men who would have complained about their circumstances. Only a matter of weeks into the relationship, Adam gave up smoking cigarettes. Judith was terrified of smoke. Judith also ate a religiously low cholesterol diet. She made him breakfasts with egg beaters and turkey bacon. He grew accustomed to the taste. He always said he loved how healthy she was. He called her a good influence—he now jogged. She found her habits annoying. Judith thought of the ten pound weights lying beside the couch as handcuffs; but that was Judith’s life. Apparently, it was also Adam’s now.

He walked into the kitchen towards Judith’s bar stool in the kitchen. Adam’s one socked foot caught her attention. He was wearing a pair of grey briefs. There was a hole in them. She thought about how comfortable they had become. It was odd how comfortable he had made himself in her life. He made her life their life.

“Hey. Do you know anything about DNA?”

“Yeah. I took a couple biology classes in my day. Why?”

In Judith’s family history, in the Abram’s family history, genetics was a popular term.

In Jewish history, there is a catalogue of guest star adversaries. But for the Abrams, their adversaries were not the Greeks. They were not the Persians, Egyptians or Syrians. Judith fought a microscopic enemy; she had inherited it. It was an enemy that traveled alone- traveled at night. It left their households barren, and it murdered their first children. A molecular antagonist that was harder to identify than an Anti-Semitic and too tenacious of a Goliath to be beaten by David’s sling shot.

The wars the Abrams fought happened on the front lines. On the lines etched into the corners of their worrisome eyes. Their eyes all shared the same brazen polish and the same worrisome creases.

Judith had trouble remembering a time when she wasn’t fighting.

The BRCA1 mutation, primarily found among Ashkenazi Jews, raises the risk of ovarian cancer as high as 54% and breast cancer up to 81%. – The Los Angeles Times; Anna Gorman; April 13, 2007

“Okay. Well, DNA, right--it has to do with genomes. I don’t know why I’m summarizing this for you, you’re a smart guy… “

She trailed off. Judith didn’t know where that introduction was going to lead her. But she needed to say it. He deserved to know. Everyone else already knew. They had all read the last page and it was wrong to leave Adam on the prologue.

Judith thought that if she waited any longer, it wouldn’t be fair to Adam. It wasn’t just her, when it happened; it would happen to both of them. Adam always spoke of them as a team—he wanted her to see them as a pair. And Judith thought that if they were a team, then he needed to know.

All the kingdoms of the Earth of his dominion, and all the peoples, fought against Jerusalem,

- Jeremiah 34:1

She laughed. It was her fake laugh. She didn’t want to explain the situation scientifically. That didn’t seem like the appropriate way to explain it to Adam. But that was the only way she knew how.

He could tell she was upset. Adam put down the mug. His right hand reached out for the hipbones that peeped out of her black sweatpants. He wanted to pull her close to him. When his two fingers grazed against her lower stomach, searching for invisible guide lines, he meant to calm her.

She stepped away from him and pulled her tank top lower.

When she was a child, it had been explained to her in very simple terms. Judith needed to find those words now. If only she had inherited articulation.

“Everyone gets cancer,” Judith had whispered to her grandmother.

Even at six years old, it had become obvious to her. Judith understood the fate that waited for her. And she understood that this birthright didn’t solely concern the end of her, it involved every day in between. It involved not dating very often. It involved avoiding smokers. It involved constant exercise routines and obsessive scanning. It was a chore and a responsibility. A legacy.

Cancer was the blanket wrapped around her in the maternity ward. One day, if she were lucky enough, it would be hidden in the hem of a wedding gown. And she most certainly knew that cancer would one day be the dark shroud she was laid to rest in. For Judith, cancer was a lifestyle.

Judith wore a black, cotton, jumper to her mother’s funeral. She kissed her mother goodbye, and then sunk her hands into the large pockets at the front of her dress. She was six years old. Her thirty four year old mother had eyes that even when closed were framed by thick, black, lashes. They curled with an unintentional art. Judith never had a chance to realize how beautiful her mother had been.

“But does everyone die of cancer. I don’t get it.”

As her grandmother recalled, Judith remained confused for a number of years. The weight of it took far too long to sink in. It was still resonating. The mixed emotions of fear, anxiety and anger now mingled together with new shed tears. It echoed in the walls of her apartment. Standing there at an awkward distance from Adam, unable to find the words she needed to say, she felt its familiar twinge. She recognized the way it tasted, two decades later. And the original wrenches of pain that she had felt had only strengthened with time.

That was the problem with dead mothers, Judith thought. It was a problem that concerned dead mothers, dead aunts, and dead cousins. Judith realized that contrary to popular belief, those losses never got better with time. As the years rolled by and the pages of calendars were pinned back, it never began to hurt less. If anything, the passage of time only solidified the painful absence. The minutes paraded in front of Judith all the memories that had never taken place. And it made her sick.

“This does happen a lot; you’re right. And, we’re going to have to get used to it. But if you’re a good girl, then it’ll all work out, baby. It’ll all work out. God takes care of us.”

Remember Moses, the servant of the Lord, that trusted in his own strength, and in his power, and in his army, and in his shields, and in his chariots, and in his horsemen, not by fighting with the sword, but by holy prayers, -Judith 4:13

That was all she needed to know at that age. She was young. That’s what everyone said. That’s what everyone murmured as they walked down the aisle past her. While she set there miserably accepting apologies and condolences, she only needed their monosyllabic comfort.

“Just so young—it’s a shame. It’s a damn shame.”

“They all get it. Have you noticed?”

She was young. At that time, Judith needed baked apples, warm blankets and monosyllabic comforting. At twelve, with a climbing number of causalities, she needed more. Adam would need to know more. There were entire manila folders of information she could give him.

Her grandmother had had her ovaries removed after the birth of her second child, Judith’s mother, Hannah. Her Great-Uncle Benjamin was the first to leave the family. He died of pancreatic cancer at the age of fifty-one. Uncle Gabe died on Gramdma Ruth’s birthday. For him, it was colon cancer. He was forty-eight. Her uncle David died of pancreatic cancer at age forty-two. Then her cousin, Sara, was the most recent. She had breast cancer, died at thirty, leaving a son. And of course, there had been her mother: ovarian cancer, thirty four.

“Cancer runs in my family, Adam.”

“Is this about your mom?”

“And what I mean is that cancer more or less runs my family.”

He was lost. His eyes were squinted; Adam looked the way he did while Judith and him watched foreign films. He was never able to read the subtitles quickly enough.

She cleared her throat and spoke again. Standing so far away from him, it almost felt like she was lecturing him. It was uncomfortable and rather painful. It was difficult to stand alone.

“Certain disorders tend to be more common among Ashkenazi Jews.”

“Ash-what?”

“Jews from central and eastern Europe, Adam. Like myself.”

She sounded practiced. She sounded as if she was reading from a pamphlet or speaking to a man she didn’t know. Judith entertained the thought of just leaving.

She wanted to leave before he had the chance to. She would never have to tell him about the lump. And then he wouldn’t have the privilege of making her even more similar to her mother. Both left by men unable to play the role. She needed a man who would appreciate the job, the job as the patient, loving, praying husband.

“Adam, I can’t do this.”

She brushed her hair up in to a messy ponytail at the top of her head, pushed away from the bar she had been leaning on and walked toward the bathroom. She closed the door and splashed water on her face. It didn’t work. She didn’t know what to say and didn’t remember why she had to say it.

She drew back the clear shower curtain and sat herself inside the bathtub. This was where she had found the growth. Her only enemy crawled into the fat cells of her breasts. She lay in the bathtub and appreciated how the tile cooled her reddened skin.

Judith lied, undisturbed in the bathtub for eight minutes. Eight minutes, exactly.

Adam counted the elapsed time on his cell phone. He sat there on his designated bar stool, next to her empty one and anxiously shook his foot on the lowest rung of wooden slats. He chewed at his fingernails. Adam wondered if she was sick. This seemed like one of those conversations. He thought that she must be sick. Then he wondered what kind of sick. He remembered having a similar conversation when it had been his mother.

He had just entered high school when it happened. Unfortunately, the memory was rather vivid. Adam had been too old. After reaching a certain age, people lose the ability to forget. He would have considered himself lucky if the memory would just fade a little. His cub-scout leader mother, his science teacher mother, was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease a week before his first formal. Only one per cent of the American population contracts the dementia creating, hallucinating, seizure causing Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, but there was Adam’s mother lisping at forty six year s old. She didn’t recognize him or his brothers. She made horrible noises and seldom showered. Her movements were jerky and her beautiful face was bastardized by her new inability to control the spasmodic movement of her facial muscles. She had had one of those broad, bright smiles.

Adam didn’t know if he could deal with that again.

Hospice.

The terrifying seizures.

Watching the vomiting; watching the crying; smelling that smell and living that life. He had already spent five years doing that. Adam wasn’t sure he would be able to do it again.

Before he answered the question, he rushed into the bathroom without knocking. He couldn’t be answering questions that hadn’t been asked yet. She needed to finish what she had started. He was surprised when he found her in the bathtub, fully clothed.

“You need to say whatever it is that you need to say.”

“There aren’t words. I don’t know how.”

“Do I look like your fucking prom date, Judith? Don’t tease me. Don’t jerk me around. Tell me what’s going on. You’re not protecting me from anything, if that’s what you think. If you have something to say, say it. Say it, straight up. This just stopped being an option.”

By the time his speech ended, he was yelling. It was the first time he had ever yelled at her and it was only accentuated by the fact that they were in such a small room with the door closed.

She started sobbing. Her chin was bent against her chest and the dark brown hair that framed her face was quickly wet with her tears. Between deep gasps, she addressed him.

“Are we seriously fighting? I could be dying right now and you have the nerve to yell at me in my own bathroom? Seriously, Adam?”

Judith felt that all the information she had originally planned on sharing was worthless. None of it would help them. Because it isn’t helpful to know why Jews from Russia, Poland, or Germany are different from those from Israel, it is not helpful to know how rare the condition is or how low her chances are of escaping cancer. None of that had made her life easier and she didn’t expect it would satisfy Adam either. She knew it hadn’t helped with either of their mothers and the last thing Judith had wanted was to be another dark era of Adam’s life. That’s not what they had been about. From the start, they were about beginnings. Judith liked who she was able to be with Adam when Adam didn’t know.

Adam and Judith were about being young. Judith thought that perhaps that’s where she should leave them-- leave them in the glory of what they had started. After all, she had seen what a long life was like. Grandma Ruth had had a hysterectomy, years of hormone replacement therapy, multiple sessions of chemotherapy, about one hundred miracles, a mastectomy and oophorectomy. That was her only chance; that was the bright future Judith needed sunglasses for. And statistics, and history lessons, and biological charts don’t make that easier.

Adam was right. He needed to know. But, the consolation he would need afterward, she was unable to provide. All the things a man needs to hear and feel after his girlfriend confesses about a lump, about a genetic disorder, about something she’s known since they first slept together, months prior, were not things Judith possessed. She only knew the things no one cares to know.

It all made sense after the Punnett squares had been drawn, after the studies, after Darwin. Isolated populations, either due to political or religious reasons, narrow their genetic diversity. This tends to cause problems in many cultures. Most Jews tend to marry within their faith and community, the same way her mother had, the same way she wanted to. It was ideal to marry inside the Jewish community, she thought.

These genetic components can lead to Bloom Syndrome, Canavan disease, Crohn’s disease, Cystic Fibrosis, Hemophilia C, Tay-Sachs, and Gaucher’s disease, among many others. -by Will Dunham in

The Scientific American, April 15^th, 2007

Judith had asked too many professionals. Too many scientists, doctors and specialists; too many she knew so well. She knew all of their technical answers. But when it came to sharing it with Adam, Judith felt that there was too much to clarify. But according to the way Adam was staring back at her empty face, she for once, didn’t have enough to say.

He looked worried. He also looked angry. She used cancer as a tool to win an argument and they both knew it was poor sportsmanship. Adam looked exhausted and Judith regretted waking him up on his only day off. She got out of the bathtub and walked over to him.

Judith tried to hug him and he walked into the kitchen instead. He saddled the original barstool. She cleared her throat. She needed to speak; she was angry; and she was scare. Judith’s cheeks were still occupied with tears when she opened her mouth. She didn’t want to be the first one to speak.

“This is not how I wanted this to go. You’re acting ridiculous.”

“No. I am not. Let’s just try this thing again.”

His gray eyes stared at her, wishing they didn’t recognize her. At least that’s how Judith interpreted his awkward stare.

“Okay. Fine. I’ll start. Are you telling me you have cancer?”

“I don’t know how to answer that question.”

“I think you already actually answered it. I’d just like to hear it again.”

“Well, I have a lump.”

Know for certain that your offspring shall be strangers in a strange land, and shall be enslaved and afflicted for four hundred years. But know with equal certainty that I will judge the nation that enslaved them, and that afterwards they will leave with great substance, - Genesis 15: 13-14

His eyes were focused on the kitchen floor. Adam was uneasy sitting there, wearing his underwear. She was attempting to gesture with her hands how long it had become. Judith tried to imitate how she had found it. She was mimicking how long the growth was. He looked uninterested.

Adam wanted to ignore it. He wanted to pretend that if he didn’t watch her represent its length, which was apparently analogous to fingers, that maybe it wasn’t there. He wanted to have sex with her. He wanted for her to stop talking; he wanted to forget that any of this had happened. Adam wanted to crawl back into bed and wake up beside a girlfriend who had normal breasts. He wanted a girlfriend he could marry instead of eulogize.

Judith read it all. It was written in the vertical lines formed between his guilty eyebrows.

And that’s when she broke. Judith broke down. She sat down on the hardwood floors that faced the island they usually ate breakfast at. She crossed her legs underneath her like a child and wept audibly. Her face was wet and red and she didn’t care. Judith was shaking.

Her closed, crying eyes were asking him if he still wanted her. She didn’t know if he would still want to make such an investment and he certainly didn’t look like it. He was sitting stupidly silent on a barstool above her. Adam watched her rupture, watched her composure melt away and her tear ducts explode and he watched her from a distance that was growing by the minute.

She was now a woman undressed by truth. Only weeks away from her twenty-sixth birthday, she only had a couple more years, at the most, until they would want to remove her ovaries.

And with a trail of tears being forged across her face, she mentioned that she had visited the doctor the day prior. She answered the question before he had asked; she was playing both parts now.

Judith’s practitioner ordered an immediate mammogram. Who then, after discovering the
alarming size of the growth, ordered a blood test and an MRI. The results had not been disclosed to Judith. They would need to be analyzed, and then Judith’s oncologist, a family friend by this point, would be immediately alerted. Judith was expecting a call.

She disclosed that part of the story after lifting herself from the ground. She didn’t bother washing her face and she wiped her nose on the sleeves of her shirt. Judith carried herself to the couch and waited for him to join. She sat there holding her swollen breast and spoke without interruption.

She was mumbling the transpired events.

That was when Judith listed all of the medical history, the many scares from the past. She mentioned how cold the office had been; how uncomfortable ultrasounds were because the jelly they use has such an awkward consistency. The process always left her skin irritated.

He sat there with an empty stare. He tried his coffee again and it was definitely cold. He spit it back into the cup and felt embarrassed.

She was stuttering, shifting her eyes quickly, and uncomfortably moving her feet.

Judith was wondering if this had been how her mother felt while sharing her medical results. She wondered if her mother had felt this dryness near the opening of her throat.

She tried to picture what it would have been like if she hadn’t said anything. She tried to imagine who she was before she had become obsessed with the lump. It was the weekend which meant that she would have been sitting next to Adam on the other barstool. This was their day off together and it was nearing noon. She would have made them lunch. He liked grilled cheese sandwiches. They would have made love afterward and then Adam would have held her. He would’ve felt her breasts. She would’ve liked it. But that was all before this morning. Before she was obsessed with it, obsessed with the feeling, with the conviction, with the theory that cancer had been chasing her these many years and had finally caught up with her. And that although she had been convinced that those twenty six years had been a long enough time to understand cancer, she hadn’t realized how quickly it spread.

Judith now held her worst enemy close to her chest, holding her adversary the way she wished she was holding Adam.

He broke her chain of thought. He dragged her averted glance back to himself.

“So, you already went to the doctors.”

Adam finally stood up. He wasn’t looking at her when he asked the question; he rinsed out his coffee cup in the sink and then walked over to the couch. It was a two person couch and Adam sat on the part she had left for him. He pulled Judith close to him. She left her feet in their place, but Adam placed her head up against his bare chest. He held her so she couldn’t move. Once there, once housed in that intimate position, she buried her face and cried. She muffled her open mouth and showering eyes. With hysterical eruptions, she dampened his skin.

We cried out to Adonai, the God of our ancestors; and Adonai heard our plea and saw our affliction, our misery and our oppression, -Deuteronomy 26

“I mean, you went without me? What the hell?”
He was trying to laugh and she appreciated it. He was pretending that it was going to be alright and they both knew it wasn’t. She appreciated it.

“I would’ve wanted to go. Judith, we’re a team. You know that, right?”

His voice cracked.

Judith nodded. She wanted to believe him but more than that, she wanted to stop talking. She wanted to stop waiting for an answer. She wanted to know what was in her breast. She wanted to see it written on paper and she wanted a boyfriend who could simulate conviction and optimism more effectively than Adam.

At that point, she was exhausted, so she silently accepted his romantic gesture.

They stayed like that, with their legs awkwardly and uncomfortably placed in their original positions for over an hour. They were both hungry, but they didn’t move. The crying exhausted her. Adam was far too awake and after he knew she was surely asleep, he slid out from under her.

Judith was still waiting for a phone call. Waiting for a phone call that even if it were successful, its ringing, its message, its existence alone, still indicated a lifetime of worry and fear.

Adam showered alone. He wanted to go for a run, but felt paralyzed waiting for the phone call. He still hadn’t made his mind up and although running would probably provide an answer, he was well aware that even without words, she needed him to be around. He knew that if the phone call confirmed her suspicions, they would both stop running. She would need him to be around even more than he already was. The thought depressed him and he felt guilty when he wondered if they would have sex while she fought cancer. He figured they wouldn’t.

If they could make it through this first time, he thought, that it would be okay. That it would give him time to decide. Perhaps, he could stall on finishing the conversion process. He just needed a few more months with her outside this cloud of confusion. It had only been a matter of hours but he needed to be reminded about how good it was. He felt that after being good, after being the kind of boyfriend who would give up Christmas, he deserved this one break.

After pointlessly bothering themselves for hours, they called it an early night. Adam pretended not to hear Judith praying under her breath. They fell asleep shortly afterward on their corresponding, separate sides of the bed. Adam found it difficult to not hold her, but he could imagine that it would be far worse if he actually did. He was worried he’d accidentally hurt her.

They woke up the next morning to her phone ringing. It was five after nine. Judith’s naked torso rolled over Adam so that she could reach the bed side table. The loud vibration had only slightly woken him but the presence of her warm body up against his stomach reminded him of the day prior. Reminded him that no matter how badly he wanted to pretend that nothing had happened, doctors were calling with results. Judith sat straight up in bed, holding the sheets up against her chest and the phone tightly against her left cheek.

“Is it a condition or a disease?”

He had no idea what was being said on the other end of the line, but this particular statement which was said at a ridiculously fast pace seemed to not be addressing cancer. Anything other than cancer at that point was reason for celebration. It was what he had wished for. He just needed time to decide. He knew he loved her. No one would be this nervous if they didn’t love her, but he needed time to know if he could stay. Adam was hoping it was a condition. “Conditions” sound more managable.

She hung up the phone after arranging an appointment for the week following. That was a good sign, Adam thought to himself. He knew from past experience that anything urgent was worth worrying about. Adam thought about how he’d buy her flowers before picking her up and driving her to the office. He thought that maybe he could be good at this whole thing.

“It’s a condition called fibro-cystic breast tissue. Apparently, I’ll be fine. “

Adam luckily didn’t voice what he was thinking. You’ll be fine, this time, he thought to himself. She seemed so happy and he wanted to experience that same relief, that same gratitude. He wanted to see how this was a blessing. He wanted to feel the resolution he had been expecting. He was supposed to have made a decision.