4. Happy Birthday To Me

The first time it happened was at Southcenter, just bumming around the mall, shopping with Mom and Laura. My counts hadn't returned completely, and my legs were still scrawny and emaciated, but it felt so good to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

We'd split up. I couldn't keep up with their pace, and wasn't much interested in the shops they'd planned on hitting. We'd agreed to meet at the recently renovated food court. You go that way, I'll meander this way (maybe stopping to rest at a bench every hundred yards or so). No, no. I'll be fine. You go on ahead and I'll meet you there.

I've got to admit that I didn't have much swagger. I wasn't so much angry as I was still pretty drained. But I was trying to be observant, trying to pay attention to my surroundings. This was practically my back yard growing up, this mall, and it was entirely possible that I might bump into somebody from high school, or even grade school, and find myself trying to explain my appearances. I hadn't yet learned to lie about the hairless head, the scrawny pipes poking out from underneath whatever loose white tee-shirt I'd thrown on that morning, and I dreaded the questions, the pitying looks, the awkward silence that stretched as old acquaintances tried to figure out polite ways to end the conversation and move on.

"What?" I ask. Two girls have just walked past me. One is brunette, the other blond, well-dressed, each holding bags from Nordstrom's and The Gap. They're about my age. They might be even be former classmates. Maybe friends of friends who know me by reputation.

They'd said something about me as they passed by. I couldn't really tell, because I'm too busy being observant and paying attention, but they definitely said something.

They ignore me at first, so I say turn and follow them for a few steps.

"I'm sorry. Did you say something?"

They might be cute. I'm thinking that they might possibly be cute, and maybe former classmates or something, and I don't really have to get into a long explanation about the hair and the skinny arms or anything. They could just get all doe-eyed and say wow, you look, you know, really great, and I'll be all shucks and thanks and then we'll sit down together at Red Robin and talk about old times.

They turn on their tip-toes. It's weird. Kind of an outside in thing, timed perfectly, both pivoting at the same time, almost brushing shoulders as they stop and look back at me. Like something they've practiced. Like something they've totally done, like, a million times before.

The brunette speaks up. Her face is icy scorn.

"You heard me," she says.

"No, really. I ... "

"You people make me sick," she says. "fucking skinhead. Why don't you just go fuck yourself?"

They turn again -- toes, timing, everything -- and casually walk away. Heads together, giggling, laughing. One last look back at me, the blond this time, slowly mouthing two words. She enunciates her silence, making sure that I'm able to read her lips: eff ing skin head.

There is a young man. His thin, weak legs struggle to carry him up a staircase. He has been in a hospital bed. He has been lying in a hospital bed for so many days, weeks, months, that his legs are emaciated. Bony arms poke out from underneath a plain white tee-shirt, matching the twigs he's using to walk. The chemotherapy had done this to him. The hospital had made him better, but in the process, it had taken away his strength.

But he is home now.

The house has two levels. The young man has grown up in this house, has lived there all of his life. The front door opens to a splitting staircase. One set of stairs, eight, maybe ten steps, lined by a wrought iron rail, will take him from the landing up to the living room, kitchen, bedrooms. The other stairs, lined by a wooden rail, lead down to the garage and the unfinished basement.

When he was younger, maybe a handful of years ago, lean times, his mother and sister had learned to make do with less money. His mother would order a cord of cut wood -- or maybe half, depending on how long the wood from the previous year had lasted. They would see how long they could go without ever turning on the heat. A contest. The wood was stacked outside, along the west side of the house, protected from the Seattle winter by a thick green tarp, held down at the edges by rocks pulled from the terraced front yard. Once a week, at least, he would push a full wheelbarrow through the garage, down through the narrow basement hallway, creating a second, smaller stack in the southeast corner of the house, piled on the cool concrete.

He had fashioned a work area in this corner. He cut the firewood. He broke apart the larger pieces so they'd fit into the fireplace. With the larger pieces, he'd start the maul into the top, tapping it down, then swinging the wood and the ax together in one wide sweep, splitting the wood against the hard concrete floor of the basement. There was a smaller hand axe that he'd use to break the smaller pieces into even smaller pieces, and then pieces smaller still. His hands would blister. He would sweat. More often than not there would also be a battered boom box plugged into one of the outlets in the corner, music for the workout, tempo for the chopping.

His arms were never very large, but they were strong. His legs, too, from all the wheeling and lifting and squatting and bracing for the wide swing of the maul. It wasn't so many years ago -- wasn't even a year ago -- that he would bound up and down these steps two or three at a time.

But now.

Now his legs have dwindled away to almost nothing, and there are eight, maybe ten steps in front of him. He needs to hold onto the rail. He pauses at the fourth step, surprised that neither his lungs nor his thighs are able to move him any farther than this. His stepfather is at his side, offering assistance. The young man shakes his head.

No, no.

This is his home. He will do this thing. He has been so dependent on so many people for so long already. These eight steps. Ten steps. A hundred? He will do these on his own.