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Show CHRYSALIS PAGE 51 it. And all the Christmases after that one, filled with Beatrix Potter books and Mother Goose, alphabet blocks, tinker-toys and stuffed animals. The scene shifts suddenly back to ME. I lie on the floor beside this Christmas tree and stare at my body, "seeing" monstrous black cells swarm, chewing my insides, expanding into thick, oozing sores, swelling, exploding into blood-red flowers that smell of death. I sit up quickly and hug my knees. Jesus. I can't go on thinking like this. A tear slides out and runs down my cheek. Remy comes to stand by me, draws his lips across my cheek briefly, and buries his nose in my hair. At the rate my hair is falling out I'll be bald in a week. There's hair in the bed and hair on the floor, the drains are clogged with hair, great tangled gobs of hair. (Will you love me when I'm old and gray? Will you love me when I'm bald?) Sometimes in the middle of the night (but never, never in daylight) I cry. I rock in the dark to the clock's ticking and feed the baby, and I cry. It's unfair that I might be cheated |