Happy Birthday or Whatever by Annie Choi

Author:Annie Choi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

My mother keeps her breast on her cosmetic table. Among the bottles of anti-wrinkle cream and toner and palettes of eye shadow, there is a gelatinous flesh-colored mound of silicon. The prosthetic doesn’t feel like a real breast—it’s much squishier and has no nipple—but it mimics the weight and shape of one. It sits in a special bra that has a soft cup for her healthy breast on one side and a special pocket for her prosthetic breast on the other side. She always wears her bra over a thin tank top because the elastic chafes the sensitive skin of her scars.

The right side of her chest, where her breast used to be, there is a wall covered in pale, soft skin. Small mounds of white scar tissue speckle the area. Underneath the thin, mottled skin, there is a layer of strong chest muscles that stretch over her chest plate, which protects her heart with a lazy valve. When the supportive bandages first came off around her chest, eight months after her mastectomy and three months after her car accident, her right shoulder kept on rising to meet her ear in an awkward half-shrug. There was no breast to weigh her shoulder down and no bandages to hold the shoulder muscles back. The muscles in her shoulder and chest had not adjusted yet. She kept on using her hand to push down her shoulder.

“It won’t go down. It make Mommy so frustrate.”

Under the guidance of her doctor, she learned exercises to help loosen the muscles in her shoulder and stretch and strengthen the muscles in her chest. The exercises were painful, I could tell by her wincing when she practiced lifting her arms straight to the side like an airplane.

“How badly does it hurt? Maybe you need to take a rest.”

“It hurt but you know, I have to do. I have no choice. I have to practice so I can play golf.”

Even after she completed chemotherapy and went into remission and her scars had healed, my mother did not want reconstructive surgery and a breast implant. She wanted that part of her body and that part of her life gone forever.

“Why I need breast? I have no baby, I not need breast, right?”

“I thought I was the baby!”

“Anne, you have your own breast.”

So her doctor fitted her with a prosthetic breast. She wears the same clothes she has always worn; she never wore low-cut blouses or dresses so the prosthetic is never a problem. She plays golf better than ever, placing in tournaments. She’s in great health; in fact, she’s probably healthier than me. When I visit her, she gives me hard hugs and crushes me against her chest, and I forget about everything.

Occasionally, when my mother is lying in bed, under her electric blanket watching TV or reading, she calls for me. She doesn’t bellow my name as she normally uses, but instead she whimpers. “Anne…Anne…you there?”

I immediately stop what I’m doing and run to her side. My mother

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