Culture Invades

I was in the kitchen putting the last touches on my absolute favorite meal: fried plantains, vegetables, and spicy chicken. I bent down over the three plates of food that had been arranged on the kitchen counter and inhaled, my mouth watering and lips smacking in anticipation of the meal that was to come. After a few minutes of this, the wafting aroma became too much for me to resist.

I knew that these plantains would be ripe and tasty because the slices were shiny and their color was a lighter shade of brown. Plantains are at their most delicious after they have become just ripe. Mom liked to buy the plantains from the grocery store when they were rock hard so that she could monitor the ripening of the plantains until they were ready to fry in oil. The spicy chicken and spinach more than lived up to their roles as awesome appetizers. The fried ripe plantains became the sweet tasting entree. I loved to end my evenings with the taste of plantains lingering on my tongue.

No longer able to control my urges, I conducted a sweep of the living room and kitchen area. Dad was sitting on his preferred living room couch, absorbed in his cable news again. Mom wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Ha! I knew that I was safe.

The phone rang, causing me to freeze for a moment. Dad reached for the handset that had been left prone on the living room table. It was a nurse from Kaiser Permanente calling to confirm an impending hospital visit with dad. I was surreptitiously reaching for a thick slice of plantain when I heard my dad utter the word “biopsy” as he was making the final arrangements for that hospital appointment. I immediately dropped the slice of plantain, the hairs on my arm standing on end, and turned my attention to my father. Of course, I knew that a biopsy was a type of medical procedure, but I was still unsure of its exact medical purpose. I probably would not have given the mention of “biopsy” a second thought on any other day, except that this time the word was spoken between my father and the nurse who’d thought it necessary to call him on that particular late afternoon. I gave into my first instinct, which told me that Dad was probably in mortal danger.

My father was a strong man with a stubborn mind, blessed with a formidable voice that could grab and hold onto your attention. His stubbornness had been a source of argument and frustration for as long as I can remember,but it also was the well from which sprang his determination to make a life for himself and his family in a country that was originally not his own. In addition to having stared down and conquered the odds that had cowed the many others who’d pursued the life that he’d been able to bring to fruition, he’d overcome some major health scares during his life through the force of his will, having escaped death’s cold and unforgiving grip on more than a few occasions. But over the last few months, his health had slowly begun to recede, as the passage of time and the ravages of life had brought on the accumulation of chronic ailments. There was the gout that inflamed and swelled the areas around his joints, the renal disease that sprung from his malfunctioning kidneys, the polyps the lined his stomach and colon, the high blood pressure that could only be kept at bay by his medication; and then there was the fainting spell that felled him a few months previous to that evening. My dad’s health was like a flimsy wooden table, its four legs wobbling beneath the weight of all of the things that were being placed upon it. And now he was going to have to undergo a biopsy.

My pulse was drumming in my ear, an indication that my system was being overtaken by fear and stress. Right after Dad had hung up the phone, I rushed to confront him in the living room, eager for the confirmation of what I know that I heard. He was fond of hiding bad news from his children for fear that we would worry. Only a few years before he’d undergone radiation treatment for prostate cancer, and he had managed to hide this from all of his children. He wasn’t going to be able to hide his condition from me this time. Providence is what put me immediately within earshot of that phone conversation on that day.
“Did the doctor say that you were going to have to have a biopsy?” I asked him, pulse beating.

“Yes Eze,” he said. “I will be going to the hospital tomorrow.”

“I’ll go with you then.”

“No Eze,” he said, shaking his head. It is not anything that you have to worry about. I will go there myself.”

His direct refusal of my entreaty would have been enough to stop me before this night. Although he was eight years retired and physically weaker than I was, he was still the father, and therefore still the head of the family. Disregarding an order from father was usually a sign of disrespect and not tolerated, and worthy of punishment(silence) even though I was a grown man. However, I knew that this time I was going to have to defy him. Every cell in my body was telling me that I would need to be there for him.

“I’m going with you. We’ll drive my car. I want to be there with you.”

“Eze-”

“No. It will be better if I’m there.”

We sat down for dinner as planned, but that phone call, followed by my conversation with dad took the joy of eating this dinner away. My anxious feelings over dad’s health acted as a block against my taste buds and a dampener of my spirit. I lost most of my hunger, my stomach becoming full after having only consumed half of my meal. And then I was suddenly desperate to leave the table, food be damned.

“I’m going to go and do some research on the computer,” I said, cobbling together leftovers.

Mom and dad both stared at each other and then at me, wide-eyed with shock. It was rare thing for me to leave the table before I’d cleaned my plate.

“You’re not going to finish your food?” Mom asked.

“Eze, sit down and finish and finish your food,” demanded dad.

No. I wrapped my leftovers in tinfoil and threw them into the refrigerator. After closing the refrigerator door, I turned on my parents, extending my hands forward against the space that separated us so as to hold them back. They were still staring at me, now seemingly at a loss for words. “I need to go upstairs. I’ll see you guys in the morning.”

Filled with curiosity, fear, and dread, I ran up the stairs to the family computer. When the google home page appeared, I typed in “biopsy” in the search box. The search yielded a boatload of results, all having a common thread that linked them: cancer. They performed biopsies on people that were suspected of having cancer. For hours I was clicking on links, frantically reading, fretting about all of the mentions of cancer, and seizing upon any string of words that elicited hope for a good outcome or a different diagnosis. I suddenly became very afraid for my father and my family, more so than I had in all of my life. I went to bed that night thinking that we may soon be faced with something that was truly existential.