The Girl With Nine Wigs Read Online Free PDF

you.”
    Hip? Young? It’s practically a beehive! Poufy and outdated. I look like some Waspy girl who drinks white-wine spritzers and plays golf on the weekends. This isn’t me. This is an uptight snob. In an attempt to find something that looks the most like me, I end up with something that doesn’t look like me at all. How did that happen?
    I turn around to my mother and see that she, too, is close to tears.
    In the elevator I look for myself in the mirror, but all I see is a stranger.

 
    FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18
    â€œ Y OU LOOK EXACTLY LIKE that Vermeer girl, the one with the pearl earring.”
    It’s a big improvement over what springs to my mind whenever I see my new reflection in the mirror. After a long session experimenting with Annabel’s headbands and the hair spray in a weird white canister that came with the wig, I come down to the kitchen around midday. My mother and her friend Maud are having coffee. I smile, kiss Maud’s cheek, and fill the kettle.
    â€œI swear, the spitting image,” I can hear her continue. It’s a sweet thing to say, but that’s all it is. Mom smiles at her friend. I scratch my head aggressively, hopelessly trying to combat the eternal itching. I need to get rid of the last few hairs; they’re making my head look even sicker.
    I disappear back upstairs to the mirror. In front of me on the chest of drawers lies a large agenda, one of those professional day planners. It is dedicated to the fifty-four weeks of chemo and radiation which sums up my life for the next fifty-three weeks. The first week is triumphantly crossed out.
    In the ninth week I will have my first evaluation. I’ll be scanned to see if all the throwing up has been good for anything at all. I’m scared to death. That the next scan could also mean my life will take a turn for the better is something I won’t allow myself to consider. It will only make the blow harder to bear when it comes. I try to contemplate the worst-case scenario: the tumors growing, the cancer incurable, me at the end of the road. I pick up our old cat, Saartje, and hold her close while I wonder who will outlive whom. For the first time in my life, I have become aware of my mortality, of being human, a part of a cycle much bigger than myself, where there’s no room or need for individuality. Funnily enough, it’s kind of liberating.
    Today is the first day I reach for the wig—after putting on my mascara. For the moment I still have eyebrows and eyelashes. When will they go? I’m shuffling through the house in my mother’s slippers and a soft, fluffy white dressing gown, which I got from the greatest boyfriend in the world. Unfortunately he’s not mine but my sister’s. Even so, I get some of the perks. The theme of my life these days is receiving, receiving, and more receiving—flowers, gifts, hugs. And I need it all—I soak it in like a sponge, not having anything left to give back in return.
    I have to admit, I wouldn’t mind having a boyfriend of my own these days telling me I’m still pretty, that I’m still a girl worthy of snuggling up to. It would make the nights a lot less lonely. But at least I have my sister back. Sometimes she leaves her beau alone and cuddles up next to me. I like listening to her when she talks about her daily life, but hearing her talk about her future hurts. I don’t have any future to talk about. I want her to be happy, but it’s difficult, very difficult when you don’t have something to be happy about yourself.
    I feel heavy and numb, even though my body seems to be disappearing before my eyes. The scales show another kilo gone. Same as every day this week. I have discovered the perfect diet: fear, stress, and tumor sweat. The night sweats started a few months ago, another one of my inexplicable symptoms before the diagnosis, but they were never as intense as they are now. I wake up a few times a night