BY STACEY SMALL

“What’s it going to take for you to not be so selfish? Get it together, will you?” My father stormed into the living room where I was lying on the couch, watching talk shows and recovering from a mid-afternoon purge of raw cookie dough and blueberry pop tarts. It was the summer after my freshman year of college, and I was bulimic.

Before I could snap back at his insensitivity, my mother’s gold Saturn rolled into the driveway. I was crying as she walked inside. Her face was blank.

“That mammography center was right,” she said to my father. “How are we going to afford this?” Her vacant expression rubbed onto him. They just stood there, and even though none of us surpass five and a half feet in height, and we bear the last name Small, I felt miniscule as I looked up at my family.

“I’m tired of being treated like a child. Someone tell me what’s going on,” I said.

“For the love of God, Stacey!” my father shouted. He stopped himself, swabbed the sweat from his brow, and looked at my mother. She turned to me.

“Stacey,” she said, “I have cancer.”

At first, Mom’s diagnosis twisted my brain into a centrifugal mess. My thoughts were suspended; they could not come and yet they refused to scuttle away. Whatever existed within my head before that moment succumbed to dizzying rotations around the axis of those three words.

I have always been told that growing up is a slow process of self-discovery. But on that hot summer day, Mom’s cancer proclamation forced me out of my food insanity. Protecting me had always been her number-one priority. When I refused to eat anything above eighty calories, she spent double on groceries in order to secretly switch food labels around. My damaged taste buds never noticed. After my five-foot frame carried fifty-four pounds and I was hospitalized at the age of twelve, Mom was right there to help me move forward. Once starvation evolved into cycles of bingeing and purging, she never became angry, even after discovering remnants of regurgitated food in the shower drain. She carried along in silence. But when she became sick, all secrets ceased. My mother spoke without intentions of keeping me safe. She did not dance around the subject in hopes of guiding my concerns elsewhere. She didn’t even tell me everything was going to be okay.

Her recovery wasn’t inconspicuous. Radiation left gristly burns along her shoulders. The drugs caused frequent nausea. Hot flashes knocked her to her knees in even moderate weather. Yet what I hated to see most were the empty scar cream tubes filling the bathroom wastebasket. I pictured Mom in front of the mirror, cringing at the cold, goopy gel as she smothered the point of excision in hopes of sealing in whatever remained. There were countless times that I had stood in front of that same mirror, slathering on cellulite creams, jabbing at excess tissue, and flattening my breasts with the palm of my hands, begging for it to all be taken away. Suddenly, obsessions and urges, the why-me and what-ifs, were settling. Something more important had shocked me into reality.

Mom’s diagnosis did not stop me from abusing food entirely; it was a gradual tapering with plenty of slipups along the way. But with her admission, she showed me that I was needed elsewhere. Spending my days internally moping was not an option if I wanted to see either one of us get better. I don’t doubt Mom would have consented to cancer years ago, had she known it would become the spark to inflame my recovery. Day by day, the mirror checks, stomach beatings, and cabinet-clearing binges tapered. My thoughts no longer screamed.

I fantasized about us healing together, and tried my best to be there for my mother. I drove her to hospital appointments, took notes, and researched treatment options. She still insists the best thing I did for her was get serious about my own illness. It was an effort I never felt the need to make until then.

More than five years have gone by, and both of us remain healthy. The research I did for Mom helped me develop an interest in medicine, and I am now an editor and writer for an oncology journal in Manhattan. Although I can never make up for those years of hardship, I try to express my gratitude in any way possible, which includes coming home for visits. Each month, I look forward to spending a weekend in our cozy Massachusetts home and doing what was once unimaginable – cooking dinner, sitting at that same kitchen table, and enjoying a meal with my family.

Stacey received her MFA in nonfiction creative writing from The New School. She is currently working on her memoir entitled, “Saved by My Stripper Shrink.”