Lise Marzouk - If: A Mothers Memoir

Youre sitting on a rush-seat chair in the kitchen. You just turned ten. You have your mouth wide open and Im exploring it.

The things abnormally large, I can see that. An incongruous, deformed irregular ball. Its taking up half the space, masking its twin in the background, pushing aside your uvula in the middle. What Im really worried about are the black threads. They wriggle into the folds, like fuliginous rivulets streaming through valleys of pink flesh. Black is not physiological. My first fleeting thoughts and words. For now, these words play on a loop inside my skull. I cant break away from them. They cling to my mind just as these dark deposits cling to your tonsil. Viscous, cloying, repulsive. Black is not physiological. A stupid euphemism intended to postpone the terrible truth, which has already insinuated itself into me. And I know the facts: black flesh is decomposing flesh. The fetid breath youve been exhaling the last few days would be enough to convince me. Weve laughed about that plenty. Im not laughing now. Im in no doubt: what Im looking at is putrefying, with the color and smell of death.

Rational thinking comes trooping in like a detachment of guards. Or rather a militia. It forbids all prevarication, prescribes action, directing me to an internet page all about black throats, to find an acceptable answer. Not harmless but not unbearable. I scan quickly through the page, from one pathology to another. Necrotic tonsillitis. Perfect. Ive found my solution. The tonsil is dying. You, on the other hand, are fine. A quick excision and it will all be over. The rational dictatorship conjures up its guillotine. Elimination with no damage to the guilty party. Clack. Off to the clinic, clean job, no mess. In making this choice, the dictatorship rejected a long list of minor illsshort-lived infections and other consequences of poor hygieneset out on the first half of the page, and thereby conceded a fragment of terrain to my premonition of horror. Peace of mind definitely warrants sacrificing one tiny organ. Because on the altar of this still-bleeding tonsil, to the benefit of this same offering, peace of mind managed to ignore the last lines on that page, although it glimpsed them, just enough to grasp their terrifying relevance. The enemy is in fact already there, skulking at the back of the platoon, andbehind its paradoxically sweet, resonant nameit trails a cortege of indescribable fears and sorrows, and tries to lure my mind into its vertiginous dance. I refuse to pronounce its name. Back to the middle of the page. Necrotic tonsillitis.

Then come the decisions. Its midnight, youre tired, youre in your pajamas and ready to go back to bed. The painkiller has done its work, your throat doesnt hurt so much. The doctor on call will do. Better to avoid going to the hospital this evening. I call. Forty-five minutes elapse. Youve gone back to sleep. The doctor shows up. Getting paunchy, shirt of dubious cleanliness, shapeless jacket, corduroy pants, worn leather briefcase. A few despicable social observations occur to me: poor-taste jokes about the sartorial and salary-related similarities between this night-duty GP and my fellow lecturers; an inadmissible contempt, distantly inherited from my family, for a man who most likely failed his residency thirty years ago, condemning himself to this job as an itinerant owl to top up his rather inglorious pay; and then a purely artistic interest in the varied prism around the contours of his eyes, the multicolored bags of a nocturnal rep for public health. Still, his homely appearance immediately gives me confidence. This is not the man to take us on down that internet page. We can rest easy. I can tell hes an expert in the flu, upset stomachs, measles, and other seasonal or childhood ailments. It only remains for me to coax him onto my terrain. Might as well come right out with it: I think my son has necrotic tonsillitis. Well, you tell me, you know better than I do. One of his tonsils, but only one of them, is swollen and dark purple, almost black. Then its repeat kitchen, repeat wide-open mouth, repeat flashlight, repeat teaspoon on tongue, repeat tonsil. When will you ever stop opening your mouth? I tease you with a smile. Oh my, arent we having fun. We await the verdict, dimly anxious. Ah yes, those black lines are strangeyou think so too, rightit looks like tonsillitis but without the white spotsthere, now were getting somewhere, thats reassuringit must be necrotic tonsillitis, its nothing to worry aboutwe did it. End of Act I.

Act II. But now, seriously, what should I do? Because I did read those lines at the bottom of the internet page. And I wouldnt want my delightful collaborator, devoted though he is to continued friendship between our respective corporations, to cause my son to run any risks. The ever-dependable rational militia sends me reinforcements. It has a secret weapon that means I can advance under cover. Will he definitely need surgery? Because, you see, were flying to Morocco in six days. Will he be fit to travel by next Saturday? The journey angle is both real and irrefutable. Nothing quite like a deadline to get the wolf across the river. Handled correctly, the goat and the cabbage should also make the crossing unharmed. But Homely is an expert with more than one trick up his sleeve. And he categorically refuses to cross the Rubicon, let alone the Styx, with my whole menagerie. Listen, we cant be sure, it might not need surgery at all. The best thing would be to go see an ENT specialist in town in two or three days to see how its developing. Then youll know where you stand for Morocco. Now, that I was not expecting. Back to the starting blocks. Unless