Larger Than Life (Novella) by Jodi Picoult Page B

heavy; instead, I curl my body around hers, as if I could will
     her my strength.
    As it turns out, you
can
love someone too much.
    Then, when they leave, your heart goes missing. And no one can survive that great
     a loss.
    “You’re going to get better,” I say fiercely. “You’re going to a new home in South
     Africa.” But even as I make this promise, I realize it’s one I can’t keep, unless
     I stay there with her.
Be careful what you wish for
, I think. When I’d walked her to Mpho’sherd, I’d thought I could not live without her … when all along, she was the one who
     could not live without
me
.
    I try to feed Lesego, but she is too weak to take any sustenance. And so, it happens
     just after 3:00 A.M . My cheek is pressed against Lesego’s belly. One minute, I can feel life thrumming
     beneath her skin. And the next, it’s gone.
    In Tswana, there are two ways to say goodbye.
Tsamaya sentle
means “go well.”
Sala sentle
means “stay well.” It depends on whether you are the one leaving or the one being
     left behind.

    Once, I came across an elephant herd grazing near a river. There was a calf that was
     testing its independence, that had wandered off maybe twenty or thirty yards. I was
     certain every female in that herd still knew his whereabouts, as surely as if he were
     emitting a radio signal. Suddenly, a crocodile popped out of the water, its jaws wide,
     its tongue a pink sponge. The calf’s mother could not see this, because she was around
     the river bend. But somehow she knew that calf was in trouble, and she bolted—all
     nine thousand pounds of her—moving faster than an animal a fraction of her size. She
     was at the calf’s side before I could even turn the ignition in my vehicle to try
     to scare off the crocodile. The elephant charged, shoving the baby out of the way
     so that it tumbled like a stone being skipped over the surface of the river. Then
     she grabbed the crocodile by the tail with her trunk, swung it over her head, and
     flung it so that it struck a tree and fell down dead.
    The calf scrambled beneath the safe haven of his mother.
    When you are truly, deeply scared, that’s the only place you want to be.

    I am there when my mother opens her eyes for the first time, postsurgery. “These drugs,”
     she said. “I’m seeing things.”
    She looks small, wrapped in the hospital gown, with a bandage binding her chest.Two drains filled with pink fluid hang from the metal rungs of the bed; the tubes
     snake under the gauze. It is strange, seeing her like this, no longer strong or in
     control. But her face, without makeup, is still so beautiful that I find myself pushing
     my hair back from my own face, trying to make myself presentable.
    “Mom,” I say, reaching for her hand. One finger glows red, pinched by a pulse-ox meter.
    “You look like hell,” my mother says, and a laugh fizzes out of me, the carbonation
     of fear.
    “I could say the same about you,” I tell her.
    I’ve been traveling for twenty-eight straight hours. It seems like ages since I marched
     into Grant’s cramped office and told him that I was going home.
You can ask me to leave the program
, I said,
or you can give me a leave of absence
.
    How long?
he asked.
    I don’t know yet
. And then I finally said it out loud:
My mother is sick
.
    You’re a fixer, Grant mused. You’re also a colossal pain in the ass. The thing is,
     it’s the pains in the ass that change the world
.
    The doctor told me it was a bilateral modified radical mastectomy. He said the tumor
     was large, and had spread to the muscles of the chest wall. After this would come
     more treatment—chemo or radiation—to kill the cancer cells that were still undetected
     and swimming through her bloodstream.
    My mother is silent for so long that I think she has drifted to sleep again. But when
     I look at her, I realize she is crying—and that it’s something I’ve never seen her
     do. “I thought you wouldn’t