Melissa Haynes - Learning to Play with a Lion's Testicles

“Aaaahhhhhhhh!” I scream. While trying to run away, I slip in my wet sneaker and fall backwards onto my butt.

Everyone freezes, and all eyes are staring down the fence line; they must know it’s there, too. The Drill Sergeant makes his way towards me. He should be running. Why is he stopping to kick down a post on his way here? Doesn’t he realize that there is a lion about to jump this fence? Rustle, rustle, rustle . Wait a second. He kicks down another post, which is followed by another rustling noise. Oh my God, it’s not a lion making that sound, it’s just the wire scratching the scrub brush each time a post comes down.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

Now I have to think fast. I cannot tolerate any further humiliation. “There was a huge spider on my hand,” I stutter.

“How big?”

“It was almost as big as my hand. It jumped on me, from that bush. It was the biggest spider I’ve ever seen.”

“Really?”

“Yes and it had big pinchers, almost as big as these pliers.” I hold up the pliers in front of my mouth opening and closing them like deadly pinchers. The lie is growing with each word I speak.

“Did it bite you?” he asks, concerned.

“I don’t think so. I flicked it off before it had the chance.”

“Incredible.”

“It was a huge spider, with giant pinchers, the size of these pliers,” he shouts down the line, as he holds up my pliers.

“A huge spider… giant pinchers… pliers.” My lie is echoed down the line, as each ranger shouts it to the one behind him.

“Anyway, it’s gone now,” I say quickly.

“What color was it?”

Why won’t he go away? Why is there an inquisition over a silly spider? Who cares what color it was? Everyone knows there are flesh-killing spiders here. I’m not telling them anything new.

“It was brown,” I answer.

“Light brown or dark brown?”

He’s relentless with his questions. Why does it matter? I reach for my pliers from his hand. “Light brown.”

“Like the color of sand?” he asks, pulling the pliers just out of my reach.

“Yes, like sand,” I agree, trying to appease him so he’ll go away and take the spotlight off of me.

“It was the color of sand!” he shouts down the line, and again the lie is echoed by each one of the rangers.

“Did it have bent legs like this?” he says, bending his elbows up to his ears and shrugging his shoulders.

“Yeah, I think so. It all happened so fast, I don’t really remember.” Now I’m getting agitated. Why won’t he just give me my damn pliers back?

“It was a violin spider!” he shouts down the line.

This time, as the echo makes its way down the line, one by one the rangers come running towards us.

“Violin spider! No way! Amazing! Where is it?” Everyone shouts over each other, scrambling to get to the front to see the imaginary spider. Machetes are drawn and bushes are hacked away in search of the spider that doesn’t exist.

Once again, karma is instant in the bush, for my lies keep me in the lions camp for an extra hour while the rangers smoked cigarettes and pow-wowed about the significance of this species that has never before been seen in this area.

“She’s dead.”

“Are you sure?” I can’t look at her. Instead my eyes are fixed on her partner standing on the hillside, watching her.

“Yep, she’s dead.”

The Drill Sergeant gets out of the truck to examine the hartebeest.

I didn’t know Death was going to rear his ugly head today. In fact, I never expected him to follow me halfway around the world. I thought I could evade him by crossing two continents and putting 20,000 miles in between us. But Death doesn’t know boundaries like time and space. It was naïve of me to believe I could run away from the son of a bitch.

Death doesn’t give a damn about anyone else’s feelings. He’s unpredictable. He’s ruthless. A thief of innocence, he forever steals the twinkle out of an eye—the twinkle that disappears once those eyes see Death up close and personal. He doesn’t care about the ones left behind, the ones who have to deal with the impact he has left in his wake, the loneliness, the grief, and the uncertainty. He leaves no answers, no reasoning, and no promises—only a lingering feeling of shock, emptiness, and sadness. He’s a powerful entity who, despite my protests and hatred for him, is always close by, waiting for me to let my guard down. And when I do, the heartless bastard sucker punches me in the gut, leaving behind a big ugly empty hole.

I can no longer contain my own memories of Death to the blackness of the night or the boundaries of my tent camp.

“She’s gone,” the nurse whispers as I enter my mum’s hospital room.

Death has overtaken the room, filling it with a stale and desolate stench. I look toward her bed, but my eyes stop just short of it. I can’t see her like this. Instead my eyes settle on the steel table where gold-rimmed spectacles are neatly folded. Near them, a brown wig cut into the style of a mushroom cap. The Cancer Society had given her the wig just three weeks after the aggressive chemotherapy treatment took her hair away. We had laughed about the wig’s resemblance to a mushroom. She hated wearing it, not just because of the style, but because it made her head hot and sweaty. I had reassured her that her golden curls would return one day, and this was just a minor setback. And that was what I believed. Until this very moment, I didn’t believe it would ever come to this.

She was such a strong woman. Her Viking roots made her tough, but her life made her even tougher. She couldn’t be intimidated by anyone or anything, not even cancer. She would beat it, she said, and I never doubted that she would. But it wasn’t just her strength that made me believe she could overcome this disease. It was the games the disease had played. When attacked with drugs and radiation, it made itself weak, even hiding at times. It had fooled us all.

“The tumor looks good on the CAT scan,” the doctor said.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve never seen a tumor shrink this much, so fast. This is incredible.”

I became hopeful. “Does that mean the cancer is going away?”

“It’s positive news, but cancer is unpredictable. We’ll scan her lungs again in a few months.”

“Can she go away for Christmas?” I asked. “She has always wanted to spend Christmas on a beach in Mexico.”

“If she feels up to it, sure. There’s always a chance that the cancer has already metastasized, but so far, it looks really good.”

“What does metastasized mean?”

“It means spread. Lung cancer is aggressive, and it can metastasize to the brain very quickly.”

“How will we know?”

“Sudden paralysis, stroke, pain. Those are the most common symptoms.”

“Can you do a scan now to see if it’s already metastasized?”

“No, we wait until three months after treatment has ended. Early in the new year we’ll bring her back in.”

“Are you sure you can’t run any tests now?” My uneasiness is noticeable.

“Go to Mexico, spend Christmas on the beach, and we’ll see you in the New Year.” The doctor was so reassuring.

Eleven days later, I would find her paralyzed on her living room floor. We would spend the entire night waiting for a non-emergency ambulance. She would never go home again.

Hope, optimism, even miracles came and went during the course of this disease, but in the end, it was Death that prevailed.

“I’ll give you some time alone with her,” the nurse says, making her way towards the door.