Anus

Seriously, this is what my sister does: she promises my dad that they’ll have movie night, just him and his little princess, just like old times, and then after he’s taken a long shower and smells all fresh and clean while walking downstairs, she’s out the front door, saying “Gotta go Daddy, love ya, byeee!” and then hopping into a convertible full of laughing friends. The car peels out, leaving a wake of bad rap music and exhaust. Then the house gets so quiet and my dad is left by himself, watching the kernels turn into popcorn, watching the popcorn spit out of the vintage popcorn maker that excited us so much as kids, watching the popcorn collect into a large bowl. He doesn’t even bother putting the DVD into the player. He wipes the counter tops in the kitchen, puts away the popcorn maker, walks gently through the house, room by room, turning off each light before going to bed at 9:30 pm.

Then the morning comes and I overhear my dad informing my mom that he’s skipping breakfast with us in order to stop by the clinic to have tests done on his asshole. Their bedroom door is tightly shut as he tells her this, but I can still hear.

I hear him say, “It hurts a lot.”

I hear him tell her not to come with him to the clinic, to just stay home and watch TV.

A dresser slams shut inside his bedroom, meaning he’s putting on his socks, and I hear him say the word: “Cancer.”

Cancer. I’m pacing around my room for a few minutes, then I’m googling “colon cancer,” then I’m running my hands through my hair and thinking really hard. As some members of my extended family have aged, cancer has been making its rounds. Although all the cases in my family have been thankfully benign so far, with the way that my dad plows through cigarette cartons, it’s only inevitable that sooner or later he's going to drop a bomb on us about his health.

I text my sister out of context: “u r a bitch.”

Five minutes later she responds: “go fuck urself.”

I’ve been worried about my dad in general lately. His appetite, although never remotely huge to begin with, has dwindled to the point where a small bowl of soup will get him patting his belly and ready to fall asleep. He’s also been complaining of fatigue recently, napping for hours on end during the weekends. At the peak of my dad’s life, in his mid-twenties, he was a “robust” 5’4”, 115 pounds. Now he’s probably about 90 pounds soaking wet. His waist size is 26.

So my dad leaves for the clinic, and when he comes home a couple hours later I happen to be in the kitchen by the garage door entrance. We’ve never been good at openly communicating to each other, and when he looks at me I even reconsider saying anything to him because I don’t want him to know I was eavesdropping, but I have to say something, so I say, “Everything okay?”

He nods yes, then heads back upstairs to his bedroom and closes the door to talk to my mom. At first I’m concerned that something’s up, but then I hear my parents laughing hysterically for whatever reason. The rest of the day continues without incident.

Turns out, my dad’s got hemorrhoids. He never mentions it for weeks, probably because he’s embarrassed. But then it comes up one night when we’re all together having dinner as a family, right after my dad asks my sister what’s under her left nostril and she tells him it’s a pimple. He smirks a little at us and says, “You know, when the both of you are older and you find zit in your butthole, do not be alarmed. It is probably a hamstring.”

“A what?” we ask.

“A... hamroid?”

“Ohh... Hemorrhoids...”

“Yes!” my dad exclaims. “That is it. Hemorrhoids. I have it! I so scared when the doctor say that word. Anything that sound like ‘roid’—steroid, paranoid, asteroid—that scares me. I thought I die. I thought cancer. But no, hemorrhoids nothing at all. I bought a cream to rub on it. An ass cream.”

We’re giggling a little. Encouraged, my dad stands up in the middle of the living room and begins acting out the position that he had to be in for the doctor to examine. “He make me lean on table, then stick butt in air!”

My dad bends over and wiggles his butt in the air. “Like this!”

“But the worst,” my dad continues, “was when I had to tell receptionist why I go to clinic. So embarrassing!”

“She say ‘What bring you to clinic?’ and I tell her...” and he softens his voice to a creepy whisper and points down, “‘Something's wrong with my anussssss.’”

And we’re all at the dinner table throwing our heads up in the air with open mouths full of half-chewed food, roaring in laughter, stomping our feet and slapping our thighs. My mom is the loudest, partly gasping for air and partly yelling things in Vietnamese, and my sister is covering half of her face, shaking her head and smiling really big. And my dad stands proudly in the living room, giddy at what he has just done, feeling like a king for making us laugh like that. Man that guy is such a goofball. I hope he’s around for a long long time.