A vase sits on the table next to the window. It hasn't held flowers in years but contains stems of a different sort; three synthetic arms shoot above the rim like sunflower stalks, blooming hands at the top. Plastic in the sunlight, but the late afternoon shadows dull the artificial sheen. Patches of flesh seem to emerge. Despite their permanently outstretched fingers, they seemed satisfied. They're not reaching for something but rather assume a pose of exaltation, of celebration. Every time I crouch to look at the books stacked under the table, I genuflect to an altar of limbs, a moment of frozen glory.

Cancer treatment makes your body something other than your own. It becomes the workplace of doctors, the playpen of needles, a harbor for pain. My mother began to develop an interest in limbs as objects separate from their human context. She amputated mannequins and arranged the spoils in vases with the care with which one would sort a bouquet of baby's breath and daisies. They never wilted. Metal joints protruded from the stumps where they once attached to shoulders and collarbones, like the work of a clumsy or sadistic surgeon.

Amputees feel a tingling in their missing limbs; they long to satisfy an itch that doesn't really exist. My mother took this a step further. Rather than accepting the loss after an acceptable period of mourning, she sought to fill the void. As a clothing designer, she's always kept mannequins in the house, but after her diagnosis, they assumed a more prominent role. Once banished to the garage or obscure corners of her sewing room, the life-sized plastic models began to show up in the living room, sitting cross-legged in the chair next to the TV., or selfishly taking up an entire third of the couch.

Right before her diagnosis, my mother began taking a mosaicing class with the neighborhood hippie. The entire process enthralled her. She loved the power tools they used to cut tile, she admired the teacher's long, scraggly hair and the zebra-striped broken VW van he parked in front of his bungalow. When at home, her ears strained for the sound of plates smashing on the kitchen floor. My infamous ungainliness, once a source of frustration (what will you do when you're invited to dinner with the queen?), provided her with beautifully cracked platters and artfully shattered glasses. Within three weeks, twenty-one round mosaiced tables filled our house. She was at once pleased and frustrated; she longed for more.

Tiling the mannequins was a laborious process. There were no flat surfaces. Tile would no longer suffice alone, so she looked around her. Seashells, bottle caps, matchbox cars, and plastic horses she stole from my room were glued to chins and shins and then buried in grout. Once dry, my mother would start scraping and partially exhume the objects, revealing a tire or, perhaps, a hoof. These mosaiced mannequins were incredibly heavy and difficult to transport and therefore rarely left the house. They multiplied like rodents; new generations moved into the living room before their predecessors were glazed. When she realized the pharmacist had given her too many syringes, she began to incorporate them as well. Stuck to a head from the crown to the nape of the neck, they made excellent mohawks. She filled some of the syringes with glitter so the effect wouldn't be "too disturbing." To her surprise, guests found the sculptures disturbing even with the glitter.

My mother decapitated one of the mannequins and placed its head on our dining room table. She superglued candlesticks all over its head and lit them, allowing the wax to drip and harden in odd swirls. When my grandmother came to visit, she absentmindedly glanced at the mannequin head and muttered, "oh, I see you finally bought a menorah." Or perhaps it wasn't an accident. One could make an argument that a severed head represents the plight of the Jews. A people without a homeland, a skull without a spine.

She found an old watch among the hodgepodge of items she appropriated for her mosaics. It still worked and continued to tick after she adhered it to a mannequin's chest and smothered it in grout. Another instance of unconscious symbolism, or an allusion to the work of Dr. Frankenstein. Instilling life in inanimate objects. It was only mildly disconcerting to pass the sullenly staring sculpture and hear the faint murmur of a heartbeat.

My grandmother, the physicist, looked up from the page. "You must have meant your other grandmother. I never said anything about a menorah." I said nothing. She turned to my mother. "Marcia, I never said that."

"Yes you did, Mom."

"I have absolutely no recollection."

"It doesn't matter."

"What?"

"It's a good story." My grandmother saved every pickle jar purchased since the early sixties. They've proved to provide the best surface for her homemade labels. "Marbles, matches, needles, pencils" all arranged in alphabetical order. She marks her memories in a similar fashion. Things either happened or they didn't. My mother thinks in terms of what ought to have occurred.

My riding instructor told everyone to bring something "visual" to class the next day, an object that would frighten the horses and challenge their riders. Some people brought brightly colored balloons and streamers that flapped in the wind, mimicking the movements of some swift, carnivorous enemy. Others placed tarps over the fences that cast strange shadows on the ground. I dragged five mannequins from the trunk of my car and placed them throughout the arena. I arranged one so it sat cross-legged on one of the jumps, guarding the obstacle with the mocking ominousness of a sphinx, and placed the others under another fence, lying them flat on the ground like four corpses exhumed from an orderly mass grave. Most of the horses initially balked at the balloons but cleared them on the second attempt, landing with a defiant snort and tail flick at the vanquished rubber foe. My mannequin jumps proved slightly more difficult. Unlike the swirling streamers and balloons which caught the horses' attention from far away, the stationary dummies came as a surprise. Some horses came so close to the jump before noticing the bodies that their front legs had already left the ground. However, without fail, every single horse slammed their hooves back down and jumped to the side, sometimes without their riders. I felt a strange mix of guilt and fascination as I watched my classmates tumble off their mounts and land on the ground next to the mannequins, for one moment joining the ranks of the dusty and the immobile.

Cancer changes the texture of your body. Skulls once covered with hair become smooth. Highways of skin deteriorate into back roads obstructed by scars, blocked by bandages. Shiny artificial replacements for stolen parts cling self-consciously to dying skin. The body becomes a mosaic of festering organic matter, prosthetic pieces, a hodgepodge of cloth wrappings and plastic tubes. Her art made this blend of surfaces beautiful; she made her sculptures special by nature of their disjointed textures. Glass beads marked each vertebra. Spidery shreds of china fanned out from scapulas. Vines of discarded costume jewelry wound around necks and seashells encased whole cheeks, like masks worn to an underwater costume ball.

Mother: I never thought about it like that

Me: What do you mean?

Mother: I never made the connection between cancer and the mannequins

Me: You're kidding, right?

Mother: No, not at all

Me: You're saying it's just a coincidence that you began to collect limbs after starting treatment?

Mother: Absolutely

Me: I find that hard to believe

Mother: Well, it was unconscious

Me: You made mohawks out of the same needles you used to give yourself injections

Mother: They were nice and spiky

We're out of vases. When someone gives us flowers, I secretly panic at the thought of having to store them. Every container in the house has been appropriated for the display of limbs. Over the past few years, the appeal of plants has waned for me. There is too much transient beauty in the world already. Oscar Wilde liked to pin a green carnation to his lapel; he believed the artificial had greater aesthetic value than the natural. My mother once tried to convince me that she too would have been a dandy had she lived (as a man) in late nineteenth-century Britain. Neither of us fill our vases with green carnations though, because even dyed to an unnatural turquoise or aquamarine, the petals will still shrivel. Plastic arms remain beautiful forever, long after roses wilt and peonies expire. Real flesh festers and rots. Our vases contain mementoes to the temporality of torsos, the ephemerality of ears. We don't place much store in the human body anymore in my house. It gives out long before the mind is ready to let go. We celebrate the replacements, exalting the sensuality of synthetics.