More narrative draft

(My mother, Gloria, 1970.)


“The soup is good today,” I remember my mother encouraging me. I was perched on the edge of her narrow reclining bed, cupping an orange-brown plastic mug. It felt scratchy against my lip, having been bitten by decades of ailing patients, I imagined. I sipped the weak broth without looking into her eyes. “Mm-mmm,” I answered. The soup is good today, I knew to mean I know this is the second time you have had to see me here in this hospital bed, with this stinging alcohol air system and these moans and shouts from my room-mates, but it will get better. I will get better. I promise. Mm-mmm, meant from me, I don’t like your promises and I don’t like it here. This hurts, Mother. Why do you forget me, hate me? What aren’t I worth it for you? Why aren’t I enough?

Her wrists are thickly bandaged and taped and re-taped, hiding hideous x-ing stitches from pinky to thumb. She had said something nearly the same to me that day as well (was that only three days ago? How did I get to the edge of this bed in three days?). She had said, “You sound good today, Danielle. You seem happier today.” I had not remembered before she said it that I was feeling sad. It had been a difficult month, but only retrospect had given me that perspective. Rather, I had skipped ostensibly untouched through the passing days and sleepless nights witnessing the sure abuse my mother had taken on trying to nurse our ailing hound back to life. The dog, Pina, should have been dead weeks ago. Her moans and whimpers were the only signs of life anymore, and their sound filtered into my dreams at night. She had been laying on a towel in the kitchen, unable to move any of her limbs from paralysis, wetting herself every time she with great effort would raise her head to see us when we walked past her. I had quickly grown afraid of her jerky movements, when mother lifted her hind with a towel wrapped under her so her bowels could empty on the paper she would lay under her a few times a day. Just the pressure of the towel against her abdomen was enough to encourage her to empty herself on the floor, whimpering from her innate desire to be on grass or dirt, or anywhere but our kitchen floor. I had had nights and nights of nightmares of her digging upward from a shallow grave, leaping decaying into my lap while wagging her bent tail and kissing me with a dry dusty tongue, happy as ever. I was so exhausted that I had fallen asleep at my desk three days in a row, and was sent home by the school nurse who suggested to my mother that perhaps I was coming down with the flu and should be kept to my bed until Monday. Mother reluctantly brought me home and put me to bed, but tucked her neck inside my doorway a few times that morning to play the part.
“Just peering in,” she had said as I lay wearily listening to Pina whine from the kitchen down the hall.
“Thanks,” I had said (though I can’t remember now if I was trying to be cheerful, or just convincing enough to make her stop looking in with her hallowed eyes).
“You sound good today Danielle. You seem fine today.” The words came with a convincing smile. She meant to be convincing me of my feelings, though it was she who looked not nearly fine. Two hours later, she carefully and methodically cut open her arms, and lay herself down in a shower pointing her thin rivers of blood to run toward the drain.

“I’m sorry about my hair,” my mother continued, pulling dull-red pieces of hair behind her ear. “They don’t let anyone heat-set their hair here. Maybe you could bring me some plastic ones, and I can set it wet? Could you do that?”
“You seem good today,” was my response, the lie flushing my cheeks. She touched my cheek, brushing the bandage around her wrist right against my mouth-- and smiled gratefully, “Now? What is new?”
There was a true need from me to sort out the scene I was in, and it seemed too complicated for me to handle without help. The smell of first-aid tape made a knot in my stomach, and I felt at once flushed with fever and a grim churning in my stomach.
“I am….I am going to be sick.” I sputtered, and pulled away. I backed quickly into the hall-bumping at once into the wheelchair of a sour looking man with a yellow bag dangling from a clip at his hip and desperately looked around for something to stare at as I tried counting my breaths. My brother peeked his head out of the room at me, hissing, “Nice one, retard!” but I didn’t really hear. I was focusing on a large fan toward the end of the hall--its contents carefully protected behind a gray cage. It’s blades turned slowly clock-wise, throwing cutting shadows on the walls to either side of it. --both the fan, and the shadow a dreary gray, and I counted breaths along with it as it passed around and around, One, two, three…I pulled the acrid air into my lungs, sucking my nostrils together as close as I could draw them, and I felt the feeling of fever drain from my face and neck.
Four, five, six, seven…I counted not feeling at all settled. I had spent the day fretting over the 6 apple slices, and 36 spoonfuls of rice (I had counted them as I ate them) I managed to swallow over dinner the night before. Today it made my stomach gripe in anguish. Knots of pain kept one fist against my gut most of the morning—but I managed to breathe through it by sipping water and swallowing mouthfuls of air. For two days, I could not eat, though my father brought home bag after bag of sweet-smelling offerings for us. Every sauce looked stained with blood, every bite salty and metallic. My brother goaded me that I was being, ‘dramatic’ and that this was ’not about me’ as I again and again pushed away my plate. But he didn’t know anything. For two nights my whole digestive system had screamed in anguish and betrayal right into my dreams, except the screams were whimpers and whines and my face felt only dusty kisses when I awoke. For two days, I had felt perpetually like I was wiping dust from my eyes.

(more to come!)