All the Dancing Birds (27 page)

“Are you saying that Mom is… is…
dying
?” Allison asks, her voice rising into a siren of distress. She twists her fingers into a tangled knot. My poor little pony. I want to reach over to stroke her hair, but of course I don’t.

“Hospice isn’t focused on dying.” Jewell walks to me and softly cups her hand under my chin. She smiles into my face. “Certainly, we’re all going to go some time, but hospice is focused on allowing folks like ma’am here to
live
their days with dignity. And then… when the time comes, the hospice nurses simply help keep folks stay comfortable while they’re looking for that soft place to land, all surrounded by love and family. Oh, and I have it on good authority that they sing too.” Jewell winks at me and straightens my sweater before returning to her chair.

Bryan and Allison nod at each other. “That sounds really nice,” Allison says. “Absolutely. We can have them here too.”

“They’ll do their own assessment of your mother’s needs, but I can make arrangements on your behalf, if you’d like,” Jewell says. “Their nurses are nearly the best, highly trained and absolutely wonderful.”

“It sounds like we’re all settled, then,” Bryan says. “We trust you to do the best for our mom. Now maybe I’d better have another cup of that go-go juice before I get on the road.”

“Of course. More tea for you, Allison?”

“Thank you, yes. Thank you for everything.”

I hear my woman scurry around. I hear liquids being poured into cups and glasses. The talk then moves and changes and shifts; night settles in and I doze across their words.

After a while, I rouse in my chair to hear the sounds of my children gathering their things to leave. Their feet move toward me. Again, kisses land on my sagging cheeks. Again, careful hands brush across my fragile shoulders.
Love you, Mom
is whispered into each of my ears. Feet move toward the door and the sweet scent of my children vanishes once more.

I wish I could remember their names.

Beads of moisture are quick to find my lashes. It occurs to me that I was unable to participate in any of the entire day’s conversation. I couldn’t raise my arm to offer the coffee. I didn’t smile or gesture or add a moment of Southern grace. No. Instead, my face retained its flat slate pose of indifference, while my mind continued to race in circles and paths, trying to locate something‌—‌anything‌—‌that might be conversational in nature.

I failed wildly.

I think it’s been a long time since I became a piece of porcelain statuary‌—‌a relic‌—‌to be wheeled from one room to the next, always talked over and around. Of course it’s hard to see what may still be alive inside my body, my mind. This pernicious silence, this chronic inactivity, would give anyone the notion there’s nothing here anymore. The way my body droops, slack and inanimate within the confines of my chair‌—‌anyone would reasonably think I’ve merely wandered off to somewhere else, someplace that has no structure of thought, no literate understanding, no reasoning.

I’m not certain when people first began to talk around me, rather than speaking with me. It’s been some time now, I suppose. Perhaps one day, I simply decided I should be a rolling artifact, wheeled around the house like some
objet d’art
, forever more to be a symbolic statement of meaning rather than a functioning mother. I don’t blame my children.

It’s difficult to converse with hardened clay.

Nevertheless, I wish this weren’t so. Even the frozen need a word tossed in their direction now and then. Perhaps the final gift I can give my children is an understanding, an agreement, that they can talk around me and I’ll not hold a grudge over it. After all, I’m really the only one to know of my disappointment.

When I’m done moping about people ignoring me, I open my eyes in time to see sparkles hovering in front of me. They are fascinating‌—‌beautiful red and yellow sparkles! They float in front of my eyes like twinkling stars in the room. I reach out to touch them. To grab them. To place them in my mouth. I eat the sparkles as if they’re popcorn. They nourish me and satisfy my heart. They busy me.

I’m still eating sparkles when Jewell comes to me. She’s finished cleaning the kitchen and folding the last of my laundry. I’m afraid she’ll be glad to be done with me and my dirty clothes, the homemade soup I never quite seem to swallow without choking on the diced vegetables, my endless bathroom needs. My terrible moods.

My throat chokes. “Help me,” I whisper.

“It’s off to bed with you now,” my woman says, carefully transferring me to my wheelchair. “We’ve had a busy day, what with so many birds come to pay their regards and then your children tonight. They’re certainly a blessing, those kids of yours. I’m sorry I never had kids, but then I’d have missed out on the likes of you, ma’am. Yes, that’s for sure… I’d have missed out on you.”

She uses a warm cloth to wash the day off me, but it does little to renew me to a better state of mind. That damp washcloth does nothing to keep me from swirling down a soap water drain toward the center of gravity. Still, my woman takes extra care tonight. She rubs lotion on my shoulders and down my back.

When she’s done, she folds the sheet carefully over the rougher blanket edge so nothing will irritate my brittle skin. She smoothes my hair with her hand and caresses my cheek. All the time, she sings over me, her deep, sultry vibrato seeping into what remains of my fractured thoughts. Tonight she sings
His Eye is on the Sparrow
as soft and breathy and beautiful as the heavens she sings about.

When she’s done singing, the room turns quiet. Soon, I hear the movement of a book, its cover opened, its pages being turned, the quiet selection of something.
Hey diddle diddle, the cat in the fiddle.
I know this.
The cow jumped over the moon.
The moon‌—‌I know about the moon and how I once whistled to it and how it whistled back. I know that moon.

My lips feel as if they may be smiling.

I rise on one elbow. One inch, I rise.

The little dog laughed to see such a sight and the dish ran away with the spoon.

I try to clap my hands in joy.

I fail.

I fall back to my bed as my woman begins to sing once more. She sings,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
My eyes are tightly closed; I desperately look for the stars my woman sings about, for the heaven that holds them high above my bed, flashing and glimmering.

I can’t find them.

My woman’s voice becomes softer and softer. She rubs my arm and strokes my head. She sings about stars.

She sings.

As I fall asleep, I’m filled with bath time melodies and children’s nursery rhymes. I carry my woman’s voice with me, down a deepening corridor and all the way back to the dreams of a once-again child.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Y
OU HEAR. You hear a woman screaming, crying, grunting in the dead of night when the thunder in her brain is louder than the sounds from her lips. You’d like to leave her to her ceaseless noise, but you’re apparently tied to her miserable body. She is you. You’ve forgotten most things now; only the most tattered and ancient thoughts remain. Still, you’re aware of your children who visit you, always with bouquets of flowers and dread puncturing their eyes as they tiptoe toward your bed. You’re aware of their words, the shaking of their heads, the whispered conversations with your woman in the hallway. You know you now have two more women, one who comes each morning, writing notes on a clipboard and softly reporting to someone on her cellphone. Then, there’s a younger one with wide eyes and a firm hand who comes in the evening to change your sheets and bathe you. She rubs your body with lotions because your skin is breaking into pieces. When she’s done changing and bathing and rubbing, she rewards you with ice cubes for your cracking lips, a slither of lemon Jell-O to soothe your throat. Still, even with ministering hands gracing your body, you shudder under every draft that brushes your shoulders, every light that floods beneath your flickering eyelids. When the day is late and your room is at last quiet, you hear the sun sighing as it slides down the edge of the sky. You sigh with it, as if it’s a song only the two of you know. Every day, your woman‌—‌your first woman, the one you’ve come to love as much as your children‌—‌slips into your room to read aloud from your box of letters or from a book of poetry or prose. It no longer matters what she reads. Every word is new. Every story is fresh. Every refolding and closing is a splintering loss.

It is late afternoon. I can tell by the shadows that fall across my bed and hold me down. The hospice woman, the one with soft brown eyes and careful hands, has finished my morning care and is gone for the day. I like her. I imagine her to smell like vanilla and coconut, but it’s been a long time since I was certain about scents. She is kind to my body, even kinder to what might be called my essence. She sits beside by bed, holding my arm and writing on a chart she has made up for me. Yes. I like her‌—‌she is gentle like my woman and she makes certain that I’m as close to comfort someone like me can be.

I lie in my bed looking much like a little balled-up fist. In spite of the hospice nurse’s cooing words and soft touch, it’s still impossible for me to get comfortable. Although my bed is changed and smoothed daily, it takes but a moment for me to rearrange the sheets into a jumble; my covers are either too warm or too cold. My nightgown is always a crumple of fabric under me.

There’s not much left in my arsenal to let my needs be known, so I often just moan, softly into my hands. Sometimes, though, I cry out with great, heaving vigor.

I know everyone does their best. I have three women now and I’m rarely alone. There is always a quiet fussing about, making certain I’m warm or cool, cleaned up and wiped down, that I don’t stay in my own filth for more than a few moments. That the temperature of my broth is tested before it’s scooped into a small plastic spoon and held to my lips. That my hair is dry-washed, my body cleaned with soft, warm washcloths before my skin is coated with lotions and salves. Everything is attended to with tenderness and courtesy.

Still, anticipating the needs of a wordless woman takes more than most can give.

Sometimes whispery conversations are held in my doorway. Instructions from one woman to the next.
She seems listless today
, or
She was able to get a few spoonfuls down
. I know which woman is in my room just by the sound of her shoes as she moves toward me, how I’m touched, whose hands are slow and careful and who rushes through my routine. I know who lingers and who bustles, whose voice pierces my skin and whose words bounce away before I can figure out their meaning.

Now I hear my woman, my Jewell; her approach is soft like the small wing beat of sparrows. I hear the breath of fabric as she sits next to my bed, the whisper of her fingers unfolding one of my letters. “I’ll read to you now, ma’am,” she says. Late afternoon is the only time I’m alone with my woman and I relish these moments.

My eyes are closed, my body not much more than lines and angles poking through the sheets. Somehow, I know it’s the last letter I’ll ever hear; I’m too far gone now and so I hope it’s at least one of my better pieces.

I’m awake. I’m aware, but most of my body is closing like windows before a storm. I have only three words left to me:
Hey!
and
Help Me!
Sometimes, when I’m electric with energy, I let my three words spill out in ever-widening circles of sound.

As always, the chaos of deep shame for my illness pulls me apart, small pieces at a time. On my bedside table is a small pot of pink geraniums in full flower; I no longer recognize their pungent aroma. I’m ashamed of my nose. I’m also ashamed that in spite of John Milton’s comfort and companionship, my hands find it impossible to return any small gesture of love. I rarely recognize people and I’m saddened there is even a need to try.

I should simply know.

The worst of this shame is that, were I able to do so, I would still hide my infirmities. I’d still be deceptive. Until I turned forgetful, I was never a liar. Now every moment that ticks by on the clock and every breath that shudders through my chest marks me an insensible woman still desperately trying to hide her frailty as if I were a drunkard, hiding empty bottles.

Sadly, I’m the empty bottle I hide.

Soon, my night woman‌—‌the young one who smacks bubblegum all night‌—‌comes to do her job. I’m glad for the medicine, which winds me quickly down into a mostly dreamless sleep. Nevertheless, I’m sad that Jewell is now in the other room until morning.

I don’t remember my name.

Chapter Thirty-Three

T
hese memories are the last to go‌—‌the rising of the breath like hands lifting the body toward heaven; the circuitous route of blood through the body like a cycle of rain to nourish the earth; the opaque flutter of eyelids, separating the light from the dark; the smacking of lips; the feeble attempts to swallow. Dreams, too. Dreams are the last to go and it is within these dreams I find myself like the moment just before a star is birthed, a dark point of nothing that becomes something amazing within less than the blink of an eye. I imagine I will soon become a baby-blue star, winking on to pulse and twinkle overhead‌—‌a new pinprick of light inside a very old universe.

I’m living just behind my eyelids.

Sometimes I’m still, slack-jawed and looking to any observer as dead as any woman could be, seeing nothing and hearing nothing. Sometimes my eyes are open and I moan. Mostly, I appear lifeless as a ghost under the sheets. Right now my hip is feeling pain; I want desperately to turn to my other side.

Oddly, it’s the pain that lets me know I’m still alive.

Now here I am, a stillness in my bed‌—‌my knees and my feet, my hands and fingers, the leading edge of my chin, each part drawn into the center of myself. My back is rounded, my neck lowered to my knees, like a question mark or, maybe, a near-circle. Everything is rounded now, pulled toward the middle, nothing angular or jutted out, except for maybe my left elbow, which is trying to fold itself in as well.