. At the foot of the bed a
tent-like contraption raises the blankets away from the place where his feet
should be, but Henry's feet are not there now. The frostbite ruined them. Both
feet were amputated above the ankles this morning. I cannot imagine, I am trying
not to imagine, what is below the blankets. Henry's bandaged hands are lying
above the blankets and I take his hand, feeling how cool and dry it is, how the
pulse beats in the wrist, how tangible Henry's hand is in my hand. After the
surgery Dr. Murray asked me what I wanted her to do with Henry's feet. Reattach
them seemed like the correct answer, but I just shrugged and looked away.
A nurse comes in, smiles at me, and gives Henry his injection. In a few
minutes he sighs, as the drug envelopes his brain, and turns his face toward me.
His eyes open so slightly, and then he is asleep again.
I want to pray, but I can't remember any prayers, all that runs through my
head is Eeny-meeny miney moe, catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers, let him go, eeny
meeny miney moe. Oh, God, please don't, please don't do this to me. But the Snark
was a boojum. No. Nothing comes. Envoyez chercher le medecin. Qu'avez-vous? Ilfaudra
aller a Chapital. Je me suis coupe assez fortement. Otez le bandage et laissez-moi voir. Out,
c'est une coupure profunde.
I don't know what time it is. Outside it is getting light. I place Henry's hand
back on the blanket. He draws it to his chest, protectively.
Gomez yawns, and stretches his arms out, cracking his knuckles. "Morning,
kitten," he says, and gets up and lumbers into the bathroom. I can hear him
peeing as Henry opens his eyes.
"Where am I?"
"Mercy. September 27, 2006 "
Henry stares up at the ceiling. Then, slowly, he pushes himself up against the
pillows and stares at the foot of the bed. He leans forward, reaching with his
hands under the blanket. I close my eyes.
Henry begins to scream.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006 (Clare is 35, Henry is 43)
Clare: Henry has been home from the hospital for a week. He spends the days in
bed, curled up, facing the window, drifting in and out of morphine-laced sleep. I
try to feed him soup, and toast, and macaroni and cheese, but he doesn't eat very
much. He doesn't say much, either. Alba hovers around, silent and anxious to
please, to bring Daddy an orange, a newspaper, her Teddy; but Henry only
smiles absently and the small pile of offerings sits unused on his nightstand. A
brisk nurse named Sonia Browne comes once a day to change the dressings and
to give advice, but as soon as she vanishes into her red Volkswagen Beetle Henry
subsides into his vacant-lot persona. I help him to use the bedpan. I make him
change one pair of pajamas for another. I ask him how he feels, what he needs,
and he answers vaguely or not at all. Although Henry is right here in front of me,
he has disappeared.
I'm walking down the hall past the bedroom with a basket of laundry in my
arms and I see Alba through the slightly open door, standing next to Henry, who
is curled up in bed. I stop and watch her. She stands still, her arms hanging at her
side, her black braids dangling down her back, her blue turtleneck distorted from
being pulled on. Morning light floods the room, washes everything yellow.
"Daddy?" Alba says, softly. Henry doesn't respond. She tries again, louder.
Henry turns toward her, rolls over. Alba sits down on the bed. Henry has his eyes
closed.
"Daddy?"
"Hmm?"
"Are you dying?"
Henry opens his eyes and focuses on Alba. "No."
"Alba said you died."
"That's in the future, Alba. Not yet. Tell Alba she shouldn't tell you those
kinds of things." Henry runs his hand over the beard that's been growing since
we left the hospital. Alba sits with her hands folded in her lap and her knees
together.
"Are you going to stay in bed all the time now?"
Henry pulls himself up so he is leaning against the headboard. "Maybe." He
is rummaging in the drawer of the nightstand, but the painkillers are in the
bathroom.
"Why?"
"Because I feel like shit, okay?"
Alba shrinks away from Henry, gets up off the bed. "Okay!" she says, and she
is opening the door and almost collides with me and is startled and then she
silently flings her arms around my waist and I pick her up, so heavy in my arms
now. I carry her into her room and we sit in the rocker, rocking together, Alba's
hot face against my neck. What can I tell you, Alba? What can I say?
Wednesday and Thursday October 18 and 19, and Thursday, October 26, 2006 (Clare
is 35, Henry is 43)
Clare: I'm standing in my studio with a roll of armature wire and a bunch of
drawings. I've cleared off the big work table, and the drawings are neatly pinned
up on the wall. Now I stand and try to summon up the piece in my mind's eye. I
try to imagine it 3-D. Life size. I snip off a length of wire and it springs away from
the huge roll; I begin to shape a torso. I weave the wire into shoulders, ribcage,
and then a pelvis. I pause. Maybe the arms and legs should be articulated?
Should I make feet or not? I start to make a head and then realize that I don't want
any of this. I push it all under the table and begin again with more wire.
Like an angel. Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, I invoke you, almost deadly
birds of the soul... It is only the wings that I want to give him. I draw in the air with
the thin metal, looping and weaving; I measure with my arms to make a
wingspan, I repeat the process, mirror-reversed, for the second wing, comparing
symmetry as though I'm giving Alba a haircut, measuring by eye, feeling out the
weight, the shapes. I hinge the wings together, and then I get up on the ladder
and hang them from the ceiling. They float, air encompassed by lines, at the level
of my breasts, eight feet across, graceful, ornamental, useless.
At first I imagined white, but I realize now that that's not it. I open the cabinet
of pigments and dyes. Ultramarine, Yellow Ochre, Raw Umber, Viridian, Madder
Lake. No. Here it is: Red Iron Oxide. The color of dried blood. A terrible angel
wouldn't be white, or would be whiter than any white I can make. I set the jar on
the counter, along with Bone Black. I walk to the bundles of fiber that stand,
fragrant, in the far corner of the studio. Kozo and linen; transparency and pliancy,
a fiber that rattles like chattering teeth combined with one that is soft as lips. I
weigh out two pounds of kozo, tough and resilient bark that must be cooked and
beaten, broken and pounded. I heat water in the huge pot that covers two burners
on the stove. When it is boiling I feed the kozo into it, watching it darken and
slowly take in water. I measure in soda ash and cover the pot, turn on the exhaust
hood. I chop a pound of white linen into small pieces, fill the beater with water,
and start it rending and tearing up the linen into a fine white pulp. Then I make
myself coffee and sit staring out the window across the yard at the house.
At that moment:
Henry: My mother is sitting on the foot of my bed. I don't want her to know about
my feet. I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep. "Henry?" she says. "I know
you're awake. C'mon, buddy, rise and shine." I open my eyes. It's Kimy. "Mmm.
Morning."
"It's 2:30 in the afternoon. You should get out of bed."
"I can't get out of bed, Kimy. I don't have any feet."
"You got wheelchair," she says. "Come on, you need a bath, you need a
shave, pee-yoo, you smell like an old man." Kimy stands up, looking very grim.
She peels the covers off of me and I lie there like a shelled shrimp, cold and
flaccid in the afternoon sunlight. Kimy browbeats me into sitting in the
wheelchair, and she wheels me to the door of the bathroom, which is too narrow
for the chair to pass.
"Okay," Kimy says, standing in front of me with her hands on her hips. "How
we gonna do this? Huh?"
"I don't know, Kimy. I'm just the gimp; I don't actually work here."
"What kind of word is that, gimp?"
"It's a highly pejorative slang word used to describe cripples."
Kimy looks at me as though I am eight and have used the word fuck in her
presence (I didn't know what it meant, I only knew it was forbidden). "I think it's
'sposed to be disabled, Henry." She leans over and unbuttons my pajama top.
"I've got hands" I say, and finish the unbuttoning myself. Kimy turns around,
brusque and grumpy, and turns on the tap, adjusts the temperature, places the
plug in the drain. She rummages in the medicine cabinet, brings out my razor,
shaving soap, the beaver-hair shaving brush. I can't figure out how to get out of
the wheelchair. I decide to try sliding off the seat; I push my ass forward, arch my
back, and slither toward the floor. I wrench my left shoulder and bang my butt as
I go down, but it's not too bad. In the hospital the physical therapist, an
encouraging young person named Penny Featherwight, had several techniques
for getting in and out of the chair, but they all had to do with chair/bed and
chair/chair situations. Now I'm sitting on the floor and the bathtub looms like the
white cliffs of Dover above me. I look up at Kimy, eighty-two years old, and
realize that I'm on my own, here. She looks at me and it's all pity, that look. I
think fuck it, I have to do this somehow, I can't let Kimy look at me like that. I shrug out
of my pajama bottoms, and begin to unwrap the bandages that cover the
dressings on my legs. Kimy looks at her teeth in the mirror. I stick my arm over
the side of the tub and test the bath water.
"If you throw some herbs in there you can have stewed gimp for supper."
"Too hot?" Kimy asks.
"Yeah."
Kimy adjusts the faucets and then leaves the bathroom, pushing the
wheelchair out of the doorway. I gingerly remove the dressing from my right leg.
Under the wrappings the skin is pale and cold. I put my hand at the folded-over
part, the flesh that cushions the bone. I just took a Vicodin a little while ago. I
wonder i