Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,29

into dirt, weary like a miner, filthy already before the day.

——

“The scariest part was the drip,” I explained to Jack, “the knowledge that her body was dehydrated and unable to retain fluid.”

Nurses would inject needles into the bag instead of into her arm. The bag was buxom, but Maman’s arm was like a broken-off branch. I would watch the liquid bubbles come down the intravenous tube and into her, grateful for the entry of every drop into her starved body.

Once we were watching her sleep, and I asked Kate if she remembered the old Little Audrey cartoon about drought, when Audrey’s garden dries up in the heat and only one drop escapes from the hose spigot.

“Kate kept saying she didn’t remember,” I told Jack. “And I kept saying, ‘Yes, you do. Remember the way the flowers had drooping heads and limp leaves and crying faces? And the rivers burned out and the fish sat in the sand, fanning themselves?’ She just kept saying ‘No, I don’t remember, no.’ But I know we saw it together. I guess, I guess she just—”

Jack kissed my head, pulling me closer in.

Mornings are best for hospital visits. Uniforms are neat, halls are clean, moods are generally blithe. Pain loses some of its drama in day. In the morning tanned doctors with abstruse test results and breezy manners make you think of all the golf you’re missing even if you’d never consider playing. In the morning the newspaper cart comes around and the sunshine plays against the walls, like bouncing balls. There is a collective feeling of hope.

“In the evening,” I told Jack, “there’s only waiting for day.”

And the drone of televisions and uncollected dinner trays and fluorescent light. There is the feeling that something has run down in the world like a tank out of gas and that the great machine is winding into crisis. Beneath you, in the emergency room, great tragedies transpire, night tragedies. And when your visit has ended and it’s time to go home, you go fully conscious of leaving your loved one alone with their illness, like leaving a child to sleep with a monster in the closet.

“Kate lost a mother,” I said, “but I lost nothing.”

“Kate doesn’t feel that way,” Jack assured me.

“But what about everybody besides Kate? How can I ever explain to anyone what Maman was to me when our relationship had no name? People need names. I wasn’t a relative or a friend,” I said. “I was just an object of her kindness.”

He wiped my cheeks, saying “Ssshh.” I buried my face in his shoulder.

“Kindness is everything,” I went on. “When you receive it and express it, it becomes the whole meaning of things. It’s life, demystified. A place out of self. Not a waltz, but the whirls within a waltz.”

“You’re the one now,” Jack said definitively. “That’s why you met her. She had something she needed to pass on.”

One day I tiptoed past the woman in the first bed and set my things on the chair. It was one of those toffee-colored vinyl hospital-style easy chairs that make you think of germs and bad luck. Usually I leaned against the window ledge or sat on the bed.

“Your mother’s not here, dear,” the woman called over. “They took her to radiology.”

I’d noticed the new name on the doorway—Krieger. There was always a new name—someone coming in, someone transferring out, someone getting well and going home. Maman’s turn never came. Things kept happening. The last thing was pneumonia.

“She’s not my mother, Mrs. Krieger. But thank you anyway.”

“Not your mother? An aunt?”

“My friend’s mother.”

She examined me, one eye half-closed. “Your parents dead?”

“No,” I said, thinking, Not exactly. I peeled the newspaper off the wildflowers I’d brought from my garden. “I’d better get these in water.”

She waved her hand, excusing me. “Just pull the drape open, will you?” I complied, and Mrs. Krieger rolled to face the hall. “These doctors. They expect you to recover in the dark.”

At the nurse’s station, a brown arm reached automatically over the counter with scissors. It was Mrs. Eden—Sara’s mom—and the scissors were the special kind with the angled blades and rounded tip used for cutting adhesives, sutures, and flaps of skin. The nurses did not lend them out because they were supposed to be sanitary, but they made an exception for me. “You’re starting to read my mind, Mrs. Eden.”

She continued to tend to business. “Maybe not your mind, but certainly your footsteps.”

Nurses have a lot of business to attend to.