by Joan Chase
Every morning and afternoon Aunt May left her hotel and came to the house to change Aunt Grace’s bandages and help her bathe. Only Aunt May could do this for her; Aunt Grace could not bear for anyone else to see her—not just for the shame of it, but for inflicting the horror of it. We knew Aunt May had been chosen for this. Perhaps because she was the oldest of the five sisters and part mother to the rest, but there was her nature itself, tender and selfless, revealed in the tone of her voice, the tone the others used in speaking to her.
They were so concerned for her when she came down to the living room after tending Aunt Grace. They would coax her to sit a few minutes. At first there would be silence, all of us thinking of Aunt Grace, in bed for the night, although her light would burn long after everyone else had gone to sleep. Once, Aunt Libby told us, when she was preparing for bed, coming out of the bathroom, she glanced through the crack in the door where Aunt Grace was reading in bed.
“You still awake?” Aunt Libby had asked.
Aunt Grace had stared out with such a look, Aunt Libby told us she felt it penetrate her heart. And Aunt Grace had said, “If you only knew the wonder of it, you wouldn’t waste a single instant.” While Aunt Grace was with us, when we spoke of her and repeated those things she said to us, it was with the sense that we had had the exquisite visitation of a saint.
Aunt May showed all the strains of her life, a widow at forty, mother to a fatherless daughter, nurse to her favorite, mortally ill sister. We honored her for her place in our lives then, her acts of devotion. But while she sat on the recliner, trying to relax, her legs would spring up and away like parts wound too tightly and she would have to startle up and walk the cramps out of her legs, rubbing her hands through her black hair and along the sides of her neck. Aunt Libby badgered her to get away for a rest.
“How could I?” Aunt May asked, casting her eyes toward the ceiling. Aunt Grace was now occupying the room directly over the living room, the room where some of us had been born, with its view of the west and the outlying woods beyond the meadows; over the fireplace mantel was the framed picture of the Indian brave. Poised on his horse at the edge of a cliff, the Indian gazed into an endless distance of land and sky, but he seemed equal to that immensity, his back straight and resolute, his attitude dignified.
Toward the end of the summer the sisters decided that we all needed a break from the tension and planned a picnic at the lake. Gram wouldn’t come. She was going to the races. Besides, she didn’t like the bother of eating outside. It was a special treat for the rest of us, however, something like the Fourth of July, and we stayed around the kitchen to help with the deviled eggs and baked beans, to pack the hamper and wash out the thermos. We felt as if after a long illness or imprisonment we were reentering the world.
At the lake, though, it was crowded and noisy. The county orphanage was having an outing and some of the kids, who seemed backward or maybe even retarded, came over to stare at us, which made Aunt Libby look her most mournful and whisper things like: “Have you ever seen anything more pathetic? Always makes one count one’s blessings.” One of the kids was sick on the ground near the covered tables and it smelled so bad we had to take our blanket over to the grass. Then Aunt May drove up, alone, because her daughter didn’t feel well, had her period, which made Aunt Libby whisper again, this time that she’d never thought of it as either an illness or a holy ritual. The orphans stared at us a lot and some tried to talk to Aunt Libby, who smiled although she couldn’t understand a word, and finally Aunt Elinor, home for a weekend, went to the park office and suggested that the orphan children be taken away where they wouldn’t disturb people while they were eating. The leaders gathered them together then, but sullenly, and we all felt guilty of a fastidious contempt, devoid of compassion, as though our long vigil, our trial, had as effectively estranged us from the rest of the world as an imprisonment.
“It’s spoiled,” Aunt Libby said when we were left to ourselves. Aunt May went in the water, where she swam, again and again, the rounds of the buoy ropes. No matter what we did, we couldn’t get the feeling right. We sat and thought about Aunt Grace alone in the house, Gram off to the races. Would Aunt Grace think we had deserted her? Did she need us as much as we needed her? After listening to us complain about the reek of vomit and watching us mope around on our patch of blanket, Uncle Dan said, “I can only stand just so much of a good time,” and he got up and began to pack things for the trip home.
On the way back, we listened to Aunt Libby speculating to Aunt Rachel that perhaps Valerie, Aunt May’s daughter, was jealous of Aunt Grace, getting all her mother’s attention and concern. Did Valerie want her to die? It didn’t fit, for weren’t we all turning everything upside down to save Aunt Grace from death? Aunt Elinor taught us that God is Life. And everyone wanted God—wanted Life. In that way the things Aunt Elinor told us made sense, convincing us with indisputable logic. In such harmonious circularity we were as one; we felt it as always, undaunted by the failure of the outing, when we turned down the gravel drive, passing under the hanging oaks, entering into our own kingdom.
“And tonight?” Aunt Libby asked one evening when Aunt May came down from Aunt Grace. Sometimes now she had to come three and four times a day to change the dressings on Aunt Grace’s neck. We would never dare to ask about that lingering abscess. To do so would be as shocking as if we threatened God with a rival power. And no one would ever explain it, thinking, if they thought of it at all, that we were wholly of them, knew what they knew, would fear what they feared, believe or not, by happenstance and accretion, as they did themselves.
“About the same,” Aunt May answered.
The silence deadened the air so the ticking of the clock seemed to flow into our emotions and become their exact representation.
“They’re going to have to do something about the pain.” Aunt Libby said that with the cross and exasperated look she wore when referring to all misery; its meaning in the scheme of things would never be sanctioned by her.
“Elinor has hired a nurse,” Aunt May said.
A nurse? It was impossible. Medicine. We thought this must be the end. Did Aunt Grace know?
Aunt May explained: “She’s a Scientist, but trained in certain procedures. For cases like this. She’ll come with Elinor next week. I don’t think you should tell Grace yet. I don’t know how she’ll take it.”
“At least this will mean some rest for you,” was all Aunt Libby said, totally disillusioned with living and dying.
“Libby: if it would do any good, I’d crawl on my hands and knees to China,” Aunt May said.
Aunt Elinor came to bring the Christian Science nurse. She made the trip without her suitcase of extra finery, came only with her brave and magnanimous soul; we could see it glowing still, translucent in her gaze. We could scarcely take our eyes off hers. The tiny nurse was a shadowy, inconsequential figure, lost beside Aunt Elinor. Maybe Aunt Grace would hardly notice her.
Aunt Grace slept now on a hospital bed which had been moved into her room and positioned by the west window. Sometimes she sat in the corner armchair, but she seldom left the room, took only a few short walks, leaning on someone’s arm. This night the door stood open, but more often it was closed and sometimes we would hear through it her muffled thrashings and moaning. We would stand in the hall, unable to leave. Until Aunt Libby or Aunt Rachel, sometimes even Gram, would come and stand at the crack of the door and say to us, “It’s all right, I’m here.” Usually in their hands was a piece of the quilt they were making, a way to pass the time and occupy their thoughts. It pleased Aunt Grace to see the pattern emerge and the piece grow larger and when she was well enough she would hem a square herself, each square setting into the point of an emerging star. Gram had begun the quilt years before, then never had the time, or later the patience, to finish it. It was the old pattern “Broken Star,” worked in strips of unbleached muslin, the stars of various shades of green, surrounded by a calico border. They had Aunt Grace make the mi
stake on her first piece, a traditional play for good luck. It was, by Calvinist logic, presumptuous that anything human should strive for perfection—Aunt Grace said that maybe they should try to make a Mary Baker Eddy quilt, one that would be as nearly perfect as possible.
Each morning we were taken in for our separate visits. Aunt Grace would make us feel at ease, her pain less in those hours, or her strength to bear it more certain. She would encourage us to tell her whatever we were doing, and tell us that she thought she was feeling a little better, would soon be up and around. We could not meet her eyes; but she looked away too, out the window as if she might absorb further the health and harmony of the land. Hopes like that she would share with us occasionally. Once she said, “I have come to know that living and dying are a single event when considered by the mind of God.” For days we would mention one revelation or another—comforted that Aunt Grace had been privileged to receive, through her suffering, a saintlike character.
But that night when Aunt Elinor entered the room with the little nurse, out of Aunt Grace’s deep eyes, hollowed by an anguish from hell, came such a look that Aunt Libby said it suggested to her the gaze of the prophetess Anne, who had waited in the temple for years and years, not allowing herself to die, not until she saw the Promise of Israel. “So it’s come to this,” Aunt Grace said, in her voice made husky from the drugs, horror in it. She was not fooled. She knew what it meant.
“Darling,” Aunt Elinor cried, and rushed over to seize her sister with an intensity that made us withdraw.
There now began a strange and bitter contest between the two sisters: Aunt Grace seemed to scent betrayal, Aunt Elinor insisted that the time for victory was at hand. The nurse was merely a convenience, a symbol of resolve, if anything. Not failure. But for us, the nurse, gliding about on her soft white shoes, had become the spirit of the house. While we had been diverted, breaking all lesser attachments, the house had been harboring a separate and competing force.
Gram was on Aunt Grace’s side. We heard her say to Aunt Libby, “All’s she wants is to go in peace. And quickly. It’s over a year. Why in God’s name won’t Ellie leave her be? I can hardly stand it.” She didn’t even look sorry, just angry, and we hardened ourselves against her.
“What other hope is there, Momma?” Aunt Libby asked.
Gram said, “Sometimes there ain’t no hope.”
At these outbreaks our alarm held us shuddering and we deafened ourselves. There was no less feeling in Gram’s voice, yet all her words seemed severe, harsh. Although she sometimes went out in the evenings, it was just her habit, more restlessness than pleasure, and there was no talk of winning or losing. Still Aunt Libby disapproved, thought she should stay at home.
“I’d like to know what anyone else could do—with her around.” Gram would jerk her head toward Aunt Elinor’s insistent voice, winding its way down the stairwell.
But Aunt Grace was a captive. No one would interfere with Aunt Elinor really, for she was all we had. Sometimes we’d hear Aunt Grace, defiant and belligerent: “God. Tell me why I have to endure this. And you. You are tormenting me. For your own willfulness. Oh, I can use a knife by myself. How can you ask me to live like this, cut up and stinking?” She would burst into anguished weeping. She no longer tried to hide her pain. We felt she punished us. We could hear her shrieking and storming and we became afraid to visit her in her room, for she would stare at us fiercely, refusing to talk, so that it seemed she wished us ill and would gladly have bargained all our lives to save her own. And hearing her at night, we could not sleep, would take our pillows and blankets and lie in the hallway across from her door, praying for it to end. It seemed that we had lost our lives already.
Through the open door, we saw Aunt Elinor stroking Aunt Grace’s arm while murmuring her litany of assurance. Once Aunt Grace sat up and with more strength and fury than we could conceive of, shook off that soothing touch, screamed, “Goddamn you. How can I ever get you to leave me alone? Just let me die. I’m begging you.” Then she turned toward the window, that was black against the wall of night. We were astounded.
Aunt Elinor came in and out of the kitchen, running errands in the nurse’s stead. They were always trying to get Aunt Grace to eat something. And always Aunt Elinor was struggling against evil, affirming the power of God to save, even while Aunt Grace gnashed her teeth, spit out her food, locked the door against her, and stopped her ears against that voice which, even as Aunt Elinor became outwardly more silent, we seemed to hear more pervasively—the voice of God, as if it had absorbed Aunt Elinor’s being.
At the table, in her brief moments with us, Aunt Elinor would sit heavily, she who before had carried herself in almost strenuous erectness. Aunt Libby asked her once what we were all thinking: “How long?”
Aunt Elinor stood and regained almost the bearing we remembered. She paused in the doorway of the kitchen, beyond her the dark hall which, like a path stumbled upon in a wilderness, must be taken, in spite of its uncertainty. No longer did she waste strength to pet us or cheer us on. “Love does not fail.” So she said, and in her strong-boned square face, lifted at the chin, we could see the lengths to which love would go.
Then one night Gram came home early. We met her in the hall. Although it was still summer, she wore already her lightweight wool coat. Under the dim bowl of the hanging globe, her slack flesh draped, flaccid, covering a body which could no longer feel the heat. Still there was a moisture, like grease, on her forehead. From that room upstairs we could hear the two sisters, Elinor and Grace. The one spoke seldom and then irritably, waspish, against the other’s continual low-voiced intensity. When the door opened we heard Aunt Grace growl, “And Christ I hope you never come back.”
When Aunt Elinor came wearily around the curve of the stairway and saw her mother standing below she stopped. In her hands was a basin of unwound and heaped gauze, stained dark. It seemed we could smell it, so we tried not even to breathe. The freckles splotched upon Aunt Elinor’s pale face seemed to form into patterns like the outlines of land masses floating upon a map of waters.
Gram started up toward her, such vehemence in her raised fist it reminded us of the time when Grandad was alive. Aunt Elinor was nearly to the bottom of the stairs then and Gram did not strike her but whacked the basin out of her hands. It flew and the contents spread, dark and vile, on Gram’s precious carpet. “You’ll burn for this,” Gram gasped, sobbing. “Pride. Meddling.”
Aunt Elinor went past her and knelt on the floor, gathering the wads of dressing back into the bowl. As her hands moved we saw the scarlet lacquer on her nails was jagged and unkempt. Below us her shoulders heaved and shook, as she continued to reach for each piece. She was alone. We were afraid: of Gram, who stood over her, still panting, but more of Aunt Elinor, who could endure the hatred and misunderstanding of the whole world.
Aunt Grace came down the stairs. She leaned on the banister and her features, illuminated by the globe light, seemed unmarked by suffering. She was like a young girl, slender, her black hair, which had stopped falling out now that the radium treatments were ended, curling again in masses around her throat, hiding the bandage. The dimple set in the center of her chin winked over the deep point of darkness. To Aunt Elinor she said simply, “Come.” Her eyes appeared to shine as with tears, but without sorrow or bitterness. There was plain joy in Aunt Elinor’s face as she went up to Aunt Grace and encircled her with one arm and helped her back toward her room. From the back, beside Aunt Elinor’s sturdiness, we could see how wasted Aunt Grace had become—now both of them held upright, supported by the ballast of indomitable character. Anne said, “Mother,” but neither answered.
Gram stood, horribly aged within the folds of her skin and under the layer of her coat. The time she’d survived was like doom upon her head. She jerked up her head as if ready to denounce, then with a sigh lowered herself to finish gathering up the tangle of dressings. There was a brown stain on her hands when she’d finished. She scrubbed at the mess a minu
te with a clean piece. “What’s the use? What happens happens,” she said. She looked at our feet, then up at our faces, one by one. “Well, don’t just stand there like a bunch of ninnies. Help me.” So then we knew we were chained to Gram, having nothing more in us than what she was and hoped for. She had claimed us. We brought her fresh water, emptied the slops, got on our knees beside her and worked until the rags were rinsed clean. When it was finished we followed her into the living room, where she struck the gas jet of the converted fireplace, and lifting her dress and the coat, which she still wore, she stood almost into the asbestos grate of the running flame. “Feels good,” she said, and gave her only smile, not to us, but to her own momentary contentment.
After that, a watchful peacefulness settled on the house. Aunt Grace appeared to have more strength, came to the table for dinner sometimes, although her digestion was delicate and even the smell of fried food revolted her, so that we did not have food like Gram’s but instead something prepared by Aunt Rachel under Aunt Elinor’s supervision—perhaps a clear broth, a green salad. Aunt Grace would just pick. Gram offered her bread and cream but she refused it. None of us could enjoy those elegant simple dishes, the bare skeletons of meals. Not with Aunt Grace wasting beside us.
Uncle Dan, though subdued, could still make us laugh when he wanted. Since we had started going to the Christian Science Church he had some new customers coming to his store to buy meat. He was glad for that, his business steadily falling off because of supermarket competition. But, he said, conversation with the faithful could be awfully risky—a fellow had to watch himself, couldn’t hardly say anything right any which way. “Especially that Mrs. Beall from over on the Franksville Road. I say, ‘Nice day, isn’t it, Mrs. Beall?’ She gives me a look. ‘All God’s days are perfect, Mr. Snyder,’ daring me to take issue. But if I try to head her off and say, ‘This rain is a blessing,’ she says, ‘God answers our every need, Mr. Snyder.”’ Aunt Elinor laughed too and agreed that some people were bores on any subject. The woman meant well, no doubt, but being new to Science, she was perhaps overzealous. And for that time, with Aunt Grace a little better, nobody was inclined to quibble. “I’ll say black’s white,” Gram said, “if it’ll do any good.”