White Trash

by John King

  Ruby tilted Aggie forward and puffed up her pillows, balancing the woman’s weight with one arm as she used the other to smooth the sheet and tuck it under the mattress, easing her back so she could feel the angle, Ruby’s arms thin but strong. Aggie wasn’t comfortable so she had another two goes, shifting the weight back and forward, seeing a trapeze artist high up in the roof of a circus tent, leotard catching the light, spangles sparkling, sequins and diamonds, the clowns below mesmerised by the glitter, talcum powder dusting Aggie’s nightie, sad chemotherapy smiles you could see from the top of the tent, grease-paint and morphine injections easing the pain.

  Aggie was fussy, had a sharp tongue on her, but she’d be sitting there for hours so Ruby didn’t mind, stayed in the circus with the ballerinas and lion-tamers, smiling, nodding, sitting next to her mum, holding her hand, excited by the costumes and jungle animals, sniffing the talc, loving the way it turned the woman’s skin white same as a geisha, and she’d told her mum she wanted to be a geisha girl one day, watching the clowns and wishing she had a white face and bound feet, but when she was older the clowns made her want to cry they were so sad, tattooed teardrops on a sad man’s face, Aggie’s skin pink and creased where she’d been sleeping, cuts that faded, freckles along the ridge of her nose and small pearls in her ears.

  Not that Aggie took liberties. Ruby wouldn’t let that happen. Once a patient started bossing you around you might as well give up. This was a lesson she’d learnt early, realising that deep down they wanted you to run their lives. Like a child they needed to feel secure, had to believe you were going to see them through their illness and pack them off home healthy. They’d try it on, but once you laid down the law they relaxed. They were testing you, and when you were trusted that was a great feeling, the biggest compliment you could have. It was give and take, the same as life, easing the worries that could weigh a person down. Kindness didn’t cost, but if a patient was rude, like Aggie could be, then Ruby knew enough to see it as fear, or a deeper sadness, but she was no fool, setting a limit and sticking to it, adjusting the bottom of the bed as this woman with cancer threatening her organs looked out of the window towards the sky.

  —When I was a little girl, Aggie said, her voice different suddenly, soft so it made Ruby jump, I had a friend called Doris, and we used to lie on our backs in the summer and look up at the sky and watch the clouds move along. Doris said that when you die your soul turns into a cloud and you float around the world for ever, so you can see heaven right there above us. My dad died when I was a baby so I never knew him, but Doris, her dad died when she was six or seven, and she did know him. I just saw my dad’s face in photographs. It was harder for her, I suppose. With me, I was always wondering.

  Ruby stood next to her and wanted to cry, reach out and hug this woman like she was a small child, as if she was her own mother.

  —I didn’t know if I believed her at first, but then I started thinking about it and it seemed a good idea, better than being stuck underground in a coffin. I liked the idea and we used to lie on the grass together, and I could see my dad’s face. He was always there, high above, watching me when I was walking to school, sailing off over the horizon at night and coming back the next day. He was always with me, keeping an eye on me, and one day I’d be a cloud as well, float along next to him, the two of us tangling together.

  Ruby made herself strong instead of sad, thinking it was a nice idea, making up your own heaven like that, the power of positive thinking, and she saw Aggie on the grass, the sun shining, dreaming her dreams.

  —I never wanted to be a star. Some kids said you turned into a star but it’s too far away, just a dot of twinkling light. They looked too small. At least a cloud is moving and changing shape and colour, like a person. My dad died of TB. If he’d been born later he would have lived and I’d have known him.

  Aggie hated being in hospital and Ruby didn’t blame her. She’d had two operations and chemotherapy, been in and out for a couple of years now. She could be fussy and bossy but if someone was suffering like that, with a good chance that they would die, you could forgive them most things.

  —I don’t like storms, all that thunder and lightning, and then the roof starts leaking so you have to put a bucket out. I worry it’s going to get into the electrics and the house will burn down. Tommy takes care of it, never worries about that sort of thing, goes up on the roof and has a go, but I suppose you get used to it if you’re a cloud.

  Maybe Aggie didn’t have long to live. Nothing was for sure right now except that she was going home soon, and it was like that with cancer, you had to wait and see, if it was malignant or benign, and it was the way they defined these things, all the terminology that broke sickness down and stuck it in categories—congenital or newly acquired, chemical or mechanical, generic or environmental. Everything had a reason. At least she had Tommy and her family.

  —Cheer up, Aggie said, the hard edge coming back, but in a jokey way. You’ll be no good to us crying.

  Ruby could hear the dinner trolley coming, a highlight for most of the patients at the end of a busy morning, every meal an event, and she knew Vicky was humming a calypso even though she couldn’t see or hear her yet, she’d been on the same tune ever since she went to Trinidad for the first time to see her gran, making everyone jealous going on about the beaches and carnival, and Ruby would love to go on holiday but couldn’t afford it this year, she’d said that last summer as well, and the calypso was in her head, went with the clanking plates and cutlery, Vicky’s own steel band serving pastry, potatoes, peas.

  Ruby looked back at Aggie and hoped she could fight back, beat the cancer, and she thought of her mum again, near enough the same age as Aggie and nowhere near as healthy, saw birthday candles and tissue hats, and her mum would live to be a hundred even though she wouldn’t understand what the cake was for. Ruby hoped she wouldn’t live that long, that she’d break out and float away, up into the sky where she’d be pulled into a current of warm air and circle the globe, following the sun, come back and smile through the window every morning, her soul free of the disease that rotted her brain and churned out all that spite, turned her tongue vicious when she’d always been so gentle, confused her personality and let in the monsters, her memory destroyed, and Aggie had it worked out right, blowing with the wind.