“In my womb.”
“Your womb?” The two women looked at one another and tried not to laugh, but did not succeed. “Oh Betty, I don’t think you even have a womb anymore.”
Grandma Betty got mad. “Yes I do!” she insisted. “I had children.”
“Yeah, but I think you also had a hysterectomy. I think I read it on your chart.”
Grandma Betty looked up at the woman. “You’re a nosy little bitch, you know that?”
The young woman laughed. “Probably so, but I want to know everything there is about my favorite residents, so I took a look. You had a complete hysterectomy in your forties and two fourteen-pound tumors removed at the same time.”
Grandma Betty shook her head in disgust. “A lot you know. Just the one weighed fourteen pounds. The second one only weighed five.”
The aide smiled. “Even so, no womb. Now tell me again,
where are you feeling pain?”
“Nowhere,” Grandma Betty said, and laughed suddenly. “I’m feeling no pain.” Saying that reminded her of the good old days at the American Legion. How the men, veterans, all of them, brave men, would get drunk and say they were “feeling no pain.” And how the one time Bill fell off the barstool and banged his chin on the bar, and…. One of the aides started out the room to answer a call.
“Wait. Come help me get Betty into bed first. Betty, are you ready to go to bed?”
Grandma Betty nodded.
“Okay, fine. But you know you need to say please, right?”
Grandma Betty looked up at her, focused on her eyes. “Yes. Would you put me to bed now, please?”
The aide nodded her approval. “That’s a good girl. Yes, I will.” The two women went about their task of undressing and washing Grandma Betty, changing her diaper, powdering her, and getting her into her nightgown. The one has such gentle hands, thought Betty, as they lifted her into bed and straightened her around. And the other, the one who insisted she always say please and thank you for every little thing, she had a pepperminty scent.
“Thank you,” Grandma Betty remembered to say repeatedly throughout. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
* * *
“Abby…? Abby?” Ellie leaned over her. “Abby, are you okay?”
Abby opened her eyes and stared. “I don’t know. I think so. What’d I do? Fall again?”
“Yes. Do you want me to go get help?”
“No,” Abby said, “just let me lay here a second.”
Ellie glanced over her shoulder at Damian and Bubba, both tied to the arena gate and fervently trying to reach one another by pawing their way.
“Ellie!” they heard someone yell. “Ellie, you gonna ride?”
“Oh, shit,” Abby said. “Quick, it’s Julie. Help me get up.”
Before Ellie could even blink, Abby was upright, and in the next instant on her feet. For the second time that day, Ellie helped dust her off.
“Don’t say anything, okay?”
Ellie nodded, watching with great concern as Abby put her helmet back on and staggered toward Bubba.
“Ellie?” The little girl called out again, “Ellie, where are you?” She’d obviously just looked for her in the tack room and from the sound of her voice was headed around the corner in their direction. “Oh, there you are. Can you guys stay till I ride?”
Ellie answered for both with a quick nod and another glance at Abby, who was halfway across the arena. She caught up with her and kept her voice low. “Are you sure you’re okay? You fell really hard.” She didn’t want to mention that snap she heard, but it was utmost on her mind, to say the least.
“I’m fine. You know what they always say, you included, about falling and getting right back on.”
“Yes, I know, but….”
Abby marched right up between Damian and Bubba, untied Bubba, and pulled the reins over his head. She hesitated only a second before mounting. Ellie didn’t know if it was from apprehension or pain, but up she went, and Ellie quickly untied Damian and mounted also.
“Walk beside me for awhile. Okay?”
Ellie nodded.
* * *
Grandma Betty had the worst night of her life. She dreamt she gave birth to a litter of chipmunks. And when she woke, the pad underneath her was full of blood.
“Well, isn’t that wonderful!” she told the day nurse, who seemed very concerned. “My favorite color, red!”
“This isn’t funny, Betty. This is serious.”
“Obviously,” Grandma Betty said, judging from the look on her face
“Just when we got you eating again, now this! I hope you’re happy.”
Grandma Betty drew a ragged breath. “Does this mean my time is near?”
The nurse hesitated. Besides the blood, there was the conspicuous absence of urine. “Probably, yes.”
“Then I’m happy,” Grandma Betty said.
Ellie got a phone call at work just before noon, and was surprised to hear her grandmother’s frail little voice on the other end of the line. “It’s happening, Ellie,” she said. “They say I’m dying.”
Silence. Ellie had prepared herself for this moment, for this day. It was the inevitable they’d been waiting for, hoping for. Still, she had to steady herself, to sit down, to stop the room from spinning, and collect her thoughts. What to do? What to say? “I’m so excited for you, Grandma. I really am.” She could hear herself saying it, she may even have said it twice, then promised she’d come right over, and hung up the phone.
Her boss looked up from her desk across the room. “Is everything okay?”
“No, um.…” She reached for her purse. “It’s my grandmother. She’s dying, and I need to be there.”
“Oh, but of course,” the woman said, and came around to see what Ellie had been working on. “Take all the time you need.”
Ellie thanked her, left, and in the lobby, stopped to phone her father. “It’s Grandma, she just called, and….”
“Yes, I know. She phoned here, too. I don’t know what she expects me to do. I can’t just drop everything. I’ve got three contracts that have to be signed today, one I was just about to hop on a plane to seal, and….”
“Okay, I’ll tell her.”
“Good. Tell her I’ll try to get there later today, say six o’clock or so, or early in the morning.”
“Dad, did you talk to her?”
“No, I talked to the nurse.”
* * *
Ellie rounded the hallway by the nurses’ station, which was empty, and expected to see every nurse from the floor gathered in her grandmother’s room. There wasn’t a one. Just Grandma Betty, all bundled up in bed in her patchwork-quilt.
“Oh, Ellie,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re here. Turn my TV on. I don’t know what they did with my remote.”
Ellie smiled. Leave it to Grandma Betty to want to watch her soaps the day she was dying. Ellie turned the set on and found the right channel.
“Turn it down a little, dear. I need to talk to you about a plan.”
“A plan?”
Grandma Betty lowered her voice. “I’m telling everyone I have a dying wish to see the old neighborhood one more time.”
“And…?”
“And, you’re not going to bring me back. When I die, you can just take me to the undertaker’s.”
Ellie found herself smiling again. On the way over, she had no idea what to expect and feared one look at Grandma Betty near death and she’d be reduced to tears. Not so. Not with her grandmother in such good spirits.
“The way I figure it, I’ll probably die during the night or very early in the morning. So, after we leave, I’ll never have to come back.”
“But where will we go?” Her grandmother didn’t really have an old neighborhood. In her own words, she “moved around a lot.”
“Well, I’d like to ride by the Legion one more time. And I’d like to go to the cemetery.”
“The cemetery?” Why the cemetery?
“And I’d like t
o go to the….”
A nurse entered the room. “I understand you’re taking Betty for a ride this afternoon to see her old house.”
Ellie nodded.
“How long do you think this will take?”
Ellie shrugged, unsure of what to say, unsure of anything, everything. How was she going to get her grandmother into the car, and then out? Was this the right thing to do? Did she have enough gas in the car? “Not long, I guess.”
“How far away? I just looked at your chart, Betty, and it says you used to live on the West Side. Is that where you’ll be going?”
Grandma Betty nodded. “Why? What’s the big deal?”
The nurse sighed. “Your meds, Betty. You’ll be due again at o-nineteen hundred.”
“So, I can tell time. Give them to me and I’ll take them myself if I’m not back by then.”
“Sorry, that’s not allowed.” The nurse reached instinctively to check Grandma Betty’s pulse. It was beating quite strong. She felt her forehead, no fever yet. “I suggest you go right after the dinner hour.”
“Why? You’re not still going to make me try and eat, are you?”
The nurse glanced at them both and shook her head. She uncovered Grandma Betty’s legs and removed both socks to examine her feet. “It would just work out better that way.”
Grandma Betty turned to Ellie. “What do you think? Is that all right?”
Ellie stared. “Dad said he’d try and get here around six.”
“Good,” Grandma Betty said. “That’s perfect. We’ll leave right after that then. Okay?”
“Okay.” With the nurse standing there and not knowing the rest of the plan, what else
could Ellie say?
~ 11 ~
Mid-afternoon, Grandma Betty sent Ellie away. “I mean it. Go. Come back later.” Ellie could see her slipping further and further before her very eyes.
“Why don’t I just stay?”
“Because,” Grandma Betty said. “I’m sure you have other things to do. Besides, I want to take a nap so I can dream one more time. I’m going to miss dreaming. Now go.”
Feeling lost, Ellie headed for the barn. There was no reason to return to work; work seemed meaningless at the moment. She stopped by Abby’s house to see if she wanted to join her.
“Yes, but not to ride. I’m never riding again. I quit.”
“What? Why?” The sound that Ellie had heard snap the other day, was apparently Abby’s spirit.
“I’m sick of falling. I can’t ride for shit anyway, so what’s the use?”
Ellie sighed. Surely there was something she could say, something encouraging, something…. She couldn’t come up with anything, her mind reeling with thoughts of Grandma Betty and her last day on earth.
“I think I’m going to sell Bubba anyway.”
“What?” Ellie looked at her. “Come on. No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am. He deserves a better rider, a better owner. I suck.”
Ellie shook her head. “You’d better not let him hear you say that. You know how gullible he is. He just might believe you. And then what?”
Abby smiled a half-hearted smile, bolstered for a second. It only took a little coaxing after that, to convince her to come along. By the time they arrived, it had started to rain. Victor was working on his birdcage. “I hate that man,” Ellie said. And the way she’d said it, first, the glance in his direction, then a sudden stiffness in her posture, stopped Abby in her wake.
“Wow! You know you looked just like Lolita right then.”
Ellie shrugged. “I am Lolita. She’s a part of me; I’m a part of her.”
“Exactly.” Abby marveled. “I can see it. Which reminds me, I saw a flyer for this organization the other day that was all about crows. I found it at the health food store of all places. There was a picture of a crow on it, which caught my eye, and it talked all about how crows work together for the common good. And get this; it also said that in the mythology of a number of cultures, the crow is revered as the messenger and the healer. Isn’t that awesome? I remember thinking, cool, I wonder if that woman we met at the retreat knew about that stuff, with the way she acted about Lolita getting stung and what she said about you being alone and all.”
Ellie smiled, recalling the woman’s expression. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Have the crows been with you all your life?”
“For the most part,” Ellie said. There were times, particularly in her mid-teens, when they were way far in the distance. She’d chased them away. She’d wanted to fit in then, and couldn’t exactly do that with a flock of crows following her around. She told people she’d stopped feeding them, and they believed her. Even Jewel believed her.
“I want a crow of my own,” Abby declared. “Do you think one of the flock would adopt me?”
“I don’t know. I think they would have done it by now.” Ellie could never remember a day when she didn’t feel an affinity for the crows, a connection. “You might not be a crow.”
“What am I then?”
Ellie reached for her saddle and bridle and looked at her. “Are you still a vegetarian?”
“Sort of. Why? What’s that mean?”
“I’m not sure. I’m just guessing. I think you’re probably a parrot, since you do like to make a fuss and talk a lot.”
Abby laughed. When she was nervous, like now, she did tend to rattle on.
“Then again, you could be a parakeet. You’re also very domesticated.”
“So what are you saying? Do you think maybe I should go out and buy one?”
Ellie chuckled. “Yeah, right. I can see Victor now, with you riding around with a parakeet perched on your shoulder. Wouldn’t that go over big?”
Abby grabbed her tack and followed along. Bubba and Damian both nickered at the sounds of their voices. One look in Bubba’s stall at all 1200 pounds of him and Abby’s stomach started doing flip-flops. “What if he dumps me again?”
“What if he doesn’t? Then what?”
Abby stared. Good point. One she’d cling to. “What’s Victor’s thing with the crows anyway? It’s not like they come close. And it’s not like every horse in the barn isn’t vaccinated against West Nile.”
Ellie put Damian’s halter and shank on him, gave him a big hug, and led him to one set of the crossties to groom and tack him. “It’s not the crows.” The night in the arena with Victor flashed in her mind. His stating to everyone that he was going to trap the crows was meant for her. He was baiting her. “I think it’s me.”
Abby looked at her. “I think so, too. Everyone knows the virus isn’t connected to just crows anymore anyway.”
Ellie nodded and changed the subject, always mindful of not saying too much about the crows, always being protective. “My grandmother’s dying.”
“Really? Oh how sad. I forget, how old is she?”
Ellie had to think. “This time around, eighty-five.”
“I’m sorry.” Abby turned and paused. Bubba was so kind and gentle; just looking at him, who would ever think he’d have this thing about throwing her all the time. “Why oh why is life so difficult?” She pondered the thought of death for a moment, and that led to another, and then another. “I think it’s like AIDS and blaming all the gays.”
“What is?” Ellie glanced at her.
“The crows. It’s not their fault they have it, or that mosquitoes zoom in on them and spread it everywhere. The blue jays either. And I don’t think it’s because of their lifestyle.”
Ellie shrugged. “They’re meat eaters. People don’t like that in a bird.”
“So.” Abby led Bubba into the other crossties. “Eagles eat meat. Imagine the uproar if they were the only ones responsible for carrying it. Our national bird.”
Ellie pretended to shudder. “Oh wow, we won’t even go there. One does cleanup, the other one kills.”
Victor walked past them just then, his head cocked like radar to try to hear what they were saying. Ellie gave him something
to think about. “I wouldn’t tell anyone what you heard. At least no one here.”
* * *
The arena was empty. No visible reason for Damian and Bubba to spook. Yet as soon as they entered, both horses took on a stance horsemen know only too well; that prey-predator kind of stance that can lead to trouble. It was the last thing Abby needed at the moment. Any courage she’d managed to muster, vanished in a flash.
“I can’t do this,” she insisted. “Look at him.” Bubba resembled a Sherman tank revved in low gear ready to charge up a hill. “He’s going to dump me for sure.”
“No, he’s not. Now come on, get on.” Ellie mounted Damian and had to take a good hold to keep him from trotting off. A door slammed shut in the distance.
Abby put her foot in her stirrup, changed her mind, and took it back out. She drew a deep breath. Glancing around the arena made her dizzy.
“Don’t think about it. Just do it,” Ellie said, as Damian danced in place.
Abby nodded, easier said than done. She climbed up and lowered herself gingerly into the saddle. Bubba stood staring, nostrils flared and wide-eyed. Ellie rode Damian up next to them. “Come on, walk along.”
“I can’t,” Abby said. “I’m going to throw up.”
“Good, then throw up and get it over with,” Ellie said, adding. “Only do it that way.” She motioned to the other side and Abby laughed nervously.
For the first few minutes, all was well. The horses worked obediently, though on-the-muscle, until suddenly, for no apparent reason, Bubba jumped sideways and crashed into Damian. Ellie’s and Abby’s legs and stirrups banged into one another’s with a clang. And both horses started acting up
“Oh, shit. Oh, shit,” Abby kept saying as Ellie repeated, “Be calm, be calm.” Ellie grabbed hold of Bubba’s inside rein, and pulled him even closer, his head now over Damian’s neck and practically in her lap. “Get after him, come on. Get his attention.”
“I can’t! What if he bucks me off?”
“He won’t! Come on, I won’t let him. Get after him!”
Abby thumped Bubba with her outside leg, which had him bouncing off Damian again, who seemed to rather be enjoying himself, dancing and snorting, and tossing his head.
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