Advocate

by Darren Greer

  “Never mind,” said my grandmother. “Just tell your mother I’ve made up a tray. It’s on the kitchen table.”

  “He won’t eat it,” I said. “He hasn’t eaten in days.”

  “He hasn’t?”

  Although I didn’t know it, one of the ways my mother and Jeanette punished my grandmother was by not telling her about David’s condition. “If you want to know,” Jeanette had said, “go in to see him yourself.”

  She wouldn’t, of course. But she did want to know how he was.

  When I told my mother Grandnan was pestering me for information about Uncle David, she told her to stop. “If you want to know something, come to us. Not Jacob.”

  “But you won’t tell me anything!” Grandnan cried.

  “I told you, come see for yourself. Say goodbye to him, before you regret it.”

  “I don’t regret anything,” said my grandmother, “except raising two daughters who don’t respect me.”

  But these arguments no longer worked. She lost credibility every day as long as she refused to help her only son. I think she saw, clearly, how the situation had got away from her. I’ve often wondered if my grandmother’s refusal to acknowledge her son’s illness came from its origins. Since it was a sexually transmitted disease, and from a “depraved” kind of sex, she couldn’t think about him being sick without picturing the acts that gave it to him. I have a theory this is a lot of the reason the disease was so roundly ignored in those first few years. It offended. It wasn’t, in the eyes of many, a blameless disease. My uncle had brought this on himself by acting on his perversion. My grandmother never came outright and said that aids was God’s judgment on the unrighteous, as so many others did in those years, but I know she thought it.

  My grandmother had lost so much face that Jeanette started to smoke in the house, and ignored her when she tried to say anything. In the end my grandmother said, “Well use an ashtray at least. Don’t get any ashes on the floors.”

  In retrospect it was a wonder Jeanette didn’t butt them out on the floors, just to annoy my grandmother.

  5

  in those final days it was not uncommon to find all of us in my uncle’s room at the same time. He was often asleep, and we rarely spoke to him or each other. Deanny and I sat on chairs near the door. My mother and Jeanette sat on either side of my uncle. We’d stay for hours this way, taking breaks only to go to the bathroom and to get something to eat or drink in the kitchen. My grandmother still did not come in. My aunt and mother stopped asking her. Occasionally David would wake up and ask for water or more morphine. He was often groggy, and there was a terrible silence in that room I shall never forget. My uncle’s feeble whispering punctuated rather than relieved it. Deanny and I finished To Kill a Mockingbird, and my uncle asked for no other book. That part of his life, the teacher, the reader, was over. I marvelled over the fact that Uncle David had read his last book, had had his last conversation about literature after a life devoted to it.

  War and Peace still sat on his night table, but it was unfinished. I opened to where he had stopped reading, marked by a strip torn from the Advocate Gazette. The strip was from the article “Strange Contagion Strikes Town.” When I showed it to my mother she wondered how my uncle had laid hands on it.

  “Henry,” said Jeanette. “He doesn’t believe in keeping the truth from him.”

  The page my uncle was on was halfway through the book. There was a conversation between two soldiers, and a man praying. My uncle had underlined in pencil a single line. Lay me down like a stone oh God, and raise me up like a new bread. This I never showed my mother, or Jeanette, or even Deanny. I felt it was my uncle’s last communication, his final words, and I have shared them with no one until now.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  on one of those days, when we were all in his room, my uncle woke up and asked to be propped up by a pillow. He was so terribly thin that just watching him move, however slowly, I felt as if he might break. He was barely awake, and he looked at none of us directly when he began to speak. Occasionally his head would droop, and we would think he’d gone to sleep again. But he kept talking.

  “This town,” he said, “has been good to me. It has nurtured me, made me who I am.”

  “Good?” said Jeanette. “That’s hardly the word I’d use.”

  My uncle acted as if he didn’t hear her, and perhaps he didn’t. My mother told her to hush. “When I was a boy,” he said, “I fell off my bike. Did I ever tell you that? The wheel came off and I spilled into the road. I was hurt — cuts and scrapes and in pain. And the neighbours came out and helped me. I remember that now, more than anything. Isn’t that strange?”

  No one said a word. It was as silent as death. “So don’t hate the town,” he continued. “The town is doing its best. And especially don’t hate her.”

  Deanny sat up straighter in her chair. She knew who my uncle was speaking of.

  “You must tell her not to blame herself. You must tell her I don’t forgive her because there is nothing to forgive. Do you promise to do this?” He was looking down, not at anyone in particular. I saw my mother and Jeanette nod. “None of you should feel any guilt. And you must make sure she doesn’t feel any either. She is old. She will eventually need your help.”

  And with that my uncle closed his eyes again, and fell asleep. I’ve often wondered if my mother and Jeanette repeated his final words to my grandmother. I know I did not. I suspect my mother and Jeanette felt the same way at first, but may have passed them along later.

  Nonetheless, she did feel guilty. She did regret. Her insistence that I give the eulogy and the money she left says that much.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  the next day, on October 21 at six a.m., my mother came into my room and woke me as gently as she could. “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “It’s your uncle,” she said. “It’s time.”

  When I got into the hallway, I saw my grandmother just emerging out of her room, with her face thickly creamed with her blue facial mask. “For heaven’s sake, what is going on?”

  Jeanette was coming up the stairs. She looked distraught. “I’ve called Dr. Fred. I think it’s better than calling an ambulance.”

  “What’s wrong?” said my grandmother. “What happened?”

  “He’s dying, mother,” said my mother. “Something happened to him during the night. He looks awful.”

  Jeanette went into his room, and came back out, face blanched. “He’s still breathing.”

  I tried to go in too, but my mother grabbed me and pulled me aside. “No Jacob,” she said. “You don’t want to see your uncle like this. You don’t want to remember him this way.”

  Dr. Fred came and examined my uncle while we waited in the hallway. Less than five minutes later he emerged. My grandmother had rubbed off her mask. We were all in our nightclothes.

  “He’s awake,” Dr. Fred said.

  “How?” said my mother.

  “He says he feels fine. He can’t feel any of his extremities, which is why I suspect he’s not in any pain. It’s sepsis. One, or more, of the infections have moved into the blood. His body has swollen to three times its normal size. The redness in his skin is due to the infection.” I know now the condition Dr. Fred spoke of, and my uncle had, is called Pneumocystis jovecki pneumonia. He never mentioned that name to us then. Perhaps he knew we were not interested in the purely clinical.

  “He looks like a monster!” said Jeanette.

  “He’s not in pain,” said Dr. Fred. “I assure you.”

  “Is there anything you can do?”

  “No. His immune system is gone, and he has nothing to fight this off with. I suggest you say your goodbyes.”

  My mother started in, but Fred laid a hand on her arm and stopped her. “Don’t burden him,” he said. “You might be tempted to talk about the past, but don’t, unless he brings it up. He may not even be awake for very long. He may go at any minute. In fact, if you don’t mind, I’d like to stay.”

 
“To help him?” said my mother.

  “If I can,” said Dr. Fred. “But more as a friend. I’ve grown to know David quite well.”

  No one saw it but me. I’m sure of it. My grandmother winced, as if Dr. Fred’s words were anathema, or accusation, to her.

  “I’m going to call people,” said Jeanette, and she was crying. “There are others that should be here.” She looked at my grandmother. “We can do for him what your town wouldn’t.”

  And my grandmother, who at other times would never have allowed such impertinence, went quietly back into her room.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  that day was the longest of my life.

  Jeanette was determined to have a deathwatch for my uncle, and she called the same people she had called for the Lemon Day protest — Henry, Deacon Harry, and Darcy from the reserve.

  Deanny came over at nine, but my mother told her it was no place for children. She was upset that she had been called a child, and wanted to know why I was allowed to stay and she wasn’t.

  “You have a point,” my mother said. “In fact I should send Jacob to spend the day at your house.” But she didn’t — she was too distracted — and eventually she relented. “Just stay out of his room,” my mother said. “He’s very sick, and we’re doing for him what we can.”

  Darcy arrived soon after. We did not know, at the time, that the band council on the reserve had been watching the actions of the townspeople. They felt they should somehow participate and show compassion. It would be years before anyone from the reserve told Jeanette this. Many reserves during the eighties dealt with the aids crisis no better than other communities, with the same fear and prejudice. Some went so far as to kick sufferers off traditional lands when they came home to die. But the reserve outside of Advocate was not one of those. Darcy was delegated to come and act on their behalf.

  He brought with him a deerskin drum, an eagle feather, bunches of sweet grass, tobacco, sage, and cedar. He wore traditional Mi’kmaq dress, buckskin leggings, a vest decorated with dyed porcupine quills and beads, and a small rawhide medicine pouch strung at his hip.

  When my grandmother saw him she whispered to Jeanette, “What’s the godawful getup for?”

  “Medicine,” Jeanette answered. “Rituals.”

  “Not in my house. This is a house of the Lord.”

  “This is a house of death and dying,” said Jeanette. “And your Lord has nothing to do with it. I’ve asked Darcy here to ensure the safe passage of David’s soul, which is something your church refused to do.”

  My grandmother, her position weakened, said nothing, except to fall back on the petty tyrannies of a lifelong housekeeper. “I hope he knows I don’t allow smoke in my house. It discolours the drapes.”

  Darcy looked at my aunt. She shook her head. “Go upstairs,” she said. Don’t worry about her.”

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  my aunt’s estimation that my grandmother’s church would not make an appearance at my uncle’s deathwatch was not entirely true. Deacon Harry did come, as he had on many previous days, though he had not given my uncle the last rites because my grandmother had not wanted him to. He wasn’t, in her understanding, up to the job. My mother and Jeanette discussed with each other whether Deacon Harry should administer what rites he could.

  The deacon did not condemn Father Orlis for refusing Uncle David the last rites; he reminded my mother and Jeanette that Father Orlis was old, and that David’s case put him “a little out of his depth.”

  “Will you get in trouble?” my mother asked. “For doing things you’re not qualified to do?”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Deacon Harry said, “only God makes those kinds of judgments.”

  If he thought anything untoward about Darcy being there with his Mi’kmaq rituals he didn’t say. They were more than polite to each other. Harry, dressed in his black rabbat, and black shirt, but no collar, stood in sharp clerical contrast to Darcy’s colourful Mi’kmaq dress.

  My mother asked David if he wanted to give confession.

  “Why not?” he supposedly said. “Might as well.”

  I still do not know if my uncle at this stage began believing in the possibility of the afterlife. He had made no noise about extreme unction and confession. Darcy burned sweet grass inside, against the prohibitions of my grandmother. We could smell it all over the house. Deacon Harry asked everyone to leave the room at ten o’clock to hear my uncle’s confession. It only took a few minutes. When he came out of the room he was grave.

  “It is given,” he said. “David is free from his sins.”

  Aunt Jeanette said, as far as she was concerned, it was those who had sinned against him that needed to worry. She was still angry, and my uncle’s impending death had not softened her.

  The last person to arrive was Henry Hennsey. Like Darcy and Deacon Harry, Henry brought his own form of absolution: a book.

  I couldn’t see its title, tucked as it was beneath his arm. To this day I don’t know what book it was. Henry asked, if the family didn’t mind, if he could read to Uncle David for a few minutes.

  “That is,” he said, “if David wants it.”

  They gave him a half hour. Deanny and I hung about outside the door to see if I could hear what Henry was reading. It is one of the few details surrounding my uncle’s death I do not know, and it has always niggled at me. I asked Henry once, but he shook his head and said that it didn’t matter.

  “It was a book we often discussed,” Henry said. “I thought it fitting he should hear some of it.”

  “Did he talk to you?” I asked.

  “No,” Henry said. “He just listened. I like to think the sound of someone else’s words comforted him. He loved good writing, your uncle. We had that in common at least.”

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  the night before my grandmother’s funeral I stay up to work on her eulogy. The same problems remain. How to tell the truth without vilifying her completely? How to maintain the sense of decency and decorum required? It all seems false. Deanny said once that you can’t be both a pragmatist and an idealist, and she is right; but I have never been either. I am an evader. I have long been such, lacking the courage of my own convictions. I march in parades with like-minded people, but I have yet to prove I can march by myself, as Deanny and my aunt did all those years ago.

  By three a.m. I give up and go to bed. I will get up in the morning and try again. If nothing comes to me, I will give the eulogy based on my aunt’s sanitized version and take the money and run. My uncle David will not be mentioned, except as a footnote.

  When I come downstairs in the morning, I am defeated. Jeanette and my mother are already up, having breakfast in the kitchen. My mother fetches me coffee.

  “So what have you decided?” my mother says.

  “I’ve got nothing,” I tell her. “I’ll give Jeanette’s version, and I’ll insert a few words about Uncle David.”

  My mother looks at Jeanette and says, “Should we tell him?”

  Jeanette nods. “We should.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “We promised your grandmother we never would,” says my mother. “Even your uncle never mentioned it. We always thought one of them might say something about it — to you, to each other — before they died, but they didn’t. It never seemed our place.”

  “We held it as long as we could,” says my aunt. “It seemed so unnecessary, so much ancient history.”

  So here was the thing that was hidden, the thing that had always lain beneath the surface. I am determined to stay unmoved. My mother and Jeanette ask me to come into the living room, where, when my grandmother was alive, all important discussions took place.

  TEN

  ■

  deanny and i lingered outside the door for most of the afternoon but we were not invited back inside. Occasionally one of the participants would come out to get something or use the downstairs bathroom and Deanny would ask how he was.

  “No change,” she was told.

>   Darcy continued to beat his drum and chant. Although he was very quiet, he could be heard all over the house. My grandmother — who had gone to her room, and did not come back out even when my mother and aunt told her the end was near — asked, loudly but with no authority, “What is that awful racket?”

  No one paid her any attention.

  Over the next hours, David’s vitals and blood pressure dropped. He became unconscious. My mother sat on one side of the bed holding his hand, my aunt Jeanette the other. They watched as his chest rose and fell, a wheezing coming from his mouth and nose. Someone in that room gave a cry. Deanny and I heard it. We sat up rigid on the rumpus room sofa, listening. Later, my mother told us David had vomited “coffee grounds,” blood that had backed up in his system after the kidneys shut down. Years later, I would understand, from my work with my clients, what this meant. The vomiting of coffee grounds spelled the end. Fred cleared his throat and passageways with his fingers.

  At five o’clock, my mother, ever the watchful parent even in the midst of such a tragedy, came downstairs to make sure Deanny and I had eaten. Under her supervision we were forced to fill up plates from the food in the fridge. On the way back up she went into my grandmother’s room to once more see if she could coerce her into saying goodbye to David. Deanny and I heard them from the hallway.

  “I can’t,” said my grandmother. “Don’t you understand that?”

  “I cannot,” my mother said. “And I will never be able to. He’s your son. He’s dying. I can’t think of one single reason why you should not go in and say goodbye. You owe him that much.”

  But in my grandmother’s purview, she owed her son nothing. She had long ago disowned him, and he only came back under her roof under false pretenses, which she had allowed in a weak moment.