After our meal is over, after my children toss goodbye kisses onto my cheek and my woman takes me by the arm to lead me to bed, I find my mouth has taken to trembling. A small whimper escapes my downhearted lips.
“Is something wrong?” Jewell asks.
“I think so, but I… .” My eyes begin to water. “I don’t know how to say it.”
“I have just the cure for all that ails,” Jewell says. “Let’s get you settled in bed and I’ll read one of your letters.”
“No. I’m tired of letters.” I place my lips into a pout. “My birds… I want to dance with my birds.” I begin to cry again.
“How about we read one letter for the birds and then we go to sleep so you can be ready for your big day tomorrow?”
“The birds are bored of my letters.”
Jewell laughs at my assertion.
I sigh and dramatically toss my head to one side. “Okay, just one letter,” I say.
When I’m settled under the softness of my quilt, my woman retrieves the letterbox and fishes around for a new letter.
“Here, let’s try this one,” she says. She unfolds the paper, careful that it will remember its creases. Before she begins to read, she places one hand on my forehead and strokes my hair away from my forehead. She continues to stroke my hair as she reads.
My dear hearts,
Oh, you kids! You have fought and bickered over every little thing from the time you were babies. Even riding through most of every day in my arms, straddled one on each hip, you still managed to poke and hit each other, if not with your round little hands, at least with your words and neener-neener taunts.
I suppose I should tell you why I allowed you to behave like little tyrants and boors with each other.
You’ll laugh over this, I’m sure. I allowed your sibling rants because I wanted you to know the joy of having someone else to fuss with. Your little fights were—if you can imagine this—music to my ears.
I didn’t have a brother or sister to spat with.
Have you ever wondered how different your life might have been, had you not had each other? I don’t know why I should ask you, except that I recall wondering about such nonsense now and then when I was a child. I remember one particular day when a heavy, pelting rain kept me indoors. I was suffering from the kind of boredom that causes a child to sigh and whine and press their young face to the window, as if doing so would change the weather and the mood.
I seemed always to be a lonesome and impertinent girl who sighed at the rain and cursed my fate to be an only child. With a sibling or two (I thought), I would have had someone with whom to play a game of pick-up sticks, or at the very least, had someone to bicker with.
Thank the stars you had each other. Thank the heavens (while you’re at it) that you still do.
Your MeeMaw should have had a dozen children clambering after her apron and PaaPaw should have had at least a couple of little sons trailing after him into the woods to hunt squirrels and gather fallen wood for the fireplace. I could have had sisters to braid my hair and fight over which color ribbon to wind into the coils and brothers to take me frog gigging at night, or wrestle with across the lawn on sun-sparkled days.
And—here’s the best part—you would have had many aunts and uncles to send you birthday cards with money tucked inside. But alas!
Still, I never heard Ma or Pa begrudge me as their only child, and a girl at that. Still, it seemed odd, in that day and in that place, that our home should be nearly childless, except for me. While other homes were resplendent with wild and noisy children, ours was a home of quietude and orderliness. I guess God knew Ma would lose her sight before I was fully grown and a blind mother to a band of children would have been a cruelty.
I wish you could have seen the satisfied and puckered mouths of the other mothers, clucking after their brood of children, counting all the little heads to make certain everyone was present. It always caused me to wonder if there was something wrong with me that God should see fit to keep me alone and less a child than I would have been, had I been one of many. An only child grows into an adult well before her years catch up to the fact. In that odd way, it seemed I was always older than Ma.
And so I remember that one day—that one rainy, face-pressed-to-the-window day, when I was as irksome as any child could be.
After the third time I sighed as if the world were coming to a rainy end, Ma ushered me from my perch at the window and sat me next to her on the living room couch. She pulled her weathered Bible from the pocket of her apron. She placed it on her lap without opening it and then recited several of her favorite Psalms aloud as if they were flickering candles pulsing under the warmth of her breath. Now and then, she punctuated a specifically important concept or lesson with one pointed finger. By the time she finished, I was changed under her recitations of gratitude and kindliness.
Now here’s the point of this letter: It’s not that you have each other and that you continue to bicker and banter even now. No! That’s what brothers and sisters do—they stick out their tongues and say rude things to each other.
My point is that it saddens me terribly that I never pulled you from your own rainy-day windows to whisper the Psalms into your little ears, rather than letting you discover your own amusements. But then again, your MeeMaw was special. She may have been destined to become blind, but I’d like to think that whoever God might be, She made up for it by giving your MeeMaw a mother’s wisdom far beyond her years. To your detriment, I was as immature as any mother should be allowed.
You certainly have my permission to read the Psalms, as well as any other book that you want—even girlie magazines, if that’s what floats your boat.
Love as always,
Mom
My woman grins at me before refolding the letter, pulling my covers up high enough to touch my chin, and then lowering the light. It’s not long before I hear her singing in the kitchen and I’m soothed to sleep within the deep folds of her song. Tonight I sleep nearly three hours before waking.
Somewhere in those narrow hours between sleep and wakefulness, my legs forget how to walk on their own. My feet have lost their knowledge of which is left and which is right and how to step one foot in front of the other. These legs have turned to spindles suddenly unable to swing over the side of the bed. To stand. To walk.
I don’t know whether to scream in protest or be glad for my legs and their newfound independence from my body. I wiggle around hoping that I’m only having a momentary glitch, but it’s soon clear my legs have given up on me for good. I lie straight-legged and surrendered under my covers, consoling myself—if I can remember this new thing about myself— that I’ll at least now stay in bed through the night. It’s small comfort, but when one’s legs suddenly and completely fall silent, there’s not much left to do but sift through the ashes and concentrate on being free from the limitations of an old woman’s halting gait.
To think I could have danced with the birds is a foolish thought, indeed. So, good riddance to my recalcitrant limbs, I say. Go ahead—let them be sticks, still and silent like tree branches in winter. It’ll perhaps do this family some good that we’re all free of the ill conduct of my midnight wanderings.
On the other hand, graceful, fan-fluttering acceptance is more than can be expected when half of one’s body turns to putty.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
So now I’ve become much like a tender birch tree, beaten down so often by the wind I no longer try to stand upright, but simply bend the way of the prevailing wind whether the wind is blowing or not.
I’ve seen them.
I’ve seen the trunks of sweet birches arching low in the Appalachian woods, agony waving across their shivering leaves. Obviously, the poor spindly things just gave up under the wind. I know how they must have felt as their branches could do nothing more than rub across the ground, giving off a miserable sound like a thousand beetle shells scraping over the dirt
.
I’m now a person who requires tedious care. My own prevailing wind has bent me in half.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sick.
The Chinese pistache in the front yard has grown large and I don’t know when that occurred. There is room now for several birds to gather on its lengthening branches. Other things have changed as well. John Milton the Cat has thickened and settled into a body that appears almost paunchy and middle-aged. I see threads of gray sewn onto my woman at the temples and streaked throughout her hair. The rose stalks have grown thick as my wrist and the walls of the house are turning yellow and pale with age.
It seems that since I turned ill there have been several seasons of summer, each followed by a long and rainy winter. Still, I can’t be certain of the truthfulness of anything.
What I do know is that a long time has passed since I began to fail. Now a creeping weakness has journeyed into my legs, my arms, my body, settling all thoughts of my ever getting better. My legs are withering like stumps of fallen trees; they’re no longer able to stand on their own. I’ve fallen into disrepair and no amount of care or watering or feeding can cause me to be upright or whole again.
Today, Bryan brings a wheelchair for me and I cry.
He tries to make it better with a bumper sticker that reads, Honk if You’re Horny. My woman blushes all the way through her cinnamon-colored skin. Bryan laughs. I tell him I don’t understand what the words mean. Bryan sobers his face and peels the sticker off.
“There, Mom,” he says, crumpling the sticky paper in his hands. “We should make this the Queen’s carriage, rather than the streetwalker’s cab.” I still don’t understand, but I mirror his smile and that seems to make things better.
Bryan and my woman help me from my bed. My body—bent as low as those sad birch trees forever wounded by chronic winds—folds easily into the shape of the chair. Bryan and my woman smile over me.
“Beautiful,” Bryan says. “You’re an absolutely regal-looking queen in your beautiful new chair.”
“Very lovely, ma’am,” Jewell says.
“The hell with you both,” I say. “It’s a wheelchair, for God’s sake. I want out of here.”
Bryan looks wounded. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he stammers.
“Get me out of here.” I raise my voice. “Get me out of here.”
“Relax,” Bryan says, using his stern lawyer voice.
“Relax, hell. You try relaxing in this… this ridiculous… thing.” I try working my legs to stand, but it’s no use. They’ve forgotten themselves completely.
I start to cry out again, but I’m surprised by John Milton the Cat who jumps onto my lap. It seems he likes the chair. I decide not to argue any further and simply let the branch of my hand bend toward the softness of his gray fur. My woman takes the opportunity to wheel John Milton and me to the living room.
Somewhere during the journey between my bedroom and the living room, I decide to like the chair, but only because of the cat.
Bryan apologetically smiles his way out the door. After my woman moves herself to the kitchen to prepare today’s menu, I realize my predicament. I’m a still-youngish woman with a progressive brain disorder, stuck in a wheelchair with a cat on her lap. I try to remember how this occurred, but few words come to my memory.
It seems life is now more-than-spare and I can’t help but wonder whether my current state is a blessing or a curse. There is something, of course, to be said for an uncomplicated manner of living. At least I’m not saddled with the complexities that plague other women my age. There is no sense worrying about a wrinkle on my face when I have trouble locating the words that might describe the event that could have caused the line.
I spend the next moments working to remember how I traveled from my former vibrancy to this current state. I manage a mere stipend of simple words and allow them to float through my mind:
Lettuce
La La La Girls
A whistling moon
A yellow shirt
Notes on a mirror
Letters in a box
Bewilderment
Memories
Breaking
Another glass of red
Sticky, sticky starfish
A spoiled trip
Piteous
Behavior
My Ivan
Longing
Stripping
Sparkles
Banging
Crumbling
Evaporating
A sonnet unwritten
A cat comes home
A singing woman
Fluttering hands
All the dancing birds
Darkness
Arms
Lifting
Cradling
Frightened legs
A rolling chair
An elegant awareness
A falling leaf
Such few words for one who once was a poet. A writer. A wife. A mother. Where it was once flowing water, language is now constricted, abbreviated. Mere drops of watery thought. As a poet, I should be delighted. Every poet wants only the essence of thought, the merest of words to tell her story. Nevertheless, a poet shouldn’t be stripped of nearly every one of her words in order to tell that tale. She should be able to select and weigh the gravitas of each word in connection with its importance to the others around it.
There should be choices.
She should—at the very least—be able to make sense, if not to others, at least to herself.
The maddening thing is my full awareness of all the blanks. I’m slowly being stripped of my color, deconstructed day by day, word by word, ability by ability. The incomprehensible thing is that I continue to know all the things I can no longer do or say or contribute.
I’m aware.
I look down at my legs. They are thin as twine, as are my arms. They surprise me with their simmering uselessness, but I let them be. I’ve learned that it’s of no consequence to argue with the failures of a once-lovely body when the brain has other intentions. I sit quietly with John Milton the Cat under my hand. The windows are open and the curtain sheers drift and snap with the breeze, waving themselves like white flags of surrender.
The front door comes alive with my beautiful Allison. She’s wearing a white dress and floats into the room like a cloud on a breeze. She drifts onto the couch, wrapping the cloud of her dress around her slender legs.
She looks at me. “Bryan told me,” she says. “A wheelchair.”
“Uh hum.” I nod my head. My brow is furrowed with worry for myself.
My hand moves from John Milton to the arm of the chair. I don’t know why, but even with a newfound freedom from the burden of lengthy conversation, I feel ashamed for my answer.
I’m also ashamed for the chair and for my trembling legs.
“Do you need anything?”
“New legs?”
“Oh, Mom.” Allison’s chin trembles.
The breeze from the windows goes slack, and the curtains settle back against the walls. Allison sighs; we sit together silently. She stays a while and then rises to float away, again a beautiful cloud in an endless sky. Before she leaves, Allison walks behind my wheelchair and wraps her arms around my shoulders.
“I’m so sorry.” She whispers into my ear, leaving a tearful mark on my cheek. “I have to go now. I’ll come and check on you tomorrow. I’ll bring some magazines for us to look at.”
“It’s okay,” I whisper back. “Oh, look! You rained on me.”
After Allison leaves, I realize I’ve cupped my hand around her tear to hold it tightly to my face.
I hear my woman’s throaty voice singing from the kitchen. The breeze returns and my curtains fly as flags once more. After a while, I go back to thinking of words and wondering when my children might ever visit me again.
I think it’s been a terribly long time.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
My woman wakes me, trilling into my ear, “I heard from a little
bird that today is your birthday.” She sounds like a singing nightingale and I’m instantly confused.
“That’s not true,” I say. “I’ve not discussed my birthday with any bird… ever!”
“You’re right, ma’am… actually, it was your son, Bryan, who told me. Your children are coming for a special dinner tonight. We’ll make your favorite chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy.”
I clap my hands. “Oh, goody. Yes. Well, then… yes, it’s my birthday. I’m sure it is.” I crook my finger and motion my woman to bend her ear closer to my lips. “You’re forgiven for your lie,” I whisper into her startled ear.
After I’m washed and dressed and combed into something resembling a proper birthday girl, after I am wheeled into the living room, after a Happy Birthday foil balloon is tied to my chair, and after the television is turned on to provide its illogical white noise of game show companionship, my woman leaves me for her kitchen chores.
I sit in my chair, happy it’s my birthday and I have a balloon bobbing above my head, announcing that lovely fact. I clap my hands and smile. It’s my birthday!
Slowly, however, as someone might carefully shift from one hip to the other in their chair, over the next hour, my mood turns. It occurs to me that even with a silver and pink balloon tied to my chair like a buoy marking my place, I’m drowning and there’s no one to pull me up and out of this black water lake into which I’ve fallen. I’m a small, fragile presence held by the silence of gravity and the stillness of coming death.
All the Dancing Birds Page 18