“Of course I did.”
“And what did Ellen say?”
“She’s inviting Mom.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Well, then…”
“But don’t you see how awful—”
“Yes, I do see,” I say sadly. “Ann should be ashamed of herself to even think such a thing.”
“She’s a mean person!”
“Yes, she is. But don’t let one mean person ruin your special day.” I’m seething, but I remain calm and logical for Debi’s sake. “And don’t ever tell your mom about this.”
“I’d never tell Mom!” Debi screeches. “It would kill her!”
Before the thought has settled in my ear, I heave a weighted sigh. “It probably would.”
We talk for a long time—an hour, maybe longer—but when we finally say goodbye Debi has come to terms with the situation. My hands tremble as I hang up the receiver. A cruelty to someone you love is far worse than a cruelty suffered yourself. The truth is I feel the same rage Debi feels, but I have nowhere to go with it.
The problem is gone. I tell myself to let it rest. Ellen has invited Donna, and the only people who know about Ann’s words are Ellen, Debi, and me. It will remain with us. Donna will never know. I am determined that on the day of the shower I will surround my sister with an impenetrable wall of love.
Seating Arrangement
On the second Friday of March, Donna and Mama drive up to New Jersey. It is the day before the shower.
I am nervous at the thought of them driving such a distance alone, but no one has a say in what Donna does so all I can do is wait for their arrival. Several times I go onto the deck and scan the thin line of traffic crawling along Hillcrest Road, but not a single car turns off. Not one. Finally I take my book and sit on the deck where I can look across and see the road.
Fifteen minutes pass, and I am still on the same page. I read a sentence, look down the road, then back to the book. Having forgotten at what point I stopped, I return to the top of the page and start again. At long last I see the maroon Chrysler turn the corner, inching its way toward our house. A whoosh of relief comes up from my stomach.
Donna eases the car down the steep driveway, pulls to the far side, then switches off the ignition. She does not get out of the car.
I hurry down the stairs and rush to greet them. “I was so worried,” I say, yanking the passenger side door open to help Mom from the car.
My sister leans across the seat and wriggles her fingers in a sign language hello. Jason sits between her legs like a co-pilot. Although she smiles and shakes off my question about being tired, I see a new weariness beneath her eyes. In the back seat of the car the big missile-shaped oxygen tank is wedged between several cartons of medical supplies.
I pretend not to notice this is practically a rolling hospital and act normal. Even though there is a knot of worry lodged in the center of my chest, I slide my arm around Donna’s shoulder and tell her she looks good.
In some ways I am as helpless as her. I am her big sister. I want to make it better; I want to do something. Anything. I don’t, because I love her too much. Saying “Lean on me, let me carry you and shoulder your burdens” would make me feel better, but it’s not about me. I remind myself that loving my sister means I have to step back and give her the dignity of independence.
Donna has the car loaded with packages for the new baby. She has even crocheted pillow covers to match the array of granny square blankets. Her face is thin and gaunt, but it has a glow almost impossible to describe. She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t have to; her happiness is obvious.
After dinner Mama and Donna are both tired and go to bed early. “It’s been a long day,” Mama says.
As Donna walks toward the bedroom she claps her hands. Jason scoots from beneath the table and follows along.
Once they are beyond hearing range, I turn to Dick and say, “Donna doesn’t look good, does she?”
He shrugs. “Actually I think she looks better than last winter.”
“That’s just because she’s happy about the baby.”
“It’s possible.” He nods and returns to the newspaper he’s reading.
I settle back into my thoughts knowing it’s true. Just as worry can make a healthy person appear sickly, happiness can spread its glow across the face of the sick and make them appear more alive. This, I know, is the case with Donna. I see the rosy look of happiness on her face, but her hands are bone-thin and shaky. The telltale truth can be found in her hands.
Although Mama herself is an early riser, she has raised three night owls. Neither I nor either of my sisters are early birds, but when I wake and stumble into the kitchen for my first cup of coffee Donna sits at the table dressed and ready to go.
“What’s this?” I say jokingly.
She shrugs and gives me a sheepish grin. She mouths the word, Anxious.
I laugh. “We don’t have to leave for another three hours.” I pour my coffee and sit cross from her.
It’s funny how I remember that one-sided conversation so vividly. My sister and I have a lifetime of shared secrets, most of them long forgotten, but not this one. In this strange combination of sign language and lip reading that we now have, she tells me of her experience with motherhood. Donna doesn’t bother with the small words; she mouths only the words that carry weight. First time. Holding baby. World changes. The words are accompanied by actions of holding an invisible baby in her arms and the wide extension of her hands meaning “world.”
Eventually words become too much for her. She pulls a napkin from the holder on the table and writes I never thought I’d live to see my grandchild.
A short while later when Mama walks in, Donna and I both have a stream of tears rolling down our cheeks.
“Who said what to whom?” Mama asks, and we all laugh.
Like everyone else, Donna, Mama and I arrive at the shower well before Debi is scheduled to make an appearance. Unlike everyone else, when a whisper runs through the room saying the mother-to-be is about to walk in, we don’t join the throng at the front of the room waiting to shout “Surprise!” Ann, of course, stands front and center.
We linger in the back and wait. Ellen and I are the only ones who know Debi is aware of what’s happening.
As is the case at all showers, be it bridal or baby, the guest of honor gives a gasp of surprise. “Oh my gosh,” Debi exclaims, “I had no idea!”
But even as she feigns her astonishment, I see her eyes scanning the room. When she asks, “Is my mom here?” Donna raises her hand and waves from the back.
Brushing past Ann with little more than a nod, Debi makes her way through the crowd and hurries back to Donna.
“Mom!” she squeals. “It’s so good to see you!” Debi turns to the crowd. “Hey, everyone! This is my mom!” She gives Donna a smile, then turns back to the crowd. “She’s not just my mom, she’s the best mom in the world.”
A tear rolls down Donna’s face.
I told you Donna never cries, but that’s not really true. She never cries about the disappointments and hurts most people would cry over, but she’s softhearted when it comes to sentimentality. When a spark of emotion touches her heart, Donna is easily enough brought to tears.
After the food is eaten and the cake devoured, we gather to watch Debi open the stacks of gifts mounded beside a chair decorated with ribbons. Ann sits in the chair next to it.
Debi sits, then turns to Ann. “Would you mind scooting over so my mom can sit next to me?” She says this in a pleasant voice, but she leaves no doubt that it is to be done. Before Ann’s butt is out of the chair, Debi waves Donna over.
I know all aunties love their nieces, but my love for Debi is different, bigger, and more powerful. It’s the kind of love you’d have for your own child. Or your sister. I have to love her this way, because she is a younger version of Donna. This day she is not thinking of being the star of the show; she is more concerned with being Donna’s voice. I glow with pride.<
br />
As Debi unwraps gifts she passes them to Donna who wordlessly holds up each item for the crowd to see. She doesn’t have to speak; Debi speaks for her.
“Oh,” Debi says, “this adorable sweater set is from Aunt Geri…”
Although Donna’s meager income is barely enough to cover expenses, she has somehow gathered a stack of gifts for the baby. The crocheted items are handmade, but the others she bought. I would gladly replace the money she spent for these gifts, but I don’t. To do so would take away the joy of sacrifice. To give a lot when you have a lot is easy; but to give a lot when you have so little is indeed a gift of love.
When the day ends, Donna is weary but happy. She has shared in Debi’s joy without ever knowing of Ann’s comments.
Talk to me, Baby
In April the baby is born. It is a boy, and Debi names him Anthony. Once Debi is home from the hospital Donna drives up for a visit. I watch her holding the baby and see the love in her face. It is a strange look, mostly happy but with sad undertones that aren’t visible unless you study her eyes.
As she holds the baby, Donna makes sounds. Nothing understandable, more like a sigh that has somehow forced its way through her useless larynx. In her face there is a restlessness that has been missing for the same amount of time as her voice.
Two months after Donna holds her grandson, I get a call from Mama.
“Can you come down? Donna is having the tracheostomy reversed, and I need you to go to the hospital with me.” Mama sounds annoyed.
“Isn’t this good news?”
“Depends on your point of view,” Mama comments. She doesn’t have to say this thought is stuck in her craw; the tone of her voice says it for her.
“What does Doctor Craig say?”
“He says it can be done, but he’d rather she wait until her emphysema is more controlled.”
When Mama is not in favor of something she loathes to talk about it, so I have to pull the bits and pieces of information from her.
“Why is Donna going against his advice?” I ask.
“Because she’s Donna! She never listens to anybody! She’s damned and determined to do what she wants and doesn’t care about driving me to my grave with worry.”
Now the truth is out. Mama doesn’t want Donna to have the operation because she’s afraid of losing her. Mama doesn’t go at problems head on anymore; she circles the issue and spears it with cryptic barbs.
“Don’t worry,” I say, “I’m sure Donna knows what she’s doing. Doctor Craig wouldn’t—”
“What do you know? You’re up there in New Jersey! You don’t see how bad she is.”
“I saw her when she was at Debi’s, and I saw her again last month—”
“That’s what you’re going by?” Mama asks cynically. “You can’t go by that! She puts on an act when she’s up there.”
“An act?”
“Yes, an act. She pretends she’s fine, but she’s not! She hardly eats a bite and sits in that damned recliner from dawn ’til dark.”
“Well, I know her energy level is low, but that’s to be—”
“That’s not even half of it!”
I know this discussion is not going anywhere, so I say, “Maybe we can talk about it when I come down.”
“It’ll be too late by then, the surgery’s scheduled for day after tomorrow.”
“I’ll come down tomorrow.”
“Well, okay, but get started early.”
~ ~ ~
Of course, nothing Mama or I had to say could convince Donna not to go through with the surgery. On her notepad she wrote, I want this tracheostomy reversed. That was the end of the discussion.
When you’re up against a person who hasn’t been able to speak for almost two years, any argument you make sounds lame by comparison.
~ ~ ~
Two months after Anthony’s birth, Mama and I once again sit in the waiting room at Johns Hopkins Hospital. They have redecorated the room, and now the walls are a pale yellow. The pumpkin seats that were there last time have been replaced by alternating blue and green molded plastic shells. These colors are supposed to be cool and relaxing, but I miss the pumpkin chairs. At least they had a thin layer of padding in the seat.
The center of the room is no longer an expanse of emptiness. It has been filled with two additional rows of blue and green shells. Why, I can’t say. Every time we’ve been here the room is near empty, occupied by only a few unhappy souls who twitch and turn as we do, worrying about a loved one.
Today there is a young boy, a mirror image of the man sitting beside him. Father and son, I think. I find myself hoping they are waiting for another child to come into the world. Yes, that would be something nice; another child, instead of heart failure, cancer, or the dreaded emphysema. The boy shuffles through a handful of books, selects the one with a blue whale on the cover, and passes it to his father. He climbs onto the waiting knee and the man begins to read in a slow toneless drone; eventually his words grow dim to my ear and are lost in the sounds of crackling loudspeakers and footsteps clicking along the marble corridor.
We wait, but time weighs heavily upon us. I want to believe miracles are possible, but I question how the tracheostomy can be reversed when Donna still suctions out huge amounts of ugly green phlegm. I am caught between my fear of the consequences and the desire to hear my sister’s voice again, so I turn away and try to ignore the truth.
Mama has found a matchbook sewing kit in her purse, and she is repairing the small hole that has fingered its way into her jacket pocket. She concentrates on this, weaving her needle back and forth, creating a fabric where there was none. It is something that enables her to escape the here and now.
I flip through several magazines and twist uncomfortably in the plastic shell. Eventually I get up and go to the window in an effort to escape the sadness of this room. The parking lot still stretches across the horizon, but each time the view is different. I have peered from this window when the hot summer sun bubbled the blacktop, when the spring rain slicked the ground with sheets of water, and when drivers had to scrape ice from their windshield before they drove away. Today the air is chilly, but the trees still look festive in their dress of bright orange and yellow. The colors remind me of the pumpkin chairs, and again I miss them.
Strange how you can miss something even though you weren’t all that crazy about it in the first place. You don’t miss it because it was special, only because it was familiar. The pumpkin chairs were here and they were familiar; now they’re gone.
We have been here almost five hours when Doctor Craig comes into the room.
“You’ll be able to see Donna in an hour or two,” he says. “As soon as she is out of recovery.”
I ask how the operation went.
“As well as could be expected.”
This answer makes me nervous. I was hoping to hear something more positive. I wait a moment thinking there will be more, but when nothing else is said I ask, “Will she be able to speak?”
“Yes,” he answers, “but she’ll need oxygen.”
“Why?” Mama asks.
Doctor Craig explains in lay terms that although they removed a considerable amount of scar tissue from Donna’s trachea, her lungs are far from healed. He goes on to detail the procedure for closing the tracheostomy with a removable plug and indicates that it can be reopened if necessary.
“I would have preferred to leave it as it was,” he says, “but Donna insisted on having the tracheostomy reversed.”
“What’s that mean?” Mama asks nervously. “That it will be harder for her to breathe?”
He pauses for a moment, fingers his brow, then answers, “Hopefully with medication and a steady supply of oxygen, she’ll do okay.”
I don’t like the sound of his answer. Hopefully?
The day after the operation Donna sits up watching television when we arrive at the hospital. A thick gauze pad is taped across the hole in her throat, and a clear plastic mask covers her nose and
mouth. Through a mist of oxygen and moisture, we can see her lips curl into a smile at the sight of us.
Hesitantly, I say, “Hello,” then wait.
In a coarse, gravelly voice, Donna crackles, “Hi.”
It sounds nothing like the way she used to speak, but this is the first word she has said in two years. Mama and I both start talking at once.
“Thank God,” Mom says, her eyes growing teary.
I lean across the bed and kiss my sister. The knobs poking out at her elbows and wrists have grown larger, and the bones of her chest are like those of a skeleton. I wonder if her appetite will come back now that she will be able to taste the flavor of the food again.
“Can you eat anything?” I ask.
“Just soft stuff for a few days,” she crackles.
It is enough; I am encouraged and try to picture the plumpness returning to her arms and breasts.
Even though Donna is weary and speaks little we do not want this visit to end, so we stay until the nurse tells us to leave.
It is one of the only times I remember walking out of that hospital happy.
Christmas
Now that Donna is able to speak I am determined to make this the best Christmas ever. I spend almost a month on preparations and order a crown roast of pork so large it will barely fit in the oven. Knowing pork is Donna’s favorite I add sausage stuffing in the center and hope she will pile on double helpings.
We have much to celebrate this year. Not only is Donna able to speak but Anthony is now eight months old, an age when the lights and sounds of Christmas create a magical world of wonder. Anthony is the first grandchild in our family, and we have bought him more toys than he can possibly play with.
I tell Dick, “This year we need a tree that’s really special.”
He cringes at the thought of what means, and he is right in doing so. Our search takes us to a tree farm in Pennsylvania where we find the tree. It is too big to fit through the machine that secures the branches with plastic netting, so they wind it round and round with cord and then move it to the top of our car. Only then do I realize the true size of this tree; tied up, it is as wide as the car and almost twice as long.
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