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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781770411951 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ECW Press |
| Publication date: | 09/09/2014 |
| Pages: | 96 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.60(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Prologue
I am close to being old. Half greyhound, long legs, pointed face. We come to Mersey House every Saturday, nine years now. I wear my work bandana white, red, and black. People touch it and read and say, “Therapy Dog Saint John Ambulance.” I am always clean, brushed, nails trimmed short. Old skin is fragile, like moth wings.
In these years people died and others have come to take their space. Old bones are porous. When memories are strong enough to stay close to the surface of the skin, I smell them. Sometimes I see them.
The people are light in their hair, bones, muscles, and blood — light as feathers. The building is scrubbed every day, and the old ones are cleaned gentle. Myother cannot smell the redolence leaking from their bodies, the medicines seeping from their skins, the excess sweet in sweat, the bouquet of decay. Myother is Mary, my other self, my mother. I love her.
Chapter 1
The Garden of Gethsemane
January
We move as one, Myother and me, twelve steps from car to door, cross the threshold with four steps more, right to the west wing, left to the east. Today we turn right.
Myother stops at the first door and raps the wood.
Rose shouts, “Come on in, Phoebe. I got a treat for you.”
Myother opens the door and we step inside. This room has the cleanest air in the House. Snow covers the ground outside but this room is green. Rose has green growing on shelves, on the floor, and on the windowsill. It is a garden.
I smell the cookie warm in her hand where it rests on the wheel of her chair. I strain at the leash and Myother walks me to Rose.
“That’s a sugar cookie,” Pansy says hard. “Show it to me.”
Rose waves it under my nose and I take the cookie gentle quick, savouring the crunch.
Pansy rises from her bed, hands on her hips making wings of her arms. Her white hair is pulled into a ball at the back of her head. Her eyes are sharp and her bones protrude. She is a seagull with her eye on a prize.
“I have to watch over her,” she says. “Where’s the package, Rose?”
Pansy opens the cabinet doors and holds the package high like a fresh kill. “I’m doing this for your own good. I need to protect you from yourself. How did you get these?” She steps close, hovering over me.
Rose raises her shoulders. “You were sleeping when my great grandson visited,” she says with a giggle.
“It’s not funny,” Pansy says. “These could kill you.”
I sniff Pansy and she does not smell of anger. Only fear, the same scent she has worn since she came here months ago.
Pansy grasps the handles of her walker and leaves the room. Pain radiates red from her hip. Rose reaches to Myother’s hand and pats it.
“The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak,” she says. She cups my face, scratches my ears. “Your muzzle is as white as my hair, Phoebe. You were black as coal when I met you. I think we both look prettier now. We shine with silver, eh girl? Now, sit down Mary, tell me about your week.”
Rose has been here seven years. She is missing the bottom half of one leg. Her skin is flushed and her stump is dark pink. She wears short pants even in winter. She has good layers of fat. I rest my chin on her stump as they talk. I count again the eight rings lodged in her bones, one for each child she bore.
Rose gives me comfort; her memories hold no dark secrets, no shame or regret, not a sniff of sorrow. Her hands buzz with memories like music, like bees around a hive: the lines of her husband’s back on their bed; a cast-iron pump handle moving up and down; wood for the stove; a sliver buried deep; her hands burrowing in the earth, planting seeds, gathering vegetables; brooms, mops, wet baskets full of clothing, clothing pinned on lines. And the babies, the scent of all eight still held beneath her skin, cloths and pins, braiding hair, caressing cheeks, hands folding over sick beds. Sometimes she overwhelms me.
I stand erect. Pansy has returned.
“I gave the cookies to Nurse Barbara,” she says.
Pansy has no greenery, no children, nothing on her wall. Her only possession is a soft black book edged with gold. She does not pet me. She does not dislike me. I fear her touch.
She moves the walker forward toward her bed. Her foot catches on one of the legs and she howls in pain. Her hands fly from the bar as she begins to fall. Her left hand slides across the sill, knocking greenery to the floor where pots crash, spilling their loamy scent.
I skitter backward and make myself small. Myother is on her feet. Rose’s wheelchair sits between Myother and Pansy.
Rose’s arms open wide. Just before Pansy’s head lands in Rose’s lap, she raises her stump, and at the moment of contact, she holds Pansy in a soft, threefold embrace. Pansy weeps.
Nurse Barbara comes in fast, Joe behind her. Joe is an aide, he is tall and strong, and whenever he greets me, he uses both hands. Joe slides his arms beneath Pansy, lifts her, and lays her on the bed. She howls again.
Nurse Barbara moves her hands along Pansy’s leg. She asks Myother what happened. Myother tells her Pansy caught her foot on the bed. That she fell into Rose’s lap and Rose held her.
Nurse is not old, not young either. She holds more muscle than fat. Her fingers squeeze up and down Pansy’s limbs. She asks where it hurts. Pansy moans, her eyes shut tight.
“The hip?”
Pansy nods.
“She should have had a hip replacement years ago. Not even a doctor listed in her records. How many years did you walk around in pain, Pansy? Must have been like wearing a hair shirt. Such a cross to bear.”
“Leave me be, I’m fine,” Pansy hisses through clenched teeth. Tears run toward her ears.
Nurse wraps a black cloth around Pansy’s arm and squeezes a ball. “Pressure is high,” she says to Joe.
Joe says he’ll get maintenance to clean up the spilled dirt.
“Stop at the station and tell them I need a pain meds juice for Pansy,” Nurse says. “And double check for me when she had her last pain pill.” She turns her face to Rose. “You’re a pip, Rose. I believe you saved Pansy from a broken bone or two with your fair catch. Are you okay?”
“Yes, darling, I’m fine.”
I weave my way back to Rose. Her stump is wet with Pansy’s tears and I lick them. My mouth burns as if filled with red ants. I whine and paw my mouth. Myother kneels beside me.
I dive for the dirt and gulp the soothing moist black.
Joe returns and hands a glass to Nurse Barbara. He sweeps up the dirt with a broom and dustpan.
“Drink this and you’ll feel better in a snap,” she says, holding the glass before Pansy’s face. Pansy looks at the glass. She curls up on her side, covers her face, and weeps.
“Honey, if you can’t drink this I’ll need to get a needle and . . .” Nurse trails off, not saying the words on her lips. You’re so thin I can barely pinch skin. “Can you drink this — should I get a needle?”
She can’t smell the terror that has closed Pansy’s throat. I push my body between Nurse and Pansy and rest my head in Pansy’s open hand. She uncovers her face and turns to look at me. I fix my eyes onto hers. She places her other hand on top of my head and I stand very still.
“I can’t bear the sight of orange juice.” Pansy breathes in deep once. Her hands crackle around my head like ice in a glass and I see that she is seeing a young nurse. She kneels in a chapel holding her black book with gold pages. Her eyes are turned upward to a stone woman draped in stone robes holding a stone baby in her arms.
“It was an accident, but I killed her all the same. I killed that woman.”
Nurse stands straight. “Now, dear, you’re out of your mind with pain,” she says and tries to move me away from the bed. Pansy presses her hands tighter around my head and my hackles rise. I hear Myother’s heartbeat quicken.
“Leave the dog alone,” Pansy cries. “Leave her.” Pansy loosens her grip and strokes my head.
“I was a young nurse in 1952 working at a hospital in Newfoundland. I was born on the Rock. Went to nursing school in Quebec and returned home with the hubris of youth.” She gasps with a stab of pain. She presses her lips together until they turn white.
“One night I was dispensing medications in ward three. There was a cancer patient, final stage. Her medication was morphine mixed in orange juice. Her roommate had hemorrhoid surgery, and she was constipated, so the pharmacy had put a laxative in her juice. I mixed up the cups. She died of a drug overdose.” Pansy raises her eyes to the ceiling and cries.
“My soul overflows with such sorrow I wish I could die.”
A rush of grey, like a fogbank on the ocean, streams through Pansy’s fingertips damp and cold onto my head. I back away and shake my skin, throwing off the fog as horses throw off black flies. It creeps across the floor and rises to the outstretched arms of Rose’s greenery.
It is quiet in the room. Rose, Nurse, and Myother quiet as if in sleep. Pansy says, “Oh my soul, if it’s impossible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”
Her hands do not tremble when she takes the cup from Nurse and drinks until it is empty.