Читать книгу Cumberland - Megan Gannon - Страница 10

Three

Saturday, July 6, 1974

32 days

Something is scuttering along the floor and rubbing up against the walls, some somethings so numerous they’re everywhere, arching backs and tumbling into one another. Then my bed is drifting in the dark and it’s water, my bed is a boat and I’m floating idly. I call out for Izzy but she’s in another boat and suddenly there’s a bigger tide, I’m doubly dizzy, the boat is sinking beneath me and I’m floating, a double drifting. The water’s rising and I scream for Izzy. My boat is turning lazily in the water away from her and I jump and hit water so hot it feels sharp as torn metal. I’m going under when I feel her nightgown waving in the dark water and grab it, following it hand over hand up to her, my fingers screaming like bent wire in the twisted cloth. She is sleeping and her boat is sinking with each breath, so I pull her arms over my shoulders and I try to wrap her loose legs around my waist but she’s not waking. I jump again, pushing off from the sinking boat—Izzy’s so heavy, she’s so heavy—and we’re miles out from shore and I know I can’t make it with the both of us.

I’m awake before I open my eyes. I lie letting the stillness of my bed solidify against my body as the morning sinks in and wonder if this is what it is like for Izzy, sounds always muffled and far off at the edges while she lies still at the quiet center. I try to relax my every muscle and see if I can stop feeling my feet and legs and waist. No matter how hard I concentrate I can’t shake the occasional touch of the sheet against my toes and kneecaps or the weight of my own legs against the mattress. What does she think about? What fresh ideas does she find to run her mind over every day? I practice times’ tables and sing through old songs silently. I lie there trying to bear it when Izzy starts chuckling from her bed.

“How’d you know I was awake?” I ask. Her hair is spread across the pillow like petals of a withered sunflower, her head too big for the little stalk of her body. She’s staring at me, and then I understand why people sometimes don’t like to meet my gaze. With eyebrows and eyelashes pale as a burn victim’s and no discernible cheekbones, our faces are smooth, upside down tear-drops tapering to a too-pointy chin.

Izzy gives me a mock-serious stare back, then laughs and shakes her head, raising her hands and flopping them down with a gesture that says, let’s get to it.

“Oh crap—first Saturday of the month. I have to change your catheter today,” I say. She laughs again. I slide out of bed and tug on my shorts, then pull my arms inside my shirt and fasten my bra.

“I should take it on the road, huh, Izzy. Only problem is, you’re the only person who thinks I’m so gosh darn funny.” Sliding one arm behind her back, I pull her to a sitting position, then tug her legs over the edge of the bed, hook my arms under her armpits and haul her up so my nose is in her hair, her cheek hot against mine. Like waltzing with a mannequin, I walk backwards to the bathroom, then push the door open with my butt and hold her beside the bathtub. “Okay, right foot first, Izzy,” and she can’t stop giggling. “Oh, whoops, that’s right,” I say, scooping one leg at a time into the tub, then sliding her inside. “I just keep forgetting.”

I unbutton her nightgown all the way down, lifting up her right side so she can pull one arm out, then the other. When Izzy’s untangled, lying naked on top of her nightgown I try to whip it out from under her in one motion. It never works. Once she got three cuts on her back where the buttons scraped underneath. This time it all gets bunched up under her butt. I wrestle the cloth out from under her, grunting and wheezing and making a show of it until finally it’s balled up in my hand. “Ta-dah! Ladies and gentlemen, please note, not a fork overturned, not a drop of wine spilled from the goblets.”

I pull her diaper off, trying not to breathe or notice the sharp box that her hipbones make of her body, the thin flow of skin over the bones of her legs and what little muscle is left. Every day my own body gets softer and rounder while Izzy’s stays the same from the waist down—or worse, shrinks, grows backwards. Someday maybe she’ll have the eight-year-old legs we had when we first came to live here.

I get a wet washcloth and wipe and rinse until she’s clean, then clamp the catheter, scrub my hands and fingernails and root around under the sink for a new catheter pack, tape, gloves, and gauze. Laughing like a mad scientist, I snap on the gloves, then creep over to the tub where Izzy’s giggling. “Let’s seeeeee here,” I say, holding the tubing as I pull off the tape and gauze just above her left hipbone and inspect the opening. The skin around the port is red, puffy, and when I dab with a piece of soapy gauze around the plastic cap of the stoma an edge of yogurty liquid peeks out.

“Shit,” I say, and Izzy looks at me sharply, then down at her hip where I’m swabbing with a new piece of gauze. Her cheek was hot—a fever? For how long? I smile—she’s watching my face—and clear my throat. “Yes, yes, yes, veeery nice,” I say. Her eyes are a little bleary, but she hasn’t been cranky or lethargic like the last time she had an infection. I finish swabbing the stoma, then snip the old inflation port tubing and wait for the water to drain out, pulling the catheter out slowly. There’s a little blood, so I snap on some new gloves, swab the blood up with gauze, then measure out with my fingers how far to slide the tubing in, moving fast to get the new catheter slipped in and the balloon inflated. Then I clean around the stoma again, dab on some Neosporin, and lay the empty bag on the side of the tub.

The water is cold when I turn on the faucet, but by the time it creeps up to where Izzy can feel, it’s tolerably warm. I dump in some shampoo for makeshift bubble bath and swish it around with one hand. When there’s an inch or two of water I scrub her feet and her legs up to her thighs. She doesn’t move, just lays with her eyes closed, waiting for me to wash all her parts. “Izzy.” A faint smile creeps onto her lips.

“Izzy, here.” I suds the washcloth and drop it in her hand. “Open your eyes.” Her chin is lifted to the ceiling and her smile brightens. She snaps her eyes open and gives me a look like, What?

“You do it,” I say.

She tilts her head into a little shrug and then starts right in on her privates, skipping the tops of her thighs. She shuts her eyes again just to bug me.

“Izzy, it’s creepy.”

She looks straight at me, furrowing her brow, then finishes and dunks the washcloth. We watch a patch of soap bubbles form on the water and she takes the soap again from my hand. I sit on the toilet and look away when she washes her chest. She wrings the washcloth out and drapes it over the side of the tub, and I pull the stopper, wait for the water to drain. She’s staring at me hard like I’m supposed to know what she’s thinking, and I don’t meet her eye as I dry her off and tape the new tubing down, then attach the new bag to her thigh with elastic bands. When I pull her from the tub and cart her back to the bed I can still feel her eyes on me.

“What, Izzy?” I say, turning back to the bathroom for the thermometer.

She gives me an exasperated look, then rolls her eyes and reaches for the notepad. She writes in big letters, the pencil digging in a little more than usual. It’s not like you. I can’t feel it.

Fresh from the hospital, I had to learn my new body, how fingers traveled to the edge of feeling skin, blood pumping into dead toes, and the light inside always pulling this half of my body back into living. Too much body over the dead edge, I spent days concentrating on keeping myself alive. Teeth clenched, staring at one spot, it took a lot of pulling until I learned that every new knowing was ballast on this side. So books and more books she brings at my bidding to anchor me here with words and thoughts and lines. Glutting myself with held-inside sound, some days I’m so heavy in this world I’m a rock watching tides without a light-lick of fear.