Читать книгу Today, She Is - Molly Miltenberger Murray - Страница 7

For ask now concerning the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether any great thing like this has happened, or anything like has been heard.8

My own face keeps flashing into my mind, a picture of my own tanned face with bobbed blonde above my lavender tankini. Wheat-tanned hills lope behind it and the spray spatters onto it, almost, but the lakedrops slither down the memory squarely, as though it’s a picture with a glass window-pane in front of the face.

Let me take you through the hall. The room is monumental: the ceilings are twice the height they are in normal house, and the crown molding holds it in like the ribbon on a dress of Marie Antoinette. The heavy furniture, an armoire, daybeds, a couch, is heavy black wood twisted like a grapevine and polished like a candlestick. The room is upholstered a long time ago. Little curios — ivory boxes, statuettes, South Pacific shells — line the tables and nook in drawers. What you notice when you are racing through the room in the shadows at night, past the side of the table that goes on forever that used to be the door of an abbey, are the people on the wall.

A mallet comes down squarely on the frame and the glass is shattered, fragmented on the wooden slats of the dock. Pieces of the broken face flutter to the ground, shreds of magazine print dripping in a pool of blood.

Souvenirs of present personality are terrifying when the subjects are so long dust and wreaths of hair framed in gilt. Their dust is shelved in the marble family mausoleum in the St. Louis Cemetery of New Orleans. Their stories shape the air around them like the frame of a house.

The great green porch creaks like the house is moving. These wooden floors are never without footsteps. Heritage drapes on our family like the spring blue mist in the morning in south Louisiana, barely there and almost too bright to see through, laying on your shoulders like mosquito netting and glistening at your feet.

My grandmother, Barbara, was 15 when her mother died, succumbed to consumption. She was with her in the apartment in Houston, all alone when her mother took her last breath. The neighbors took her in for the few days before her father came back from traveling.

I was 15 when I thought I died, surrounded by family. They never knew I’d live.

They prayed that I would.

You can always tell a good artist by the eyes. They should follow you wherever you appear from — the side of the room, the door, the corner. These portraits are masterpieces. They are so real that I have almost caught them out of the frames so many times, nearly, almost there. They are life-size: larger than life, seeping life from the oil as I race past them, sent to bed.

The moss on the rock face of the Holter Canyon clutches to the niches in between eagles nests and ancient bristled bonsai-like pine trees, the only bryophyta of its kind found in the world. The water in the river snaking in the narrow channel beneath is glacier fresh and so blue, so dark mallard blue, icy and 3,000 feet deep, someone said.

Lewis and Clark, the explorers, came through this place on the Missouri on their journey to the Pacific Coast. Legend has it that, ensconced in the channel, they watched the cliffs swing shut in a silent rocky clasp and said, “Let us call this the Gates of the Mountains.”

The men in our family have many things in common—a nose, a laugh, but one is distinct and I remember family friends remarking on it: their wives are dearly beloved. Christian had two. When Amelie died, he repainted her white dress black and the portrait remained in the living room, to her chagrin. She has a portrait too, with her twin sons. The one on the right riding the tricycle died while the portrait was being painted. He is larger in the picture than he would have been in real life. The one on the left is the one that lived. Henry is the son of Edwin, the son of James, the son of Alphonse, the son of Christian.

Most of them died not long after the pictures were painted. The Munster Boy did not live past age 12. The second twin on the tricycle died long before the portrait was ever painted. I don’t even know the name of the Munster girl. Aristide the Judge grew old and left a will. Amelie, beloved wife, was in white when the likeness was taken. Her dress was painted over in black after she and the child died in childbirth. They are all dark-haired, dark-eyed, sweet-mouthed, Roman-nosed.

Amelie, the first wife, is the most remarkably like-life. The others can die of boredom, possibly, but she is a question that crawls up your spine and keeps her creepily alive in the conversation of the room. As people have said on the subject of Mona Lisa, there is much to be said for a lady who preserves her mystery for 200 years.

Does that even happen? Does a driver ever really just, turn without looking, like that, speeding towards you, not thinking, not turning, not turning, not turning, straight on forward until he ramps up the side of your pontoon boat and lands on your daughters?

The speedboat with the upturned snub nose leaves a snotty crest in the river. The driver doesn’t take the trouble to check for a clear coast before he shoves up the boat’s nose and turns, and doesn’t take the trouble after. He’s on a pleasure-ride.

A pontoon boat is a family-sized craft, an oversized raft made for floating and leisurely chugging. It cannot move fast. It certainly cannot race out of the path of a speedboat.

Our pontoon boat is a sitting duck of screaming people while the speeding speedboat speeds onward and does not hear the screams of disbelief, the final, desperate belief.

Little daguerrotypes are on the tables with lockets and miniatures. A wreath of cousin someone’s hair is on the wall, with smaller wreaths of locks and a painted Chinese screen, ivory encases the table-top. The larger wreathe belongs to the Bride.

My cousins look strikingly like them.

The most poignant image, I think, is this, the dark oil seeping out of the engine and churning in the water like blood. It happens.

An Anglo-Saxon poem I read my sophomore year in high school had a line that licks round your tongue. Wyrd goes ever as it must.9

“Is he going to hit us?” screamed a younger sister, while my aunt shrieked, “Do something!” In an exceptionally slow pontoon, it was too late to do anything and we had to sit terrified in the peace and loveliness of Holter Lake for the speedboat to come crashing into our bow, landing over my two youngest sisters and on top of me.10

My brother is ready to leap gallantly into the cold dark river to search for us. Dad tells the police report that he and my uncle had pushed off the boat, but they had not; Daddy pushed the boat that covered my two youngest sisters and me back into the water.

Barbara Ellis, aged 4 years old, brown curly hair and round cheeks, knocking on the door of the tall white shotgun mansion next door, New Orleans. “Miz Miltenberger! Miz Miltenberger! Can I play with Henry?” Henry Miltenberger, 5 years old, freckly, red-haired, lanky already, lopes to the front porch, overjoyed. Mrs. Miltenberger disappears into the dark hall and Barbara throws rocks at Henry. That’ll teach him. Teach him who’s smart!

My father and uncle shoved the assassin-boat into the river, freeing my sisters, who were for the most part unharmed, and myself, who looked — dead. From my bench on the boat I was sped by helicopter to the nearest hospital in Great Falls, Montana where for the first week doctors and nurses scurried around to save me as I lay unconscious in a coma in my room in the Intensive Care Unit.11

In the picture my sister told me one night I am unconscious, with a single line of blood trickling down from my forehead from where I was scraped by the rough. The little girls are awake and crying — everyone is crying. I throw up, and I start breathing again. The pontoon slowly chugs across the lake, all the way back to the landing, and I am flown to Great Falls by the emergency helicopter on the dock.

Henry stepped out of school at age 15. His favorite teacher had taken him aside. Henry, he said, you aren’t doing us any good, and we certainly aren’t doing you any good. When his father took him along on an interview for his brother Gus. The job was offered to Henry. Henry went to work at the ports at age 15.

Dear Molly,

When Mom and I arrived around 4:00 p.m., we weren’t allowed to see you. You were on a sedative drip to calm you and to stop your thrashing. Every hour they would stop the sedative, causing the pain to hit you immediately to check where you were. One time they asked you to open your eyes and they thought they saw you open them a touch. Another time a nurse was changing your I.V. when you sat up and opened your eyes from the pain. The nurse said your eyes were glazed and couldn’t see.

We prayed for you in the chapel, and I am spreading the news so the whole nation will be praying for you. I wish I could have seen you, there are times I don’t believe it has happened, and other times I can’t stop crying. I have been praying for a miracle, that you will once again be healed and new. . . I wish with all my heart that you were healthy at home and I could call to talk your ear off!

Love,

Your Friend12

Since three days ago a lifetime is past. Since yesterday a century has passed away. The whole world prays for me; at least this country prays, and some churches in Europe. There is no brain activity at all.

Barbara was 16 when she joined her brother Sydney at Tulane. The youngest in her class.

The injury is more serious than they thought. I’m not waking up like I should, and I’m shivering, sweating, there’s a fever in my brain. My traumatized brain is encaged by a coma from a severe shock to my occipital glob, swelling to a balloon inside of my fractured skull. Soon it is going to pop.

The doctors consider my blank brain a lost case by Wednesday. My mind is irrecoverable, and my life is scarcely closer.

They give me up for lost. My parents don’t. They are always with me, praying for me, talking to me, playing music. Daddy rubs my feet and the nurses cry because fathers don’t usually care this much. Mummy paints my nails and the nurses call me Sleeping Beauty.

Four days and the medical team says to pull the plug.

Our family line has a very distinct nose. Aquiline in some. Roman in most. Roman, I’ll say Roman, a friend told my dad, it’s roamin’ all over your face. My great-grandfather told my grandfather that what he left to him was not money but a good name. Our family does not always have brains. We don’t always have beauty. But the one trait we can all account for is character. I come from a family of personalities.

Dr. Gorsuch is a man my parents trust. He’s the best in the unit, a Christian, and he is willing to take a risk. He suggests a procedure that gives me a 50/50—40/60—30/70—20/80—10/90, 5/95, 1/100? A chance of survival; prospects unknown.

I am one of the first. There isn’t a precedent, but there isn’t a choice.

Henry and Barbara are my grandparents.

My parents, distraught. Praying in the chapel; giving me back to God. There is a verse that they hold onto for dear life, Psalm 118:17. I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. The Lord has chastened me severely, but He has not given me over to death.13

Dear Molly,

Your brain was expanding so much they thought they might have to do surgery, and you had a fever to make things worse. But today, they cooled your temperature to around 95°F, and put you on a paralyzing drug so you wouldn’t shiver, causing your brain to get worse. So far the swelling has gone down a bit and we’re all thanking the Lord. Since they put you in a kind of coma, they won’t be taking you out of it until they are positive you are better, you won’t be able to move for a little while. I’m still having a hard time believing that you’re in the hospital fighting for your life. I was given a picture blown up from my birthday of your family and me, every time I look at your beautiful face I can’t believe something awful could happen to our darling Molly. You are such a blessing to know and I can’t wait to see you alive and well. I love you. God, please heal Molly and help her family to be comforted.14

Daddy says that his father never, never talked about the war. There is a bronze medal in a box with his uniform, a compass, a knife. Poppy mentioned once that he had been attacked with the knife in face to face combat, and now he is holding the knife that was held to his face.

They swathe me in ice like a dead fish, which reduces the swelling in my brain, and keeps it within reasonable limits. I am always cold.

He ran out of his shelter into the snow of German fields once in his socks, almost dragging his best friend—wait, I’m putting on my boots—before he could put the boots on, the camp was blown apart, Henry watching.

And I live.

Aug. 31, 2002

Dear Molly,

I am so excited that I was able to see you today! I was able to sneak in under the nurse’s nose and see you. You look so peaceful. I could only see your nose up and your hands. You have so many tubes coming out of you, to help you breathe, suck out your stomach acid so you don’t vomit from hunger and just a whole bunch of tubes that I don’t know what they do. The doctors shaved a square on your head to put a brain pressure antenna thing on your head to read your brain’s pressure. The nurse put your hair in pigtails, you look cute. When we prayed your dad said I could hold your hand, it was so soft and cold, your hands are always so pretty and soft. Your brain pressure is at 10–18 but it jumped up to 20 and dropped to 2 (when they were sucking the phlegm out of your lungs so you wouldn’t get pneumonia). Normal is -2 to 2. Your parents stroke you and play soft music to make the pressure go down. The doctor gave you an EEG test to see if your brain works or not, and it came out positive! Get well my dearest Molly.

God hears us, trust Him.15

Mere was a WAC, one of the info girls in the army who wore those adorable olive shifts and sifted through important information and decoded messages. At a ball in D.C., she danced with distinguished generals and charmed a European prince.

These days I am waking up on a kitchen counter, and I close my eyes so they won’t know that I am awake because I don’t want to talk. The room closes around me like a curtain, like I am a child squinting out from under the covers, trying not to be seen by the babysitter. People move through the shadowed whiteness of the plastic-smoothened room. Here I am, peering out from under the blankets at them, and they don’t even know it. Bright white people dressed in white dress-suits, the kind from Dillard’s that old ladies wear with gold jewelry, stop whispering in the background and move closer, so close that I know they’ll pinch my shoulder like an old man, and then so close again that I realize I’ve closed my eyes — so I open them again and up goes the room.

After the war, Mere went back to Tulane to get her masters in biochemistry. When she ducked out of the program to get married, her professor railed at her — you’ll have eight children and you’ll deserve it for leaving! Guess I will! Said Barbara. And she left to marry Henry, and had eight children. My father is the youngest.

August 2, 2002

Dear Molly,

Today, your brain pressure is sticking around 10, which is good! You have an ever so slight fever, but not a bad one. I heard you opened your eyes and looked around today, but they couldn’t tell if you could see or not. You are able to move and crossed your feet and such. They hope to take you off the sedative slowly and have you wake up! Love ya.16

I remember floating at the level of Daddy’s head at the wake, seeing my grandfather in a box. It was the first time I had ever seen Daddy cry; I could not bear it. People think there is no way that I could remember Poppy; he died when I was one and a half. But he called me Molly Ellen. I remember him catching me with his feet, tickling me from his Laz-Y-Boy by the door, teasing us cousins on the front porch, and how he looked in his box at the funeral.

Some people remember every moment of being in a coma, not being able to speak, the trap, the muzzle of silence. One gentleman lived for 23 years trapped within himself, clinically dead, until a physician worked with him and he communicated that he was alive beneath it all, trapped, trapped. He cannot get out. He cannot get out — 23 years. Now he is writing a book by signaling.

What is it like? Not horrific. It is a string of real-to-life, realer-than-life, dreams, bringing me back to places that I haven’t been to in years. I am ten years old and find a dumpster with a bear in it in Grand Lake, Colorado. I am four years old and cross a bridge over the monkey house of the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago.

Passing through hallways and tunnels of darkness and light, falling down a hole of life like Alice in Wonderland.

Mere’s funeral was in the spring in the Abbey, which always reminds me of Easter. At the wake, my sister younger fought my third cousin because she said her shoes were prettier. My cousins and I played cards behind the curtains until we were too noisy and attracted an aunt, and I cried at the graveside.

At Aunt Dolly’s funeral — that woman was a saint — her daughters asked us to kiss her cheek. A band broke out into When All the Saints Come Marching In when the pallbearers carried her up the aisle, and we all sang along and ate cake with blue frosting.

I almost died too. But — I lived. I was 4, but now I am 15, again, oddly enough, and starting over, against the odds. Despite the odds. The hospital calls me the miracle girl. I am a miracle.

All the time — every five, ten waking minutes, they tell me the story again and again. I shall not die but live: and declare the works of the Lord. The Lord has chastened me severely, but He has not given me over to death. I was crushed by a flying boat and here I am. Life is a paradox that doesn’t fit in my hatbox, and death is only the beginning of it.