Mute Exasperation

And then there was the time when my nephew brought her down, to visit. He is only six years younger than me, so more like a brother.

She looked like a pigeon, with her chest extended and her skinny legs hanging from her in mute exasperation. I had never noticed the hump on her back before.

She seemed confused, more than her usual denial, simply unable to comprehend. Christopher and i sat up half the night, drinking red wine and swearing into a dying fire. Isn't that how it is?

At midnight she came downstairs, flailing and flagellating. Her unsteady step meant she had to hold the wall, along with its ornamented pictures. 'Hey, watch the oil, trapped in a hexagon, it's of something I don't understand and don't even particularly like'. She staggered on, unawares. Isn't that what life is all about.

I heard her in the bathroom, puking the alcohol. The sound of your own mother being sick edifies your ears. I imagined her flabby belly, contracting, restricting, doing its pigeon thing, regurgitating. I saw her on her knees. Maybe she was praying to the Lord on the big white telephone. 'Oh God, oh God'. My stomach churned in sympathetic convulsions. A drastic seizure had taken hold of me.

“Yes, yes, your grandmother was a prostitute,” Christopher stared at me, “That's why they went so nuts when she came to your school,” he stared at me some more.
“Why didn't they tell me?”
“How can you tell a child something like that?”
He accepted the point.
“I remember, this one time, sitting in an airport departure lounge, and I was crying. Your dad told me this story, of how his mother had tried to knock his teeth down the back of his throat, but instead, they'd just wedged against his kneecap. He showed me the scar and everything.”
“My grandmother was a prostitute?”
“Yes, she was a whore.”
There was a period of silence, punctuated only by the slight swhoosh of uncorking. Christopher sat at my feet. I stroked his hair, as I had always done. Despite his tall and lanky frame, I was still his Aunty Chrissie. He could rest his head on my knee without fear of retribution.

Mother emerged from the bathroom. The first five steps on the staircase did not present a problem, but then she pitched forwards and remained dribbling against the angles. I was the first to her aid. She was heavy. Christopher arrived to help. He hauled her to her feet, hands under her armpits. I felt a deep churning. My own mother, incapacitated on the stairs.

We talked kindly. She was plainly out of her skull. I wondered where she was. I hoped that she had found a place, far from the reality of her grovelling knees.

I could not put her to bed. She revolted me. 'Go mother, and find your peace, do not expect me to provide it for you'. She was crying. Her tears felt caustic. I could not touch them or be with them.

She disappeared behind a creak and I was grateful. Doors cover up so much. Father had taught me that trick. Sometimes you just have to shut the door. Blank piece of paper. Blank expression. Wipe your smile. She fell at the last, as did he, presenting flabby indifference is often insufficient, especially when combined with the stains on the sheets.

They left, people always do, no matter which directions they ask for. I gave them parks and trees and little irrelevancies, but of course they would find their way, or at least he would. I had protected him all his life, or so I had hoped, and he should be able to direct without distractions. When I said 'large space' to him he did not panic. She listened to nervous cough. I could have strangled her.

Am I talking in code? I really should not. Those that understand my amorphous letters will be able to make sense enough. For the rest of you there is merely mild confusion. Consider yourselves lucky.

I thought about it, after she had gone home. Watching her crawl up the stairs, apologies on her knees, murmured regrets, and I figured maybe this is how it was meant to be. I had lost him, my father, to a blur of alcohol, why would my mother be any different?

Too much, not my job, not my responsibility, not my destiny. Fuck your own life up, not mine. I will not own this debauchery. Are drunkards not meant to be good company? Hell, find me with enough alcohol inside and I will make you laugh like a moron that has never known intelligence.

So, I wrote to my sister, because trying to talk sense to my mother is like trying to explain calculus to the innumerable. I did not know my mother would open it. I was unaware that she recognised my handwriting. I could have stopped, for one moment, and considered, potential outcomes, but I did not. Does a rose consider potential outcomes? Does a dog regard consequence? Sometimes things just need to be said, but in their saying, other things become implicit.

Mother opened the letter, the one which said I would not take care of her. I wrote in no uncertain terms. This is my way. She would not know my way. I called her some names. I went to great length to describe her abuse. There was no doubt. At a certain point there that is what happens. Surety takes over. Terms have to be explained in black and white.

I like black and white. Black, supposedly not a colour, but it's dense, as if it could swallow you up and hold you. White, I do not know about, seems transparent. Best pictures are shot in black and white, more impact, greyscale does not touch it.

I got the call while I was walking up a hill, a really big hill. I had to stop, because if I did not then my breath could come in snatches and I would not be able to talk. Paulette said mother had cancer. A few questions revealed that she had received the letter, steamed it open, disregarded that it was addressed to another, then had gone for a walk, from which she never came back. I felt for her, I really did, to go out, knowing your own daughter hated you, and step your feet on the earth, one after another, treading towards a place you dare not go ...

“OK,” I said automatically.
My sister seemed unimpressed.
“I meant everything I said in the letter.”
Yes, she understood, but I wondered for how long.
“I can't come and see her.”
Again she professed some kind of comprehension.

I got calls, once a week or so, telling me of mother's progress. She was in hospital. She had been released. The cancer was all over. It had started in her lungs and then spread to her brain. She had a tumour in her head the size of my daughter's fist. I looked at my child's hand. “Bend it in,” she did as she was asked, “Can you feel your fingernails against your palm?” she nodded. I compared the size of my hand to hers. I felt sickeningly satisfied.

Friends noticed I was limp. I explained. They sympathised. I tried to find polite ways of saying “My mother is dying”. Every day I felt her inside me, heavy and longing. I wrote her letters and sent her chocolates and flowers. 'I'm sorry your life is over', no, that is impossible to say, 'I'm sorry that the Lord's revenge has been so unequivocal,' again, not something that trips lightly off the lips. 'You're my mother, I love you, please don't go,' never occurred to me.

I arranged to visit her. Terror is vagueness. She sat in her bed, at home, on plumped, cream pillows, with frilled edgings. I climbed up next to her. I never had before. Something happened involving spaghetti bolgnaise. I chopped her pasta for her. The black and white television poured forth some form of bloodless bilge. Everyone was grey. When the news reports came on, detailing the capture of Saddam Hussein, she became excited. “It's your dad!”
“No, it's Saddam Hussein.”
Ten seconds later, “It's your dad.”
“No, it's Saddam Hussein.”
We went through this 100 times. My dad as a vilified dictator, yep, I could go for that.

Lying next to her, holding her hand, I felt a bony warmth, albeit transitory. Her legs were even thinner than before. I could see them under the bedspread, moving like an interlocutory. Toiletting, an even and totally human function, required her attention. The bathroom was only next door, clothed in its dusky pink morality. She rose, on rickets. I thought of a fence in the wind, or dilapidation. I walked around to the other side of the bed, ignoring the cream frills. Standing above her I tried to seize her moment, but her body felt disconnected and somehow elastically fragile. She looked me straight. “Does my face look fat?”
Yes her face looked fat, massively distorted by hormones and anti cancer treatment. I stared down at her, and her hamster cheeks and her swollen eyes. “No, your face doesn't look fat,”I lied.
“My face looks fat.”
“No, you look fine.”
“I'm dying, I can't look fine.”

There was a slight pause. Of course, she did not say that she was dying, instead it was left to me to reassure her. I put my hand around her back. I did not pull her from her wrist. I clasped her under her bent elbow. I pulled back the sheets. I saw her skinny legs and tried not to heave. I moved her around, until she had a centre of gravity that would work for her. I did not think about her wasted backside. I had come from between those two hips. I did not want to connect my mortality with her's.

Taking her feet in my hands I felt her hooves. I put them in her slippers. Her skin was dry. Later I rubbed moisturiser into them. I hauled her to her feet. Against me she was flaccid. “Can you hold me?” I asked. She had never held me. Her arm shins dug into my neck. I thought of when I was little and my father had got me to place my feet on his so we could dance. This was not about to happen here.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said.
I knew why. Her urine flowed between us. “It doesn't matter. At least I don't have to change the bed, those bloody envelope corners.”
She laughed. She had always been particular. Came from being a nurse for 25 years, or however long.
“Don't worry about it, I pissed myself the other day.”
“Did you?” she said, wide eyed.
Of course I did not. The horror of my own urine puddling at my feet would be enough to ensure a suicide consideration..

I bundled her back into bed, and then dabbed up the urine, with a yellow sponge, yellow rubber gloves and yellow disinfectant. All the time I talked to her, blabbering on about something insignificant. I think she appreciated the relief, as did my sister, if only for a weekend. I made it normal. So, you've got up from bed and pissed on the floor? I was not taking notes, regards volume and capacity. Maybe we all end this way, incontinent and senile, please Lord tell me it's not so.

“It's your dad.”
“No, no, it's Saddam Hussein.”
“He's in disguise.”
“Yes Mom.”
She turned to me. “You've never called me Mom before.”
“It's just the word seemed too small.”
“Do you think I'm small? Does my face look fat?”
“No, no, and I love you Mom.”

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