No One Ever Dies When You’re in the Room
A sudden pain flares in in my head like a match flaring into darkness: my mother is dying. I hold her hand, a traitor’s clutch: the claw-like fingers, the blank eyes, the greasy hair. Who is this old woman? The ladies who care for her buzz like wasps. They do well-meaning but pointless things, calling to her loudly, giving her water, shaking her arm. I want her to die I don’t want her to die. People call, I cry down the phone, I cry to myself. I am a child again, crying mama. The room has one tiny picture on the walls, hung crookedly over her bed. I straighten it, my sister tells me it’s still crooked. Everything is crooked. My aunt calls to say that no one ever dies when you’re in the room. Why? My sister leans over my mother showing her pictures of beaches and forests, saying loudly, Mom? Mom!? What do you like better, the beach or the mountains? My mother forgot to tell us what to do with her afterwards. Once she becomes bone and ash, like the house we lost to fire. Like the inside of my head. My sister’s rage is as perfect as fire. The pain in my head flares into flame. No one ever dies when you’re in the room. The woman in the bed is not my mother, I am not myself, my sister is not here. The ladies buzz, bringing fruit from the garden, fruit that does not taste like fruit. No one ever dies when you’re in the room. Except that I can feel myself dying, while my mother lies in her bed, not dying. Not yet. I long for a drink, and after she does not die, I drive around the Valley, thinking about drinking. No one ever dies when you’re in the room. It is so hot outside, the heat a hard margin against the soft outline of her undying. The fruit, a strange hard nectarine that tastes of apple. When Eve held the fruit in her hand, did she falter? Did she pause? Did she think for a moment, I will not taste this? But I did taste it, I tasted everything, the bleach, the tiny hairs on the skin of the fruit, the crumpled linen of my mother’s skin. I want to die in the room. I have died in the room. The room is nowhere and everywhere, and I am dying even though I will go on after she is gone.
Bad Habits
You end up in bed with your best friend and some guy
she’s fucking. You don’t plan this/it just happens, the way accidents
happen, one split second of looking the wrong way. Lights
twinkle through his bedroom windows, all of Silverlake aglow.
Not unlike the view from the hospital room at UCLA where you lay,
crib-bound, aged three, your spine molten with infection. Your first memory.
Your friend has no self-consciousness: she shrieks, weeps, cries out.
Her slender body taut as the stamen of an iris, taut with intent.
When you were three, doctors told your parents you would die.
The man is cute, although hard to see in the dark. His mouth tastes stale.
I want to fuck you, he breathes, and you let him, even though
you do not want to, even though the lights of Silverlake are glowing,
lights of civilization, little barriers against grief. If loneliness is an illness, then what is sorrow?
Your friend holds your hand while he fucks you. It is cool and comforting.
The man’s big house is built into a hill, the kind you have dreamed of owning.
You do not remember dreaming when you were sick, you remember only
the nurse who would not give you a blanket. And the lights of Westwood,
laid out below you, patchwork of darkness and light. Loneliness is as dangerous
as smoking, says the surgeon general, but he gives no recommendations.
Afterward, the man gives you a plastic bottle of water, walks you out,
hugs you briefly, a stranger’s embrace. In the car, you light a cigarette,
driving home through the lamplight, the burning tip one more tiny flame
in the illuminated night, altar of defense against darkness.
You are not quite inside your own skin, but you have felt this before.
The night and its lights, your moving car, the moving bodies,
the air liquid and cool as the sea. Later what you will remember most
is the bamboo outside his house, a wall of bamboo, those brown
slender staves, elegant in their crowded simplicity, so removed. Don’t touch me.
Twiner
If I say I am not lonely, will you believe me? Dioscorides wrote De Materia Medica, the world’s first pharmacopeia. We do not know much about him, but his text was never lost. Permanent circulation, like the blood flowing through my heart. Think about that: a book that was never lost, through thousands of years. Each page more beautiful than the last, drawings of plants and explanations of their use. I promise I am not lonely, though sometimes I howl in the bath. If this, then that? If this, then what? Dioscorides may have been Roman, which meant that a Roman citizen stood up for him. None of this information is hard to find. I am not hard to find. Dioscorides’ book was a pharmakon: each plant could be a poison or a remedy. Isn’t that always the way? It’s just a matter of dosage, like the number of days I spend lying in bed. It’s therapeutic, I tell myself. I am healing myself. Too much time around other people makes the inside of my head sound like the New York Stock Exchange. I heard a young woman say that in a meeting once, a meeting of other people just like me, people who cannot put the bottle down. Today, Dioscorea is the scientific name of an invasive plant species found everywhere. Also called wild yam. It’s toxic, but it can be properly prepared. I think I may be toxic if not properly prepared. Wild yam treats pain, especially the pain of women. What is women’s pain if not the pain of the world? If I say I am not lonely, will you believe me? The plant itself is a vine that begins by sending shoots out to assess the area. If the shoots find something that will hold their weight, they send a tendril to coil around an object, like the branch of a tree. It is a twiner: a plant that wraps around other plants. What happens to the tender branch of the tree, after this entwining? Does it survive this embrace? Kill or cure? I say that I am not lonely, but I know you do not believe me.
Welcome to the Family
At the remembrance of life, everyone prefers to remember that you are dead. People politely avoid the urn, and I suspect fear of contagion. Are you really in there? Lord, you know the secrets of our hearts, declares the rector. I sincerely hope that is not true. The urn will reside on Aunt Diana’s mantle—but do you want to live there? Be dead there. Whatever. Since you died, I keep crying in short, brutal spurts. La petit mort. When I was 13, you walked in on me masturbating, and I wanted to die of shame. You just laughed, and then later told me about what’s natural. Shame is natural, also death. Lord, you know the secrets of our hearts. Death defines everything now: the color of the sky, the new shoes, the moon, the scent of roses. I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him who is my friend and not a stranger. I hope that God has greeted you as a friend. The urn has pink butterflies on a silver background, which I chose because you liked shiny things. Also butterflies, and hearts and flowers. But you really weren’t much for feminine retiring. You preferred telling people what to do. Spare us, O Lord. If you were here, you’d probably tell me to pull myself together. Or maybe not—you were unpredictable that way. As when I became suicidal aged 36 and had to be driven 400 miles by Dad. He raged the whole way. Remember how you greeted me at the door? I fell into your arms, and you said, smiling, Welcome to the family. Because despair runs in our veins, viscous as blood. It’s my turn to get up. I say my piece, my eyes completely dry. It’s a performance, and you taught me how to perform. People laugh; people weep. People tell me it was a good speech. Spare us, O Lord. The service ends, and the reception begins. Later, I go home alone, not even the urn to keep me company. Welcome to the family.
