All the Dancing Birds (17 page)

The woman steps from her car, pulls her coat over her head, and runs through the rain to join Allison and Bryan on the doorstep. She has no umbrella to shake‌—‌only a face that beams at me. I’m not at all sure what to do.

“Mom, this is Jewell,” Bryan says, ushering forward a woman who appears to be nearing her middle years. “She’s going to stay here and help you out around the house.”

I study the woman. Jewell. Her skin is like velvet. It looks so brown-buttery and delicious, I want to taste it. I don’t know what to do with everyone in the doorway, especially my children and a woman whose skin I want to taste, so I invite them in and tell them to sit.

“My children tell me you’re now my woman,” I say to Jewell. “I can’t say I’ve ever had a woman before. Just what am I supposed to
do
with you?”

Allison fidgets in her seat. Bryan rubs his forehead and utters a wincing groan.

Jewell seems unfazed. “I’m here to help you, ma’am. Cook. Clean up a little. Do the laundry. Whatever you need. I can drive you to appointments and maybe take you out to lunch or a movie now and then.” She smiles broadly and looks at me with warm eyes that seem to have melted round holes through her otherwise perfect covering of skin.

“And this is all the idea of my children?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you go home at night?”

“No, ma’am. The arrangement is… well, I’ll stay nights, too.”

“Good God! Am I to sleep with you?”

Bryan leaps from his chair. “Mom! Be
nice.
She’ll stay in the guest room. She’s here to… she’s a special aide who helps people who are sick like you. She’s here to help. Okay?” Bryan leans into me with a gaze that leaves me no choice but to settle into my chair. I cross my ankles and fold my hands. Like a lady.

Still, the room has taken on shades of gray, as if I’ve brought the day’s icy clouds into the house to huddle across the ceiling and drip misunderstanding down the walls of the living room. Bryan settles back in his seat, but continues to look at me with eyes as clouded as the day. I seem to be a source of discomfort in my own home and I don’t know how to fix the thing I’ve just broken.

I blink away the sudden lack of color in the living room. “I’ve never had a woman before. Not even my mother had a woman and she was blind and lived in the South where it was common for someone to have a woman… for cleaning and serving and such. Sometimes they even had a
man
, sometimes both a man, a woman and all their little picaninnies.”

“
Mother!
” Allison cries.

The room is sharply quiet again. Gray again.

From the edge of my periphery, I see John Milton stroll into the living room on practiced cat feet. He walks directly to Jewell and jumps into her lap, rubbing his forehead against her chin before settling into the deep folds of her skirt. Jewell strokes the top of John Milton’s head. “What a lovely cat,” she says.

“Yes,” I say. “That’s John Milton. He’s come home after a long time away.”

“He’s beautiful. I like cats and… well, they mostly seem to like me, too.”

I stand up as if to announce the end of our interview. “All right, children. Thank you for my woman. She can stay, but she can’t sleep in my bed.”

Allison opens her mouth as if to speak, but only a small sigh escapes. Bryan cups his hand around his forehead and shakes his head. Neither says a word as I head to my bedroom. I close the door and stand in front of it, not knowing what next to do other than shuffle my feet back and forth.

I hear my children talking; I hear them show my woman around the house, opening doors and cupboards, pointing out where things are kept; I hear
thank you
and
goodbye
; I hear the front door close. The silence of my children’s absence creeps under my bedroom door.

Sometime later, I hear my woman‌—‌my new woman‌—‌cooking in the kitchen and cooing to John Milton. The house smells of spices and furnace heat and, strangely, I’m satisfied deep into the core of my bones.

While things are quiet, I decide now is a good time to consult the oracle of my cedar box. I pull out a letter and read my scrawling words, my breath falling in a whisper over them.

My lovely children,

Your father was born with healing hands‌—‌hands that could make your skin swoon beneath their touch. His hands were such that I could feel heat rise up from them whenever I came near and diminish when I would leave. There was mystery in his hands. Mystery and healing.

When your MeeMaw died, your father’s hands drew me to his chest and calmed the quaking waters within the cells of my body.

Then, when your PaaPaw died, so soon after, it was your father’s hands that melted away those mountains of anguish for whole moments at a time.

His hands helped me wander through my college studies of literature and math and the humanities; they helped me study each book page to become Salutatorian of my class, a purple sash across my shoulders signifying the accomplishment. Then, those hands clasped my elbow to guide me through days of uncertainty and decisions after I became orphaned from Ma and Pa.

They held me on the day of our wedding and, only days later, they opened an envelope that spilled out a letter forever changing our lives. In all the years after, it was the only time I saw his hands tremble. He pulled the letter from its envelope and read it slowly. Twice.

After a long silence, he looked at me and smiled. “It’s all good,” he beamed. “We got the job.” He put the letter aside and pulled me to him. He danced me in a slow, swaying shuffle, all the while whispering into my ear.
It’s all good, baby. It’s all good.
He rubbed my back with those hands that could melt stone and whispered in my ear until I knew everything was good and we were good and nothing would ever be the same.

The following day, we packed our few belongings into the car and drove away from the graves of my Ma and Pa and John Milton the Cat. We left the upside-down winds of The Blowing Rock and the green-blue scent of the Appalachian Mountains that always seemed to carry secrets deep within their hollows and swales.

We left the soil of our roots, and yet everything I knew or ever wanted to know resided in the hands of your father as they carried me across our wedding threshold and all the way to Sacramento, California.

It’s his hands I miss the most. His hands and his eyes… and, of course, the touch of his breath on my neck as he whispered into my skin,
It’s all good, baby. It’s all good.

I just thought you children should know of hands and their sublime importance.

Love,

Mom

I look down, dumbstruck that all my memories now fit neatly within the fold of my arms. I grab my letters and hug them to me, bringing them to my face so I can smell them, taste them, feel their texture on my skin. I’ve created a small treasure; I don’t know what else to do but hold these letters, my mouth silently moving a blessing over my armful of creations.

Each day I have fewer and fewer memories. I imagine that soon, only the most elderly thoughts will be left. The withered old women, the old crones.

I’m growing quieter now and, ridiculously, words simply fall from my mind, never to be useful again. They just clatter to the floor and break into unintelligent little pieces. The only thing to do with these once-lovely words is to allow them to be swept up and discarded. I guess that’s why I now have Jewell‌—‌my woman.

She’s here to sweep up after my dropped words.

Chapter Nineteen

Y
OU PACE. You pace circles through your house, making footprint marks on the carpet where your woman has freshly vacuumed. It is evening and you’re crazy with an urgency to move your legs until they take you somewhere safe, somewhere away from your failing mind. You try the front door, but some foolish person has tampered with the lock and you can’t get out. You try another door and it’s the same story. Locks have been replaced on each door by someone who intends to keep you from your memories. When the sun is completely done with the day and there’s nothing left for you to do but sigh at your doors one last time, you swallow the medicine your woman hands you and go to bed. Sometimes, you wake in the middle of the night to once again wander your paths and try your doors, but the story hasn’t changed and your memories are still on the other side.

My woman, Jewell, proves neither to be my woman nor a jewel, like amethysts or garnets or pink topaz would be jewels. No. She clinically documents my endless circles through the house. She measures my food and doles out medicine as if my consumption were a personal opportunity to prove her worth. She locks all the doors to confound me and smiles incessantly to annoy me. Worst of all, she shorts my evening glass of wine, even refusing to refill my glass when it’s demanded of her.

“It’s not good for you, ma’am,” she offers as her only explanation for such ungracious behavior.

“Nonsense!” I say. “And would you
not
call me ma’am?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I sigh. “My wine is my only comfort,” I say.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So, you’ll pour me another glass? A proper, full glass this time?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“You’re a mean woman, Jewell. I’m going to speak to my children about this.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I
mean
it. You’ll hear about this from my children. And
stop
calling me ma’am.”

“Certainly, Mrs. Glidden.”

“That’s even worse. Fine, then… call me whatever you want.” I sulk into the palms of my hands.

“Yes, ma’am. Do you need anything else?”

I perk up. “A nice glass of wine, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Every evening it’s the same conversation. Every evening it’s the same result. Jewell and I have our circuitous routes and nonsensical words until there is nothing left to do but sit in a chair and rub the topside of my legs until my hands become hot from the friction of rubbing.

I sit now in my living room chair, distressed after yet another unproductive discussion regarding my paltry serving of wine. I absently rub my knees, back and forth, back and forth. The television is on, but people are talking too fast and the images are flickering from one thing to another more swiftly than I can follow. Flickering, flickering, flickering.

My stomach feels oddly hot; heat travels through me until I feel nothing but sparkles in my arms and legs‌—‌in my head. Sparkles! Twinkling pinpoints prick through my body like lights shining through tiny holes in a blue drapery on the backdrop of a stage. It’s a Broadway play! I watch with fascination as sparkles of fiery white light travel from my head into my arms and down my legs, down, down deep into my core.

Sparkles, sparkles everywhere.

The sparkles cause me to dance and jump until I fall to the floor, shaking, dreaming wild visions and yet thinking of nothing but prickly spots of light. I am aware, then unaware and then vaguely aware again.

I float and dance like a firefly in a bottle, helplessly beating my wings against a glass.

I hear someone‌—‌my woman perhaps‌—‌calling me. “Ma’am. Ma’am!”

Then, I feel arms lifting me. Laying me down. Straps are placed across my chest, my legs. Then I’m quickly rolled out into a cold, gray wintry day. I hear more voices invoking my name. A high, wailing siren penetrates my skin and frightens my heart. I see lights again‌—‌flickery, flickery lights that fly about inside my brain, behind my eyes. Once again, I’m part of a play, dancing to the rhythm of a light show.

A voice speaks into my sparkly, sparkly face. “Mrs. Glidden? Mrs. Glidden, do you know where you are?”

My lips buzz together; it sounds like bees live in my mouth. The twinkle-lights in my body seem to have burnt out, but the darkness behind my closed eyes, along with my buzzing lips, continue to befuddle me.

“Mrs. Glidden?” Someone in a bright pink T-shirt with
Emergency Room
printed across its front in large readable letters talks to me. “You’re at Sutter Hospital. You’ve had a seizure. We’re going to give you some medicine to settle you. I need to start an IV line for your medicine, so I’d like you to try to hold still for me. Okay?”

I try to talk, but my mouth only manages to murmur in sibilant thrums. I nod my head. Soon, the T-shirted nurse probes for a vein under my skin. When she’s done, she pushes the plunger on a syringe of cold, stinging liquid into my new IV line.

Quickly I sleep‌—‌a darkly dreamless sleep.

When I wake, I’m in a different room. Bryan and Allison hover over my bed like ghosts clinging together until it’s hard for me to distinguish between them. My mouth no longer feels like bees are buzzing and singing behind my lips, but still my thoughts are cloudy and unreliable. I recognize another person at the foot of my bed‌—‌it’s Dr. Ellison. She holds a silver clipboard in her hands and talks to my children as if I’m not present.

“Your mother’s had a seizure,” she says. “She seems to have suffered a generalized tonic-clonic event… what you might call a grand mal seizure. Because your mother’s brain is most likely accumulating a protein we call beta amyloid… this could explain the event. The protein could be collecting and causing a form of plaque. It’s thought that this plaque can cause nerve damage in the brain, which you see evidenced in her continued decline of cognitive and motor function. It’s not uncommon for Alzheimer’s patients to experience seizure activity, but because your mother is still relatively young, we want to keep her here for a day or two for tests to make certain something else didn’t cause the problem.”

“Whatever you need,” Bryan says.

Allison looks down at her hands as if she is inspecting a new manicure, but I see her chin wavering in distress. “Is she going to die?”

“Of course not, Allison,” Bryan says. His voice is in full attorney-in-charge, deep-throated confidence. “Mom is
not
going to die.” Then he wavers. “Right, Doctor?”