Sciences Participating with Arts & Culture in Education

On My Back

On my back, I am held in a moment. The sand is no longer a sponge to the weight of the tides and my fingers caress the waves with welcoming. But skies are swirling, troubled, and their vastness threatens. I can’t place my finger on the wound, but it lives within me, within the waves, asking to be defined.

With her staggering breath, my tears rise to a pressure. They plead to over-flow, to drown my peace of mind.

I wish I could say something to reassure you.

GERBERTOV, NELL.

My fingers are almost permanently coated with the dry texture of grey river clay, every kneeding-worn wrinkle on my hands carefully outlined. And these lines are still no more than a suggesti

on of my labor, which mostly remains hidden.

It is this way in most aspects of my life. My kids, like my pots, are beautiful. They are talented and enjoyed by the world, and this is what a mother works towards: that the nourishing shells around all she has loved are so impeccably smooth that her chicks appear to crack through them effortlessly. As an artist, I am trained to make it look easy, as if my pots have emerged from nature itself.

And what about the sweat and strain beneath it all? People will not believe in it, or they are not interested, the way no teenager wants to know their mother misses them after spending her life fearful of losing them. Kneading, kneading. I am happy for my kids. Thump, thump. Did you hear that Lilly was published? Kneading, kneading. Thump.

Those last thumps of clay echoing around my empty studio, the cat’s tail twitching, I pause to lean my head back, fatigue weaving in and out of twinges in my joints, my shoulders. I am tired, but for the past 20 years that hasn’t been an excuse to stop kneading the clay. Glancing down at my table, I take a moment to gaze upon the gorge like shape of the urn that my hands rest on, still wet, still grey.

I think about my mother and how her ashes rest in a similar urn. Somehow, kneading the clay of it helped me to smooth the surface of the shell her death encumbered. Like a piece of art, that urn appeared effortless in its intricate turnings. An object easy to buy, easy to envy.

My mother too was an artist, my house now filled with her paintings. Behind every one of her canvases, behind coats of acrylic, I can vividly imagine the the joys and tragedies and effort of her life. Is that the real artistry?

The phone rings.

SINGER, EVIE flashes in green.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Nell.”

“Hi!”

I say nothing else.

“How are you feeling?” I manage finally. She hates this question, but somehow I know that it’s the foundation of the phone call.

“Not well, today’s not a good day...”

“No? Any news on your new meds?”

“No, they still haven’t found the right balance. I actually don’t think...”

She pauses, waiting for me.

“You don’t think...”

“I can’t stay in this house anymore... It’s just not possible.” Her voice breaks on possible.

“I completely agree,” smoothing. “It’s much too... huge, really, for one person. Especially someone who isn’t well... You know, for now.”

I can feel the question boiling within me, filling every silence in our conversation.

“How about you stay here?  Lilly’s room is still all set up. It would be my pleasure to have you here. It’s just Alan and I, so it’s quiet, but there’s still a bit of movement...” I can hear I am selling it to her.

“I think that at this point... I just don’t think staying here is an option anymore,” she says, barely above a whisper.

“I think you’ve been very brave staying there all alone and I completely commend you, but I also know you can ask for help. I am here to help you, Evie.”

“I know.”

She knows.

“Please stay here, it would be my pleasure. And don’t worry about being a burden, you’re my friend and I want to look after you.”

“When can I come?” She knew all along.

“Well... I’d like to clean up a bit... Maybe get the bed together... We could come and get you tomorrow?”

No answer.

“No sooner?”

Sooner?

“Well, actually…” The clock shows 2:30 pm. “… Alan could probably come and get you by 6."

"That would be great." I hear her relief.

“Great, I’ll see you then.”

“Thank you, Nell.”

“Evie, I’m happy to do it.” I really am.

“Thank you. Bye Nell.”

I put the phone down, and, carefully wrapping the wet urn in saran-wrap, I’m surprised to see that my hands are steady. I’m also captured by how smooth the clay is beneath my fingers, lines forming lustrous curves. How can I make something beautiful at a time like this?

The phone rings.

GERBERTOVE, LILLY.R.

“Hello, my dear.”

“Hi, Mom.”

Why is she tired?

“How was your day?”

“Fine... Have you had any news from Evie?”

I hesitate.

“She’s coming here.”

An echoing silence.

“She’s staying with you? Why?”

“Yes. She can’t handle staying alone anymore.”

I wait.

I wait.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“What about her medication?”

“Well... It’s still not kicking in. It’s making her sick, making her worse.”

“Should I... I mean, should I come up and see her?”

“No, no, we’re not at that point... Yet.”

“Yet?”

“Well...”

“But mom, they still haven’t completely dismissed the new medication... Right?”

“No, that’s true. She could still pick up. It’s hard—impossible--to know what’s going to happen. I’ll keep you posted, don’t worry. We’ll look after her. And who knows? She might be able to go home in a week.”

More silence.

“Yeah, who knows?”

We know. We both know.

GERBERTOV, LILLY.

As I hang up the phone, I’m surprised that my hands aren’t shaking. Who knows? She might be able to go home in a week. Silently going into my room, I close the door and watch my hands. Waiting for them to tremble. Nothing. So I close my eyes and try to remember.

Evie always told me I was her fifth child. My mom and she were best friends since before I was born, and I always find it hard to imagine them without me in the equation, as if I’m the glue that’s held them together. When my mom found out she was pregnant, Leslie had a miscarriage. Around the same time, she was diagnosed with leukemia.

Since then, she has assumed the role of my second mother, my godmother, thinking that my mom had the child that she herself couldn’t carry. Maybe it’s crazy, but it’s a life that made sense to us. I ran to her for everything. She could always see something I couldn’t—and it mystified me every time. If you don’t know what to do, then don’t do anything, she would tell me, asking me to sit in discomfort until I was comfortable with it. I did. I was. Simply because she asked me to be.

Do you ever catch yourself pretending someone is gone, just to see how it feels?

*

It’s Friday morning and she is transferred to the Jewish General Hospital

by ambulance.

It’s Friday morning and when I open my eyes, my fingers finally shake.

At 3h30 am my eyes are blinking all the way up Cote Sainte Catherine street.

I walk past all the sick vessels until I find bed 39 in the red area.

She lies there, sleeping. Is she sleeping?

I watch.

I wait.

What am I waiting for?

I just stand there, because I don’t know what to do.

As I watch her I see my grandmother lying there, mouth open, I having arrived 8 minutes too late. Palms beginning to sweat, I imagine that I’ve been given another chance, a chance not to be too late.

I know I can’t run away in front of Evie, so I beg for her eyes to open.

They do.

“Finally!” she breathes.

She looks at me as if she were speaking to a part of me that I didn’t yet know, and I look back at her, asking to be included.

“Lilly, love,” she says, pointing to a bag buried in the corner of her curtain drawn cubicle, “get me that bag.”

I blink at her, incredulous at how she never hesitates to boss me around.

Without another moment to spare, she has me emptying out bags and rummaging through other patients’ boxes looking for her glasses, a watch, her hairbrush. I realize that this is her way of fighting for her life, and I couldn’t have been more thankful to her for giving me something to do other than face the obvious.

“I can’t find anything,” but I know that she is pleased to see me looking, looking for her. Fighting alongside her, for her.

When she finally orders me to give up the search, she points to a chair and I pull it close to her bed and take her hand. Her eyes bore into mine and it’s as if I see truth for the first time. I feel my hands sweating under hers, and she tells me to take off my coat. So I do, simply because she told me to. Biting my lip, I fight back what I knew was inevitably going to overflow. But I hold it off a little longer.

I glance at her swollen feet and ask, “I know this is a stupid question, but how do you feel?”

“It’s not a stupid question... Oh Lil, I feel like...”

“Crap?”

“Not good enough.”

“On toast?”

She smiled, “Better.”

“What’s the latest on the doctor’s end?” I ask, giving her a chance to reassure me.

I hate how I sound like my mother, making stupid chit chat.

She doesn’t say anything, so I mindlessly continue

“I heard that you were going to go back to St. Agathe tomorrow?” Another chance, come on Evie.

“I’m not going back.”

Our eyes held each other.

I dip my toes in the tides.

She says “I wish I could say something to reassure you.”

*

I get a text “This is the shitter, Evie’s going.”

*

Hours, days; they’ve slipped beneath the hospital door of B-407 as I massage her feet and fight back the waves that are building up within me, asking me to comply. With her staggering breath, my tears rise to a pressure. They plead to over-flow, to drown my peace of mind.

But I stay.

I turn my head to the hand on my shoulder and without knowing who it is, I kiss it. It feels good to feel life squeeze and reassure me.

“Let’s change the conversation. Now, what’s the new subject?” The words emerge from that dry, sassy, nearly lifeless mouth of hers, and whoever is in the room chuckles in amusement and wonder.

But I swear I notice, even without looking, glimmers of hope in their eyes every time she speaks.

This time I walk out of the room and into the florescent hallways of disinfectant.

I’m tired, sad, but those are not excuses anymore.

Something I can’t bear to lose is slipping through my hands, through the time that escaped beneath that hospital door, through every silence in our conversation and the watch and hairbrush I couldn’t find.

Pumping away at the disinfectant as if it could kill all the moments that were strung together by a false hope of more to come.

“... For the funeral... Perhaps it should be this Saturday? I don’t know how long the family can stay...”

My fingers are so tired from trying to push the waves away, and no matter how tightly I squeeze, the water always finds its way through.

So I walk back in, for our very last goodbye.

A child’s intelligent heart can fathom the depth of many dark places. But can it fathom the delicate moment of its own detachment?

I get a text: “It’s done.”