1. That day when they strap you into the lift harness, and you rise, swaying like cargo, then they slop your body into the wheelchair, you scream like an animal, like a raccoon trapped—dogs at your neck, that scream. The charge nurse will come then on her soft shoes that you can always hear, come in her unflattering shirt and try to comfort you by stroking your left upper arm—do not heed. She’s not who you want.
2. At breakfast lift your trembling hands and squeeze the soft egg—cooked just like you wanted it—and lift it like the harness lifted you, strung up in your fingers, and throw it across the room so that strands strike the TV screen where the talking heads are beautiful and starving. Then the toast, then the blueberries one by one—which makes a grand mess. Watch them fly, applaud their splat. The kitchen aides and serving women will rush in, touch your right upper arm. Not what you want, but the one who wears the pink uniform will wash your hands with Attends. She will say, Truth, dear, don’t throw your food. It’s not polite.
3. After they have cleaned you up, tell them to leave you alone in the garden, and they will, though someone always stands in sight. The garden is an “enchanting enclosed patio” according to the brochure, and many rooms look onto the garden, and some residents’ windows are open (the reverse of peeping toms), and so you sit in the sun and practice howling like the she-wolf you once were until the ever-ready residents roll their wheelchairs away from their windows, down to the nursing station to complain. Then the aides come again and touch both arms, lean in, and say, Truth, are you having a bad day? Truth, come into your room where the sun’s not so bright—as if the sun were the problem. They will run their hands up and down your arms. It means nothing.
4. Refuse your room, and ask to go to the Day Room instead. While the others try to watch I Love Lucy and The Price is Right, talk back to Bob Barker and Lucille Ball until people start to sigh. When Lucy’s scene in the chocolate assembly line gets away from her, roll forward, reach into your diaper and smear shit onto the screen. So they know you mean it. The old grays groan and turn away. The green-dressed aides scurry around to clean up the mess and finally roll you to the bathing room and clean you up, wiping your bottom, but they have to use the lift to do it. It is better than nothing; an excuse to make a lot more noise, and they have to get close. Then they use the disinfectant on everything. People complain of the smell, and you holler: This is what you’ll come to as well. They don’t believe you.
5. Return to your room and rest awhile, for you must regain some strength for the next attempt. When they come to ask if you are better now, pretend to be asleep. When they believe you, wake up and yank all the faded lavender bedding off the bed and drag it into the toilet and stuff it in the bowl, like stuffing a mouth, like stuffing a body away. Wheel back to the room and rest until you hear the aides enter, stop and sigh deeply, say Oh, Truth. One of them pinches your thigh when she brings the bucket to clean up. You are delighted.
6. At lunch, eat the fresh-picked cherries but spit the pits—you know your husband ordered these, your favorite fruit, especially for you. No one else gets them because they might choke. He’s forgotten these rules, or he wants you to choke, and also, he’s forgotten how good a spitter you are. How well your tongue still works, though words sometimes elude you. Once, a long time ago, you remember winning a cherry pit spitting contest at the county fair—so you know how to get the air behind the pit. You spit pits all over the table, then far and wide over the dining room. Cackle your loudest when the blue hairs at the nearby tables try to duck. The pink aide and the purple aide come, take away the cherries—too bad, but you keep it up with other things: chicken wings (that they should fly again) and cooked carrots. They move you to a table of your own, and as they do, they chide, Truth, Truth, this has got to stop—can’t you be good? And after they wash your hands, and wipe the table, they scold you softly, holding their palms on each side of your face. Not good enough.
7. After lunch, there is bingo and when they ask, you nod yes yes, and you do try to play for a while. You roll the chair up to the cards, and you hold up all the fingers of your left hand, and they say Really?, and you screech a little in response so they give you five cards real quick, and you can just about control the pieces. You were once so good at this, and you know exactly how to play but you shout bingo randomly, though it doesn’t sound like that, even to you it’s just syllables, so they have to stop, and finally the activities director, without speaking, pulls your chair out from the table and rolls you to the Day Room where the zombies are, and sits next to you and puts her hands on your knees, and looks into your eyes, and says Truth Truth Truth, what’s wrong darling. You cannot say what you want; you cannot say his name. You want her to cry so badly. Why won’t she cry?
8. They take you to therapy then, but when they bring you the Styrofoam noodle to play the push-pull game that is supposed to increase strength in your arms, you grab it away from the wimpy boy therapist with the thinning blond hair and hit him with it. Over and over until he laughs, but not a sweet laugh: he’s not buying it either. The staff consults. They switch to the plastic stretchy thing you have to hold and pull, hold and pull, but you wrap it around your neck so they grab it quickly, touching your throat to make sure you have no marks. As if. But then the big woman in red tries to stand you up, hold you under your arms, and the woman with the strongest back holds you in front, and she keeps saying, It’s good to stand, Truth, you’ve got to stand for circulation, so you do try to stand between them for a while, it’s almost a comfort with them front and back, but then they start to sweat, and you start to screech again because it is not him holding you up. You realize: they are all strangers; you know this, Truth.
9. Someone in the nurses’ station picks up a phone and while she is calling she looks at you. The priest arrives to give you Holy Communion. You try to ask: Do you actually think this disk of flattened, dried out gruel will bring me anything but indigestion? And don’t you want my confession first? Don’t you want to hear my sins of the day? Would you like me to fart a hymn so you can smell this life I live? But instead you take the prayer card he has given you and eat it in front of him. When he leaves, you overhear him say to the woman at the desk, She’s touched in the head, bless her heart. Bless his fucking heart right back at him; he doesn’t know the half of it, and you set to pulling down the curtains.
10. In an hour, he arrives. He is not the man you wanted; you don’t think he is the man you wanted, not the one who lived with you all those years, not the one who brought you sweet cherries. You don’t know this man. But when he comes in, he speaks gently, he says, Are you being Wonder Woman again? Are you using your Super Powers out of turn? Out of turn? The very idea. But he seems familiar in that Old Spice scent from long ago. And you giggle, and he asks, Would you like to see mine? teasing like. You know he already knows you would, and you dare to hope, and you make the little gesture. Will he remember? Like a child reaching up. And he stares out the window, smiles a little and sighs, and you almost know him. Maybe he is the man. You roll the chair close to him, and nudge his knees, and he bends down and he lifts you out of the chair, and he pulls you clumsy-like, like young lovers might, onto his lap, then rolls you slowly onto the bed with him. He touches your arms, curls around you, and though there are places you can no longer feel, you can feel enough, and at last you can see in your mind the soft colors of his fingers drifting up and down your arms, and from that you feel the Truth-full rising calm that will last a few days, maybe a week. And you wonder how long you can live with these too-small doses, the delicate ink of touch, this meager stain for the skin, this one surface on which there can live the words of your still-beating heart.
This is a compilation essay: that is, a lyric form compiled from a series of many closely observed experiences and molded into one under an anonymous point of view. My mother, Ruth (Truth), lives in a facility where I had opportunity to see her, and many women, struggle with loneliness and the need to be touched.
Anne-Marie Oomen wrote Lake Michigan Mermaid with Linda Nemec Foster (Michigan Notable Book, 2019), Love, Sex and 4-H (Next Generation Indie Award for Memoir), Pulling Down the Barn (Michigan Notable Book); and Uncoded Woman (poetry), among others. She edited ELEMENTAL: A Collection of Michigan Nonfiction (also a Michigan Notable Book). She teaches at Solstice MFA at Pine Manor College (MA), Interlochen’s College of Creative Arts (MI), and conferences throughout the country.
