bed, head cupped on one hand, raised up on an elbow.
OUTSIDE THE HOSPITAL, water drips from the wide-canopied trees on the lower slopes of the mountain. The monkeys are throwing confetti in the wet sunlight. It doesn’t matter to them that ma has lost her looks and that we can’t find them hidden in the tissue paper in the box of dresses. Her looks have just upped and gone, folded into her disappointment at living a country life with a country doctor, at living with you.
She’s looking past you now, to the other side. And you’re quiet, finally. The years of your voice have ended. You’ve stopped shouting, calling all of us names, swearing and joking and needling, talking about George and the War and the Freemasons, your favorite songs, the doctors you hate, the patients you treat and everything else in between, from the stock market to a film you once saw, to The Water Babies which your mother loved and read to you over and over again, and your father, your poor father, who could barely make it past the first page. What we can hear in this room is a very faint echo—hell’s teeth, poor blighters and wragtig , mense! — whistling between your lips with each breath you take. Your watery reflection shimmers on the damp window, and I can almost make out that madcap twinkle in your eyes, or is the headlights of the cars, turned on in the middle of the day because of the rain?
I think we should get a second opinion, I say to Ma and to Simon as they watch the nurses move you and turn you, as if you were an oversized doll. Ekskuus tog , I say to the older nurse, her grey-streaked hair tucked and folded under her white cap. Is dit te laat vir die bloodversuiwering? Is it too late to purify my father’s blood? To turn the headlights back on?
Betsy! Ma takes in a breath, the corners of her mouth drawing down, her side teeth lengthening. Why do you want to do this to him? What for? He’s suffered so much already!
Simon looks at me, his eyes clouding over. Listen, he says. That door is closed. We made a decision. We had to.
(Funny you should talk about doors, Si-Si. All the doors that were never shut, the parade of doctors marching in and out of our house, my body and yours. You never go there, Si. And maybe you never should.)
I still think we should ask! My voice is tight, louder than it means to be. There’s a second engine whirring inside me, a motor just reserved for you.
* * *
OUTSIDE, THERE’S A soft summer rain falling that’s good for the hydrangeas and the lavender and all the trees in the Kynsna forest and maybe some of the last Kynsna elephants too. Harold is going to leave the forest forever and he’s going to climb into the dusty pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Fourteenth edition, 1929, A New Survey of Universal Knowledge, right here in the George public library, this last summer before medical school.
He’s diving straight into “Medicine, General” and “Medicine, History of ” and it’s very, very deep over there. It’s going to be a helluva long time before he comes up for air, with or without golf balls. The pages are very thin and the encyclopedia is very thick. It’s Volume 15, Mary, Duchess of Burgundy to Mushet Steel, that’s making you sneeze and you don’t even have a hanky. Mrs. van der Vyver, the librarian who showed you where to find this volume, has a squeak in her skirt and you wonder if you’re going to see a mouse running down her leg anytime soon.
“Influence of the World War. Since 1910, the progress of medicine has been much influenced by the four years of the war. . . .” You’re staring at the page so hard now that it’s almost making you naar . Trench fever and shell shock, boetie. Paratyphoid fevers. Maybe it’s her foundation garment that’s going to snap. She’s walking around reshelving books and you can see the wisps of hair pressed against her neck as if they’ve been flattened between the pages of a book, pressed like violets or pansies or
OUTSIDE THE HOSPITAL, water drips from the wide-canopied trees on the lower slopes of the mountain. The monkeys are throwing confetti in the wet sunlight. It doesn’t matter to them that ma has lost her looks and that we can’t find them hidden in the tissue paper in the box of dresses. Her looks have just upped and gone, folded into her disappointment at living a country life with a country doctor, at living with you.
She’s looking past you now, to the other side. And you’re quiet, finally. The years of your voice have ended. You’ve stopped shouting, calling all of us names, swearing and joking and needling, talking about George and the War and the Freemasons, your favorite songs, the doctors you hate, the patients you treat and everything else in between, from the stock market to a film you once saw, to The Water Babies which your mother loved and read to you over and over again, and your father, your poor father, who could barely make it past the first page. What we can hear in this room is a very faint echo—hell’s teeth, poor blighters and wragtig , mense! — whistling between your lips with each breath you take. Your watery reflection shimmers on the damp window, and I can almost make out that madcap twinkle in your eyes, or is the headlights of the cars, turned on in the middle of the day because of the rain?
I think we should get a second opinion, I say to Ma and to Simon as they watch the nurses move you and turn you, as if you were an oversized doll. Ekskuus tog , I say to the older nurse, her grey-streaked hair tucked and folded under her white cap. Is dit te laat vir die bloodversuiwering? Is it too late to purify my father’s blood? To turn the headlights back on?
Betsy! Ma takes in a breath, the corners of her mouth drawing down, her side teeth lengthening. Why do you want to do this to him? What for? He’s suffered so much already!
Simon looks at me, his eyes clouding over. Listen, he says. That door is closed. We made a decision. We had to.
(Funny you should talk about doors, Si-Si. All the doors that were never shut, the parade of doctors marching in and out of our house, my body and yours. You never go there, Si. And maybe you never should.)
I still think we should ask! My voice is tight, louder than it means to be. There’s a second engine whirring inside me, a motor just reserved for you.
* * *
OUTSIDE, THERE’S A soft summer rain falling that’s good for the hydrangeas and the lavender and all the trees in the Kynsna forest and maybe some of the last Kynsna elephants too. Harold is going to leave the forest forever and he’s going to climb into the dusty pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Fourteenth edition, 1929, A New Survey of Universal Knowledge, right here in the George public library, this last summer before medical school.
He’s diving straight into “Medicine, General” and “Medicine, History of ” and it’s very, very deep over there. It’s going to be a helluva long time before he comes up for air, with or without golf balls. The pages are very thin and the encyclopedia is very thick. It’s Volume 15, Mary, Duchess of Burgundy to Mushet Steel, that’s making you sneeze and you don’t even have a hanky. Mrs. van der Vyver, the librarian who showed you where to find this volume, has a squeak in her skirt and you wonder if you’re going to see a mouse running down her leg anytime soon.
“Influence of the World War. Since 1910, the progress of medicine has been much influenced by the four years of the war. . . .” You’re staring at the page so hard now that it’s almost making you naar . Trench fever and shell shock, boetie. Paratyphoid fevers. Maybe it’s her foundation garment that’s going to snap. She’s walking around reshelving books and you can see the wisps of hair pressed against her neck as if they’ve been flattened between the pages of a book, pressed like violets or pansies or
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