FFP#25 – Five Years Ago

Five years ago this week, my grandfather passed away. I wasn’t there when he died, but I did see him about a month beforehand, around Mother’s Day. He had already been dying for years it seemed: bladder and kidney cancer, heart attacks, emphysema, lung capacity shrinking from 25% to 14% to 7%. When I saw him, he was in bed, attended to by my aunts and uncles and grandmother, hospice caregivers and nurses. Various grandchildren, family friends, and old coworkers came and went, taking turns sitting with him, watching him watch TV, watching him sleep, watching him take his medication. I don’t think he was ever alone.

In the kitchen, on my grandmother’s dining table, was a notebook listing all his medications, the times and dates when they were to be administered, the names and contact information of the doctors and nurses who prescribed and changed dosages. These were meticulously kept notes that told a story about pain and discomfort, anxiety and deterioration. I wonder if anyone kept that notebook, that record of medicated life, that muted period between two worlds, or if it was tossed away. I hope it was thrown away.

There was only one time I gave my grandfather a pill: he started to shake and said he was feeling anxious. Someone said to give him .5 mg of lorazepam – I think it was a nurse, my aunts were out for the afternoon, taking a much needed break, and my uncle and I were left alone, along with the nurse and my grandfather. I think my uncle and I both felt lost, in a way, not knowing what to do or how to help. My grandfather, dressed in freshly pressed pajamas, his hair and mustache groomed, his skin soft and practically wrinkle free, seemed nervous and small. So when the nurse said to give him his medication, I was only too ready to help.

“Grandpa,” I said. “Grandpa, open your mouth.”

I pressed the tiny pill onto his tongue so it would stick and in doing so I touched his tongue with the tip of my finger. It was hot and damp, and it didn’t feel like the tongue of a dying man. At least, it’s not what I imagined a dying person’s tongue would feel like. I was expecting dryness, a white or colorless tongue, a tongue that was curling in on itself like an injured insect. But my grandfather’s felt strong and alive. And for a moment, I forgot everything I had ever thought I knew about life and death and the conversion between the two.

I helped my grandfather sip some water to wash down the pill. The nurse asked him on a scale of one to ten how much pain he was in. “A four,” he said. A four! – Even though it pained him to speak and he winced with every word, he only considered his discomfort a four. Was he being brave? Macho? Or had he experienced worse? At the time, I was sick myself – not yet diagnosed with lupus – but wasting away at 100 pounds, dealing with my own constant and frustrating pain. For me, every day was pain or more pain, so it wasn’t until my diagnosis and treatment a year later that I experienced a day without pain. That day I felt like something was missing, I felt unweighted and free. But before then, my body was weak and heavy and seeing my grandfather in bed, I realized that the pain could always get worse. And I think my grandfather knew this, when he said “Four.” He knew it could get worse.

How alone we all are, I thought to myself. Even with all the family and friends and visitors surrounding my grandfather, all the people surrounding me in my own life, even with all that love and support, the truth is that we die and suffer alone. No one can inhabit this body with me. And as awful as it sounds, it isn’t really that terrible. We enter the world just as alone, just as ignorant of life as we are of death, and somehow we survive.

FFP#24 – Chronic

The pain lives in the region between the navel and the right hip. Medical tests have ruled out any disease or infection, such as appendicitis, mainly because there is no accompanying fever. Kneading down hard on the area alleviates the pain.

This explains the bruising.

In that area of the abdomen, between belly button and bone, stretches a four-inch bruise. The bruise is exactly as long as the distance across my knuckles. If I could, if I were brave or crazy or stupid enough, I’d dig my fingers through my abdominal flesh, locate the pain and destroy it.

#

When I was thirteen, I broke the pinky finger of my left hand while playing basketball. The resulting pain, a dull ache that radiated throughout my entire finger, wasn’t unbearable. But a lump formed below the first joint of my pinky, making the finger appear impregnated.

My father, who didn’t like how my finger looked, took me to an orthopedic surgeon. We learned that surgery would straighten and return my pinky to its original size, but it would be purely cosmetic. There was nothing wrong with the finger, other than that it was broken. It would heal. With surgery there was a possibility that use of the finger would become limited. I was a guitarist, which I liked more than being a basketball player, so the idea that this would keep me from playing guitar upset me. I whined a bit, and we decided to leave the finger as it was.

A week later, while watching Tora! Tora! Tora! in Mr. G’s American history class, I felt a sharp pain in my pinky. I had noticed the previous day that the lump was larger. A part of me feared that the lump would continue to grow, transforming my finger into an unbendable, sausage-like appendage. The finger felt tight and stiff, as though it were about to burst.

“Juan,” I whispered to my friend. He was seated behind me. “Juan, gimme your pocketknife.”

The room was dark, but I could see well enough to slice open my pinky finger. The only mistake I’d made was not realizing how much blood there would be. Nor was I expecting an odor. Cutting through the lump released an extreme amount of both. Blood spilled onto the desk and my eyes watered from the acrid scent.

“Blood!” someone yelled.

“Jesus Christ,” Mr. G said as he searched his desk for the bio-hazard kit. “Turn on the lights!”

“Yuck.” Juan covered his mouth and nose with his hands. “You can keep the knife.”

More than a few students gagged. A girl named Lindsay, a girl who tortured me for wearing high water pants in fifth grade, fainted. Her head hit the floor with a satisfying whack.

“Oh God. Someone go help Lindsay.” With his latex gloves on, Mr. G wrapped my hand in gauze.

“You,” he said when he finished. “You need to go straight to the nurse’s office.”

But I couldn’t move. I wasn’t really listening to him. My focus had shifted from my smelly wound to something small, about the size of an almond, in the pool of blood which had collected on my desk. I picked it up, my good hand shaky. What I held was fleshy, soft, and baby-like. A tinier version of my pinky.

“It’s a little finger,” I said, suddenly feeling cold.

Mr. G squinted at it. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Did you cut off your finger?”

Someone in the class squealed.

“I don’t think so.” I felt my fingers through the gauze. “They’re all there.”

“You need to get to the nurse’s office now. Take that finger. Hurry up and go!” Mr. G pointed at the door.

I ran out of the classroom, bloodied gauze trailing from my hand.

I didn’t show the nurse my extra finger, but I did end up having to get stitches. A few days later, my pinky returned to its original size and shape. A couple of weeks later, I could play guitar as well as I ever had.

For years, I kept the finger in a small bottle of formaldehyde. A science geek friend of mine helped me get the stuff, but I bottled it myself. I kept the petite container on top of my bookshelf, next to my collection of glass cat figurines. A tiny finger suspended in liquid. A part of me, pickled forever.

#

Three days ago, a small bump appeared an inch above the bruise. About the size of a pimple, the bump is hard. When I rub it, a clear liquid beads up around it, as though the pimple were sweating. I try not to touch it, but it itches. I rub my bruise and pick at the pimple. This is how I fall asleep.

In the morning, a Monday, sick day number two and the third consecutive day I’ve spent in bed, my cat Lola begins to show some interest in me. She leaps on top of me, her large speckled paws massaging my chest, her claws snagging my pajama top. She sniffs the area around my belly button before stepping back onto my chest, rubbing her head against my hand until I pet her. She turns around, purring and flicking her tail. “Scratch my back,” she seems to be saying.

That’s when I notice a hair poking out of her bottom. A stray strand of cat fur, I think at first, so I yank at it. But it’s human hair. I continue to pull at it, not wanting Lola running around with human hair trailing out of her butt. At about twelve inches out, it sticks. I tug harder. The cat’s tail swishes in circles, a warning to hurry up. I jerk the hair as hard as I can and Lola jumps off the bed. She disappears into the hallway.

I expect the worse: a piece of feces stuck on the end of the hair, a tape worm, a piece of undigested food entwined in hair. But on closer inspection, I realize it’s a tiny thumb.

#

The bump, the pimple, keeps me up all night. This morning, I finally decide to take care of it myself. If I went to my doctor, he would tell me to leave it alone, that it would heal. Or maybe he wouldn’t even see it; he’d say it was all in my head, like the inexplicable abdominal pain.

I take off my shirt to get a better look at the pimple. I squeeze it, and pus oozes out slowly. Then something thin and white, like a matte ribbon, leaks out. I grasp it using my fingernails.

I choke back the saliva that has gathered in the bottom of my mouth as I extract the narrow white strip. Four more thin white strips, all connected, pop out after it. I sway side-to-side, trying to keep myself calm, in a trance where I am deliberate in my actions but not completely aware of the situation.

That is, the removal of an anemic and flat hand from a pimple on my abdomen.

When the last bit of the hand, the boneless wrist, comes out, the pain in my side completely vanishes. A small amount of blood seeps from the wound. I drop the hand onto the bed where it moves gently, the tips of the fingers curling up softly.

I’m revolted, yet not surprised.

Pain comes from unusual things.

I climb out of bed and grab my robe. In the bathroom, I wash my real hands, my attached hands, and cover the pimple with a bandage. I look for something to kill the flat hand with, but decide against using any chemicals. I pick it up with a pair of tongs and toss it into a plastic grocery bag.

Lola follows me around, intrigued by what I’m doing.

I don’t want to throw the hand away. It’s a part of my body — but is it? What if it’s like the movie? Evil and capable of climbing out of a dumpster. Or worse — what if it’s a parasite? Something that infected me in my childhood. Would it infect another person or an animal? Just imagine a world with wiggly fingers and hands popping out of everywhere.

I decide to boil it.

The force of the boiling water moves the hand around the circumference of the pot. Within a couple of minutes, the hand turns from translucent white to opaque gray. I drain the water and return the hand to the plastic bag. Now I can throw it out.

Back in my apartment, I vomit three times. Then I take a long, hot shower. Change into jeans and a clean T-shirt. I sit at the kitchen table, sipping sweet tea. I start to cry.

#

In my life, there have been only two other instances in which I cried out of happiness.

The first time occurred when my parents brought me a guitar. I was around ten. Overwhelmed by the unexpected gift and the tremendous possibilities it meant for a lonely child, I broke down.

The second time, I was sixteen years old. My dog Linda, which we had adopted when I was eight, had gotten loose and ran away. Four months later, on a damp November morning, Linda appeared on our front porch. There she was: tail wagging, tongue dangling, as though she had never left. She’d come back home even though I had given up hoping for her return. As I ran to get her food and water dishes out of the shed, I wanted to yell, “Linda’s back!” I wanted the neighborhood — the world — to know my dog had returned. But as soon as I saw her blue plastic feeding bowls sitting dusty and empty on a low shelf, I lost it and started crying.

And now, here I am.

A pinky, a finger, a hand. My own body growing new parts within itself. My own body turning on itself. Or perhaps a parasite, a monster hiding in my organs, building itself within the warmth and darkness and safety of my corporeal self, trying to find its way out.

But for now, all I know for sure is that the pain is gone, and I’m moved to tears.

FFP#23 – Tía Raquel

I was six years old when my parents bought the piano. An upright piano purchased for $200 from the elderly woman down the street. The piano itself was in good condition, beautifully smooth dark wood, bright white and solid black keys. The bench seated me comfortably.

It was so beautiful that I cried.

Around the same time I got the piano, my Tía Raquel move in with us. She was only fifteen, rebellious, and a habitual runaway. My grandmother felt they needed some time apart. She reasoned that if Raquel stayed with her older brother (my father) and had to take care of me, she’d become a more responsible teenager. Raquel didn’t seem to mind the change of families. She liked my parents quite a lot, but I wasn’t sure how she felt about me. She always referred to me as “mocosa.”

One of Raquel’s duties was to pick me up after school. We walked home together. Sometimes, she’d give me a piggy back ride. Other times — most of the time — she was in a sour mood. On these days, she’d make me walk behind her or she’d tease me, telling me my nose was so wide and short that I looked like a pig.

When we’d get home from school, I’d watch TV, have a snack, play the piano. At this point, I hadn’t taken any lessons yet, so I tried to teach myself how to play by sounding out familiar tunes. The first week, I taught myself how to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The second week, I mastered “Jingle Bells.” The third week, I figured out how to play the first five measures of “Für Elise” and considered myself a musical genius.

“That sounds nice,” Raquel said when I’d play something she recognized.

Some days, before my parents came home, she’d bring out a fancy, fold-out cosmetic case that she kept hidden in the back of her closet. Inside weren’t the usual tubes of fruit-flavored lip glosses or plastic pots of body glitter you’d think most teen girls would have. Instead, Raquel used it to store five little cloth dolls that she’d sewn herself.

I always wanted to play with the dolls, but she wouldn’t let me touch them. She’d dress them up and show them to me and that’s about it. “This one’s your mama. This one’s your dad,” she’d say, holding up the two larger dolls, one dressed in blue plaid, the other in orange. “This one’s Saul.” She’d hold up the doll dressed in denim. “This one’s me.” A black haired doll in a pink dress. “And this one’s you.” I was the smallest doll, overstuffed and naked, without hair. “You’re the baby,” she’d say.

“Make me some pants,” I’d tell her angrily. “I’m not a baby.”

“Make you some pants?” Then she’d laugh.

When my mother arrived home early from work one afternoon, Raquel panicked. She messily threw the dolls back in the cosmetic case. We were in my bedroom, so she tried to find a place in my closet to hide it. In the rush, her hair got snagged on the buttons of one of my shirts. She yanked her head back, losing a barrette and a diamond earring in the process. She grabbed the barrette, but didn’t notice the earring. Neither did I, until the next morning when I found it in one of my tennis shoes.

I took it out carefully, deciding I wouldn’t give it back — punishment for her unflattering, nude replica of me.

Other than her dolls, she was completely obsessed with her boyfriend Saul. In his mid-twenties, with a lot of free time, he drove around town wearing a stone-washed Levi jacket and checking out high school girls. I didn’t know what Raquel saw in him. He had a goatee and smelled like cheese.

But Saul was the reason Raquel ran away. She went to him whenever she had problems or whenever he needed her. He was as obsessed with Raquel as she was with him.

This was how it usually went: Raquel would call Saul as soon as we got home. She never told him about her day at school. With Saul, their conversations were all about music and cars or Raquel telling him over and over that she loved him. I was young enough that I didn’t quite understand the drama; all I knew was that it made me uncomfortable. I didn’t like to hear Raquel sound so compliant. I preferred her tough act, even if it meant she’d boss me around all day.

Once, when we were walking home from school, Saul followed us in his blue Mustang. He was hanging out the window, begging Raquel to get in the car, telling her I could make it home just fine by myself. I stuck my tongue out at him when he wasn’t looking.

Raquel ignored him, grabbed my hand and walked a little faster.

“What did you do in school today?” she asked me. She never held my hand and never asked me about my day, so I was a little surprised.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Oh, that’s interesting,” she replied, dragging me along.

The next day, after another huge argument with Saul on the telephone, Raquel started crying. “Asshole!” she yelled, slamming the phone on the receiver so hard it cracked.

“Are you okay?” I asked. I felt shy, never having seen her cry before.

“No.”

“Do you want to play my piano?”

She shook her head.

Probably less than an hour later, a car screeched to a stop in front of the house. Saul emerged, red-faced and angry. He pounded on the front door cursing and yelling at Raquel to let him inside.

“Fuck,” Raquel muttered to herself. She was still crying, but now she looked terrified.

Saul kicked the door. It shook in its frame; the hinges loosened.

Raquel ran to the piano and opened the cabinet’s lid. “Get inside. Now,” she whispered.

I climbed onto the bench, then stepped on the keyboard. She helped me get inside the cabinet. I was small enough to fit, and I laid myself across the soundboard, leaning against the softly padded hammers.

Raquel closed the lid. I tried to keep as still and quiet as possible. I didn’t ask why we were hiding — I felt her fear, sensed some unknown danger — I was wondering where she would hide.

The cellar, I thought. Raquel, go to the cellar!

Inside the piano, I was safe. Invisible. The outside world was muffled. I heard Raquel and Saul arguing, but they sounded so far away. She must have let him inside. Maybe they would make up. Maybe she would run away with him again. I relaxed.

Then came the gun shots. Muffled, but still louder than firecrackers. And then silence.

I shivered. In the darkness, I felt protected. What was happening out there, it wasn’t real, I told myself. In here, within the womb of my piano, I was safe. I touched the hammers and strings. The soundboard groaned peacefully under my weight. I fell asleep.

I awoke some time later to the muted sounds of my mother screaming.

“Mommy!” I yelled, waking up slowly, not remembering where I was or why it was so dark. “Mommy!”

But she had heard me. She opened the lid and pulled me out. Placing a hand over my eyes, she carried me from the living room into the bedroom. She checked me all over, touching my face and my arms, asking me if I was okay. Then she carried me outside, to her car. In silence, she drove us to the police station.

About a month after the shooting, my mother found the cosmetic case. She convinced my father and me that the dolls were evil, that my cousin was dabbling in brujería. “This is why such bad things happen to us,” my mother said, even though the bad things had happened only to Raquel. She made my father burn each and every doll.

We hardly talked about my aunt after that. I started taking piano lessons that same year, and I was surprised at how quickly Raquel’s existence began to feel like dream. All I had of her was that one diamond earring, which I kept tucked away in my jewelry box. When I was in middle school, I started wearing it and any time a boy flirted with me or asked me to a dance, I touched the jewel and said no. I knew that not all boys were like Saul, but I couldn’t be sure, not for years anyway, that I wasn’t like Raquel.

FFP#22 – Mmm, Baby

On second glance, the pistachio nut wasn’t a nut at all but what appeared to be a tiny petrified fetus. A little green, a little dusty, a little baby curled up into a hard heart. She showed her husband but all he said was, “You going to eat that?”

“Am I the only person who sees people in food?” she asked.

Her husband laughed. “Don’t you watch the news? Every few months someone is selling a piece of toast with the Virgin Mary or Jesus on it. And some fool always buys it. Goddam toast!”

“Well, if I had a piece of toast with Jesus on it, I’d never sell it.”

“You wouldn’t. You just keep everything until it rots.”

She thought about the orange Tupperware container hidden under her bed. It contained an oblong potato chip that looked like Jay Leno, a partially smashed powdered donut that reminded her of Santa Claus, a corn tortilla with burn marks that resembled her father’s round eyes and full mustache, and a piece of bacon that had sizzled into the curves of a pin-up girl. At one point, she had a much larger collection but while babysitting her sister’s kids, the youngest — a three-year old who seemed to disappear every five minutes — had found the container and eaten most of it. She gave the child a spoonful of Pepto-Bismol. He threw up soon after and seemed, for the most part, just fine.

She didn’t know if she’d place the pistachio with the others since it seemed more real, more human, to her. And she didn’t like to think of Jay Leno’s salty chin rubbing grease on the baby. She cradled the nut in the palm of her hand.

“Let me see it again,” her husband said.

“Why?”

“I want to see if it really looks like a baby,” he said. “I want to see what you see.”

She held out her hand, the nut rocking back and forth.

“I see it.” Her husband grinned, and before she could say anything he plucked the pistachio from her palm and popped it into his mouth.

“Mmm, baby,” he said.

“Murderer!” she shouted and ran to the bedroom, locking the door behind her. Within a few seconds, she heard her husband’s muffled apologies. He tapped on the door.

“Honey,” he said. “Honey, I was kidding. I’m sorry! I didn’t realize – “

“You never realize anything,” she said. “You pig.” She crawled to the bed and grabbed her Tupperware container. She knew that seeing and counting the food pieces would make her feel better. Of course, her husband hadn’t really killed anybody, but it hurt her to know that he thought of her collection as a joke. She pulled off the lid and checked each remnant of food.

When she was a little girl, her mother had given her a misshapen, dried lima bean with miniscule marks carved into it. “Look,” her mother said. “It looks just like you.” And it did: the straight mouth and long nose, the small eyes too close together. “We find ourselves in the strangest places,” her mother said. “It’s one of God’s mysteries. It’s how we know we’re meant to be. It’s how we know we’re loved.”

She wondered who that baby had been, who that pistachio might have represented. She hated her husband for his inability to see or care. His inability to know love. He was still knocking on the door, pleading with her to come out and forgive him. She let him keep on knocking as she climbed out the bedroom window with the food she loved and a newfound determination to find herself in the strangest of places.