Trash_ Stories - Dorothy Allison [98]
I looked up at Mavis, and she shook her head at me. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what I mean. You been on this road a long time. You know what’s coming, and your mother needs you to take care of it.”
She pressed a sheaf of forms into my hand. “You go in there and take another good long look at your mother, and then you get these papers done right.”
Later that evening I was holding a damp washrag to my eyes over the little sink in the entry to Mama’s room. I could hear Mama whispering to Jo on the other side of the curtain around the bed.
“What do you think happens after death?” Mama asked. Her voice was hoarse.
I brought the rag down to cover my mouth.
“Oh hell, Mama,” Jo said. “I don’t know.”
“No, tell me.”
There was a long pause. Then Jo gave a harsh sigh and said it again. “Oh hell.” Her chair slid forward on the linoleum floor. “You know what I really think?” Her voice was a careful whisper. “I’ll tell you the truth, Mama. But don’t you laugh. I think you come back as a dog.”
I heard Mama’s indrawn breath.
“I said don’t laugh. I’m telling you what I really believe.”
I lifted my head. Jo sounded so sincere. I could almost feel Mama leaning toward her.
“What I think is, if you were good to the people in your life, well then, you come back as a big dog. And . . .” Jo paused and tapped a finger on the bedframe. “If you were some evil son of a bitch, then you gonna come back some nasty little Pekingese.”
Jo laughed then, a quick bark of a laugh. Mama joined in weakly. Then they were giggling together. “A Pekingese,” Mama said. “Oh yes.”
I put my forehead against the mirror over the sink and listened. It was good to hear. When they settled down, I started to step past the curtain. But then Mama spoke and I paused. Her voice was soft, but firm.
“I just want to go to sleep,” she said. “Just sleep. I never want to wake up again.”
The next morning, Mama could not move her legs. She could barely breathe. There was a pain in her side, she said. Sweat shone on her forehead when she tried to talk. The blisters on her mouth had spread to her chin.
“I’m afraid.” She gripped my hand so tightly I could feel the bones of my fingers rubbing together.
“I know,” I told her. “But I’m here. I won’t go anywhere. I’ll stay right here.”
Jo came in the afternoon. The doctor had already come and gone, leaving Mama’s left arm bound to a plastic frame and that tiny machine pumping more morphine. Mama seemed to be floating, only coming to the surface now and then. Every time her eyes opened, she jerked as if she had just realized she was still alive.
“What did he say?” Jo demanded. I could barely look at her.
“It was a stroke.” I cleared my throat. I spoke carefully, softly. “A little one in the night. He thinks there will be more, lots more. One of them might kill her, but it might not. She might go on a long time. They don’t know.”
I watched Jo’s right hand search her jacket pockets until she found the pack of cigarettes. She put one in her mouth, but didn’t light it. She just looked at me while I looked back at her.
“We have to make some decisions,” I said. Jo nodded.
“I don’t want them to . . .” She lifted her hands and shook them. Her eyes were glittering in the fluorescent lighting. “To hurt her.”
“Yeah.” I nodded gratefully. I could never have fought Jo if she had disagreed with me. “I told them we didn’t want them to do anything.”
“Anything?” Jo’s eyes beamed into mine like searchlights. I nodded again. I pulled out the forms Mavis had given me.
“We’ll have to get Jack to sign these.”
Jo took the papers and looked through them. “Isn’t that the way it always is?” Her voice was sour and strained. The cigarette was still clenched between her teeth. “Isn’t that just the way it always is?”
“Mama’s pissed herself,” Arlene told me when I came back from dinner. I was surprised to see her. Her hair was pushed behind her ears and her face scrubbed clean. She was sponging Mama’s hips and thighs. Mama’s face was red. Her eyes were closed. Arlene’s expression was unreadable.