A Funny Kind of Paradise Page 3

  Gayla. Of course. How could I have forgotten?

  It must be hard giving her bowel care.

  Too right. I’ve started giving it to her in the afternoon, because we’ve got a little more time, we’re not in such a rush, and I can bring a chair and sit right next to her, keep her on the toilet. I give her the suppository, wait twenty minutes, and then I bring her in and I just stay with her until she goes. Pray it works, because she won’t sit, and she won’t push.

  Does she go on her own?

  Mmm, maybe sometimes. It’s hard to know because she’s all over the place, you know, walking into other people’s rooms, or sometimes she’ll use the garbage can, that kind of thing. We have to check her before we supp her. You can tell when she’s stopped up…I mean, first of all there’s nothing to her, she’s all bones, so when her belly gets distended it really shows, and second, she gets pretty agitated when she hasn’t gone for a while. I mean, wouldn’t you?

  * * *

  Not so long ago, I would have been scornful of the transformation of the noun “suppository” into a verb (so slangy!), but now I just nod soberly. I look back with nostalgia to those days when I thought of constipation as I did yellow fever or typhoid: something that happens far away to other people. But no, that’s wrong, because in the past, I took my bowels for granted, so why would I trouble myself to ever think of anyone else’s? In this world, however, where limited mobility and a lack of fibre make moving the bowels a feat rather than an unremarkable fact, I get liquid laxative daily in my tube-feed, an extra dose the day before “bowel care,” a suppository every four days, and if that doesn’t work, I get a Fleet, which, my dear Anna, is the brand name for an enema. It has ruined the expression “fleet of foot” for me forever. But I am lucky. So far I have never required “disimpaction”—and yes, that means exactly what you think it does.

  The aides record the products of our bowels in a binder kept for that sole purpose with a religious fervour that I found entertaining until someone messed up my bowel record and I got “missed.” I can now infer that if a bowel obstruction is anything like a week of constipation, it must be a very painful way to die, and henceforth I keep my own private calendar on my over-the-bed table to mark with big black Xs.

  * * *

  Things We Don’t Want to Know.

  Makes me think of Angelina.

  We’d come to the diner for waffles before swimming lessons one Saturday morning. It was raining hard and the restaurant was quiet.

  Chris and Ang had eaten and were sitting together at one of your booths, and you and I were sitting across from them at another. Chris had his drawings of an imaginary world spread over the table and he was letting Angelina add bits and pieces to both the picture and the story. He was very fair, and so earnest, so serious, explaining like a little professor. Angelina was his opposite, so dark, wisps of hair escaping her braids and floating around her head. Even in a quiet moment, she sparked like tinder. They were so beautiful, my two children. Chris was seven, so Angelina would have been four years old, too small to see sitting down, really. She climbed up on her knees to lean over the table, crayon in hand, her rubber boots dripping muck onto the vinyl seat.

  “Angelina, take your boots off the seat, you’re making a mess,” I said without thinking, hearing my own mama’s harsh voice coming out of my mouth as I spoke.

  Angelina ignored me.

  Chris looked up from his picture and met your eye, a warning, and you set down your coffee cup, unfolded your legs and crossed the aisle. You always moved smoothly, graceful even in the old sweater you’d thrown on over your apron when you sat down with me.

  “Here, my liefje,” you said, slipping Angelina’s little boots from her feet and mopping up the dirty meltwater with a paper napkin. Angelina permitted it, relaxed, shifting her weight from knee to knee for you without taking her eyes off what Chris was doing.

  “She should learn to do as she’s told,” I said.

  “Did you do as you were told, as a child?” you asked.

  I laughed, remembering growing up with Enrica. Mama and I came together like bucks with massive racks of antlers; our clashes left us lurching backwards, until the force of our collisions finally sent me flying across the country as far away from small-town Ontario as I could get. That was how I saw it at the time.

  Now, I imagined myself and Mama and my daughter as belonging to a band of fighters. It was the first time I’d thought of conflict as a tradition, one that would carry on into the next generation.

  “We are strong women, in my family,” I said proudly. “Angelina is just like me.”

  You looked at me speculatively. “Have you had her hearing checked?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with her hearing.” Dismissive.

  In fact, neither Ang nor I had trouble with our hearing. But it takes time to hear what you don’t want to hear. And see what you don’t want to see.

  * * *

  I have no photograph of this day that we spent together, Anna, and there’s no special reason why I should remember it. But I do, and it’s become a place I go to in my head when I’m alone and need comfort.

  Christian must have been about eight—his hair was just beginning to darken from flaxen to honey—so Angelina would have been about five. We had taken them to the beach with our buckets and shovels, juice boxes and chips, and a Thermos of coffee for us. The kids were making a sandcastle. Chris had strategized—he’d dug a big moat and was keeping Angelina in happy, constructive motion running back and forth to fetch water. This bought him time to do the detail work on his tower. You and I were making desultory conversation about the girls in your diner, my business, your father’s prognosis and how unlikely it was that you’d go back home to the Netherlands to visit him before he died.

  “Why should I?” you said calmly. “He was a very nasty man.” And I laughed.

  The sun was warm; the children seemed to brown like buns before our eyes. It was a perfect day. Rare and precious.

  Even now, I think of the sound of the ocean lapping the shore, and that cinnamon warmth lulls me to sleep.

  But that was when the kids were very small. The older Angelina got, the more uncontrollable she became.

  Another memory surfaces, from about the same time.

  Ang was doing half days in kindergarten. I picked her up in the van because I wanted to get groceries on the way home. In the store, she ran up the aisles ahead of me, and when I caught up with her, she was eating fistfuls of sugary cereal right out of the box.

  “Angelina, you’re old enough to know better! We don’t buy cereal,” I said in frustration. “It’s expensive and it’s not good for you. Give me that!” I seized the box with one hand and, with the other, I grabbed her arm roughly, twisting her whole body towards me; the sight of the crumbs around her mouth inflamed me and my voice rose. “You ask before you open something, do you hear me? I have to pay for this now.”

  “That’s okay, I can eat it,” she sassed.

  “You’re not funny, Angelina,” I said.

  “You never buy anything good,” she wailed. In a temper, she reached for the cereal and we tussled, spilling little crunchy nubbins everywhere. I held the box aloft and Angelina jumped for it, missed, turned angrily and began swiping boxes off the shelves onto the floor, crying noisily, until in desperation I abandoned my shopping. Leaving Angelina’s mess on the ground and securing my daughter by her arm, I dragged her to the till, paid for the half-empty box of cereal and dropped it in the garbage on the way out of the store while Angelina screamed like a tortured cat.

  “You’ve made us late, and now what are we going to have for supper?” I yelled, once I had her strapped in the minivan with the doors on child lock.

  “I don’t care,” she screamed. “You’re just mean!”

  She was impulsive, she was belligerent, she was jealous of any attention I gave to Chri
s. He was showing me the poster he’d made for a grade five science fair project when Angelina crashed through the door, hollering “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall.” It was her favourite song that month.

  Seeing Chris and me leaning into each other, Angelina crossed the kitchen in one bound.

  “Let me see!” she squealed, grapping the poster so roughly that it tore.

  “Angelina, for heaven’s sake, look what you’ve done!”

  “It’s just a stupid old poster,” she said, defiant.

  “Your brother put a lot of work into that!”

  “Your brother put a lot of work into that!”

  “Angelina, that’s rude. And inconsiderate. Apologize to your brother!”

  But Christian was gone, taking his poster with him, while Ang and I raged at each other, oblivious to his disappearance.

  Why should I remember in such detail this relatively innocuous thing when there were so many more dramatic disasters? The images come quickly now, indistinctly: Angelina lighting the Christmas tree on fire, Angelina throwing a bowl of tomato soup at the kitchen wall, Angelina swearing at me when she got caught shoplifting in grade four.

  I never managed to figure out what was going to set her off. She was so angry. I couldn’t control her.

  * * *

  From the start, Angelina had trouble at school. I dreaded report cards and parent-teacher interviews. “Angelina does not follow directions. Angelina has problems concentrating and sitting still. Difficult to engage. Fidgets. Lacks insight into consequences. Disruptive. Angelina is a real troublemaker.” As for socialization, while Ang seemed to get along with the other first graders, if there was trouble on the playground, Ang was sure to be at the heart of it. That stupid old bat of a teacher didn’t have a good word to say about my daughter, and I wanted to take her teeth out for her with a hockey stick.

  Chris was such an easy child. Angelina came as a shock.

  You used to close the diner on Sundays in the winter; one bleak afternoon you took Chris shopping for a coat and then for milkshakes. Angelina had been eating sugar with a spoon straight out of the bowl; after telling her three times not to, I punished her by making her stay home with me. By the time you and Chris got back, it felt like Ang and I had been fighting for hours.

  “If you’d listened to me…” I nagged while I put coffee on.

  “Look, Chris, here is the game I was telling you that we played when I was little,” you said. Chris started; you winked. You had told him nothing, you were fishing for Angelina. Chris played along.

  “We learned English like this,” you said, and began a two-person clapping game. “A sailor went to sea, sea, sea…” Angelina’s attention focused and she watched, wide-eyed.

  “Let me try!”

  “You play with your mother,” you said, and Ang and I began to clap hands together.

  Anna, you taught us more and more complicated clapping patterns. We played for a long time that night, laughing as we made mistakes.

  Angelina would ask to play until I wished that there was a machine that could do it for me. She loved it. The repetition seemed to calm her down, de-escalate our conflicts.

  It wasn’t a long-term solution, but it helped for a while.

  * * *

  Now it is my turn to be washed, apparently, because here comes Molly, looking slightly grimmer than she did before, with her Gayla trailing behind. She stoops, grabs my wash basin from the bottom shelf of the side table with her right hand, and gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze with her left at the same time.

  Okay, Frannie here is a straightforward “total care” except for the tube-feed, but I’m gonna show you how to get her up even though she’s connected, because we can’t touch Calvin until ten thirty; he’ll bite my head off.

  How do you mean?

  Oh, he’s one of those obsessive compulsive types, you get that a lot. Even people who weren’t OCD before get to be that way in here—they’ve lost so much control, they get fixated on the little things…You’re a bit like that, aren’t you, Frannie?

  At which point, though indignant to be compared in any small way to that arse, Calvin, I am obliged by honesty to nod.

  Calvin’s got his little routine. Get in there at ten thirty on the dot and follow the cheat sheet on the inside of his locker door, and he’s absolutely sweet and easy, but if you’re early or late or you don’t follow the routine, he bitches and he’s nasty and he’ll make you put his socks on sixteen times because there’s a thread catching on his little toenail, or some such. Two choices, you can go in there like a bulldozer and tell him “This is how it’s gonna be,” which is good for him from time to time. Or you can follow the routine. Either way, you gotta walk in there with confidence and draw the line, as soon as possible. Say, “Okay, Calvin, I’m willing to try to comb your hair three times, but if that doesn’t do it, you’re not the only sheep in the heap.”

  Molly looks over at Gayla, assessing her comprehension, and readjusts her instructions.

  Gently tell him, “You aren’t the only resident I have to get up today.” Okay. Now, Frannie here…

  Molly doesn’t stand still and talk. She’s filled the basin and placed it on the side table with the lotion, the soap and my toothbrush in a kidney bowl. While she was lecturing, she opened my locker and held out a loathsome green dress, knowing full well that if I reject the first offer, I’ll relent on the second, and I know what kind of a day Molly is having because the second choice is also a dress. I still have some nice clothes, and normally Molly would take the time to put me in them but the one-piece dresses (split down the back, donated to the hospital when someone died and discreetly redistributed by the aides) are the fastest thing to put on and they’re polyester, so they last forever. Clearly Molly is behind in her work. I wonder if she’ll have time to do my teeth. Teeth are always the first corner to be cut.

  Okay, the tube-feed is done, which is good, because she’s had a chance to digest for a bit. In a pinch, we can pause the machine to wash her up, but it makes her kinda queasy to roll her back and forth right in the middle of a feed, plus, I can’t roll her unless the bed is flat, and there’s always a risk she’s gonna upchuck and choke. What I’m trying to say is do your best to get in here when the feed is off, and even better if you can give her ten or twenty minutes after it’s done. Now I could call the nurse to disconnect the tube, but I’m not gonna take the time to do that.

  Can’t you just disconnect the tube?

  Well, of course I can, but I’m not supposed to, so I’m not gonna. Plus I’ll show you how to work around it.

  Molly dips the cloth in the water and washes my face, looking over to see if Gayla has the initiative to figure out she should already have a towel in her hand for the I’ll wash, you dry routine. A little sigh, just a puff of air, escapes Molly’s lips as she reaches to the bottom of the bed and tosses Gayla a towel.

  Frannie is a classic left-side stroke…right-side paralysis, language loss, cautious behaviour. I’m sure you got all that in school. Fun and games, right, Frannie?

  She spares a smile for me while she whips off the blankets with one hand, spreads a towel over my body with the other, and while she’s down at the end of the bed, she pulls on my socks. Molly doesn’t like to waste a movement. The right hand reaches into the water while the left is holding up my arm to get well into the pit.

  Some aides like the discreet little wipe with a damp cloth, but Molly likes a sloppy splashy wash that leaves the incontinence pads under me soaking. I never quite feel dry when she washes me. On the other hand, I do feel clean. Little rivers are running over my ribs.

  Be super careful cleaning around the gastrotube opening. It looks pretty good today, but sometimes it gets quite red and sore; you can let the LPN know and she’ll slap some Polysporin on. There’s a package of clean gauze in her drawer here—I wrap one around the opening to keep
the plastic off her skin. I change that every day.

  Molly dries her hands on the towel quickly before reaching into her pocket and drawing out a pair of gloves. The water runs between my legs, and Gayla barely has a chance to give me a perfunctory dab with the towel before Molly grabs the slider sheet with both hands and gives me a quick tug, flipping me on my side. The institutional towels are rough; propelled by Molly’s strong arms, they exfoliate the top layer of skin exquisitely. Heaven.

  Okay, now set up so that you only have to roll her once. Flip the pad in half, so the sling doesn’t get wet when she rolls back; fold the sling in half and centre it, then scrunch the right half under. Same with the disposable. If you tuck that side under really good, you won’t have to roll her; the right side will come through. I’m gonna put a hospital gown on and the dress over that. Now I’m bringing the tube along the side here…I’m just gonna let the fabric bunch up a bit, but I’m still gonna tuck that over her hip so you don’t have any skin showing when she’s up. Okay, Frannie. Come back.

  Gayla gives a little tug and over I go, facing Molly. She’s got her cloth ready, and this time she’s wrung it out.

  I want to wash this side, because she was lying on it, and that’s where you get that lingering smell of urine, on that offside hip. I know in school they teach you to put that side railing down to protect your back, but if I keep the bar up, Frannie can hold on for me while I pull everything through, there, see. Now I’ve got her centred on the disposable and the sling. So go ahead and put that gown and dress on her right arm, and I’ll give a little pull so we can tuck it properly behind her; that’s right. Do up the disposable and Bob’s your uncle.