That Arab Spring
It has been a week since she’s been off dialysis, and, every morning, we expect to wake up and see more and more decline, but nothing. In fact, she’s going the other direction: smiling, eating all the foods she shouldn’t eat. She answers the telephone with a strong and healthy “Yes?” This is not what we expected, not what I flew thousands of miles for.
People from her church come daily and stay too long. They come in gangs of four, five, or six. They bring soups, pies, and cakes. Somebody’s ham has to be moved to the freezer. We bring in the folding chairs from the porch for everybody. After initial hellos and you look goods, they settle down in a neat semicircle in front of her bed to talk county politics, church gossip, a long list of the lives and times of assorted daughters and sons. We serve them coffee, and they eat the cakes and pies they have brought. The church people are good at this. They seem to know exactly what to do, to say, how to say it. How much to joke, or not. My brother says they have had more practice than the rest of us.
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In the late afternoon, Dr. Keyes comes, and we meet him at the door, handshakes all around. While she sleeps, we sit at the kitchen table and drink coffee. He starts by telling us things we already know about her and ends with, “Your mother is peaking now. She is at the top.” Grinning, straightening his tie, “Happens all the time, you know, as if the body can’t believe it either, as if to say, ‘No death here, by God. No sirreee.’” Grinning and rubbing his hands together, “But you know,” his hands opening to show white palms, “you know,” his palms waiting and white until finally my sister has to ask, “What?” He looks at her, and his palms slowly clamp shut. “After the top, there’s nowhere else to go but down.”
Drinking more coffee and unboxing some donuts, we move on to talk about other things: the elementary school killing, riots in Cairo, the county isn’t what it used to be. Before he leaves, he straightens his tie one more time and walks to her bedside. She is awake and happy to see him, and before he can start she asks, “What’s new?”
He finds this very funny, laughing long and loud. He fingers her green tubing, pulls up a chair and says, “Hungry?”
“Always.”
“That’s good.”
“Think so?”
“Sure.”
When he takes her hand, we move back to the kitchen. I stop to look at the wall, at the horse painting that has hung next to the refrigerator ever since I can remember. Brownandwhite horses galloping down a ravine, their nostrils flaring, their manes an angry tangle in the wind. Looking at that painting like I’ve never seen it before, running my fingers over its crusty ridges of paint. On the painting’s horizon, deep in the hills, a wild purple storm is brewing, lightning zigzagging earthward.
I walk Dr. Keyes to his car, and we end up shaking hands twice: once as he is leaving the front door and once again before he gets into his car. As he drives off, he slips on sunglasses and unknots his tie. I wave like he is a relative until his car disappears.
When I return, she is watching nighttime in Cairo. Tahrir Square is full of people. There are flashes of light, sometimes cameras, sometimes not. Ghostly images of rioters. “They’re killing people in Egypt,” she announces. “Some truck just smashed into a crowd of people. Never even slowed down, just plowed into them.” She doesn’t stop to look at us, to see if we are listening, watching, but slowly reaching up to push her green tubing tighter, closer to her nose. Rioters are singing, dancing, chanting, elbowing one another to get in front of the camera. “Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Freedom, yes, yes, Allahu Akbar.” Peace signs all around.
“There’s murder in Cairo,” she whispers.
The three of us talk little about what needs to be discussed. There are expenses and papers to be signed, things to be sold, given away, thrown away. There is small talk in the other room about funeral expenses and insurance and unpaid bills and so on. “Who will pay? When? How?” The talks are short, questions left unanswered. Nobody’s heart is in it. Just something we are supposed to do.