by Miriam Toews
I took her hand and said Elf, I have a plan.
FOURTEEN
MY AUNT’S SURGERY IS OVER. So is her life. At first everything was going well, very well, and then even after the surgery everything was looking good. The doctor came out to meet us all and pulled off his mask and smiled and shook our hands and said he was happy with the way things had gone in there. But then her organs started to fail one by one and even though the doctors and nurses attempted to save her they failed too and in the end we lost Tina.
We sat on chairs in the waiting room, our heads in our hands, we were in a row, staring at the floor. We’d thought it was a slam dunk. We cried quietly. We whispered. Our platoon had taken another unexpected hit and Uncle Frank couldn’t speak at all. We forgot about his insulin shot. Sheila told us that lately Tina had been calling him while she was in Winnipeg to remind him. My mother had lost her last sibling, her closest sister. She stood up and left the room and I stepped into the hallway after her and saw her lean her forehead against the concrete wall.
The nurses in Cardiology gave Sheila a plastic bag that said Property of Ste. Odile Hospital on it. Aunt Tina’s fuzzy slippers and sudoku book and Kathy Reichs’ novel and glasses and toothbrush and moisturizer and purple fleecy track suit and slinky black camisole and high-top white Reeboks were in the bag.
We had a family meeting right there on the spot. Sheila would take her dad home to my mom’s apartment in a cab to make phone calls and to figure out how to get Tina’s body back to Vancouver. I would go tell Elf what had happened and then go get more groceries and especially more coffee, something very bold from the Black Pearl my mother specified, no more of this Starbucks stuff. My mom would take Nic’s car and go to the funeral home way down on Main Street to talk to her pal Hermann, another Mennonite, and see what he could do for them in terms of an urn and cremation.
I sat on a bench by the Assiniboine River and e-mailed Nic from my BlackBerry. I told him that in five or six days my mom and I would be going to Vancouver for Tina’s funeral and could he make arrangements to come home from Spain earlier so Elf wouldn’t be alone. I phoned my kids and told them what had happened and they were silent on the phone, incredulous. I could hear their non-stop music playing in the background. I waited for them to be able to speak. And then we said goodbye. Suddenly the skies became dark purple with flashes of light and the wind picked up and made waves on the river. It was a typical prairie storm, angry with the dryness it had been forced to endure, and everyone around me ran to take cover from the hail. I crawled under the bench and lay there, very still, and listened to the giant balls of ice pummel the wood above me. I saw gum and graffiti, even there, on the underside of the bench. Initials and hearts and curses. I thought about my aunt and my mother sliding unscathed under that massive semi truck on their bikes, coming up on the other side laughing and breathless. It must have felt amazing.
Now I’m learning something. Go into hard things quickly, eagerly, then retreat. It’s the same for thinking, writing and life. It’s true what Jason said about cleaning a septic tank. My aunt came to Winnipeg to be with my mom, to help her, except then she died. My mother sat in moonlight on her balcony writing a eulogy for her sister. The city was spread out in the soft darkness, calm after the big thunder and hail storm, still moist and warm like a woman very satisfied in love. My mother was often asked to write eulogies because she had a breezy style that was playful, good with details and totally knife-in-the-heart devastating. I made food, a big pot of pasta, and then after dinner I went for a walk with Sheila and we sat on the curb outside my mom’s apartment block together while she talked on the phone with her sister who was back in Vancouver waiting for the sad delivery of her mother’s ashes. What can I say? said Sheila on the phone. What can I say? We finally went back inside and my mother listened to Sheila talking about Tina for quite a long time and then at midnight Sheila went into her bedroom. I knocked on her door and offered her some more of the chocolates. She took them and I hugged her and said good night, schlope schein, the way her mother used to do and she hugged me and we both cried and I brought her more Kleenex from the other bedroom. I found my mother out on her balcony and suggested she go to sleep. She said no, she needed to write a few things down. She wouldn’t mind being alone for a while.
Is this almost too much? I asked her. Almost, she smiled. I left her alone to write the eulogy.
I went back inside and found my uncle Frank sitting by himself on the couch in the living room in the dark. I hadn’t seen Uncle Frank cry before. He told me Tina was older than he was in years but much younger in her soul.
Is that true? I asked him. You married an older woman?
Well, I had to, he said. Before I could get him to explain what he meant by that he told me that Tina died fast the way she did everything and we both agreed that that’s the way we wanted to go too. Lingering is the worst, said Uncle Frank. Your grandfather, Tina and Lottie’s father, lay in a bed for nine years. Before that he was the most rip-roaring chap I’d ever known. He was his own man. Then he had that stroke. He lay in bed so long that his arm fused onto the side of his torso. The skin grew together, it didn’t know what else to do, and he was stuck that way.
Really?
Really! he said. Thankfully your mother pulled the plug when she did. Well, not literally pulled the plug, but one day she just decided to let him die.
What?
We were all taking turns suctioning him—his lungs, I mean. Your mom, Tina, all the kids and their various spouses. It was the end. He was finally dying. His lungs were filling up and we were all doing shifts, suctioning. Do you know what that is?
Well, not really. But I can imagine.
Nine years in bed and before that oh, the energy of that man, the life in him. Yoma! (Plautdietsch expression loosely translated to “Damn!”) It was your mom’s turn to be with him and it was just the two of them. It was late. He said Helena, Helena, that was his dead wife’s name, your grandmother, I’m coming, I’m coming—
Wait—what? He thought he saw grandma?
Yes. Not thought. He did see her! So your mom made an executive decision, that’s like her eh? These Loewen girls are spark plugs. She didn’t suction him. She was a nurse then, she’d been trained. She could have done it of course but she decided not to. His lungs filled up with fluid and she held his hand and said the things we say in times like that and let him go. Best thing she could have done for him. Hard, Yoli (he said something in Plautdietsch looking up at the ceiling, a reverie, a memory), but still.
My uncle was such a big guy. He sat on my mom’s flowered couch and cried for his tiny lion-hearted Tina, his spark plug, and I sat next to him with my hand on his leg.
My mother and I were on a plane. Before we left I talked with Elf. She didn’t talk at all. I told her things would be okay, truly, that I needed her, that I understood her, that I loved her, that I’d miss her, that I’d be back for her, that being together in Toronto for a while would be amazing, that Nora was really looking forward to it too, that I understood that just because she didn’t want to live didn’t mean that she necessarily wanted to die it’s just that that’s sort of how that one goes, that she wanted to die the way she’d lived, with grace and dignity, that I needed her to be patient, to fight a little longer, to hold on, to know she was loved, to know I wanted to help her, that I would help her, that I needed to do some stuff, that mom and I had to go to Aunt Tina’s funeral in Vancouver, that I’d be back, that she’d stay with me in Toronto for a while, a total break, that Nic was here now, back in Winnipeg, that he’d see her every day, that I had to go, that I had to know she’d be okay while I was gone, that I would bow down before her suffering with compassion, that she could control her life, that I understood that pain is sometimes psychic, not only physical, that she wanted nothing more than to end it and to sleep forever, that for her life was over but that for me it was still ongoing and that an aspect of it was trying to save her, that the notion of saving her was one
that we didn’t agree on, that I was willing to do whatever she wanted me to do but only if it was absolutely true that there were no other doors to find, to push against or storm because if there were I’d break every bone in my body running up against that fucking door repeatedly, over and over and over and over. Will you eat something? I asked. Will you talk?
She put her arms up like a baby waking up from nap time and wanting to be held and I fell into them and bawled.
On the way out of the psych ward I stopped at the nurses’ desk. I put my hands on the counter, palms up like I was ready to have them nailed to the Formica. Then I begged. Please, I said, don’t let her go. The nurses, two of them in sky-blue uniforms and ponytails, swivelled around from their computers and looked at me. Please don’t let her go, I said again.
Sorry, said the nurse closer to me. Let who go?
My sister, I said. Elfrieda Von Riesen.
Why would we let her go? said the nurse. Is she due to be discharged?
No, I said. She’s not. I’m asking you please don’t believe her if she tells you she’s fine because she’ll be very convincing and you’ll think okay, let’s free up a bed, let’s let this one go, but I’m asking you to please not do that.
Sorry, said the nurse. You are?
I’m her sister!
Oh right, said the nurse. You mentioned that. She looked at her files. The other nurse didn’t look away from her computer screen. Why would we let her go? said the nurse again. Did her doctor tell her she’d be leaving?
No, I said. I was gripping the counter like the guy on the cliff in Deliverance. No, he didn’t. I’m just trying to get reassurance. I’m worried that you will let her go because she will ask to be let go and she will seem very normal, very sane.
I guess that’s for the doctor to decide, said the nurse.
Okay, I said, but the thing is she wants to die and if you let her go I’m afraid she’ll kill herself even if she tells you in a very convincing way that she won’t kill herself. I could feel my heart throbbing. I was mumbling now, looking down, dribbling words onto the front of my shirt, nobody could really hear me and they strained to make out what I was saying.
Sorry, I beg your pardon? said the nurse. I think the doctor will be the one to determine whether she’s okay to leave.
Just then Janice came around the corner from the rec room and our eyes met and I said oh, Janice! Janice! I’m just asking for Elf not to be let go while I’m gone. I’ll be back to take her home with me to Toronto for a few weeks or months and I’m just asking that—
I was coughing, I couldn’t speak. Janice was holding a guitar. She laid it on the counter and came to where I was standing. She put her hand on one of mine. She looked me squarely in the eye.
Don’t worry, she said, the way she is, and considering what she’s been through, there’s no way we’re letting her go home any time soon and certainly not without a plan in place. We don’t know what that will be yet, a long-term facility or ongoing outpatient visits to psychiatry, but we promise we won’t let her go home until we have follow-up care in place.
Okay, I said. Okay. I touched the guitar, its smooth golden surface.
Yoli, she said, I think it’s a great idea for Elf to go to Toronto for a while. I thanked her and she let go of my hand and it wasn’t completely like falling from a high ledge.
I fell asleep and woke up flying through blue skies past soft white clouds, my mother’s head on my shoulder, my bag open and spilling its contents all over my lap. I felt my forehead, a thin layer of sweat. Everything was oozing out of my body now, blood, sweat and tears, like a fire sale, everything had to go, even all the junk in my bag was bursting out like nothing I had or was could contain another thing. My mom woke up and for a while stared straight ahead. Then she said huh, and turned to look at me for a second like she was trying to remember where she was and who I was. And I thought, oh stay this way, don’t remember. Stay this way. But she snapped out of her post-nap fogginess and said hey Yoli, sometimes we just have to be brave, that’s it. One time when my mother was a social worker for Children’s Aid she had to apprehend a baby from its meth-head sixteen-year-old mother. The girl attacked my mom in her office and broke my mom’s glasses so they left a deep cut on the bridge of her nose and the jagged scar still shines white against her summer tan. I stroked the little scar and my mother took my hand away from her nose and held it in her own.
I agree, mom. But how brave, exactly? I asked.
Well, said my mom, at least as brave as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
So mom …
Yes, Yolandi? She smiled and put her head closer to mine so she could hear me speak.
I think it would be really great if Elf came to stay with me in Toronto for a while when she gets out of the hospital.
Oh! said my mom. Well!
I’ll be at home all the time and Nora will be there a lot. It’ll be a different scene for her. No pressure. It’s worth a try, right? I could rent a piano for her if she wants to play and we could even get a boat or something.
A boat? said my mom.
Because I live by the lake. We could get a small rowboat and go out on the lake if we wanted to.
We were quiet for a while thinking and listening to two teenage girls in the row behind us having a conversation about school and their volleyball team and boys and rashes and then we heard another voice, an older woman who sounded drunk, saying: listen, I will give you two kids one hundred dollars … each … if you can finish this flight without ever saying the word like again. The girls stopped talking and the woman said deal? The girls said, like, each of us? And all of us within earshot of this smiled at each other. Then a man in the aisle began to complain that somebody’s kid had bit him in the ass when he’d stood up to get something from the overhead bin. It was true, I’d seen it, a three-year-old was marching up and down the aisles, bored out of her mind, and suddenly came face to ass with the guy and just opened her mouth wide, chomp, and the guy screamed, he hadn’t known what had hit/bit him and the little girl stood there with her arms folded across her chest while her mother apologized profusely in a posh British accent, ordering the kid to say she was sorry. I won’t, insisted the little girl, also with a lovely accent, and the mother said you will and the girl said I won’t, you will, I won’t. Finally the guy whom she’d bitten said it really wasn’t a big deal, just a big surprise that’s all, and let’s be done with it. But the mother was relentless, kept insisting that her kid apologize, you will, you absolutely will, until a whole bunch of people from seats 14A to 26C all yelled out she won’t!
That sounds wonderful, Yoli, my mom was saying. What does Elf think about it?
She wants to do it, I said. I’m going to get Nora’s room ready for her. Nora’s totally fine sleeping on the futon in the living room. I’ll be at home anyway trying to finish this book. We’ll walk and eat and sleep. We’ll do whatever Elf wants to do. It’s worth a try, right?
I like the idea of the boat, said my mother. And Nicolas? You’ve talked to him about it?
Not yet but I’m sure he’ll be okay with it, I said. I mean he’ll miss her, obviously, but it won’t be forever.
But are you sure you’re up to it? said my mom. We don’t know what Elfie will do. Ever.
I know, I said, but what difference does that make? Either way, if she’s here or in Toronto with me, we’ll worry anyway. So maybe a change will be the best thing? The tour is off now so she doesn’t have to think about it. Or anything.
Well. My mom sounded unsure. It could be a good thing, couldn’t it?
After the funeral we all sat around in the big dining room of the church, eating ham and cheese sandwiches and reminiscing about Tina. Uncle Frank sat hunched over, his face very close to whoever was talking, intense, nodding, not wanting to miss a word. If he could absorb every single sentence uttered about his beloved mercurial wife, store every word and syllable somewhere deep within his body, then maybe he could keep her for a little longer. I loved the
way he listened as though his life depended on it.
The funeral had been held in a Mennonite church so the usual squad of perpetual disapprovers (they don’t take breaks, not even for funerals) stood huddled in one corner, occasionally firing glances at the rest of us but we were used to their negative juju and tried never to let their gaze meet ours. As we entered the sanctuary before the funeral service my mother sighed and breathed oh Lord to the backs of a hundred black-suited men who were already seated on their side and I knew what she meant. Don’t engage, I whispered in her ear, and she squeezed my hand as we walked to the front of the women’s side with our family. Violence is eternal. It changes shape and gets in like water. What’s a pacifist supposed to do with eternal violence if it can’t be volleyed back directly at the enemy? We sang hymns in four-part harmony. Uncle Frank was in the front pew on the men’s side and while we were singing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” he swung around and gave my mother and me two thumbs up, which we returned.
After the funeral, in the dining room, I overheard snippets of a conversation my mother was having with my cousin Hans: she came to Winnipeg to help me and then she died! Earlier, before the funeral, some of my cousins and I went to Leni’s grave. It said Safe In The Arms Of Jesus on her tombstone. My aunt’s ashes would be buried just a bit down the hill and slightly to the north of Leni. The cemetery is small and green and old and reminds me of the cemetery in East Village where my grandparents, Helena and Cornelius, are buried, and behind them, in a neat row, the little graves of six of their babies. Of the sixteen kids that Helena gave birth to only ten made it to adulthood. I wondered how that worked, Helena’s grief. If, at the end of the day, after all her chores were done and the evening was softening things a bit and she had a minute or two to cry or think, I wondered if she knew exactly who or what she was crying or thinking about, and if it even mattered. I wondered if my grandmother had ever said to my grandfather, honey, no, not tonight, we already have fourteen or maybe fifteen, I’ve lost track, and of those fourteen or fifteen, sweetheart, I have buried six and I’m more tired than all the world. And now her Tina’s gone as well and her Lottie is the last one standing, and fighting off armies of her own. So it goes.
