Swing Low

by Miriam Toews

  Speaking of babies, there’s one outside my room, directly across from the nursing station. Only in a rural hospital would a psychiatric patient and a premature baby be housed next to one another. They need to watch him very closely. His name is Hercules and he weighs a little less than four pounds, although the nurses tell me he’s gaining weight nicely. My concern for Hercules has made me so nervous that I often stand next to his crib and stare at him for lengthy periods, while I wait for a meal or a visitor or for 9:30, when I make my regular call to the city. Should he be sleeping for this long? I’ll ask the nurses. Yes, Mr. Toews, he’s fine. Should this tube be under his mattress like this? Yes, Mr. Toews, relax. Excuse me, but, uh, Hercules looks uncomfortable. Okay, Mr. Toews, we’ll be right there. Very good, I’ll say, very good. If I’m in my room writing, as I am now, and I hear one of his machines beeping, I’ll jump up and rush over to his crib. We’re on it, Mel, the nurses will say, or, Mel, you’re a little jumpy today.

  Yes, well … there isn’t much to do here. Yesterday I asked one daughter how long I’d been here. About ten days, she answered. Ten days! I said. That’s rather long! There was so much to be done back at the house, I said, the flowers, the yard, the packing. I know, she said, everything’s being taken care of, all you have to do is rest. Don’t worry about a thing, okay? Everything’s going to be okay. I promise. I promise. Then I’d launch into the Where is Mom? Where is Mom? Is she dead? And daughters tell me she isn’t, only resting, only very, very tired. I have vowed to get better. It’s my fault she’s tired, but daughters tell me it’s not, nobody’s to blame. Tell her I love her, I say, and they promise they will. She loves you too, Dad, we all do. Sometimes I think I have spoken to her on the telephone. The girls say, You have! You have! Every morning at 9:30 you talk to her on the phone. She tells you she loves you and you tell her you love her. You ask if she’s getting some rest. Yesterday you talked about baseball. You talk to her! Don’t you remember?

  Well, sometimes. I’ve written it down so that I will remember. Elvira loves me. So do the girls. I love. I love. In hearts, like a schoolboy. The girls say we’ll get through this. The girls say the yard is fine and the income tax is done. The girls say nobody in town blames me. The girls say the car insurance is paid. They say the air conditioner has been fixed. They say we will be together again soon, very soon. That’s another thing I write down a lot. They say we will be together again soon. Sometimes the girls write it down for me, when I can’t, in big block letters on my yellow legal pads. WE LOVE YOU. MOM LOVES YOU. THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT. YOU ARE A GOOD FATHER. WE ARE PROUD OF YOU. PLEASE TRY TO REST. PLEASE DON’T WORRY. YOU’LL BE TOGETHER WITH MOM SOON. PLEASE BELIEVE US. WE LOVE YOU AND ALWAYS WILL.

  Yesterday my daughter shouted in the hallway outside my room: When will he be seen by a psychiatrist? Shouldn’t he be transferred to a psychiatric hospital? He’s told you he wants to be helped! When will he get it?

  I am absolutely mortified to hear this and I am worried that Hercules will be woken up by the shouting and that my brother will hear it too and be embarrassed. When I hear my daughters discussing my situation I try not to listen. Often, to distract myself from the goings-on in the hallway outside my room, I focus on the objects in my room.

  I have several of what the nurses call my personal effects with me. A painting, by my granddaughter, of a red sailboat, yellow sails, blue sky, entitled “Summer Memories.” There is one tiny figure on the deck of the boat. I’ve stuck it on my dresser mirror, under the tiny clasps that keep the glass secured. I also have a book of poetry given to me by Elvira before I was hospitalized. The poet was one of my first students, a man now more than fifty years old with grown children of his own. I have a lovely handmade glass vase with several yellow tulips in it, on the windowsill, and two very large Snickers bars on my bedside table.

  I also have tracts, given to me by various visitors, and a Bible and a devotional book on Corinthians and a brochure advertising a new housing development on the edge of town. On one of my walks, after the wander guard was removed, I stopped in at the model home they use as an office and picked one up, for no reason whatsoever. I show it to my visitors from time to time, hoping to divert the conversation away from me, and often my visitors will indulge me and we’ll chat, awkwardly, about the pros and cons of another housing development such as the one described in the brochure.

  I took what they call a kitchen test the other day. I’m not sure why. The results? Patient is able to make toast but is unable to remember how to operate a can opener. A secret: I’ve never known how to operate a can opener. You gasp, it’s shocking, I know. I lied to the kitchen testers. I took advantage of my forgetfulness and told them that operating a can opener was simply another thing I’d forgotten how to do. Oh, the subversive pleasure I, as an elementary school teacher, got from lying on my kitchen test … I have told a few other white lies during my stay in the hospital, it seemed simpler. How are you, Mel? Fine, fine. Be sure to say hello to Jake for me. Is he still enjoying his work at the printer’s? Oh, for sure, Mel, he misses you coming in with the Class News. Wonders when your next project will be ready. Oh, I’m working on it, Mrs. H., I am, I just need a little time.

  I can’t remember what Jake looks like. I suspect Mrs. H. is irritated with me, I miss Elvira. I don’t want to open cans of tomato soup. I don’t want to borrow ten dollars from my daughter, I don’t want an old man’s haircut at the personal care home, and I don’t want to have to ask for clean underwear. My driver’s licence has been taken from me, my belongings are packed away in boxes. I don’t have another project, Mrs. H.

  My students and I published newspapers every year. Roving reporters investigating the birth of a litter of kittens at the Penner farm, Jason’s second broken arm in less than eight weeks, a trip to B.C., a family wedding, the death of a beloved pet, all the comings and goings of my group of eleven- and twelve-year-olds. The Class News. Stacks of paper arranged around the ping-pong table, I’d collate them all night long, around and around the ping-pong table, my tie tucked in between the buttons of my shirt, my sleeves rolled up, my family asleep upstairs, oblivious, thousands of copies to be delivered through town the next morning, eagerly anticipating the expression on my students’ faces when they would see their words, their lives, in print! It was marvellous! To create a permanent written document bearing witness to real life, better than a thousand photographs, it was out of this world.

  My senses were activated by the words describing the events rather than by the events themselves. I put a lot of stock in words, in written words.

  three

  Have just received my medication in a tiny paper cup. The nurse stands beside me until I take it. I swallow, smile, hand her the cup, and she says, Good.

  Nothing I see is familiar and the parts of my body are strange, as though they belong to somebody else. My brain is stuck and every last ounce of energy I have is trying to get it out of its rut like a car stuck in snow. Forward, reverse, forward, reverse. How to explain the process of putting the pieces of my brain together: as though I’m attempting to walk down a street and various limbs, arms and legs, continue to drop off my body. I’m getting nowhere. Certain memories run through my mind on an endless tape loop, over and over and over. When I was a boy I had my tonsils removed. I was put under with chloroform and I dreamt I was somersaulting through the walls of the hospital. I still recall the feeling. It remains the most vivid dream of my entire life. Over and over and over, like this, and through. What a feeling.

  When I was a boy I spent a great deal of time sitting in a homemade airplane in a blue shed behind the J.R. Friesen garage. On one of the airplane’s wings were painted the letters CFAMV. I played with the control panel, and when it crashed in a neighbour’s field I wasn’t in it, but I was sure my fiddling with the buttons had made it crash and kill the man who was. I asked God to forgive me for killing the pilot and to wash away my sins with Jesus’ blood.

  When I was a boy I worked for my dad, taking
care of chickens and sometimes having to kill them. I tried to convince myself that they deserved to die, that they were bad chickens, sinners, and that I was doing the right thing. I was once so unbelievably young.

  I nodded to a tall older man in my room just now and he nodded back. Then I noticed that I was staring at my reflection in the mirror, just beneath “Summer Memories.” Excruciating! Is there a doctor in the house?! (Answer: Yes, but you baffle him. He prefers problems he can see. Am beginning to understand why.)

  Daughter says to doctor in hallway outside room: This is the second time my father has been in this hospital without receiving any type of care whatsoever. Where is the psychiatrist?

  Answer: He retired this afternoon.

  Daughter: This is a farce! Why won’t you transfer him to the city? To a hospital with a psychiatric ward?

  Answer: We think he might be ready to go home.

  Daughter: Home! There’s nobody at home! How can you let him go home after what happened?

  Answer: Where is your mother? (Excellent question. I listen very closely after this.)

  Daughter: In the city! She’s exhausted, she can’t take care of him anymore without help or she’ll die, literally! He won’t eat! He won’t talk! He won’t wash!

  Answer: He talks here, some. He eats. He washes. He gets dressed. He’s very cooperative, actually, very pleasant. Your father’s an intelligent man. Perhaps you underestimate him.

  Daughter: Because he wants to go home, that’s why he’s —

  Answer: Then perhaps he should.

  Daughter cries. Doctor must carry on with his rounds. Will stop in on his way back. Why? shouts daughter. For what? One daughter shushes other daughter. They will soon come into my room with their lies and their smiles and their hugs and kisses. We’ll write things down together in big block letters (I haven’t the heart to tell them I’m not blind) and I hope they don’t leave too soon. One of my daughters has been wearing the same outfit now for several days, in fact it’s been almost two weeks. Cut-off jeans, a blue tank top with a greenish flowered blouse over it. This morning I asked her if she had much trouble deciding what to wear and she said, Why? You don’t like it? She didn’t get my joke, and I answered, Oh no, I like it very much.

  I’ve heard a noise. There’s a child in the hallway, apparently. It sounds as though a ball is being thrown against my door. Thump, thump, ka-thump. Now it’s stopped. Now it’s started again. Stopped. Started. The child is young and the ball gets away from him. He retrieves it and begins to throw it against my door again. He loses it, it rolls a little down the hall, he runs after it and brings it back … thump, thump. How will I write with all this racket going on?

  Now I’ve lost the image of the child outside my door, but I can still hear the ball bouncing. The image has been replaced with another, it’s a boy shooting baskets in the driveway! I know him!

  I’ve just had visitors, my sister, Diana, and her husband. When they came in, authoritatively and all smiles, I said: Where’s your basketball? (This sort of thing does NOT help my case.)

  A woman has come into my room with more tracts and has asked me if I would be interested in crafts.

  What sort of crafts? I asked. I failed the kitchen test, you know.

  Kitchen table crafts, she said. We have lots of fun with oh, Popsicle sticks, doilies, pipe cleaners …

  Before she could finish I applied catatonic gaze, willing her to leave, which she did but only after telling me crafts would do me good.

  Where were we? Well, let me begin again as a boy. I delivered the messages to the neighbours when I was three years old.

  My brain is still stuck. I meant to write about myself as a boy but … reverse, forward, reverse, forward, reverse … flooded. So, I’ve been looking out my window for hours at my late brother-in-law’s home. In one spectacularly lucid moment a day or eight ago I remembered every detail of the obituary I had written for him while he lay dying years ago in this very hospital. I would rush to his bedside after work and pull up a chair while he added to and amended the details from our discussion of his obituary the day before. He always wanted it to be longer. He told me there were three things he’d like to do before he left this world: drive his company’s cement truck one more time, have one more game of tennis, and make love to his wife.

  You know, I told the nurse after my shower, when I was a child I dreamt I somersaulted through the hospital walls.

  Did you really? she asked me.

  I really dreamt it, yes, I answered. To this day it remains a vivid memory, as though it happened just yesterday.

  There we go, Mr. T., we don’t want you getting lost.

  The funny thing is, I said, I feel that I already am.

  Oh, that is funny, she agreed. Try to have a little rest.

  My desk is littered with notes to myself, my file reads. I saw my file when the nurse put her clipboard down on my bedside table while she removed the dressings from my feet. I object to the use of that word “littered.” Were they implying that these notes were worthless? That they belonged in the waste paper basket?

  Why, then, when they don’t want to listen to me, do they allude to my writing as garbage? When I speak I irritate and when I write I litter? How would they prefer I express myself? I wonder. With Popsicle sticks? I could have talked to myself, I suppose, but why raise another thousand eyebrows? It is interesting that I have used the word “myself” three times in the last two paragraphs and have no idea what it means anymore. (What does one do with pipe cleaners?)

  By now it is quite dark outside. A light rain is falling. I smell lilacs. Or I smell something that reminds me of lilacs and of my hometown in May (this is my hometown in May) and especially the walk down First Street and then up William and finally across Main to the school. Every spring my desk was swamped with lilacs. Children brought me jam jars and ice cream pails and plastic honey tubs, whatever empty containers they could get their hands on, filled with lilacs, until I began running out of space for them and I’d have to beg the children to stop.

  I like to imagine that the teacher has left the room inside my brain and every last neuron is out of its seat and acting up. I will walk in and ask them to take their seats, and miraculously they will.

  Does it matter? Not everything does matter so much after all. When I was a young man I vacillated wildly between thinking everything mattered, that every word, every action, every task was important, to thinking that nothing at all mattered, that everything was futile. I had a gambler’s mentality, all or nothing. Just as I appeared close to achieving normalcy and balance to a point where I could say Life is Good, I would notice myself cracking under the pressure of its goodness. Is this the sort of thing my doctor wants to hear? Should I ring my bell and have the nurse run in here so I can tell her that sometimes I think things matter and sometimes I think they don’t? What does a ham have to do around here to get cured?

  Keep writing. I had intended to review my life as a movie but I can see now that it’s not fitting nicely into that format. It has all the structure of a bamboo hut in a hurricane and I must apologize for this lack of cohesion. A series of jerky stills, courtesy of my renegade mind, will have to do. Just wait for the inevitable upside-down slide in the carousel. Why don’t you run downstairs and make yourselves some popcorn while I repair the reel. Oh, but there we go, I imagine you running and the image creates a tiny spark. I remember now.

  When I was a boy I loved to run. One day I was out running all over town, through people’s yards and up and down back lanes and empty streets, when I happened to come across an apple pie cooling on the wide wooden railing of Mr. and Mrs. I.Q. Unger’s back porch. I was about nine and I should have known better, but I decided to take the pie and run. I had visions of myself enjoying a huge feast for one somewhere in the bush outside of town. I turned around to make sure I hadn’t been followed and there, peering out from behind an old shed in the yard, was my little brother, the one I mentioned earlier, the one who replaced my dea
d sister, the one who stole my mother’s heart.

  What are you doing? he asked me, in Low German.

  Nothing, I said, go away.

  You’re supposed to come home now, he said, you’re supposed to stop all this running and come home.

  I looked back at my pie. It was a perfect pie, light beige strips of dough criss-crossed on the top, bubbles of baked apple oozing through the tiny squares, columns of steam rising up from it.

  Get lost, I said quietly, again in Low German.

  My brother stepped out from behind the shed and slowly took aim at me with a homemade slingshot. I laughed.

  Come with me right now or I’ll shoot this thing, he said in a menacing voice.

  Ha ha, I said, hoping the people inside the house wouldn’t hear us.

  My brother took a few steps towards me and said, I mean it, I’ll shoot you. I could see the ugly little rock he had placed up against the elastic, holding it between his finger and thumb. He was only four or five years old.

  I smiled at him and made a face. He came closer. I didn’t move. Finally he was only a few steps away from me and still he kept coming closer, pointing that homemade slingshot at my face and telling me to come home. Right now, he said, over and over again in a whisper. Right now.

  I stepped backwards. He came closer. I took another step backwards, towards my pie, and another step, hoping, in one fluid motion, to grab the pie, leap over the porch railing, and avoid getting shot by my brother.

  At this point he was so close to me I could have reached out and grabbed the slingshot, but my brother had it cocked and ready to fire. All he had to do was let go. I took one more step backwards, thinking that it would buy me another second or two to formulate my plan, but that’s when the plan died.