She

by Shireen Jeejeebhoy

chapter eleven

  VEXATION IS HEAVY, TIME TO SHOP

  SHE’S LYING ON the couch, having her post-breakfast nap, staring at the television, when a loud rap rap rap on the door startles her over the sound of Marilyn Denis laughing on CityLine. She turns her head toward the sound. Rap rap rap. She stirs herself, puts her feet in her slippers, pushes herself up to standing, and stumbles to the door. She looks out the window next to it to see her grandmother standing there, puffing steam. She ponders this unexpected sight. Rap rap rap rap rap. She jumps, reaches forward, and opens the door enough to see out. And stares.

  “Don’t stand there. Let me in.”

  She opens the door wider and steps to the side to make room. Her grandmother steps in with a faint scent of lavender, takes the door out of her hand, and closes it with a snap. She takes off her hat, places it on top of the coat rack, unbuttons her coat, shrugs herself out of it, and hooks it on one of the empty rack hooks. Her grandmother stares at her speculatively for a moment before straightening her wool skirt and barking, “Your fiancé called last week and informed me that he was leaving you. He said it was time for me to deal with your dirty breakfast dishes and half-drunk coffee mugs all over the house. He said you were my granddaughter, you were my responsibility, not his.”

  She shifts her weight, chews her lip, puts her hands behind her, then in front, then crosses them.

  Her grandmother rolls her eyes and barks, “Well, come on,” and marches into the living room. She follows and watches as her grandmother takes a look around and sees the papers on the coffee table, the dirty dishes, the spotted glasses, the Kleenex box on the floor next to the couch. Her grandmother sees the blanket tossed to the side over the flattened cushions and smushed throw pillows. Her grandmother marches to the dining room and sees the avalanche of paper thrown up against and almost covering the phone on the desk, the pencils and pens higgledy-piggledy on top and poking out from underneath. She glances down and sees a couple on the floor. Her grandmother turns and looks at the solid wood dining table covered in more newspapers, a half-open book laying upside down to mark the page, more dirty dishes, pill bottles, vitamin bottles, and a threesome of mugs. Her grandmother steps toward the table and peeks into the mugs. Coffee. Then she steps toward the kitchen and sees a full sink of dishes, food detritus on the counter, and a fridge wallpapered in magnets. Wordlessly, her grandmother steps back into the living room and piles up the dirty dishes before picking them up in one hand and the glasses up with the fingers of her other hand and forges back into the kitchen. She doesn’t follow her grandmother back.

  She’s cold all of a sudden and plops back onto the couch. She pulls the blanket up onto her lap and lies down, hearing the clatter of dishes and glasses being washed in the sink before being slammed into the dishwasher. She hears the dishwasher gurgle as it takes in water and the tap being turned on. She guesses her grandmother is now scrubbing the counter and will soon be cleaning the table. Sure enough, she hears newspapers rustling, papers being straightened, books being shut, pens being gathered up and dropped into the pen holder. Her grandmother determinedly comes back into her view and repeats the tidying process with the papers on the coffee table, plus she plumps the cushions that she can get at. Finally, she sits down in the armchair opposite and contemplates her granddaughter.

  “You don’t look well.”

  What can she say to that?

  “There’s nothing to be had by prevaricating. I got your email. I must say I was a bit skeptical. You people don’t know what hardship is. And you always were prone to blowing the smallest cold out of proportion. It was that father of yours, always indulging you. So I waited for you to snap out of it. But you didn’t. So I called a neurologist friend of mine. He talked CT scans and cracked skulls. I told him that wasn’t what you were talking about. He was quite a waste of my time. He was not familiar with this Akaesman thing, he claimed. I didn’t blame him though. Sounded like hocus pocus to me too,” she waves her hand. “But he finally admitted he had heard of your … your condition and said it was a mild thing. If you could name the Prime Minister of the day, had good reflexes, and knew your alphabet and your name, you were fine. Well, I thought that was as pathetic as your email. There are plenty of conditions where people can do that yet be sick. I didn’t practice medicine all those years and not know that. So I did some research. It took me some time, I must admit. I did this because you’re my granddaughter. I would not have spent all this effort on just anyone. Do you know how difficult it is to find someone knowledgeable about this Akaesman, who is willing to talk about it? Impossible! But I persisted,” here she pauses and wags her finger at her, “and I hope you remember what I told you about persistence and perspiration.”

  She repeats in her head as her grandmother adds after another pause: “success is ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration.”

  Her grandmother sits back, satisfied. Then leans forward again to continue, “Well I discovered that you were right after all. You’re lying there because he’s feeding on your energy and leaving none for you. Did you know that?”

  She simply looks at her grandmother while her grandmother glares at her for a few minutes.

  “Well, of course you did. I must say I’m disappointed in Jim. I never expected him to be the kind who left just because things got a little tough. He had no business leaving you in the lurch like that.”

  “And speaking to me like that,” she thought but did not dare say out loud to Grandmother.

  “He may have been only your fiancé, but in my world, that’s as good as being married, and he had obligations to you. Clearly, he was weak and selfish. Well, a good thing you found out now. You don’t need a moral coward for a husband. I know a good family lawyer. He’ll make sure you can keep the house. He won’t allow Jim to try to claim half of it for himself. He can use spousal support as leverage against him.”

  “But … but, I’m not married,” she says, trying to follow her grandmother’s logic. “And the house is my inheritance f-f-from my parents.”

  “You’re common law. Were. Common law. Under Ontario law that’s as good as married. He has obligations to you, and you need to educate yourself about them. Men are very good at doing that for themselves. Women waste too much time sniffling, and by the time they’re done and ready to seek good legal advice, the man has absconded with everything.”

  “I’m not sniffling,” she states.

  Her grandmother stops and regards her, “No, you’re not.” She frowns, “Why not? Well, that doesn’t matter. You’ll keep the house. As for that other thing, that Akaesman thing, I don’t know any doctors or lawyers to help you with that. My family lawyer isn’t familiar with anyone either. I expect you have one of those kinds of lawyers, or maybe one of your doctors can help you find one if you don’t. You don’t need my help that way anyway. So. What are we going to do with you? Clearly, you can’t look after yourself. Look at you!”

  They stare at each other. Smokey peeks in from round the corner and swiftly pads upstairs.

  “It’s no good you pretending you don’t need my help. You and I both know you do, however distasteful that is.”

  That jolts the fury to on. She lurches up and leans forward aggressively, “Distasteful? Distasteful! How dare you say that! You’re my family. You’re the only family I got. You’re supposed to help me! You went on and on when I was growing up about how family is the only one you can count on when in trouble, how that’s why you took me in, but since the invasion you haven’t once visited me. You didn’t even respond when I asked you to come to TARC with me when they said they needed family to be involved.”

  “I responded.”

  “Oh yeah, that short email,” she snorts. “I don’t call that a response. That was a brush off! Jim said you didn’t get it, that he wasn’t getting any help from anybody. And now after he leaves — after he leaves,” she shrieks, “you march in and decide to help. And then you say distasteful? How dare you? I wouldn’t ask for your hel
p unless you were the last person on earth!”

  They glare at each other.

  Abruptly, she falls back against the couch, fury vamoosed. “You are the last person on earth. I, I have no one else to ask but you. I didn’t ask you because … because I’m tired, I’m tired of rejection. That’s all I s-s-see wherever I turn.”

  “You want me to feel sorry for you?”

  “No!” she screams, rising up.

  “Then stop complaining.”

  “I’m not complaining! I’m stating the truth! You don’t like it, too fucking bad. You think the only people entitled to be sick are your patients. Well I’m sick too!”

  They stare angrily at each other.

  Her grandmother opens her mouth to speak, but she interrupts, “Yeah, you thought you’d got rid of me forever. But Jim had other ideas when he took me to where he knew … he knew … Akaesman was. I don’t know how he knew. But he changed after that camping trip. He complained of being tired. He was pissed off all the time. He took me there, and Akaesman made other plans for my life, and nobody asked me what I wanted. Nobody, nobody asked me,” she screams. “I didn’t want this! I didn’t ask for it! Everybody acts like I did.” Her voice breaks; she wails and cannot stop. She hides her face behind her hands for minutes. But then the wails stop. Sniffing hard, she yanks a Kleenex out of its box and blows her nose as noisily as she can.

  Her grandmother breaks the atmosphere. “Well. You need my help. I will give it. Don’t say I don’t do my duty. I spoke to an OT about what I can expect, so it wasn’t all a surprise. What I see here is you need someone to clean your house and keep it tidy. Didn’t the Shadow Court supply you with a homemaker?”

  “No. Yes.… No.”

  “Well, which is it girl?” she exclaims impatiently.

  “They were s-s-supposed to, the lawyer s-s-said. But they, they, they,” she finally spits the word out. “Didn’t.”

  She harrumphs, “I’m not shocked; the OT said something along those lines. I’ll set you up with someone competent. I happen to know of a very good worker who needs some employment. I’ll send her to you.”

  “With, with Jim gone, I … I have to cut back expenses. I’m not earning. My trust fund is all going to treatments. After that … all I have are RRSPs,” she relates in a monotone.

  “I’ll pay for her. I’ll also take you grocery shopping. Clearly, if you can’t keep your house clean, and from the looks of things, you can’t even cook yourself a proper dinner, you can’t shop on your own. I’ll make up a meal plan, something nutritious. I’ll expect you to cook it. The worker will do the meal prep for you. Understood?”

  She nods. There is no point fighting her on this, for she’s spent decades instructing her patients on proper nutrition until they gave up and followed her orders. Grandmother could always tell when her patients hadn’t obeyed her.

  “Good. I’ll take you shopping today. You have nothing worth eating in your house. Certainly that Jim of yours didn’t have an idea about good nutrition. Go get dressed. I can’t take you in that.”

  She looks down at her drooping sweatpants and sweatshirt.

  “I’ll wait.” They eyeball each other, she not wanting to move, wanting to lie down. Her grandmother equally determined not to move until she is dressed and ready to be dragged out to the grocery store. She surrenders, slowly stands up, leaning on the arm of the couch until she stops teetering, and slowly, slowly climbs the stairs up to her bedroom. She stands in front of the shelves, trying to decide what to wear. Her eyes become fixed, unblinking. She can hear her grandmother moving around downstairs, she can hear the cat snoring on her bed, she can see the shelves in front of her, she can smell the remnants of toast char from that morning’s breakfast. She cannot blink. She cannot move. Her eyes dry. The air scratches them. She hears and sees, feels and smells. But cannot move. Cannot speak. Cannot blink.

  Something lets go in her head. Regaining control over her eyelid muscles, she forces them down until they shut. They spring back open, and she once again can move and contemplate what to wear. Something comfortable, something that won’t pull at her shoulders or squeeze her expanding arms, and most of all, something that won’t make her elegant grandmother huff. Ten minutes later, she’s dressed. Ten minutes after that, she’s sitting in her grandmother’s gleaming silver-grey car, hot and exhausted. She leans her head back and doesn’t pay attention to where they’re going.

  She opens her eyes to see them being swallowed up by the entrance to an underground parking garage.

  “Where are we?”

  “Whole Foods.”

  “I can’t afford this!”

  “I can. You’re going to get better and that begins with good nutrition.”

  “I can get good nutrition at the low-price st-st-store.”

  “We’re shopping here,” she says as the car humps over a dinky speed bump. She reaches for a ticket from the machine.

  “No, but …”

  “No buts. We’re going here. You’re going to eat good quality, organic fresh vegetables and fruit. They have pre-cut veg, fresh-washed salad, prepared fruit. That’ll make it easy for you to eat it.”

  She boggles at the thought of the cost of such luxury.

  Her grandmother drives down another ramp. She stops at the bottom, turns left, and then moves the car forward slowly until she sees the right spot. She’d forgotten how picky Grandmother is about parking spots. How irritating.

  They get out simultaneously and slam their doors together. The garage has that faint carbon dioxide smell. Music blares from a lit-up car wash area near where they enter open sliding glass doors to the parking garage elevators. It’s a short ride up to where the elevator ejects them in front of a kitchen store. They turn right and right again to walk past flowers and wine to where the shopping carts are stationed. Her grandmother pulls one out of the line and heads straight for that fruit she was talking about. She follows dutifully, her senses overwhelmed by the neat, geometric piles of natural colours — red, yellow, green — the smells of fruit and cheese and fresh fish, the cacophony of voices and shopping carts echoing off the hard, warm-coloured surfaces. She barely notices what her grandmother is putting into the cart as she follows her out of the produce section and into the aisles of bulk foods and teas, dairy and cereals, frozen vegetables, and milk and cheese. While her grandmother looks over the low-fat cheese area, she stares at the bars of olives and antipasto, follows her nose to the drums of heaped-up glistening coffee beans, turns around to stare at the Christmas goodies piled up round a column.

  “Come on,” her grandmother calls as she zips past her into the lit-up area which used to be the Hazelton Lanes skating rink but now houses the cash registers. As she stands next to the conveyor belt laden with food, she looks up through the arching glass roof to see the endless November-grey sky.

  She hears her grandmother’s voice calling her and starts. She scurries after her back to the elevator. As her grandmother pushes the cart to the car and she strives to keep up, her grandmother says, “We’ll do this every Wednesday from now on. I’m free on Wednesdays. That worker I was telling you about can come on Fridays.”

  “Um, but, but Fridays I go to TARC.”

  “All day?”

  “Well no, but …”

  “What time do you go?”

  “One.”

  “Then I’ll send her to be at your place for nine. She should be able to do your laundry, clean the kitchen and bathrooms, and do meal prep in four hours. You can give her a key to lock up.”

  “Nine is too early!”

  “Nine is not early. The early bird gets the worm.”

  “That’s because the early bird sleeps through the night,” she grumbles to herself. But she’s the one who needs help; she has to take what she can get. Grandmother has stormed into her life with help. Any help is good, even if it’s not on her schedule, her routine — even though it will tire her.

  She climbs into the front passenger side of the car and leans
back against the seat, closing her eyes, while her grandmother puts the groceries in the trunk and slams it shut. The gentle bounce of the car presages a rough storm about to hit.

  ~~~*~~~