I miss Shalini.
Well you’re not going to school today.
But today’s Friday. That means I won’t see her until Monday.
Don’t whine. You need to get me in bed and catch some sleep if you can. You still have a lot of work ahead of you.
Shalini is the best friend I’ve ever had. Not like other friends.
I don’t care about Shalini. By this time next year, you’ll have forgotten all about her. Or it could be next week. Focus. You’re Sheri now. You’re going to learn what exhaustion is, and despair.
I’ll never forget Shalini.
Yeah, whatever. You’re twelve. Everything is so important in your life right now. Real life-and-death stuff, the world holding its breath. Now drag me to bed.
I was so angry, but she had the power to make me never see Shalini again and never see my grandfather again. She had the power to do anything. She could have decided we were moving to some other part of the country. Or she could have just vanished forever. So I hunched over and pulled her to the bedroom.
I’m not due at work until Monday morning, she said. All of today and then three more nights. That’s how long it could be. You might want to become a faster learner.
No Shalini, no school, no aquarium, no Grandpa. All taken away. My back had tightened up, stiff as I dragged. And then we were at the bedside and I hauled her off the ground and we fell onto the mattress.
Sleep, she said. Sleep while you can. Forget where you are and forget the mountain of days. Each one enormous, lost in some forest that never ends, but then the edge will fold back and you’ll walk on what was the sky and is now only another forest floor, another layer, and you can feel the weight of hundreds of these layers above you. Like an ant climbing tunnel after tunnel in darkness and the mountain never ends. Think of that. More than a thousand days, each one never ending.
My mother facedown in her pillow, yawning now, falling into sleep. She had never left that mountain of days. Her mother had died, but that hadn’t been the end of the forest. I wanted more than anything to free her.
~ ~ ~
Sheri. I was confused at first, but then I knew my mother was calling me. Sheri. I struggled awake and could smell urine again, and more. The awful, overpowering smell of shit right here in the bed with us.
Ah! I gasped. I thought I might vomit.
Clean me up, Sheri. Letting your mother die in her own shit, like an animal.
Stop this!
I wish I could. I wish I could stop dying, believe me. I wish you could die instead. The cancer came from you.
You’re crazy! I screamed. I was out of the bed already, running out of the room.
You will come back here and clean this.
I opened the front door and went outside in my underwear. Still snowing. Everything blanketed, only the sides of buildings showing, and thin tracks in the road. The piles of traffic barriers still orange. I gulped in the fresh, cold air and my bare feet ached already. I could run, just run to every neighbor and see if anyone would take me in.
Sheri! I don’t want to smell this. This is vile. What have you done?
My skin tightening, all heat already gone. My body thin and pale, flushing pink. It seemed a long way down to my feet. A body such an unlikely thing, the shape of it and how fragile it was, exposed.
I marched into the bathroom and wrapped each hand in toilet paper, then I went to my mother and pulled back the top sheet. She had rolled over onto it, mashed all against her backside. My mouth opened to retch, but I held it back. I grabbed two handfuls with my toilet paper mitts, wiping, and carried them to the toilet, flushed, and wrapped again.
I tried not to touch, but I had to get in between her legs, and there was the angle with the sheet, and the toilet paper too thin.
Don’t be so rough, my mother said. You’re hurting me.
So I tried to be gentle as I wiped the backs of her thighs and butt and crotch and the sheet, and nothing was clean, and the smell was no less.
Baby wipes, my mother said. Baby wipes and then baby powder. You need to buy those things or my skin will get a rash.
I couldn’t answer. I was still trying not to throw up, keeping my mouth closed. I grabbed a small hand towel and soaked it in warm water, then wrung it out. I wiped her with this and she complained.
It hurts. Damn it, Sheri. You’re tearing off my skin.
But I ignored her, washed out the towel at the sink, unbelievably nasty, something I never thought I’d have to see, all over my bare hands, and then returned to wipe again until she was clean. I pulled off the corners of the sheet, rolled her gently to the side, and wrapped it in a ball.
You do this a hundred times, she said. Imagine that. A hundred times, no less. The shit soaks into the mattress. You can’t get the smell out. You use bleach and soap and shampoo, and you even try gasoline once. There are two beds, so at first you just flip her mattress. Then you use both sides of yours. But that’s only the beginning. It happens so many more times. If you had money, you could buy adult diapers, but you don’t have any money. So you try making diapers from towels, but there’s no elastic, so it all spills out the sides. Almost always diarrhea. A brown lumpy drool with bits of red in it, sometimes blood. And the smell is sulfur. Not like my shit now. This is nothing. This is healthy. But when someone is sick, that sulfur smell, the smell of gunpowder or rotten eggs, that smell is everywhere, and that’s what soaked into the mattresses, the smell of sickness and death.
I’m sorry, I said.
Just understand. I slept in that smell for years, but my bed should have been kept separate. I should have been kept safe. That’s what he didn’t do, keep me safe. I don’t know how to say it any more clearly.
I understand. And he should have been there. He shouldn’t have left.
Good, Caitlin. Good.
There’s nothing he can ever do to make it up to you.
Yes. That’s right.
You suffered something no one should have to suffer.
Yes.
And you lost everything, and it can’t be returned, and your life will never be what it should have been.
My mother sat up. Caitlin. I’m proud of you. That’s good.
And she died without her husband. He committed a crime.
Yes.
And he can never make that better for her, because she’s gone.
Yes.
He’s a monster. He’s unforgivable. He should be hated. He should have nothing, and he should die alone.
Caitlin. Yes. My mother looked excited, as if we had discovered something, as if we were going on an adventure.
But he’s still my grandpa.
My mother slumped back down into her pillow. I stood and waited, but she said nothing. Aren’t you going to scream at me? I asked.
Gray light of day in the room. My mother’s back almost the same color as the white mattress, lying in her bed nineteen years ago, when she was me. I waited.
The clock said almost one p.m. I’ll fix lunch, I said.
I dumped the sheets in the washer with the others and used all the highest settings, poured in bleach as well as detergent. It would be a shitshake, and I’d have to wash a couple more times, I was sure. I mixed a bucket of bleach and water and took another small towel and wiped at the spot on the bed while my mother remained silent. I didn’t sniff-test the mattress when I was done. And I could smell my mother. She wasn’t quite clean.
I’ll run you a bath.
No response, but I went to the tub and was careful to get the temperature right. I poured in some shampoo.
In the kitchen, I looked for something fast, found cans of chili. I could fight her. I knew I was strong enough. I could last until Monday morning. I opened both cans and shook them into the pot, put it on low.