OCR Text |
Show Moon - 210 of your bed. In it were patches of urine. The tube made me irrationally furious, a rage magnified by my knowledge of how Td neglected you. How dare they violate your body like that! Who did they think they were, treating you like someone hopeless, someone from whose body the fluids must be coaxed, forced, like you were some catatonic or some dying old man? Didn't they trust you to do it right? I would complain, I would protest. I would get you out of there. "Please untie me," you said. "Yes." That would be a way to begin. It was time for me to start helping you. The knot in the sheet was tight, but I managed it. As soon as your bond was loosened, you tumbled forward like a doll, and if I hadn't been quick, you'd have crumpled to the floor. I sat you back up. You grinned at me as if we'd just shared a joke. "Sorry, Mom," I said, "but I've got to put this around you again." I stuffed the pillows around you, struggled with getting the knot the way it had been, felt the fragile hollows between your ribs, the knobs of your elbows. "It isn't because they don't want you to go anywhere," I said, "but it's just to protect you, keep you from falling." I said this to explain the impossible, which was that I was tying my own mother to a chair. "It's all right, Dear. I'm glad you've come. Happy birthday." Because I was behind you I could let my face screw up tight like a child's before I rearranged it into a smile. I would not cry in front of you. I'm sorry. I don't understand why I thought showing my feelings would be wrong, except that all you have to fall back on at these times are what you've seen in the movies, and in the movies everyone plumps up pillows and smiles bravely right |