The Minutes
I was sitting in my car that was parked in my mother’s driveway, well what used to be the driveway. Smoking a cigarette and wondering why my Mother had let the house go down so badly... and when had it happened.. Lots of things change in sixteen years and the ivy and kudzu grow fast and thick and you could spend a lifetime beating it back with a spoon...
My Mama was dying of liver failure and cancer and down here death is a social occasion. People you do not remember bring you food that no one eats.. You can wake up to find a neighbor hand washing your bras and panties or unpacking your suitcase for you.. Some come for no reason than to look upon the dying and grab a muffin out of the big basket some business in town sent over... Some call at all hours whispering ‘is she still alright?’ You say ‘yes’ but really want to say “no, she is dying” but you don’t..
Miss Cornelia from the dress shop in town called me today and told me she was bringing over some dresses in case I did not have anything suitable for ‘Well, you know’... Yes, I know... She also wanted to know if she should bring anything for my mama to wear for “well, you know”, and went on to remark how much weight Mama had lost and under the conditions she looked better than she had in years... I told her I had to go change Mama and hung up…
My Mama had vehemently protested having a nurse to come full time and given her temperament I doubt any would have stayed.. Mother had the hospice lady in tears within three minutes of the woman stepping through the door.. Everyone pretended the cancer had gone to her brain and said things like “wasn’t it just pitiful how it had altered her.”.. The truth was, she was always mean and her tongue was always ready with a sharp word. She was no Mellie Wilkes suffering death’s final indignities with a saintly glow...Mama’s dying was as much a exorcism as it was a release... Chas, my stepfather had decided we could handle it and it is what Mama would have wanted, but I knew he just didn’t want people in town to talk about Mama’s being altered especially the part about Mama’s altered state leading her to have these outbursts about Chas fucking his secretary.
My Aunt Laurette arrives this morning, they had not spoken in years but the grapevine is the grapevine and she was there to ‘see about her sister’. She made a few half hearted swipes at the kitchen counter with a paper towel and then announced she was exhausted from the drive and she needed a nap and did I think Mamma would mind her borrowing a morphine patch on account of her knees. And maybe a drink… Her nerves were slap torn out of the frame and she was worried about her blood pressure. I told her to take the guestroom and I would move my things upstairs into the loft...
Chas decides today that we can’t let the vegetables in garden just lay out there and rot.. He needs to run down by the funeral home and talk to Jimmy Hoskins about making some arrangements, he did not figure it was gonna be much longer and there was some bushel baskets stacked in the barn, and don’t forget to take the baby monitor with me when I was in the garden picking and I had his cell phone number and to call him if she…
I spent the better part of the afternoon sitting between the tomatoes and the crookneck squash smoking the last of the bud I had brought from the west coast and listening over the baby monitor to Aunt Laurette read Mama something out of a Reader’s Digest.
Mama was having a bad night and I ended up having to give her a few drops of Jack Daniels off the end of a spoon and phenerghan suppository before she would finally quiet down... There was no point going back to bed now so I went ahead and stripped the corn and got it ready to freeze. Chas came in and asked me if I wouldn’t mind breading that okra before I froze it, Mama always liked it that way the best and use the pint bags instead of the quarts now. He picked out a casket he said, white and gold and he thought Mama would have loved it… I told him I would ask Miss Cornelia if she had something to match it... He was gonna run on out to the farm, he needed to check on that new bull... call him if something happens..
My baby sisters Danielle and Marguerite showed up just in time for Mama to pull her catheter out and fling it around the room, slinging that rusty brown urine that smells like meat that has gone over, sweetish and sick... Laurette said I should call and see if I could get somebody over here to clean up this mess, if that pee stays in the drapes they are gonna be ruined and always stink and I better spray them with some Lysol or something... We had to hold Mama down to get the catheter back in although I still don’t know why we bothered... It was there when I got there and Peggy Morten the home health nurse came and showed me how to catheterize Mama and take care of it with some betadine solution. Mama hated Peggy but Peggy came around once every two days like it was some kind of penance.
D and M spent a good deal of time in the loft smoking my roaches and trying on my shoes. Aunt Laurette was going to have a quiet day in bed on account of her nerves being so tore up so I went ahead and called Carl over at the pharmacy and told him we needed another box of morphine patches, on second thought better make it two... I sat in the den for awhile and watched the birds fly into the big plate glass windows.
Another bad night and Aunt Laurette lay in the bed with Mama, they were wearing matching morphine patches and looking at Jay Leno on the TV. I was in the den reading some shit on the internet… The baby monitor was sitting on the desk and I could hear the harsh rasp of my mother’s breath and Laurette murmuring something to Jay…
D and M came downstairs and we all went back into Mama’s bedroom, looked at her and walked out to stand in the kitchen and agree that it was going to be soon. M said she would call who needed to be called and D said she was gonna go back on over to Daddy’s and Sharla’s to get in Shar’s tanning bed, to call them if ‘well, you know’.
Got seven new casseroles today, and they all had little stickers on the pyrex indicating the contents were made with love from someone’s kitchen; Macaroni Pie, Veg- all casserole, some kind of Bisque thing and the rest were all Frito pies... The flowers had stopped trickling in... People that sent flowers when she first got sick were waiting till she died to send anymore and the folks that did not send flowers when she was sick were waiting to send them when she died. Chas wanted to know if I was keeping up with the cards so I could write thank you notes… I was... In the big green cloth envelope Jimmy Hoskins had given him with the funeral arrangements. He wondered if we needed to call Tommy Snell and get him to sing “Rock of Ages’ or something at the service. Asked me if I had seen Laurette and if I knew what happened to that box of Snackwells Johnny and Claudia had brought over…
Miss Cornelia came and I got a plain black sheath for the funeral and two challis dresses for the other... D and M got in a fight over what Mama was going to wear and Laurette ended up picking out a pale cream spring weight suit with a gold silk chemise in a size 2 and the mortician could just take the back up to fit her... Miss Cornelia asked if we needed shoes and I had no idea... I had never thought about people being buried in shoes really... I said I guessed so...
I heated up a plate of Frito pie and got a beer and went to sit on the deck... D and M were back in Mama’s room with her trying to find some underwear to bury her in and going through her make up. Chas and Laurette were in the kitchen arguing about that silver Mama had loaned Laurette that never got returned.
Mama had been in some type of coma for a day or so and no longer required anything of any of us. We took turns sitting in the bedroom watching Mama, watching her struggle for a breath and exhale it, holding our breath until she took another breath... Just when you thought your head would explode she would gasp and her chest would rise. We were all standing in there when she died… She just never took another breath... Laurette broke first and I heard her gasp... then Chas and finally D and M... I held out the longest... I inhaled and felt slightly foolish for giving in to the superstitions of death... We waited and looked at each other and at Mama... No one was saying a word. M broke the silence by wailing and running out of the room and D followed her... Laurette looked at Chas and said “well it is near one ‘o ‘clock, you reckon Jimmy will come out and get her tonight?” Chas said yeah but we needed to fix her up first... I bathed her with a Estee Lauder "Beautiful" gift set somebody had given her when she first got sick and dressed her in the new nightgown and robe set someone had sent... I had to crawl in bed with her and get behind her to put her top plate back in her mouth. Mama had busted out most of her top teeth when she was 27.. Water skiing and she bit the end of a Dick Pope Jr. She was always real bitter about that too... Chas told me I better hurry before the rigor set in and Mama would never forgive me if I let her be buried without her teeth...
I covered her face up with the sheet and Chas uncovered her. Laurette covered her and M uncovered her… I heard Blue barking and saw Jimmy Hoskins coming across the dam and around the pond with the hearse. We sat in the living room while Jimmy and some fella’ that said he went to school with me put Mama on the gurney and tried to figure out a way to get the gurney through that tight doorway... They finally ended up leaving the gurney in the hallway and lifting Mama up and carrying her to the hall... D and M had dug out a bag of tea lights and styrofoam cake plates and were floating the candles across the pond... Jimmy and that fella’ I went to school with loaded Mama in the car and I felt Chas wince when they shut the back door on the hearse... Chas told Jimmy he would be by in the morning with the stuff we wanted Mama to wear and that he had not been able to get up with the preacher yet…
D and M were humming Amazing Grace and had just sent the second bag of tea lights to congregate in the west corner of the pond. Chas stood on the end of the deck and in the yellow haze of the sodium light I could see him clenching his fists and rocking almost imperceptibly on his toes... He looked up at me and I could see the faint sheen of tears in his eyes and he said “well that’s that, I guess” and he was going in the house to call his brother and did I think it was to late to call over at the nursing home and tell Granny Maman... He hollered out to D and M that they were going to have to pick all that candle mess up in the morning, a lot of company was going to be coming over to pay respects… I said I was coming in too; it had turned off a little cold.
Laurette was standing in the kitchen eating a piece of sour cream pound cake Mrs. Denard had dropped off and looking through Mama’s wallet... It had been sitting up on the counter since Mama got so sick... She had found PaPa’s driver’s license behind Mama’s... “ I did not know Therese had this” she said.. Chas said ‘keep it Laurette, that man ruined your sister’. Laurette dropped the license in the pocket of her housecoat and picked up another slice of poundcake... She asked for some milk but I told her it was most likely spoiled by now but she could look…
I asked D and M if they were staying here tonight or going back over to Daddy’s and they said they were leaving but would be back early in the morning… I told Chas and Laurette goodnight and Chas looked at me and said; “I just know she was glad you were here”. I said “I reckon”… then he said “she never was the same after you left you know, she always wanted to say she was sorry but you know how your Mama was”. I asked him when she dropped out of AA and he said he said it had been a good little while ago, you know how your Mama was. I told him I was setting the alarm for 8 and was that early enough? He thought it was...
I heard Laurette crying and blowing her nose in the bedroom below and Chas close the door to the dining room where he had been sleeping since Mama got so sick... Blue made his once around the house and I watched the candles flicker out in the west corner of the pond… and guessed that was it then... We were quits now, me and her….I sat on the edge of the pullout sofa and smoked a stale Benson and Hedges I took out of her pocketbook. I blew some smoke rings and punctured them with the glowing tip of the cigarette, crushed it out in the rubber tree the lady at the Poss Ace had sent and set the alarm.. I fell asleep thinking about her, when she was beautiful and how graceful her hands were and how fast they would reach out to slap you for something or sometimes just to touch your hair... and her standing where all that kudzu is now, hollering at me on the day I left and how I never looked back at her…
