Perfect for Mother's Day: the Baby Be of Use series or The Secret Language of Sleep. - - - - |
The Seven Signs.BY LEONARD KRESS
of imminent death, my sister reads the Xerox sheet the social worker sent. Too late—the kids lunge for the almost fumbled phone, pile on top of the baby. The oldest uses the cord for double Dutch, my shushes and shutups provide the chants. I try to convince my sister there is no chance of reversal, that the deep and glorious sign- off her friends encourage her to expect will only double the letting go. She's white as a sheet, barely eats, but throws her legs over the top of the bedrail all night, dangling them like a kid And when denial strikes, we both know I'm kidding when I bring up my father's blind belief in chance over necessity, what almost took him to the top of science, the atomic blast he could have designed but didn't. Now he tears her soiled sheets and measures detergent in calibrated beakers, double strength to stanch the stench of death. Double her pain meds, the hospice says, no kidding around, this stuff you see oozing on the sheet is her flesh melting off her bones, and the deep chants abrading like a Russian hymn are her rendition (sign six) of her dead answering her call, flopping on top and shaking what's left inside loose, leaving the top free to glare at us who stay, redoubling our efforts. What strange and eerie kind of sign was it when we talked on the phone? Even the kids grew quiet, the baby gnawed the nipple, my last chance to hear her voice—before the winding sheet gets wound, its starch crackling and crazing like sheet- rock in the early stages of demolition, about to top- ple under the Renovator's blows. No chance it will be left standing in the end. Doubly strange for us offspring—parents retracting into kids, meeting ours along the way, flashing signs. O take them from the top again, these signs, on the off-chance one's missed. Double- check the folded sheet, prepare the kids.
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