There’s a war in her brain, her mental landscape blighted by bombs that explode with two hundred volts of electricity. She’s convulsing, the current coursing through her while I stand by watching her toes. Her toes will curl, watch, they tell me, so I do. The nurse holds her head as it starts its rebellious journey, jerking backward. Her toes curl. I glance from her toes to the second hand on the circular wall clock and back to her feet. It has to last so many seconds, how many did he say? My mind is stuck.
As Dr. Flak outlines ECT procedure, grief rains upon me like the ashes of Vesuvius, binding my forehead and scalp and the mass of particles beneath. “The thing to remember is that this method is performed while the patient is unconscious,” he is saying, “which is induced by a short-acting barbiturate. Not only that, you should know that patient is also given succinylcholine.” He pauses. Possibly he notices my vacant stare and mistakes it for confusion. “. . . temporarily paralyzing the muscles to prevent self-harming. After this, a breathing tube is inserted into the patient's airway. Beside this, a rubber mouthpiece is also inserted into the mouth to prevent teeth grinding or tongue biting during the electrically induced convulsion. Then, we have the electrodes. These electrodes may be placed on both sides of the head—bilateral— or one side and an electric current is passed through the brain. In this case, I would advise bilateral.”
I am covered with ash. I wonder how long it’s been since I’ve blinked. Today, for the debriefing, I have driven Abie here. I will not transport him home. “How strong is electrical current?” he asks, using his business voice. The edgings around his ears are on fire. Dr. Flak adjusts his glasses. “Well,” he says, “the usual dose of electricity is 70–150 volts for 0.1–0.5 seconds. This stage lasts approximately 10–60 seconds.”
As I stand on this deceptive shoreline so smooth that it threatens to sneak out from under me, a rogue wave thunders in and crashes over me. I don’t thrash about like a fish at the end of a line. I’ve become a silent shadow—-I know I’m thinking but I have no thoughts; I see but no image appears within the curve of my retina. And though I hear, I can’t distinguish the words above the bellowing wave which is Dr. Flak’s voice—“The physician in charge will try to induce a seizure that lasts between one-half and two minutes. If the first application of electricity fails to produce a seizure lasting at least 25 seconds, another attempt is made 60 seconds later. The session is stopped if the patient has no seizures after three attempts.” There is one scene I will never forget: one on perpetual playback. I saved only myself, fleeing from the firestorm that was Abie.
A nurse in green scrubs asks if I’m alright. “I have to be,” I say and let her catch my eyes. For an instant I let her in to the bewildering wildness behind these eyes of mine and then I shut her out. There is an eclipse behind my eyes and even I cannot look inside, although sometimes I think if I do, if I stare unblinking and lose my sight, the past will dissolve, and with it the present. But for now, I stand beside my frail daughter in her Day Surgery bed, my face hovering above hers like a mist or lover so that she might see me when she fades and again as she reenters.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
This Gossamer House (edit 1)
Life is lived in fragments in this house.
Abie visits Caroline is the hospital every three or four days. He stays for thirty minutes each time.
Where is Lisa? Years later in the next house and again in the house after that, I ask Garth who, in this part of my life, is the string around my finger, where was Lisa? In Europe? Living with Nadavi in Israel? In another of her houses? We once counted out all our houses, each of us listing streets and street numbers (we were bent on listing full addresses only).
"Nineteen," I said.
"Twenty-eight."-Lisa.
"Twenty-eight? Wait." I said, counting again. "Twenty-one. Yup, that's it. How do you get twenty-eight?"
"My memory is shriveling like an old woman's tits," I say to Garth in the next house when I ask him to pencil in those rubbed out times. Garth tells me we fought over Lisa. My voice rises one full octave: "We fought over Lisa! You never cared, you didn't even like--" He says he's not going to lie and tell me he actually liked her; they had a personality clash is all. It was just he thought Caroline wasn't Lisa's responsibility, Lisa had to get on with her life, he said. "But her own sister!" I said, although I understood. Guilt is like lead in my veins.
Julian phones. "Don't visit," I tell him. "Are you sure?" he says. I don't want him to see Caroline this way, not for myself, but for her, out of respect. I don't want visitors paying their respects, watching from the shore as her mind thrashes in treacherous waters.
Although the trees are barren on the Outside, in Nine South, it's spring with
lilac-colored walls, daffodils, tulips, and crocuses sprouting on window sills in the Group Therapy Room and patients' lounge. Gloria, Pat, Dorothy, Kim-these are the nurses. Hair dyed beet red, blond with insistent brown shoots, clipped black hair like a cap. Voices like cream and morning coffee.
Time goes slowly and quickly.
Dr. Flak schedules a round of shock treatments. When I see Abie, I weep on his shoulder. He's going to check his sources, he says. Maybe we won't have to, maybe--Like the evictions, there are no maybes. I know this.
She laughs like a crazy person, whooping like a trapped bird, flapping and hooping with unflagging insistence. "Trogolite!" she shrieks. "Trogolite!"
"Honey," I once said, "there is no such thing as a Trogolite. What does it mean to you? Honey sweetie, tell me, what is it?"
"It's an old word." she said.
"Can we check in the dictionary?"
"It's an old word, from England," she said, her head drooping and then from her throat, a hum like a motor idling.
I sat with her, my hand on her knee. To ground her, keep her in this world from which any visitor would scuttle away. Not a good place. Bad things happen in this place. I breathe in. Five seconds later I breathe in again, this time lightly, my stomach lifting and receding only slightly; I tread lightly.
"Tell me then. What it is. A trogolite."
She grinned then. A lewd sneering smirk.
"It's a hermaphrodite."
"Who, honey? Who's a hermaphrodite?"
"You. You are," she said and flew off with her whooping laugh as wings, her laugh so searing that it scorched my eyes. And I can't save her. I would leave my mind, tear into her untamed planet and scoop her up; I would make deals with the ruffians--mother for daughter, I would plea, mother for daughter.
The first in the round of twelve electroshock treatments is scheduled for tomorrow morning at eleven-twenty.
Abie visits Caroline is the hospital every three or four days. He stays for thirty minutes each time.
Where is Lisa? Years later in the next house and again in the house after that, I ask Garth who, in this part of my life, is the string around my finger, where was Lisa? In Europe? Living with Nadavi in Israel? In another of her houses? We once counted out all our houses, each of us listing streets and street numbers (we were bent on listing full addresses only).
"Nineteen," I said.
"Twenty-eight."-Lisa.
"Twenty-eight? Wait." I said, counting again. "Twenty-one. Yup, that's it. How do you get twenty-eight?"
"My memory is shriveling like an old woman's tits," I say to Garth in the next house when I ask him to pencil in those rubbed out times. Garth tells me we fought over Lisa. My voice rises one full octave: "We fought over Lisa! You never cared, you didn't even like--" He says he's not going to lie and tell me he actually liked her; they had a personality clash is all. It was just he thought Caroline wasn't Lisa's responsibility, Lisa had to get on with her life, he said. "But her own sister!" I said, although I understood. Guilt is like lead in my veins.
Julian phones. "Don't visit," I tell him. "Are you sure?" he says. I don't want him to see Caroline this way, not for myself, but for her, out of respect. I don't want visitors paying their respects, watching from the shore as her mind thrashes in treacherous waters.
Although the trees are barren on the Outside, in Nine South, it's spring with
lilac-colored walls, daffodils, tulips, and crocuses sprouting on window sills in the Group Therapy Room and patients' lounge. Gloria, Pat, Dorothy, Kim-these are the nurses. Hair dyed beet red, blond with insistent brown shoots, clipped black hair like a cap. Voices like cream and morning coffee.
Time goes slowly and quickly.
Dr. Flak schedules a round of shock treatments. When I see Abie, I weep on his shoulder. He's going to check his sources, he says. Maybe we won't have to, maybe--Like the evictions, there are no maybes. I know this.
She laughs like a crazy person, whooping like a trapped bird, flapping and hooping with unflagging insistence. "Trogolite!" she shrieks. "Trogolite!"
"Honey," I once said, "there is no such thing as a Trogolite. What does it mean to you? Honey sweetie, tell me, what is it?"
"It's an old word." she said.
"Can we check in the dictionary?"
"It's an old word, from England," she said, her head drooping and then from her throat, a hum like a motor idling.
I sat with her, my hand on her knee. To ground her, keep her in this world from which any visitor would scuttle away. Not a good place. Bad things happen in this place. I breathe in. Five seconds later I breathe in again, this time lightly, my stomach lifting and receding only slightly; I tread lightly.
"Tell me then. What it is. A trogolite."
She grinned then. A lewd sneering smirk.
"It's a hermaphrodite."
"Who, honey? Who's a hermaphrodite?"
"You. You are," she said and flew off with her whooping laugh as wings, her laugh so searing that it scorched my eyes. And I can't save her. I would leave my mind, tear into her untamed planet and scoop her up; I would make deals with the ruffians--mother for daughter, I would plea, mother for daughter.
The first in the round of twelve electroshock treatments is scheduled for tomorrow morning at eleven-twenty.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
This is Not a Good House:erotic memoir, creative non-fiction
This is not a good house. Bad things happen in this Gossamer House. Policemen wearing black padded vests and carrying rifles surround a house at the end of the cul de sac. They ring every bell and tell us to keep our blinds down and stay inside. In number nine, someone has taken hostages. For a split second I think Garth is taking the man in number nine down, but he's beside me looking out the window in our bedroom which is not the one overlooking the garden, the room with the ensuite and walk-in closet, Garth refusing to sleep there until we have a bedroom set. He takes me to remote shops in Scarborough strips and Keele and Highway Seven. So we set our box spring and mattress in the front room and I store my clothes in six stacked black plastic bins in the cupboard. During the week Talon is here, we fuck in the walk-in closet. We save ass-fucking for alternate weeks.
The man in number nine is holding three people hostage, a wife, her lover, and her teenage daughter. "How do you know?" I ask Garth. "I asked," he says. He has a way of reducing matters to their basics which I don't really call reducing-he hones in. He says he listens and pays attention to detail. If I have a problem and need to understand the underlying issues, I go to him. "I need some foundational listening," I say and he stops everything. I'm a mental pack rat and Garth is a stark minimalist which impresses me.
Toward the end in the Indian Road house, on one of Abie's two week returns from Geneva, as I lay stiff and unmoving in the middle of the night while Abie pounded away-it wasn't yet morning and he had woken up with an itch--Abie's prick finally wilted. He shoved me out of bed and I fell on the floor against the sliding mirrored doors of the wall-to-wall closet. "Don't you ever--" I said and I meant it. Ineffectual pricks have a way of sticking around; Abie's winding its way into the Gossamer House. The car dealership is after him. Payments are owing. Do I know anything about his whereabouts, a phone number or address? "But you must know," they say, "do you have children? Wouldn't they--""I'm the daughter of a union organizer," I say. "I know you want your cars back and goodness knows my girls and I have been through enough, but I can't. It's not in me."
I phone Abie. The hounds are after him. I bring in the red Neon the same afternoon. Yola co-signs the contract for a used Explorer. Around the same time Lisa receives an eviction notice, her father spewing his standard scenarios about holidays, delays, funds in transit across the Atlantic, and moves into the basement.
"Will you tell Lisa to close her lights?" Garth says showing me the electricity bill. "And would you tell her if she turns off the lights instead of conserving water by not flushing the toilet, our bill would be lower?"
"Tell him I'll pay for my electricity," Lisa says. I don't tell her about her decomposing shit in the basement toilet.
In this house, the ache in my heart takes root. Memories fall away like leaves in autumn. Even Garth can't help me remember the order and details of events. I need to remember how everything unraveled and I have only two photographs: in one, snapped at Kortwright when we're living in the Overbrooke house, a Rousseau rendition in which I'm smiling, arms akimbo, surrounded by ostrich ferns, and a second, a sparse backyard shot two months after we moved into this Gossamer house, in which I'm wearing Caroline's navy blue and white long cotton dress that is now too large for her and so has been passed on to me, and I'm not smiling, my already thin lips pursed together.
She refuses food. I visit Abie at his Teddington House. Sylvia has made a deep pot of sausages in gravy and sauerkraut for Christmas. "How about some yogurt?" I say, yogurt having been her first food,y homemade yogurt brewed overnight in the Highway 6 house. Still she refuses. Abie says hold her hands and tries to force food in her mouth. She turns her head side to side. And the thing is, the damned and evil thing is, I listen. I hold her hands. The same way I ran over the snapping turtle, over and over, back and forth with my Jeep Wagoneer, one eyeball popping out, a giant white marble on the freshly moved grass, the turtle flipping over. "Easy," Abie said when I called him, "you got the soft part now. You've got a jeep for god sake, just drive it like you're stuck in snow. Like we did in Montreal." I got back in the jeep and drove over that turtle, forward, brake, reverse, brake, forward again, a green leg, a thalidomide limb with claws at the tip, stirred. I screamed-three shrill wrenching notes. With poor Lisa riveted on the patio steps. And Caroline huddling beside the wood stove in the kitchen. The turtle was rabid, Abie said, otherwise it would not have left its place near the lake, finding its way to the pebbled walkway. "It can break a tree's limb in half. You have two children. Get ahold of yourself and do what I told you," he said.
She is so thin now, ninety-nine pounds just skin, bones, and heart ache. I lost all reason and listened to Abie. There are certain times I will always regret.
Abie says she goes into her closet and puts hangers around her neck. "Good thing she's a clutz," he says. One day he finds her holding a broken mirror. I live with Garth and his son. I work from seven to noon and sometimes one, counting reps and listening to complaints-a cleaning lady has the flu, a hairdresser's streaks are not thin enough, there's packing for a two-week cruise, and the strain of choosing kitchen tiles. How can I leave her alone with Garth who has hardly spoken to her in two years? He doesn't know what to say so he says nothing. "How about hello?" I say. "How about 'how are you?'" He says he'll try. "Two sentences," I say. "I go to work in the morning, rush home for lunch, sometimes there's no time even for that, and then I pick up Talon, talk to his teachers, play with him when you're on the phone, and you can't promise two simple sentences!" He stands in the doorway watching me cry, hearing my throat constrict after sentences, then phrases, and finally on words as they twist their way up, tangling and gasping as they surface.
Dr. Flak is Caroline's link at Mt. Sinai. She's been his patient since she was nineteen when she was being assessed. I was searching for another hospital, some place with a spot of light. Sunnybrooke would let me visit every two days and then just for an hour. "Let me out. Please let me out," an old lady had wailed from behind a locked door. Caroline had a once-a-day quota to call me. On her second day there, I took her out. "I'll take care of her at home," I said. I lose track of doctors: There was other doctor at Sunnybrooke--Dr. Bolous and also Dr. Theodoro, a handsome young Greek resident who later gained weight which is understandable given the wear and tear in his line of work. Caroline was an out-patient, just starting to take epival and gaining thirty-pounds with each additional capsule added on. I saw young girls with pretty figures grow larger and larger from one visit to the next. Caroline's hair changed texture; I didn't know how to manage the curls and rebellious jungle of tangles. Caroline can remember the names of all her doctors, only not when you ask her to list them. She's not good at sequencing. But sometimes she'll be going on and she'll name one of her doctors, like the one she saw in the Deloraine House whose name I often forget. "Remember Dr. Wright?" she'll say and I'll answer "What a memory you have!
We're at Dr. Flak's, Abie and I and Caroline. "Let me see if there's a bed," Dr. Flak says. I brush my eyes with the back of my hands. My nose burns, then fills like sink with the tap left running. My eyes overflow. I turn my head just as my face crumples. We settle her into a bed in a private room. She has a locker in the room and a bathroom with a shower. There are floral curtains. The windows are thick and impenetrable. I pull up a blue padded chair and sit with her.
I can't remember if she kept on talking- "minus levels thin, minus level plus, minus levels thin," or calling out "Trogolite! Trogolite!" her head rooting from side to side, or whether she sat unmoving, her head drooping. There is a song I remember playing on my autoharp when the girls were little, in the houses before the harp was seized along with my piano: "If somehow you could pack up your sorrows and give them all to me, you would lose them, I know how to use them, give them all to me." It's like that when they give her Adavan and ask me if I want to stay, a tube has to be inserted down her nose. "Yes, I can," I say, and I talk to her, "They have to do this sweetie, I love you, it's going to be alright now, I'm here, the tube is to give you food," I say holding her hand in mine, my voice soft and full; I have travelled to that dead zone beyond despair, where my breathing is shallow and my eyes hollow.
"You're amazing," they say. "So good with her."
"You're so brave."
"Thank you," I say, "Thank you."
Dr. Flak stands at the end at her bed. "I see you're sitting up," he says. She spits at him.
Twice she pulls out the tube and twice they reroute it down her nose. I gasp the first time. After the second time I rush out to Hasty Market and buy eight small containers of Astro blueberry yogurt.
"I want these on her tray," I say.
"These are for you, honey. I'm going to sit outside. I'll be right outside." I say, and I tell her that I love her, that she is my light as I gently close the door. And then I wait.
The man in number nine is holding three people hostage, a wife, her lover, and her teenage daughter. "How do you know?" I ask Garth. "I asked," he says. He has a way of reducing matters to their basics which I don't really call reducing-he hones in. He says he listens and pays attention to detail. If I have a problem and need to understand the underlying issues, I go to him. "I need some foundational listening," I say and he stops everything. I'm a mental pack rat and Garth is a stark minimalist which impresses me.
Toward the end in the Indian Road house, on one of Abie's two week returns from Geneva, as I lay stiff and unmoving in the middle of the night while Abie pounded away-it wasn't yet morning and he had woken up with an itch--Abie's prick finally wilted. He shoved me out of bed and I fell on the floor against the sliding mirrored doors of the wall-to-wall closet. "Don't you ever--" I said and I meant it. Ineffectual pricks have a way of sticking around; Abie's winding its way into the Gossamer House. The car dealership is after him. Payments are owing. Do I know anything about his whereabouts, a phone number or address? "But you must know," they say, "do you have children? Wouldn't they--""I'm the daughter of a union organizer," I say. "I know you want your cars back and goodness knows my girls and I have been through enough, but I can't. It's not in me."
I phone Abie. The hounds are after him. I bring in the red Neon the same afternoon. Yola co-signs the contract for a used Explorer. Around the same time Lisa receives an eviction notice, her father spewing his standard scenarios about holidays, delays, funds in transit across the Atlantic, and moves into the basement.
"Will you tell Lisa to close her lights?" Garth says showing me the electricity bill. "And would you tell her if she turns off the lights instead of conserving water by not flushing the toilet, our bill would be lower?"
"Tell him I'll pay for my electricity," Lisa says. I don't tell her about her decomposing shit in the basement toilet.
In this house, the ache in my heart takes root. Memories fall away like leaves in autumn. Even Garth can't help me remember the order and details of events. I need to remember how everything unraveled and I have only two photographs: in one, snapped at Kortwright when we're living in the Overbrooke house, a Rousseau rendition in which I'm smiling, arms akimbo, surrounded by ostrich ferns, and a second, a sparse backyard shot two months after we moved into this Gossamer house, in which I'm wearing Caroline's navy blue and white long cotton dress that is now too large for her and so has been passed on to me, and I'm not smiling, my already thin lips pursed together.
She refuses food. I visit Abie at his Teddington House. Sylvia has made a deep pot of sausages in gravy and sauerkraut for Christmas. "How about some yogurt?" I say, yogurt having been her first food,y homemade yogurt brewed overnight in the Highway 6 house. Still she refuses. Abie says hold her hands and tries to force food in her mouth. She turns her head side to side. And the thing is, the damned and evil thing is, I listen. I hold her hands. The same way I ran over the snapping turtle, over and over, back and forth with my Jeep Wagoneer, one eyeball popping out, a giant white marble on the freshly moved grass, the turtle flipping over. "Easy," Abie said when I called him, "you got the soft part now. You've got a jeep for god sake, just drive it like you're stuck in snow. Like we did in Montreal." I got back in the jeep and drove over that turtle, forward, brake, reverse, brake, forward again, a green leg, a thalidomide limb with claws at the tip, stirred. I screamed-three shrill wrenching notes. With poor Lisa riveted on the patio steps. And Caroline huddling beside the wood stove in the kitchen. The turtle was rabid, Abie said, otherwise it would not have left its place near the lake, finding its way to the pebbled walkway. "It can break a tree's limb in half. You have two children. Get ahold of yourself and do what I told you," he said.
She is so thin now, ninety-nine pounds just skin, bones, and heart ache. I lost all reason and listened to Abie. There are certain times I will always regret.
Abie says she goes into her closet and puts hangers around her neck. "Good thing she's a clutz," he says. One day he finds her holding a broken mirror. I live with Garth and his son. I work from seven to noon and sometimes one, counting reps and listening to complaints-a cleaning lady has the flu, a hairdresser's streaks are not thin enough, there's packing for a two-week cruise, and the strain of choosing kitchen tiles. How can I leave her alone with Garth who has hardly spoken to her in two years? He doesn't know what to say so he says nothing. "How about hello?" I say. "How about 'how are you?'" He says he'll try. "Two sentences," I say. "I go to work in the morning, rush home for lunch, sometimes there's no time even for that, and then I pick up Talon, talk to his teachers, play with him when you're on the phone, and you can't promise two simple sentences!" He stands in the doorway watching me cry, hearing my throat constrict after sentences, then phrases, and finally on words as they twist their way up, tangling and gasping as they surface.
Dr. Flak is Caroline's link at Mt. Sinai. She's been his patient since she was nineteen when she was being assessed. I was searching for another hospital, some place with a spot of light. Sunnybrooke would let me visit every two days and then just for an hour. "Let me out. Please let me out," an old lady had wailed from behind a locked door. Caroline had a once-a-day quota to call me. On her second day there, I took her out. "I'll take care of her at home," I said. I lose track of doctors: There was other doctor at Sunnybrooke--Dr. Bolous and also Dr. Theodoro, a handsome young Greek resident who later gained weight which is understandable given the wear and tear in his line of work. Caroline was an out-patient, just starting to take epival and gaining thirty-pounds with each additional capsule added on. I saw young girls with pretty figures grow larger and larger from one visit to the next. Caroline's hair changed texture; I didn't know how to manage the curls and rebellious jungle of tangles. Caroline can remember the names of all her doctors, only not when you ask her to list them. She's not good at sequencing. But sometimes she'll be going on and she'll name one of her doctors, like the one she saw in the Deloraine House whose name I often forget. "Remember Dr. Wright?" she'll say and I'll answer "What a memory you have!
We're at Dr. Flak's, Abie and I and Caroline. "Let me see if there's a bed," Dr. Flak says. I brush my eyes with the back of my hands. My nose burns, then fills like sink with the tap left running. My eyes overflow. I turn my head just as my face crumples. We settle her into a bed in a private room. She has a locker in the room and a bathroom with a shower. There are floral curtains. The windows are thick and impenetrable. I pull up a blue padded chair and sit with her.
I can't remember if she kept on talking- "minus levels thin, minus level plus, minus levels thin," or calling out "Trogolite! Trogolite!" her head rooting from side to side, or whether she sat unmoving, her head drooping. There is a song I remember playing on my autoharp when the girls were little, in the houses before the harp was seized along with my piano: "If somehow you could pack up your sorrows and give them all to me, you would lose them, I know how to use them, give them all to me." It's like that when they give her Adavan and ask me if I want to stay, a tube has to be inserted down her nose. "Yes, I can," I say, and I talk to her, "They have to do this sweetie, I love you, it's going to be alright now, I'm here, the tube is to give you food," I say holding her hand in mine, my voice soft and full; I have travelled to that dead zone beyond despair, where my breathing is shallow and my eyes hollow.
"You're amazing," they say. "So good with her."
"You're so brave."
"Thank you," I say, "Thank you."
Dr. Flak stands at the end at her bed. "I see you're sitting up," he says. She spits at him.
Twice she pulls out the tube and twice they reroute it down her nose. I gasp the first time. After the second time I rush out to Hasty Market and buy eight small containers of Astro blueberry yogurt.
"I want these on her tray," I say.
"These are for you, honey. I'm going to sit outside. I'll be right outside." I say, and I tell her that I love her, that she is my light as I gently close the door. And then I wait.
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