Girl in Field
This story was inspired by a painting I received from my mother when she died. (Unfortunately, I am unable to provide the proper attribution for the art.) Girl in Field is my interpretation of my mother’s relationship with her sister as she was dying of TB in the 1940s.
It was published today in Flash Fiction Magazine.
There is a myth that the acres of flowers planted in the gardens near North Qu’Appelle equal the number of dead buried in the Saskatchewan hills. The waves of yellow primrose, tiny witches’ bluebells, and bleeding hearts reek with the sweet smell of death.
Here you are, dear sister, confined by consumption, the king’s touch, the white plague—to give it a simpler name: slow death. With your passion for life and no fear of dying, you starved yourself, smoking cigarettes like the film starlets who grace the cover of your magazines. Beauty in death awaits; your reward from scarcity. Do you feel a feverish glow in your ethereal thinness?
The doctor said you’d be more comfortable in the san, words to soften the blow that leaving home may mean not coming back.
I promise you you’ll beat it, unsure if I’m talking to you or to myself.
Bed rest, fresh air, and wholesome food remedy this wasting disease. You pull the frayed edge of the comforter under your chin, your nails manicured, hair done. Besides your thinness, it’s impossible to know what’s invaded your lungs.
But then you wheeze, harsh and deep, and panic grips me again.
“What can I do?” I ask, I beg.
“Walk with me.” You’re too proud to say, push.
In mid-July, I wrap you in a knitted throw made when you had the strength to click the needles. I held your skill in high regard, but now, you’re told, “no more,” for fear that slight exertion will overtax your lungs.
I wheel you along the wooden walkway from the women’s pavilion to the gardens, and you demand I go more slowly.
A fountain bubbles in a reflecting pool. Lilies float in the pond; their broad flat pads buoy the white and pinkish petals, cup-shaped blossoms that open like welcoming hands in the afternoons and close up again in the evenings.
Is it the clatter of the rickety chair rattling through you that makes you ask me to tread more slowly? “Not that,” you say. And I know it’s time that needs to slow, to unspool gradually between us. You’re only twenty-three; the injustice of tuberculosis has no boundaries.
I feel helpless, once again, during my fortnightly visit. At dances and parties, I’m on my own, missing your throaty laugh; its late-night tenor as if you’ve been shouting above the band. The boys we know ask about you, and I invoke your smile and tell them you are on an ocean voyage. Your joy resides within me, and I see you in a sequined gown and long white gloves, twirling, spinning. In reality, boredom nearly kills you, lining up behind the ruin invading your body, each waiting their turn on your dance card like the boys used to do.
White roses, celebrating new beginnings, sweeten the air with their green thrum of life as they climb the trellises framing the wooden benches, inviting visitors to pause and reflect. And I do.
“Take me back,” you say, knowing what awaits.
A bath so hot that it burns thin skin or cold enough to leave you shaking. Threadbare towels will wrap around your skeletal frame, hooked shoulder blades knobbly and protruding.
I think of how, as children, we played at the lake. The faded photograph, circa 1935, of you and I goofing on a dock. Second and third-graders at most. Our hair in pigtails, me soon destined for the lake by your outstretched arms. I trusted you to always be there, right behind me, just as you are in the photograph.
Here, the children are restrained to keep them calm and resting. No checkers, no jacks, no reading. Exertion taxes their dying lungs. Too tired to fight, too innocent to question, resigning their arms to be forced into backward jackets. Newborns howl while whisked away and introduced to dads and siblings, while mothers stay behind with heavy breasts and broken hearts as they struggle to survive. Yet blessed they call themselves, their babies, free from this disease.
“What can I do to help?” I’m desperate, fearing your answer.
“Take the pain away.”
Two years inert, you’ll have to learn to walk again. If you ever leave, that is, but I know you never will. Ravaged elbows and bleeding heels from this resting cure, you lie on starched white sheets, rigid from losing the same battle every day.
You recount the new lesions, your voice barely audible above the dry death rattle. The doctor shows me the flexible tube with its one-way valve used to remove air from the space that presses on your lung.
“What can I do to help?” More urgent now.
“Please,” your eyes are begging, and your voice is weak—the weight of death upon your chest.
“Yes,” I say, but how?
Gone are your smooth, soft curls—shampoo’s too taxing. With the whoosh of air, in and out, the mechanical ventilator taps out its cadence.
Surgery is your last option. But you’re too tired to care, nor do I try to coax you. I’m selfish and relieved your journey is nearly done.
I lie beside you, your bony thigh against my side. I hold your hand and wait.