over the cliff

Before I forget the entire trip, there are some things I meant to post but haven’t. So I better start.

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Part of me knows I am in Africa. The part that wakes up each morning before dawn and hears the lions roaring. The part that spills orange juice down a crimson tank top already splotched with coffee stains and tree sap. The part that has to jump out of the path of rampaging monkeys begging for a piece of fruit or two, and failing that, endeavor to steal it.

The part that doesn’t know is sleeping. It’s waiting for the credits to roll or the alarm to ring so I can wake up. Get dressed. Walk to class. Go to work. Watch Out of Africa. Go to bed.

My brother arrived in January and isn’t quite used to the accommodations my parents and I procured. He went from tents and hostels to feather beds and private plunge pools. The baboons like the plunge pools. I tried it once but the water was too cold to get used to. But just for a moment I stand up to my chin in icy African water, breathe the African air, sip an African cider and watch the Kingfishers. The elephant fence below keeps the elephants out, but not much else. Leopards, monkeys, and anything else with an inclination can come right up and join me if they so desire.

They don’t. I’m almost disappointed.

Disappointed or not, I am in Africa. And the part of me that doesn’t know it will wake up when I’m on the plane and eating peanuts. It will sift through the memories before the rest of me falls asleep and forgets the coldness of water, the roar of lions, and the taste of mango juice at dawn.

Sometimes we broke the silence with laughter. The pill box that Uncle Ed bought had a funny voice that said “It’s time to take your pill. It’s time to take your pill.” We liked to imitate it. I can’t remember the names of the medications. They all looked the same. One put her to sleep, one was part of the chemotherapy, another we stopped because we thought she was allergic, some she took several times a day, some she only took on days we took her to the hospital.

“It’s time to take your pill. It’s time to take your pill.”

If you took your pill early, it didn’t know it. “Time to take your pill.” Sometimes the nurse would give her a pill and set aside the pill box. “Time to take your pill.” And we had to run around the kitchen trying to find it. “Time to–”

Time to go to the hospital. Time to log the days events in the little blue journal. 5 kids in and out each day. 2 nurses. Or was it three.

Time to switch shifts.

I started working at my Aunt’s dental office in October. Mema called and I scheduled her an appointment to get her teeth cleaned. Then she got sick. I asked Mindy if I should cancel the appointment.

“Just leave it for now, if she’s well enough she’ll want to have her teeth cleaned.”

Since Ed was the one who prescribed all the medications, we kept saying that we were going to write him out of the will. All he’d get was the annoying voice that said, “Time to take your pill, time to take your pill” which really only meant it was time for another day of sleep and nausea and recording what she ate and didn’t eat and if she took all her meds.

Not all of the pills went into the talking box. The ones she only took occasionally (need sleep? can’t eat? head hurt?) went into a ceramic dish on the kitchen table. Mindy spent her lunch break popping the tops out and later someone would pop them back in so she’d have more to play with the next day.

On one of the better afternoons, Mema sat at the table with us. She wanted to know where all the pills came from.

“Ed prescribed them,” we said.

“Ed…” she took a breath. They were ragged by then and some days she couldn’t wear both sets of implants in her mouth. It was hard to understand her. Harder still to watch her lips flop while she mumbled. “He’s my favorite doctor… when I’m not sick.”

We laughed.

“Time to take your pill. Time to take your pill.”

We added the dish full of pill bottles to Ed’s inheritance.

Before things got bad, when we just knew she had a tumor, we took her to the hospital for tests. They gave her a pepto bismal milkshake.

“It’s not even cold,” she said.

They made her drink two glasses of it.

“Why?” she said.

“It’s for your chest x-ray.”

My mother explained that Ed was convinced that the brain tumor was merely lung cancer that had metastisized in her brain. He was convinced that smoking was what was killing her. It wasn’t a brain tumor. It was lung cancer. It had to be.

“He’ll be so disappointed,” Mema said as she took another sip.

The x-ray came back clear.

We added ‘pink stuff’ to Ed’s inheritance.

Mema kept getting sicker. I took the dental appointment in her place. They gave me earphones so I wouldn’t have to listen to the scrape, scrape, scrape of instruments. As they plopped down against my earlobe the air rushed out taking with it the distant echoes.

“It’s time to take your pill, it’s time to take your pill, it’s time…”

I move in a week.

The apartment is quiet. Demos is staying at my parents’ house in New Bern because I’m trying to get rid of the fleas he brought here. I’ve flea bombed, attacked them with spray, but still they flock to my ankles like I’m some sort of fucking Noah’s ark.

There are glasses and plates to wrap, books to pack and label. Furniture to be moved, electricity to turn off, elecricity to turn on, phone lines to disconnect, cable companies to deal with. A trailer to haul up a mountain, down a mountain. Unpack. Organize. Decorate.

Lately I’ve been thinking more and more about Mema. A lot of things have happened that I would’ve told her about. She would’ve offered me coffee or tea. Ice cream. Chocolate if I wanted it. Sissy would’ve lain on the floor and periodically lifted her leg to feebly swat at a bug or itch. I would’ve sat in the chair I’m sitting in now, at the table on which my laptop is resting. She would’ve nodded and smiled, taken a drag off her cigarette and said “Now what do you know.”

The phone would ring. It’d be an aunt or uncle. The conversation would last no more than a few minutes; it doesn’t take long to chat when you call often.

I never did. I called when I had news, which was rare.

I called when I got in from a long car trip. Promised to come out and see her, spend the night to wake up to coffee and eggs and bacon and chocolate cake if I wanted it. The only times I ever ate breakfast were at her house.

During the long pauses while I fingered the wood grain on the table and she worked on the daily jumble, Sissy would shake her head and jingle the rabies tags. The water would boil. Coffee is ready. Or tea. Or chocolate cake if you want it.

Before I ever sold a poem, or got into grad school, my mother stood at my door and told me the MRI scan found something. Not Alzheimers, which we feared would suck away her memories of us one by one like a lazy ant eater.

A tumor with wide thin wings as if it could flit off the page and out the window. 6 months or less.

It was less.

Before I ever sold a poem to Strange Horizons or was offered a teaching assistantship at SIU I spent the night in her guest bedroom. I had a job interview the next day. Not something I wanted, just something I needed to pass the time. My father thought I should be doing something more constructive than taking anti-depressants. She wasn’t dying yet. Just sick and a little forgetful.

Mema always had the softest pillows. Thick and fluffy and squishable. The bed in her guest bedroom used to sit on the second floor in a room by the secret stair case. It wasn’t that much of a secret but the tiny door was enough to remind you of Alice in Wonderland if you were still child enough to think of such things. Back then Mema’s was a place between travels. A place to go when you weren’t quite ready to go home yet and felt like running into family, drinking coffee, and eating chocolate cake if you wanted it.

The pillows and bedding were moved to the new guest bedroom, new house. A place she bought when Daddydoc died and the memories scratching at her consciousness became too much.

Sissy’s rabies tags jingled as I checked the alarm clock again and again. Interview in the morning. For a job I did and didn’t want allatonce. News to tell Mema. A reason to call. A thing to talk about in the long pauses between phone calls and jingling tags.

Sissy’s claws scratched the door and she whined to be let in, let in, let in. I didn’t want to let her in. I wanted her to go back to Mema’s room and pretend that no one was sick, no one was dying or waking up in the middle of the night confused and wondering where the dog was. Sissy whined and whined but I was on the second floor dreaming about the secret stair case and counting the hours before I could get up, walk downstairs and find four tablespoons of Cafe Vienna sitting in a mug, waiting for the water to boil.

When they told me about the surgery, they mentioned that I may experience some mild discomfort in the hours immediately following the procedure. They told me about the risks, and the pressure I would feel as the laser cut the flap, but here’s what they didn’t tell me:

That before going into the operating vestibule, the doctor would take a felt tip marker and draw all over my eye. Okay, okay so he just made two marks. Whatever.

That after the laser cut the flap, the doctor would take a poking device and move the flap (and consequently my eyeball) all around like he was adjusting the dial on a radio.

That after the laser finished blasting out the offending tissue, he’d take a squeegee and wash out my eye socket.

They gave me a mild sedative about an hour beforehand, and that’s the only explanation I have for being able to put up with it.

I brought the two new fairy tale poems I’ve written to writer’s group last night. Not exceedingly helpful comments- mainly because there were only two people there and Oliver had already seen both poems. I did come up with a title though for one of the poems. Tell me what you think:

[Insert Title Indicating that this is a Poem about Bluebeard the Wife Murderer, not the Pirate]

I really suck at titles.

And it turns out that I was right about weddingchannel.com (Click here to view ‘Your Wedding Date is in 16 Weeks’). I got two e-mails from them a while back. The first one wanted to know what professionals helped me the most on my special day, and the second one was a link to their “For Better or for Worse” section. It can tell me how to change my name, how to merge my stuff with… my stuff?

I’m tempted to re-register with all the same information except a new wedding date and see if I get reported for attempted polygamy.

I got up at 5 this morning and I’m dying to go back and take a nap so I’m gonna make this relatively quick.

The 17 hour flight from Atlanta was… not quite as bad as I expected, but that’s really not saying all that much. Once we got to Africa though, everything turned fabulous. Free alcohol everywhere. My favorite drink thus far has been something called Savannah Dry which tastes slightly of apple cider and it’s delicious.

On the plane flying into the remote area where our camp lay, I happened to spot a giraffe. And this may sound dorky, but that was so totally cool. Our first game drive was that night and our guide is gorgeous. Black curly hair, dimples, too cute. And as I expected, I’m now sick of seeing Impala. The suckers are everwhere. We did happen to see a Rhinoceros and her calf, and we pulled a little ways from her, got out of the landrover and had drinks.

We’re not allowed to walk around at night because of the possibility of wild animals entering the camp, and so we have to be escorted by armed guard from our rooms to the boma (sp?) where they serve dinner and back. Our rooms though… gah. So fabulous. Each room has its own plunge pool which looks out over the Savannah and though the water is rather chilly, it gets hot enough in the middle of the day to make it worthwhile.

Yesterday on the game drives we spotted giraffes, buffalo (we drove the landrover right into the middle of their herd), Elephants (a bull, a momma, and a little baby! too cute), hippopotimi (sp?) more Impala and other deer/bovine like creatures the names of which I can’t spell. During the afternoon/evening drive we tried to find a leopard that had been spotted in a tree with a kill, no luck, and then we went to where two lions had been heard roaring from the camp. We found the lions, and drove right up to them. Maybe… 15, 20 feet away? And he couldn’t have cared less about us. One of the other vehicles shined a light with a red filter in his face and he and his brother started roaring for us. That was cool.

So this morning we had seen all of the big 5 with the notable exception of leopards. So when Simon spotted tracks, he and Elmon, our tracker, got out of the landrover and tried to hunt them down. Our vehicle and several others were also trying to find them (there were two sets of tracks, a male and female). At one point Simon and Elmon left us in the landrover and trekked into the bush. Half an hour later, we saw Simon running towards us, sans rifle, and he said that he and Elmon had been growled at. We then took the rover into the bush after the growl but couldn’t find the kitties. Then another group radioed in and said the leopards had been spotted so we high tailed it out of there and towards the river.

Sure enough, the monkeys were giving the alarm, two baboons were skittering across a field (baboons are favorites among leopards) and then we spotted them. They crossed the road twice (once they came within a couple of feet of us to pass behind our car, and have I mentioned yet that these landrovers don’t have tops?) and while the male was skittish, the female paused a couple of times so we could get a good look at her.

Anyway, that’s my trip so far and now if you’ll excuse me, I really need to go take a very long nap. Ta ta.

Last night I decided to try to organize some of the papers piling up beside my desk and I came across my travel journal. Here are some things that I thought were so fascinating as to recount in those pages:

When I arrived at the airport to check in and fly across the ocean to Stavanger, Norway… the ticket person discovered that my flight plans included a 10 day, 2 hour layover in New Jersey. I’m sure New Jersey is lovely to people who live there but I really had my heart set on more exotice places like Berlin, Krakow and Prague. So my mother called the travel agent who made the error and she (the agent) drove two and a half hours to Raleigh to give me new tickets that had me leaving the next day sans 10 day layover.

When I arrived in Stavanger, I was majorly sleep deprived and had a miniature bottle of wine in my hands when I greeted Katie, Josh and Katherine. I fared better than Katherine though, who was dragged to a party the night she arrived and was pestered constantly by people asking her if she had a boyfriend. She finally exclaimed, “I’m a lesbian” and tried to crawl under a glass table to take a nap.

When we were trying to get to the ferry, we had to climb a fence because we couldn’t find the entrance… and I fell. P.S. Oliver, stop laughing at me.

The hostel in Berlin lost our reservation so we had to stay at a pension. Katie was disappointed that we weren’t going to be staying in the gay district.

Our first night in Berlin we went to a restuarant where some drunk German kept coming to our table and talking to us. The only German words we knew well were ‘Yes’ and ‘Thank you’ so we kept repeating them. When the waiter finally shooed him away, he told us that the man had been asking for Katherine’s hand in marriage.

Firetruck ladder interpretive dance!

We didn’t figure out until the last day how to pay for the public transportation… so basically we had been travelling illegally for the past 3 days on the buses and subway.

Katie got smited by a steel door when she tried to sneak into the restroom at the Berlin train station without paying.

On the overnight train to Krakow, we were woken up several times by armed guards. Customs agents. And when I say armed, I mean like AK 47 armed. You try waking up to that two inches from your face and see what it does to you. Well, actually we were so friggin tired we didn’t pay much attention.

Feet. Pain. Ow. Duct tape. There are a lot of comments in my journal about that.

The second day in Prague we went to the train station to get tickets to Budapest and a policeman stopped me and asked me for my passport. Fortunately I had it on me… but normally I left it in my room. After that, I kept it with me.

We saw ‘The Mummy Returns’ our last day in Prague. Czech, Russian, and German subtitles. That was only a problem when the characters spoke ancient Egyptian because we didn’t get the English translation. Although that didn’t really detract from our understanding of the plot.

One night in Venice, Katherine, BB and I decided we wanted to see the sun set over the water. So we kept heading west trying to find well… the end of Venice. What the HELL were we thinking?

The train ride from Venice to Munich sucked. Really sucked. It was so insanely crowded. Basically if you have a Eurorail pass, you can get on the train. Doesn’t mean you can get a seat though. Katherine, BB, and I were in a compartment with 3 Equadorians who kept hitting each other in the groin with water bottles. On one of the stops, Katie got off the train and came to our window yelling ‘Our train is going to NICE! Where is your train going!’ It turned out that somewhere along the way, the train would split and one part (the part with Katie and Josh) was going to France whereas the part Katherine, BB, and I were on was going to Germany. So Katie and Josh got on our part of the train but had to stay out in the Hall with the rest of the 2 million backpackers. I’ve always wondered what would happen if Katie hadn’t discovered that when she did.

Apparently in Munich, there are clothing optional sections of the city parks.

In Amsterdam we stayed in a Christian Youth Hostel in the middle of the red light district. They gave us a little bible pamphlet on check in. I wonder if I still have it…

One of our travelling companions, wanted to go to one of the Coffeeshops. He came out all excited saying “It’s like a grocery store in there!” Then he proceeded to list a whole bunch of different types of weed. Stupid, innocent, naive me thought there was only one. Learn something new every day I guess.

So that was Europe. Guess you had to be there.

That was the message facing me in my inbox. For the past 5 years or so I have been stalked by WeddingChannel.com. It’s like I’ve joined a cult only no one bothered to brainwash me.

Freshman year of collge I was friends with a girl who was quite anxiously awaiting a marriage proposal from her boyfriend. One night some other friends and I were browsing ring designs on adiamondisforever.com trying to pick out the ring that her boyfriend should buy her (it really is better for us to pick it out then conveniently e-mail him the acceptable designs) when we decided we should also pick out the perfect wedding dress. We went to weddingchannel.com, however, in order to look at anything, you had to be signed in. — wouldn’t create an account because she was afraid it’d be bad luck, so I volunteered. When creating an account though, you have to be engaged. And you have to give a wedding date. I always thought ‘May 21st’ sounded pretty and the next time that was going to be on a Saturday was in 2005. So boom, I had a wedding date and an account and we looked at dresses.

I forgot all about it, until the e-mails started coming. At first I thought it was funny, but after a while I got irritated and tried to delete my account. IT WOULDN’T LET ME! I spent a good half hour searching the site desperate for a “Fiancé eaten by shark, wedding cancelled” option. Then after a while I got a new e-mail program that blocked the e-mails because it thought they were Spam and forgot all about it, again.

Until this one. 16 weeks. Damn, I have a lot of planning left to do for my non-existent wedding. I wonder what will happen after May 21st. Will it automatically sign me up for Babychannel.com in order to constantly remind me that my biological clock is ticking? How about tips on how to keep a marriage alive? I don’t forsee any problems with mine. I might get mad at myself and say things I don’t mean, but I always make it up to me eventually. Usually with chocolate. I spoil me, but I deserve it.

Oliver: I already miss you
Auto response from Elserandh: Gone to the Sound for the weekend.
Oliver: Who is going to mock me all weekend?

That made my night. I am too easily amused.

This weekend was nice. Didn’t get as much accomplished as I would’ve liked. Last night I went outside with my glass of wine and sat on the dock to look at the stars. The sky was perfectly clear, and I watched Orion and tried to pick out the other constellations I knew. Taurus, Cassiopeia, Sirius Major, some others.

Mema has been doing well. She’s still dying though. Her short term memory is getting worse. We keep having to tell her that Bush won the election.

My grandmother has a brain tumor. Some days are better than others, but she’s sick. It sucks, but I’m still in denial so all is good. I guess.

Candace is getting married, she’ll be the first of my friends to do so. I’m not old enough to get married, which means that none of my friends are old enough to get married. Life is strange.