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 have 4 submissions out. One to the New Yorker which is now at almost 7 months. Another is at SH but my average response time for them is about a month and I only submitted it a week ago or so. The other two are theoretically overdue. One is really really overdue. The magazine has an average response time of less than a week, and I’m at over 3.

But am I angsting? No. Not really. I’m checking my e-mail no more than usual, I’m checking Critters and Rumormill no more than usual, and I’ve only complained to my friends a couple of times.

Wow. I think I’m growing up.