Mother

I don’t remember if I ever saw my mother eat an orange

pulling apart the sweet dripping sections with her long fingers 
flicking aside the white membrane 
biting the flesh with perfect sparkling teeth

I do remember the delicate way she held a lobster roll 

between two fingers  
her back straight   
the way she dabbed at her red shaded lips
with the corner of her napkin 
 

I remember how she ate stuffed quahogs at Bobby Byrne’s   

one hand in her lap 
fork held at a precise angle  
the way she talked to the waiter  
showing her broad smile
but never with food in her mouth

and I remember how she ate oysters at Wimpy’s in Osterville    

laughing as they slid down her throat  
salty

oh she would say  
delicious  
believe me
if God eats  
He eats oysters

I don’t remember if I ever saw my mother eat an orange   

but I do remember the blue leather bar stool
where she sat in the afternoons  
and late into the evening  
at Cotuit Highground    

and I do remember exactly how much orange juice

the bartender mixed with her vodka

Grandmothers count time from their grandchildren’s ages and JoJo was 6 months old. That’s how I know it was almost 16 years ago. I had been feeling tired for a couple of days but that’s not unusual if you have multiple sclerosis so I paid no attention. My left arm had been aching for a couple of days but that’s not unusual either. On the third night I ate dinner and decided to take a bath and go straight to bed. I bent over to turn on the water in the tub and that’s when it hit! PAIN like I had never felt before. Pain beyond a 10… beyond an 11... beyond…

I called 911 and within a few minutes an ambulance arrived. The paramedics hooked me up to the ekg and stood around watching it and chatting, their arms across their chests. I began to sweat and feel nauseous. I had difficulty breathing.

“Looks okay to me.”

“Me too.”

“What do you think? Indigestion?”

“Probably anxiety.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“What do you think it is?” one of them asked.

“A heart attack and I want to go to the hospital.”

“You look pretty anxious to me.”

“You would be anxious too if you were having a heart attack.”

I knew that appearing anxious is actually normal during a heart attack. Why didn’t they know that?

“We can take you to the hospital ma’am, but I don’t think you’re having a heart
attack.”

They loaded me on a gurney and put me in the ambulance, then stood in the
street with the ambulance door open and discussed my “indigestion” again.

“Could I please have some oxygen?” I asked nicely. You really don’t want to make the
paramedic in charge of your care angry. They gave me oxygen and took me to the hospital.

At the hospital they transferred me to another gurney and a doctor I did not know said, “Well. It looks like you’re having a heart attack.”

Suddenly I didn’t care who got angry. I clenched my teeth. “Get me Dr. Kaufman.
NOW and I mean NOW!”

Dr. Kaufman was at the ER desk and heard me asking for him. Before I knew what was
happening I was in the cardiac cath lab, someone started an IV and I don’t remember much after that.

I remember my son, Christopher, came from California but I don’t remember talking to him. I remember waking once to find my sister, Annie, sitting on the bed beside me and once my daughter, Lori, fed me something. I don’t know what. I remember hearing my nurse talking to me about something and though she was right next to me I could not see her. “Why do I still have pain?” I asked.

“Because a heart attack is a process. A portion of your heart is dying.” She gave me more morphine.

I have no idea how long I was in the hospital but I left there with a new pill to take daily and nitroglycerin spray in case I had pain again. I also left with the knowledge that while heart disease kills more women than cancer it is rarely perceived as a serious threat. A heart attack presents in different ways with women. Some women mistakenly think only crushing chest pain is a symptom of a heart attack and, therefore, delay seeking medical care. Others have found that healthcare providers have failed to recognize their heart attack symptoms by attributing the cause of symptoms to other health problems, such as indigestion or anxiety.

My message to women is: If you think you are having a heart attack, call 911, crush or chew a full strength aspirin with a glass of water to prevent further blood clotting and assert yourself. Seriously!

Christmas and my little sister

The last time I saw my sister, Melinda, she was ringing a Salvation Army Bell outside a local store. I dropped some money in the red kettle and said, “How you doing?” She looked the other way. I waited, hoping she would look at me, acknowledge me, till I began to feel awkward standing there. I went inside the store and cried. She was thinner than usual and wore clean but too large jeans and a sweat shirt. She needed a jacket. She probably needed a meal too but there was no way she would let me buy her food.

I was four years old when my parents brought Melinda home and I was enchanted with the tiny baby and the birdlike noises she made. In time she grew to be my little shadow and followed me wherever I went. We were best friends, my little sister and I. We loved the beach where we lived, hiding in Nana’s big house and walking “up street” with our mother and aunts to buy ice cream cones. We measured ourselves by the tall hollyhocks that grew in Nana’s yard. Melinda and I shared three years as
the only children in our small family. I remember them as golden days.

As we grew we behaved as most sisters do. We laughed and played together and we fought over who knows what? We tattled on each other and sometimes swore to be “best sisters” forever. When our younger sister, Annie, joined us alliances were made and broken and sometimes we liked each other and sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes we called each other nasty names and, behind our parents’ backs, we hit each other. But when bedtime came the three of us had a ritual that had to do with love and a secret “gopher hole” and I always went to sleep knowing Melinda loved me and I loved her.

We went to the same schools and took music lessons and did all the normal things sisters do. I didn’t always want Melinda around when I was a teen but she wanted to watch this sister she was not familiar with… this sister who dated boys and shared secrets with close girlfriends. After high school I moved to Las Vegas and a year later, Melinda joined me. We were young women who dated young men with serious intentions and for a while we even shared an apartment. We married and Melinda
left with her husband when he went into the Army while I stayed behind. She
came back with a baby boy, my first nephew.

As young mothers Melinda, Annie and I brought our husbands and children together for holidays, birthdays and sometimes just for fun. We enjoyed each other’s company and spent a lot of time laughing. We were family.

Melinda was a tiny, beautiful woman. She wore exquisite dresses and loved tasteful, delicate jewelry. She was soft spoken and well mannered and lived in a lovely house with her husband and son. But something always seemed to bother her; made her feel incomplete. She could not name it.

I don’t know when or why Melinda found drugs. I only know she was soon hooked and there was no going back for her. She lost everything except her son. He was hooked too. Together they lived in a deserted apartment on Stewart and 13th Street with no air, no heat and no water. You would have to be from Las Vegas to know what kind of neighborhood this is. One hot summer day I saw them walking across a parking lot carrying jugs of water, my little sister and her son. I did not stop to talk to them. I did not want to embarrass her.

Sometimes Melinda called me and asked for money. I always told her I would help her find food and a place to live but she wanted money. She became incensed when I said no. She called Annie too and Annie and I talked about what to do but we agreed giving her money would be a mistake. And we felt bad. And guilty. And sad. And Melinda was angry with us. I always believed she would someday turn herself around and we would be sisters again.

A few days after I saw her ringing the Salvation Army bell, I received a note from her. She wrote the Salvation Army was helping her and while she knew her family thought of her as trash this was her life and we could accept or forget her. She wished me Happy Holidays.

I never saw or heard from her again. The following March my beautiful, delicate sister died in the deserted apartment. Her son was with her. That was 15 years ago. She was 48. There is no moral to this story, no message.

It’s just that this time of year Salvation Army bell ringers are everywhere and they bring me vivid memories of my little sister, Melinda.

Storms

flags

Rudy and I visited the 9/11 Memorial just before sunset. There is a flag for each person who died and a wall with their names.


flags


2,996 flags
each precisely placed
stand quietly
bearing witness
and pain

long dark shadows
grow between the flags

listen
did you hear a cry
or was that a bird

look
where that flag stirs slowly in the breeze
is that a face
or a misplaced shadow

wait
stand here
between the shadows
do you feel the void
of lives that once were

10 years later

2,996 flags
silence
long shadows
and memories

painful memories

Ma’s blues

Ma Rainey... one of the greatest blues singers of all time...


“'Cause they say I do it
ain't nobody caught me
sho got to prove it on me."
~ Ma Rainey song


do I remember those times?
law yes, I remember those times
like they was yesterday
fixin’ myself up
of a Saturday evenin’
an walkin’ on down to the
juke joint
fine as I wanted to be
fine as ary one of them
fellows standin’ on the
street corner
lookin’ at the women


I remember the taste of moonshine
the sweet drape of woman arms
heat of a body sashayin’ against me
on the dance floor
oh yeah
I remember the warm musky smell
of a woman’s neck
the silk of her hands
on my gold coin necklace
heat entering me like a miracle

law yes I remember those times
and I miss ‘em honey

I miss ‘em

Delia

I met Delia at work many years ago. She was a tiny, dark haired woman with a bubbly personality and a red hot temper if you crossed her. We liked each other immediately and in time became more like sisters than friends.

Delia came from Cuba when she was little more than a teenager. Sent ahead by her parents to find a job and a place to live she was scared to death but very determined. She frequently boasted of the fact that she had no accent. Oh! She had a very pronounced accent! I loved her malapropisms. “Jet lash” instead of “jet lag” and “like a bull in a Chinese shop” were two of my favorites.

Delia and I spent hours talking about Che, Fidel, Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson. We talked about our childhoods. She told me of Havana Vieja, El Malecon and El Morro Fortress. She described the courtyard of her childhood home, the synagogue next door and the laundry that flapped from balconies in the hot sun. I told her about the house I grew up in, the mighty Chattahoochee and rainy summer days in Georgia.

I learned to speak Spanish with a Cuban dialect from Delia. She often thought it was funny to tell me the wrong word and stand back and watch. I once told a woman from Nicaragua that her “chango” was cute. She was furious that I had called her baby a monkey.

Delia loved to cook and I loved to eat. She made me arroz con pollo (chicken and rice) fried platanos (bananas) and my all time favorite, fried yucca. She tried to teach me to cook. We giggled at the inedible creations I turned out and in time she gave up the cooking lessons.

I once rode with Delia to the eye doctor to pick up her new glasses. She blatantly ran a red light. I clutched the seat and squeaked, “Delia! That was a red light.”
“I didn’t see it,” she said. “I’m legally blind without my glasses. Sit back, relax and don’t worry. I won’t kill you! But just in case, say ‘Pio!’ You don’t want to die without a pio.” (peep)

A quiet week day afternoon found us alone in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Las Vegas church, looking for a statue of “La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre"
… "Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, the patroness of Cuba. Delia loved her and wanted me to see her. As we searched toward the front a priest came from seemingly nowhere, moving quietly in his sock feet. “May I help you?” he whispered.
“Where is El Cobre?” asked Delia.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The statue of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre,” she replied.
“We do not have one in this church. We have a lovely bas relief of Our Lady of Lourdes in the apse.”
“Bas relief? You don’t have a statue of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre? You don’t have a statue of ANY of the saints?” Okay. She was a little loud but she got that way sometimes and there was no one there but the three of us.
The priest pointed furiously at the door.
“Get… Out … Of … My … Church!” he hissed through clenched teeth.
We collapsed in the car in the parking lot, laughing and gasping for breath.
“I wonder what was wrong with him,” Delia said.
We went to the closest botanica and bought a statue. She is lovely, soft blue, carrying her child and floating above a small boat with three men in it. She stands in my house today along with yellow sea shells and a green scapular that a friend gave Delia when she had melanoma some forty years ago.

I don’t really know what happened. A few years ago some small, inconsequential (and they are all small and inconsequential) annoyance came between us. She didn’t call me and I didn’t call her. The annoyance fed on itself and we both became proud and in time we lost touch.

There were days when I thought to call her and didn’t, times when I remembered the love we had for each other and wondered if she missed me as I missed her. I missed her but I was stubborn and fearful of rejection.

Last week a mutual friend called. I knew the moment she said, “I have sad news,” that she was calling about Delia. “She had cancer again,” she said. “She was only sick about three weeks and she left us today.

I am left with the statue, some pictures, and a hole in my heart where Delia used to be. I always thought I would see her again. I always thought we would talk and laugh and eat yucca again. But for pride and fear of rejection, we might have. I will never know.