I am reading an essay about death and dying in a crosswalk while my mother lays dying in the hospital bed across from me the day after the Day of Mourning.
It starts out as a tack piercing the end of the big toe on her right foot. Just a little thumb tack or a carpet tack or maybe even a pushpin. She is 88 years old; subtleties and nuances wore away decades ago. She doesn't treat it. She doesn’t complain. She hobbles around. She powers through, like she's done with everything else in life.
In 1956 when she was 21 years old, her mother packed her up and shipped her off to the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers with nothing more than what she could carry in a small duffle bag. After she gave birth, she had a single week with her newborn daughter before the child was taken from her and placed with a Black couple who whisked her away to parts unknown and forever. One week. Snatched from her arms. Ripped from the headlines. She cried for the five minutes she allotted herself for this weakling activity.
In 1965 when she was 30 years old, she packed up two-month-old me and left my father, heading back to her childhood home in Kane PA from Detroit with nothing more than what she could carry in a suitcase on a bus. A two-month-old. A suitcase. A Greyhound bus. Back to live with her parents, a Black father who ran his chiropody practice from the corner office of their house on the corner and a Black mother who ran the rest of the white town, including running the white police who met my father at the Greyhound bus station and threatened to arrest him if he got off the bus in search of my mother.
In 1968 when she was 33 years old, she bore a son and then her mother died of bladder cancer and then her son died a crib death and then her father died 18 months later from a cerebral hemorrhage. Mother, dead. Son, dead. Father, dead. She packed up her heart and soul and never recovered, the course of her river altered permanently.
In 1976 when she was 41, she packed up my three-year-old sister and left my stepfather, heading to Honolulu from Detroit with nothing more than what she could carry in two suitcases, having sold Bobby the Baby Grand Piano for $400 to fund her escape. A large stone head named RA the Sun God occupied a hatbox, which was rammed into a suitcase, her mother's television set and some clothes crammed into the other. A three-year-old. Two suitcases. An airplane. I was in Honolulu already, the 11-year-old anchor baby.
This August I begin taking her to the podiatrist every few weeks, who keeps close track of the wound as well as the rest of her feet, nails growing and curling and digging through her canvas sneakers, skin peeling off in great, coconut shaving–like flakes. She winces when the doctor moves her big toe gingerly and cuts the nail gently, which is how I know it’s really hurting her because this is not a woman who winces.
In October, something happens to the pinkie toe on her right foot. “It was yowling and it kept me up all night.” She applies Aspercreme with lidocaine to stop the pain. She tells no one. The tack piercing is almost healed.
A week later at the podiatrist, she takes off her shoes and socks to reveal a right foot that is shedding zombie layers of skin on her ankle down to the white, that is red and “wet” and inflamed all over. The podiatrist, the assistant, and I exchange horrified looks. My mother sits calmly, humming and giggling to herself.
Her nails still look neatly trimmed from the last visit.
The podiatrist says that Aspercreme has menthol and the menthol has torn up her foot. She prescribes extremely helpful products that remove the excess skin and also provide some relief to my mother’s aching foot but when the relief wears off in between applications my mother decides that putting a plastic bag on her foot for two days is the best idea.
At the podiatrist the following Tuesday, it is revealed that the tack wound has reopened, the zombie ankle is alive, and the entire foot is livid.
Sunday night her housemate looks in on her and finds her sound asleep and unrousable, which is a very good thing given my mother’s catlike nature. Monday morning her housemate looks in on her and finds her sound asleep and unrousable, which is a very bad thing because they have a dr. appt. that she needs to get ready for and it appears as if she hasn’t moved.
Push push. Shake shake. Panic panic. Call.
Monday September 13, 1999.
I'd had it.
I’d had it with the roadblocks, the ganging up on, being denied, the ambivalence, the naysaying. They weren't interested in actual repair, they just wanted to have power. And after a year of agonizing sessions, I’d had enough. I just let go. I sent Daughter back. I couldn’t anymore. I couldn’t continue to tear her in two like that bible story. I eventually got her back but it was the hardest turning point I’ve ever experienced.
Monday December 4, 2000. Two Dragon years ago.
“Hello?” I say expectantly to the unknown number displayed on the screen at my work desk phone.
“May I speak to Tijanna Eaton?”
“Yes, this is Tijanna.”
“Hi, I’m the Sheriff of Victorville or maybe I’m the Doctor of Victorville and I’m calling about James Eaton.”
“Yes…………okay……..”
“Was he your father?” (Because it turns out I am the Coroner of Victorville.)
I decide right then that I hate receiving news on Mondays and he’s dead because it’s Monday’s fault. Mondays bring bad news.
I also decide that when people say, “This is your year” it isn’t so much that it is the best year. It just means everything is amplified.
Some Monday in August of 2006.
“Hello?” I say expectantly to the unknown number displayed on the screen at my work desk phone.
“May I speak to Tijanna Eaton?”
“Yes, this is Tijanna.”
“Hi, I’m the case manager, receptionist, clinician, or perhaps I’m the doctor and I’m calling with your test results.”
“Yes…………okay……..”
“You have tested positive for HSV I and HSV II….”
Monday December 31, 2012. One Dragon year ago.
“We are breaking up,” reads the 9 am text. This means the entire band will break up because they are girlfriends and this news is disastrous and it greets me bright and early, and after 13 years I will become violently unmoored from being a musician in a way from which I’ve never recovered.
Monday November 3, 2024. The current Dragon year.
“Paramedics taking Barbara to hospital,” reads the 9 am text.
She is septic. She is fighting staph. Her right leg is not getting enough blood flow. The big toe is dying. Two other toes begin to follow suit. “Demarcation” is what they call it. They will wait for the foot to bifurcate the living tissue from the dead. They will see what happens in six weeks.
The days go by and then it is one week. She turns 89 while nearly in a coma. It is two weeks. It is three weeks.
It is a story about a pair of lovers who leave a party, on their way back to the protagonist’s place to fuck, when they come across bodies littering a crosswalk. The protagonist switches effortlessly into calamity mode, welcoming the adrenalin and the searing garrote of thought that propels her body into motion. Observing the dead man face down in a puddle, tending to the dying man face up and screaming and clutching at her with bloody hands, observing the dead man in the puddle lifting his head to grab air and ordering a bystander to help him not drown, talking to the face-up dying man while calling 911.
I am the protagonist, watching the dying man in the puddle—my mother—struggle with life, with breath. I am the screaming man, clutching at the protagonist—the doctors and nurses—as my mother lay dying in the puddle. I read this story and I look up at the sound of my mother’s rasp and twitch. I look at her and I look at her and I stare at her and I want to finish reading because it’s gripping and it’s distracting and my mother is dying and all I can do is sit and read and watch and wait.
The pair have sex. The pair are kinky. The pair have a dynamic. I claw as much meaning out of each sentence as possible wanting more sex and more kink and more dynamic because these are the elixirs we drink after catastrophe. Unlike my mother who won’t drink the apple juice, the pineapple orange juice, the tea, the water, or the Ensure that they leave for her, I drink in the details of the story and am still parched when it’s over.
The protagonist begins a search for the driver who hit and ran by tracking down and calling the building superintendent whose camera captured the whole scene. The call and initial follow-up email are cordial but then the women ricochet off each other, the protagonist requesting to view the footage, the super saying there is nothing to see, the protagonist offering credentials in reviewing videos for forensic evidence, the super becoming increasingly noncommittal, the protagonist becoming frantic and obsessed, the super ultimately deciding that the camera saw nothing. I have personalized these details and my mood is incendiary at the building superintendent. A solution was in her hands and she threw it down and trampled it and then gaslit our protagonist and I wished it was her body lying in the crosswalk.
It has already been six weeks and the process is still unfolding, or winding down, or killing itself blackly. If you tink-tink her big toe, she feels nothing and nothing moves because it is dead. But the rest of her is very much alive and she is awake again, cantankerous again, eating little bites of food, drinking ginger ale by the can, watching sports, receiving visitors, complaining, humming and giggling as I hum and giggle.
"Dessert first!" she exclaims when I encourage her to eat the protein first. She eats dessert first. There is never enough room for the protein.
**************************************
They discover cancer in her colon.
"Surgery on Monday," reads the text from my mother’s housemate.
Monday December 9, 2024. The current Dragon year. My birthday is on Tuesday December 10, 2024.
Surgery occurs on Wednesday December 11, 2024. The cancerous mass is removed. The surgery is successful. I visit. The recovery begins. I visit. The recovery stops. I visit. It begins again. I visit. It stops. I visit. She stops. I visit. She begins again. I visit.
Sunday December 29, 2024 she calls and we talk for 24 minutes.
“I feel great!” My mother says. She has never said that before.
“I am so tired,” my mother also says, toward the end of the call. She has never sounded this tired before.
I receive a call at 9:56 pm.
“The paramedics are here. Barbara is having trouble breathing,” says the concerned nurse. I give permission to have her transported to the hospital. I forget to find out what hospital she is at. I will find out tomorrow and I will visit, like I've done since the beginning of this ordeal. “I will call and update you.”
At 1:50 am, I have not heard back so I call. I want to find out in advance which hospital they took her to.
“She’s still here. She doesn’t want to go to the hospital.” I am alarmed. I encourage them to take her. I hang up and wait.
At 2:52 am, just as I am finally going to bed, I receive a call from the nurse saying she’s nonresponsive. I panic.
I dress quickly, rush to the car, drive fast, call my sister, call my daughter. They both answer the phone. I pick them up. I drive even faster.
We arrive. It has taken only 45 minutes from the time I leave my house in Oakland until the time we pull up in front of the care center on 19th Avenue in the city. We hold hands as we enter the room.
Barbara Jean Capp Eaton Brown Hagler, The Red Queen, tore through the veil, rather impatiently, on Monday December 30th, 2024 at 3:15 am.
It is still a Dragon year.
Comments