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ARTS & LETTERS JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURE Issue Six, Fall 2001 LIKE LOVERS Janice Eidus The windows of my mother's spare, antiseptic room in this prestigious Manhattan hospital look out on Central Park: the trees are bare but the air is balmy in late February, and people walk hatless and gloveless, their light jackets casually unbuttoned. But she, so frail in her loose hospital gown, her collarbones jutting out like two sharp stones, isn't looking out her window. Instead, she stares fixedly at me, squinting through her bifocals. I sit across from her in a narrow metal folding chair that's wreaking havoc on my lower back. Sitting up tall the way my yoga teacher has taught me to, I focus on my breath: inhale slowly, exhale slowly, inhale, exhale... "I didn't like that other place at all," my mother says suddenly. Her voice is ragged and hoarse—a result of having been intubated for two weeks in the Intensive Care Unit of a Bronx Hospital, before being moved here. "In that other place," she goes on, "the doctors robbed me and stole my pants, and then they left me in a bawdy house." Her eyes are wide, her expression a combination of outrage and bewilderment. "And then you came to see me, Janice," she says, "wearing a gold lame suit and an Afro wig." Giving up my attempts at perfect posture and breath control, I slump down in the unforgiving metal chair, feeling stunned at how rapidly, due to her sudden illness, she moves in and out of lucidity. I stare at her arms, legs, and hands, all grotesquely swollen from water retention, while the rest of her has shrunk. Her silvery hair is matted, and her skin, usually so glowing it makes her look ten years younger than her age of 79, is sallow. Each time she moves even slightly, she cries out in pain. (excerpt from the short memoir, LIKE LOVERS) © Janice Eidus |
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