(no subject)
[5.11.2008: mother’s day]
May 15, 2008
It is on this day two years ago that I massaged her legs, arms, watched them buoy in
mid-air like balloons, like containers filled to the brim. was this yesterday? i don't
agree with the flower industry, roses and tulips being grown in homelands like mine,
chemicals caught in eyelashes and in people's throats. the workers not being
compensated for their labor. Insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and soil fumigants,
all pollutants into the skin for thousands of workers. But this is what my mom wanted,
roses like every mother celebrating mother's day. I spent the little money I had and
gave her the roses.
I had the inability to become a safe doctor or lawyer, a financially responsible
engineer, even a drab heterosexual person. I couldn't stay in doors for protests
and couldn't hold my tongue back. I actually told her i stopped eating pork
altogether. The least I could do was buy flowers, follow the usual mother's day
protocol.
she coughed up blood, liquid swelling in her lungs, a cough she said,
a cold she said. I wonder why the doctor lied to her and signed that medical
permission slip so that she could travel across the ocean 23 hours later,
back to her home. he must've known she was practically gone. His pen swirled
slopes like the airplanes they've both traveled, he smiled softly and probably kept
it quiet or unsaid. Maybe the both of them realized the truce-he her doctor and
she her patient, or perhaps something more human like immigrant to immigrant. the
cancer spread and her heart, lungs, kidney, they all were slowly deteriorating. she had
to go home.
all I could do was try to massage it out of her. I received hilot every instance
I had a trace of a sore throat, achy muscle, sad heart as a child. Old and young women
came to my house after the women healers in my family had died and pressed my body
into circular patterns, their fingers stirring camphor in the air, their faces controlled
and confident. I am no healer like this. I could only do what I could to appease the
body from spilling from itself. the mountainous mattress springs of her
small studio basement apartment creaked from the weight.
I could only cry and tell her to come back to me. put the socks on her feet one by one,
help her with her sweater, then her coat, carry her purse, make sure her passport
was in order. my palm felt as minute as it was at age 8 after the first heart attack,
brushing it across her forehead and with the same childhood hope, thinking that was
just enough.
And I sang to her, in a low and sad voice,
gala sumpit kalad abong, agka na tatakot.
Come on, let's go home, there's no need to be afraid.
My lola sang this to me as I dangled from her sturdy body as thick as an aged tree,
both our eyes half-asleep in crescent moons, drifting in Chicago starlight. My titas
sang this when the small babies unfurled cries from the cars to the front steps.
As is the only way to keep new spirits safe.
When fear is this close, when you can see the body has taken on too much even for
it's own architecture, it may seem unrepairable, hopeless. What is there to do
but sing the helplessness into a rhythm that can sustain us, even for the last
seconds?
I don't remember if we laughed or if she gave me advice. the florescent
light made us both pale, her skin yellow and veins transparent. I pulled her
up from her bed, handed her her cane. Her eyes were like caves, I remember.
I told her to eat all of her favorite foods, to say hi to lolo and lola for
me in their graves. She nodded.
I asked her to stretch everyday, rotate her wrists, her neck, ask my cousins
to massage her back and legs since I couldn't be there. I pressed my lips at
her forehead, helped her into the car. the men in her apartment were kind enough
to drive her to the airport, usher her to inside. One panicked, let his stern
composure loose, manang, maybe you should cancel? Kasi, the hospitals
are better here. her face looking forward, her throat filled with liquid.
No, let's go. it's time.
I asked her to promise to come back to me, safe and whole. she promised
those fake treaties just to appease, just to make amends, just in case. If she
couldn't promise her return she knew I would never let her get near an airport
gate, she knew I could talk her into anything, it was my gift after all. I couldn't
pay rent with it, but I could argue her to stay in another hospital bed somewhere
in Humboldt park without ever going back home. besides, isn't the responsibility
of a mother to ensure security, to believe even the impossible can occur?
two years ago I cried all day. called my beloved, and I tried to voice it by
phone wires, tried to explain that I knew she's never going to come back. I walked
on kedzie, watched for the car to turn around, carefully walked blocks like needle
to thread, hoping she'd find her way back to my hands.