Remembrance of Things Past Remembering

“I just want you to understand discovering your mother in a rehabilitation hospital packing her things only these are not her things, these are trash things, used diapers, plastic wrap, wads of Kleenex, her purse turned inside out, her fears, her incomprehension, the memories of her mother, the desire for her mother, the way her mother touched her face as a girl and forgave her, the way the kitten felt wiggly and soft when she brought it home in her pocket, the dancing she did in the basement, the smell of her aunts’ cooking, how they said potato in that lilting Irish as they peeled them . . . .”—Emily Hipchen

Providence & The Sparrow

by Emily Hipchen

PROVIDENCE Rhode Island—(Weekly Hubris)—1 December 2022—I just want you to understand discovering your mother in a rehabilitation hospital packing her things only these are not her things, these are trash things, used diapers, plastic wrap, wads of Kleenex, her purse turned inside out, her fears, her incomprehension, the memories of her mother, the desire for her mother, the way her mother touched her face as a girl and forgave her, the way the kitten felt wiggly and soft when she brought it home in her pocket, the dancing she did in the basement, the smell of her aunts’ cooking, how they said potato in that lilting Irish as they peeled them, the sound of the pieces hitting the pan, the taste of the raw peel they gave her, the feel of their legs against her ear and the thick nobs of their knees against her cheek, the sight of her father walking in the door, the way he rolled his ankles when he walked, her mother’s fingers in her hair, loosening her braids, her mother’s kiss before sleeping, the doll she pressed to her neck, the unrolling dream of the roads rivering up into the blue mountains outside town

The sack in her hand in the hospital room is transparent plastic, white plastic handles that click together to close tightly, but her arm is going in and out, dipping in and out, her starfish hand scouring the reefs, and once when we were underwater together, she turned to me, the second-stage in her mouth making that sucking bubbling sound and her eyes were so magnified I thought they would take up her whole face, and she shifted her head back on her neck to look up at the surface, at the blot of the sun blazing behind the mirror of the surface (up where she could not be suffocated in water), which is a gesture she made the last time I saw her just a few weeks ago, in her wheelchair trying to catch her breath, trying to make the cage of her ribs let her bird-heart go, or rather to keep it there or something—because it’s not at all clear anymore what she wants to do, where she wants to be, how she wants to live, if she wants to live here where mostly she stays behind her closed eyes and sometimes, surely, she has to feel crushed under all this needing to keep her heart plodding down this road on its tired flat feet with both soles loose at all the seams

Her hand in the sack digs in the dirty diapers, pushing everything wet aside, she says my name, she says Emily, Emily—Emily is in here, can you help me, she is in here, and how am I in there and in her mind too? Her hand snouts around for me in her own waste and worry and this is when I become a memory that will not be retained, which is not me, not what I am to her—there amongst what will end up in a landfill, like the both of us, which is, I stand there thinking, exactly what should happen, that she is a fool, she is telling a truth, we are (ridiculous) this tissue, that lipstick

She says: shh they are trying to kill me, and I can’t think who would try to kill this old woman in her paper pants wet to the knees, her diaper overborne, which must be cold, which must be clammy, and her paper shirt that is like the bag around her hand and just barely holds her inside it, there are ties at the neck, the sleeves bell, her dress at her wedding had so many pearl buttons it took, she once said to me with her hand just going all crooked in the joints crooked around the bell of the wine glass mostly full of something white and cold and bitter, about an hour to fasten her in, buttons up the wrists, buttons up the back and over a corset she didn’t need, the waist at 20 inches, the bust full with tulle to give her breasts she didn’t have yet, though she was 22 when they married at the local church, her sisters in the wedding, all those buttons, she said to me, breathing out something between acetone and grape juice, they took it all off her to put her into something my father could ease her out of the night of their wedding and with this she looks away out the window like the past is there

They are trying to kill me, I don’t like this hotel, there’s a parade in the hall but they are trying to kill me, she insists, then sits on the bed, her bag of trash beside her, so I sit down beside her and I say, Mom, here is some candy, let’s have a piece of that together, and I unwrap a piece of something chocolate that she tucks into the bag for later, as if there’s a later she will understand as later, not the eternal now in which she, like any quivering creature, is hunted, cornered, and slaughtered just for living, just for (she imagines, I imagine) being, and so I say, Mom, can we change your pants do you think and she looks at me and says, Emily, you fuss too much, there is no reason to change and anyway no time since Father is here and he needs me to get on my shoes, but I can’t find the left one and the car is waiting, so she looks at me with those eyes that are not the eyes I have looked into all my life and I am not me, I am not there, we are not here, we are not sitting together on a hospital bed in a rehabilitation facility in 2014 with a bag of trash for packing and now she is crying, wailing, the tears a complete mask that splots the blue paper over her breasts a darker blue and all of the sudden she says, Emily, Emily, where are we, what happened, did I hit my head? Is this the hospital

It’s Mother’s Day, I say, should we change pants and go out to dinner and I have been pressing the bell for a nurse, trying to get someone to change her and put her in a shower and instead the television is shouting something about the weather and my mother turns up her head and hisses go away go away go away you don’t get to see me like this and with all her might she shoves herself out of the bed leaping for the door with her bag of trash that holds me in it and she is in the hall before I can recall her to herself as if I could call her anywhere, trapped as I am in this locked bathroom, trapped because something has happened and I can’t get out Mother, Mother, Mom Mom Mom I call, but she is sleeping or gone and so I figure out how to jimmy the lock from my side and no one ever knows that she has locked me in the bathroom like a dog and left me there and maybe she never was where I thought she was which is the most likely thing you can imagine, I think, when the orderly who is so kind rolls up with a chair for my mother, he is young and handsome and my mother thinks he’s the maid, so he plays the maid for her, listens to her complain about the service, ask about checking out, what she owes, and I say, can she shower and change and can you get someone to help her and get her fresh—I wave an arm that folds in the whole whole world

She is clean, in pajamas, she smells of powder and lotion like a soft baby. I hand her the phone and she explains that I have taken her out to dinner at a restaurant she can’t remember the name of and that her whole family is there, of course, making sure she is remembered and she’s ordered the biggest steak and shh, she says to me, you can’t say that I’m lying because this is a white lie, it makes people feel better that you don’t want to be with them, so you say I’m sick or I have other plans, and everyone knows this is a white lie, but I say, Mom, don’t you want to play bridge with Mrs. Peres, and she says, No, not really (she is smoking, her bouffant enormous and flipped at the ends), I would rather stay here, she says as she sips her drink and looks over the rim at me, her hand around the martini she’s made for herself, it’s a white lie, a white lie, and when she hands me the phone my brother says: you’re at rehab, right? Not at a restaurant, no steak, nothing like that and I say: yes, but I know that what she said is not a lie, she is not lying now, everything else was a lie, the forgetting, the panic, this facility, the crawling to the finish line, but this, this here, this Mother’s Day dinner she believes in and sees is not a lie at all, and she tastes this steak even though it’s ice cream she’s cutting with a little plastic knife and lifting to her mouth to chew.