Araby. Gretta Mulrooney

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СКАЧАТЬ Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’

      ‘Ah, you know your mother. She has me beat. She wouldn’t go to her hospital appointments, then she put a stop on the doctor. He came one day and she wouldn’t see him, told me to say she was asleep. I was terrible embarrassed with him driving out from Fermoy and all. She’s frightened of going back into hospital. It’s because of Nana.’ His voice was cracked with fatigue.

      My grandmother, her mother, had died in hospital after a stroke. I took a handful of the grain and sprinkled it on the ground. A hen strutted and pecked by my feet. My mother loved her hens, just as her mother had. She would stand at the hen-house door, talking to them, calling them her doteys, clucking to them and asking them to lay her beautiful speckledy eggs.

      ‘I’ve been trying to get her to eat but she won’t. She takes a few mouthfuls. I can’t wash her properly with the old arthritis, I’m frightened I’ll let her fall. I wanted to ring you a couple of weeks ago but she sprang the old tears on me.’ He made a gesture of exasperation and scratched his thin, still sandy hair.

      He’d never been able to deal with her if she cried. A blank, terrified look would come on his face and he would slope away to his woodwork or his vegetables.

      ‘I’ve told her I’m calling the doctor. I’ll do it now.’

      He looked relieved. ‘Ah good. She’ll take it from you, she knows you’ve got sense.’

      I rang the doctor, a man called Molloy, and caught him just before evening surgery. I’d never met him so I explained who I was.

      ‘My mother is very ill, I’d like you to visit immediately,’ I said.

      He sounded truculent. ‘She’s been very naughty, missing appointments. We haven’t been able to monitor her.’

      I bridled at that word, naughty, reducing her to less than adult. What did he know about my mother’s fears? ‘I realize that she has avoided medics but I’m worried about her. She’s lost a lot of weight very suddenly.’

      ‘No cancer was found in the tests,’ he said quickly and I thought he sounded defensive. He would know that I was a physiotherapist, my mother would be sure to have told him, and I guessed that he was wary of another professional.

      ‘No, I know that the original tests were clear. Can you come tonight?’

      ‘Yes, very well. You’ll be there?’

      I confirmed that I would. I went into my mother to tell her. My father had given her a cup of tea and she was holding it, untasted, in her lap.

      ‘I’m mucky, Rory,’ she said. ‘Look at me, I haven’t even had a cat’s lick for a week. What will the doctor think at all?’

      I smiled. ‘A cat’s lick’ was the name we’d always given to a quick rub of a flannel on the face.

      ‘Would you like to have a bit of a clean-up?’ I asked her. ‘I’ll wash your hair for you too. You’ve always liked your hair to look nice.’

      I didn’t want Molloy turning his nose up at my mother; I wanted her to have dignity as he probed. I wasn’t sure how she would react to my suggestion. This was the moment when my mother needed a daughter and I wished for a sister to leave delicate tasks to. I was used to manipulating the limbs and kneading muscles of both sexes, but I had never been in the bathroom at the same time as my mother and the barrier of propriety was a strong one.

      ‘’Tis a fine state I’m in when me son has to help me wash,’ she said but she nodded her agreement.

      She let me lead her to the bathroom, walking slowly and giving little groans. Inside she held onto the sink.

      ‘That was my life-blood draining away when I bled,’ she said flatly.

      I smoothed her hair back, paralysed by this sudden insight. She knew the symptoms of cancer; a woman who lived across the road in Tottenham had died of it and my mother had watched her waste away. She had always said the word in a hushed tone, as if to invoke it might bring its wrath on her. I didn’t know what to say. I took the coward’s way out.

      ‘You’re not well at all, Mum, that’s for sure.’

      ‘I should have had that operation, years ago.’

      ‘Maybe. But that’s past now.’

      ‘Oh everything’s past now.’

      There was a silence. My eyes were heavy.

      ‘Shall we do your hair first?’ I asked gently, pulling up the chair that they threw towels on.

      ‘I couldn’t be climbing on that,’ she said fearfully in a child’s voice, clutching my arm.

      My heart juddered. ‘No, no. No climbing. You can sit on this and rest your head back, like at the hairdresser’s.’

      She acquiesced and I helped her lower herself down. I wetted her hair and poured on shampoo, lightly massaging it in. Her temples had become concave and I imagined that if I pressed too firmly my fingers would penetrate her scalp. Strands of hair came out on my knuckles, threading them together. Her hair had been a source of huge pride, thick and wavy into old age. She would often say that it had drawn many compliments in her youth, a honey-coloured delight. For years she had kept it long because she hated hairdressers. They pulled you about, she said, and made an eejit of you. Her scalp was sensitive and the slightest tug on her hair hurt her; she didn’t like anyone touching it. It was still well-coloured with little grey but as I witnessed how thin it had become tears filmed my eyes. This was the first time I had washed my mother’s hair and it was slipping away, swirling into the plughole. Her head seemed weightless in my hands and the brown furry ball webbing my nails emphasized that she was giving up, letting her pride and joy go without a fight. Any hope that I had trickled away with the soapy water. I wanted to weep but I reached for a towel, passing it unobtrusively across my eyes before wrapping it carefully around her head.

      ‘Now,’ I said, sitting her up as you would a child, ‘was that okay? I didn’t hurt, did I?’

      ‘No, ye’re very good. The water was lovely.’

      ‘I was better than those old jades of hairdressers, then?’

      She nodded but I didn’t raise a smile. I helped her unbutton her cross-over apron and she stood up so that I could turn the chair around. I soaped a flannel and she ran it around her face and neck and under her arms. The tops of her arms, where there used to be solid quivering fat, were wasted. I turned away and fiddled with the soaps and shaving gear on the shelf behind me, rearranging them. She ran out of energy half way, leaning against the sink rim, so I rinsed the flannel and went back over her skin, wiping away the soap. Her large stomach, slightly exposed beneath the apron, was a yellowy colour. She said that she could manage her other bits herself so I ran fresh water.

      ‘Shall I help you with your knickers?’ Although she thought of me as a medic, we’d never been in this kind of personal territory before. I hovered, unsure.

      ‘Just slide them down for me.’

      She eased them from the top and I pulled them slowly by their elasticated hems. Then I left her to see if I could find fresh clothes. In the bedroom I searched СКАЧАТЬ