I Have Been Assigned the Single Bird by Susan Cerulean

Author:Susan Cerulean
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2020-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Resistance (Only Leads to Suffering)

I did not want the life of the grown daughter who tended her invalid mother in the room next door to Dad’s. Every single afternoon at five-thirty, the small woman would come bearing a fragrant paper sack from a fast food chain. She would wheel her mother to the dining room, cut her institutionally prepared dinner into manageable bites, and then unwrap a hamburger and french fries for herself. After they’d both eaten, the daughter would wheel her mother back to her room and gently close the door. The television they watched would talk through Dad’s walls until nine o’clock, or later.

That wasn’t the kind of arrangement I wanted. I craved long summer evenings walking the neighborhood with Jeff in the open air, watering our garden, cooking dinner from the vegetables we grew, sharing a beer on our own front porch. My father wanted that too, of course. But his immobility didn’t allow for it.

Outside Dad’s window, kudzu vines continued to erase the light. The growing season would last until first frost, around Christmas. I couldn’t remember what that little woodland had looked like in spring. A friendly, very deaf little woman across the hall explained why she had moved out of my father’s room before we took possession. “I hated the unnatural shade and how dark the room became every summer,” she said.

“I really ought to take a chainsaw to that kudzu,” I said to my dad. “Or pay someone to knock it back so the trees won’t die.” Dad didn’t comment. The kudzu’s regrowth felt so inevitable, I didn’t take it on.

Another day. “Sue, I’m going to live to be 110,” announced my father when I walked in his door. “But I’m kind of at wit’s end. I’m not really sure what I should do with the small amount of time I’ve got left.”

We had done the things I could think of, the tasks that Mary Jane had been too frail to accomplish. We’d been to the doctor, the ophthalmologist, the dentist, the oral surgeon, the gerontologist. But given the limitations of his disease, we couldn’t do the things I’d imagined would help pass the time: play cards or watch long movies or adventure out in the car. He seemed muted, even less joyful to see me. His emotional register felt compressed.

And I felt like I was metering out my own life energy when I matched myself to his pace: pulling on his socks, solving staffing issues, walking alongside him to the bathroom, ever so languidly. I’d have to check my active body and mind at the door when I visited my father, and I could feel the pulse of my own purpose, my words, my desires, beating against his needs. We’d done this for four months, but how much time lay ahead? Dad’s announced prospect of a long life ahead made me feel as if I’d quietly lose my mind.

I quartered a pale-skinned honeydew melon I had brought from the store. The

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