The Break by Katherena Vermette

Author:Katherena Vermette
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2016-09-02T13:48:41+00:00

The room is full when we get to the hospital. I couldn’t keep Jake away another day and Baby boy is good medicine for everyone. He goes right to our Kookom’s lap. Jake greets his grandmothers and goes right to Emily, her bed raised to sitting. Her face has more colour this morning. They talk close and she smiles. Paul moves away for what looks like the first time all night. I fill a Styrofoam plate with food for Kookoo, cutting everything up for her, just like I did for Baby boy. She nibbles kindly and shares with him. My mom and Paul don’t eat and I don’t ask them to.

“Where’s Pete?” I ask my family.

Mom looks back and forth. “He went to clean up.”

“Oh,” is all I say because my mom is like my boy and I’m going to have to wait.

“I am going to get a coffee. Does anyone want one?” Paul stretches up and gets her wallet.

“I can go,” I chime in.

“No, I need the walk.” She looks over at Emily who just looks at her cousin. My sister’s mouth makes a thin line where a smile used to be.

Once she’s gone, Mom pulls me out into hall. I still can hear my Kookom singing an old song to Baby. It soothes me, too.

“She’s a wreck!” My mom will not be soothed. “Your sister’s a fucking mess.”

My mother is a big believer in stating the obvious. “Well, of course she is, Ma. How else is she supposed to be? You’d be a mess too. You are a mess.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be so fucking nice to that fucking sorry excuse for a doctor, I tell you that.”

“What happened?”

“They want to discharge her. Her. Emily. After all this, they want to discharge her today. Or maybe tomorrow, they said. Maybe. They already want to get rid of her, can you believe it?”

“Well, they have to be quick, Ma. If the doctor says she’s good to go then she’s going to be okay.” I want to reach out, put a hand on her arm or something, but my wrecked mother would only flinch, and that would hurt both of us.

“I don’t believe it for a second. They’re just trying to push us out.”

“Why would they do that, Ma?” I cross my arms in front of me instead.

“Because that’s what they do. They don’t care.”

I look at her long, my poor mom and all she’s been through. How this must feel for her. “Let’s just see what the doctor says, okay?”

She scoffs a bit and looks down the hall. The beeping and the noise is everywhere. The smell, too, gets into everything.

My Kookoo starts another song.

I think of my aunty and how she died. What my mom and grandmother must be thinking now. Here at the hospital, the same hospital that wants to release their girl, their other girl.

“They didn’t even treat her. Just put her right back out in the street. Didn’t even look, just thought she was another drunk and didn’t care,” my mom says under her breath.

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