The Current That Carries by Lisa Graley

Author:Lisa Graley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

FEEDING INSTRUCTIONS

You’ll have to adjust, maybe even make some sacrifices—depending on the life you’ve lived before—but soon you’ll slip into a pattern the way a cow or goat, on her way home for milking, furrows a hillside by taking the same route again and again. I’ve been nine years trying to find a formula, going by instinct mainly, just doing what needs to be done. You may find yourself better suited for it than I am. But don’t worry if that’s not so in the beginning.

You won’t have trouble with her. She sleeps eighteen, maybe twenty, hours a day, and even awake, she lies motionless in bed—curled up the way of beans left long on the vine. Through the rails sometimes, she’ll watch—say if you’re folding towels and sheets in the living room beside her. But she can’t see well. Look at her eyes. I always thought them the color of orange pekoe tea—after you dunk the teabag a few times. Now the color is fading behind clouds of cataract. Probably she will make out your shape. She knows me—inasmuch as she knows anyone—in a dim way, by my movements and voice.

You might talk to her, tell her about the weather. We have three dogs—Scamp, Fritz, and Lady—but she may know earlier ones better: Speck, Tanner, Duke, Rover, Buddy, and Foxie. Tell her funny things they’ve done. Make up things if you need to. Tell her they caught a rabbit or treed a coon. Repeat, over and over, to her, “Them’s good pups.” That’s what Martin’s daddy always said, and it will be familiar. We don’t have a cat, but occasionally she sees one and enjoys stories about it—call it Kasey, Sam, or Tiger-Boots. You might get her to grin—if she thinks you’re tickled. To be honest, it’s one of the few rewards. She may not know what you’re saying, but a humorous tone stirs amusement in her.

She won’t raise up. Look at her. She hasn’t moved since you got here. She stays balled up like this most of the time. We keep the pillow between her knees so she won’t get a bedsore. And you can see how thin her skin is—like the flesh of an overripe peach. A hand around her wrist will bruise her, and any kind of friction will peel back skin. Gentleness is a must.

Come back this way to the kitchen, and I’ll show you where everything is. Her ears are still sharp. Maybe she doesn’t grasp what we say, but I do my best not to alarm her. One day last week one of her sisters stood over her, saying, “Poor, pitiful thing. Wonder why she don’t just go on, June?” Though I judged Mommaw—that’s what our children call her—to be asleep, I asked Myrtle if she’d heard the dogs in the night, and while she was answering, I ushered us to the front porch. People don’t realize, I guess, that some part of her may understand. She never wanted to burden anybody, and even now we don’t want her to feel unwanted.

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