My gran’s death shakes and rattles her. She moves back and forth, side to side, her head following in a slow but constant no and then, later, yes. She labours to shrug herself off, whispering and muttering and moaning, calling for her people. Her mouth moves and moves.
They feed her to the end, till the very last day, putting on her a great huge bib, and with efficiency, spoon in egg and yoghurt. Later I find a piece of egg by her lip and mistake it for a loose tooth and tell my mother, “Her tooth has come loose in her mouth.”
“Well, get it out,” my mother says. “She’ll choke.”
And I put my finger in and retrieve a tooth-sized piece of egg. I tell my gran I am sorry though I am not sure what for. I say it is okay, but I’m not sure about that either. She dances in bed, twitching and throwing her arm out.
“Are you hot?” we ask, opening and closing the covers.
Her eyes are half closed. Is she awake, asleep? We never know. There is nothing to do but chit chat, which we do some of the time, yawing from epic, whispered goodbyes: “Let go, you can let go, it’s okay, I love you,” to saying, “Yes, he has shingles, which I’ve heard is very painful. But, so, he can’t travel right now. He just came back from the Camino, where he overdid it obviously, obviously that’s what his body is saying with the shingles, you know…” Click of knitting needles.
How do you gather at this portal?
At C’s birth, I was shocked at how the enormity of what was happening to me was contrasted so strongly with Ricky and the birth team having curry in the kitchen, chatting. How could they? I wonder if my gran feels the same. But you cannot keep up solemnity. Before long it slides into platitude, and besides, the baby needs lunch.
On Wednesday we arrive and my gran is wearing black gloves. Her hands and lower arms are blackening and ice cold. The gloves are to help keep her warm, but they can’t be pulled over the fingers, so they stick up ghoulishly and move and wave, the fingers walking through the air, spiderlike, clownlike. Later someone replaces them with socks, which do not stick up at quite so jaunty an angle. Death creeps up her hands, twining up her arms and round her ankles, moving towards her heart.
I hold her hands, put cream on them. But she pulls them away, muttering, muttering.
“Is it sore?” I ask, a little hurt.
I want her to receive my appeal to her, my loving gesture. My family do not really ever touch. Just hug on hello and goodbye, but nothing between. I want to show her I can touch her with tenderness. I want to show my mother and aunt that I can abide holding her black hands, that I can stand it, that I am not squeamish, and also, maybe it is a wish expressed, to be touched by my mother, to be stroked and calmed and tended to. Or that I could touch my mother like this, could stand the intimacy, the proximity. I can do it now, to my gran, though not in life. There was never time for that.
But she pulls away, and I am surprised, rebuffed. Good for her, for not letting me use her, for making me replace the silly gloves, wipe the cream off. Too late, my gesture, and not real, or, rather, real, but full of complications, entangled, snarled up in generations talking past each other with hands untouched. I must have disturbed her, her process, and for that I am sorry.
All across the city the water is turned off for major maintenance. We haven’t had water at home for days. Knowing it was coming, I filled a bath and sat in it too hot, which is how I like it, just a little too hot, so it hurts to be in it, so you have to take your legs and arms out and your torso broils. When it cooled some, C joined me, but didn’t much like it. Then Ricky bathed. We keep the water in the tub and use it to flush the toilet. Our days are measured in the scum ring that moves by degrees.
C’s nappies pile up. I put the shit-filled liners in a bucket of ice cold JoJo water to swill around hideously, and let the wee nappies just gather in the basket. What to do? I call around at laundromats, but everyone is off too. Why can’t I simply buy disposables and be done with it? I don’t know. I can’t stand the waste. I care about the environment. But that is the good patina on what is otherwise the theme phrase of our family: it’s a waste. Waste, waste. Don’t make waste. Or: don’t waste. Her nappies pile up and I wonder what to do and I put my hands in the bucket of icy shit water and stir.
On Friday my mother sends a message to say she will be returning home the next day. Has gran suddenly improved? No, she says, but I can’t wait here forever. I go east again, to my gran who is dying in the East Rand, where she lived. I pick up my mother and we go again to the bedside. My gran’s hands that morning are suddenly pink. Oh, I think, she is coming back.
Then, at her bedside, I suddenly confront my mother about a small thing that infuriated me the day before. My mother gets a physical fright, flinching in her chair. I have done the worst thing. I have upset the peace. I have spoken. She responds, small, stutteringly.
“We never speak,” I reply to my mother, desperate. “We never say anything real. We’re always just nice and calm and quiet. Keep the peace and don’t waste. Don’t make a mess.”
It all comes pouring out of me, there beside my grandmother, whose body is moving like a corpse down a river in flood, and beside my tiny daughter, worn like a shield between us on my mother’s lap, both of them witnessing my mother and I trying to be born. I want to be awake. God help me.
I say to my mother, Come home with me, spend the weekend. On Sunday we can reassess. But there is no need. I look at my phone in the early half light on Saturday and my mother has sent two messages at 5.26am: Gran died last night, and, Water came back so we can do washing.
I am physically shocked. I gasp. Ricky looks up.
“Oh, oh,” I say. “My gran died.” I dive into the bedding.
Just at that precise moment, my mother taps on the window to be let in. Tap, tap, with her nails. Oh, oh. My mother comes into my room and watches me cry. She sits very close to me, but we do not touch.
“C, C,” she says.
I say, “What happened?” Lamely, I know what happened. I was there as she battled to shrug off her mantle, as she uncoiled.
“C, C,” my mother coos, holding her, rocking her.
My mother thought she heard the water in the pipes, early, early on Saturday morning, after she’d heard the news: my gran had died just before midnight, the water coming on the heels of the news. But my mother was wrong. The water was not yet in the pipes. It would come, but only later that day. Then the nappies would be washed, and just in time, and hung up to dry in the winter sun.
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