The blaring ambulance siren abruptly woke me up from my late afternoon drowsiness as I ran past the main door, almost cutting the living room curtain in half. She seemed more fragile than I had imagined her to be—the sagging skin of her freckled neck, the sharp web of indigo veins throbbing under her fingers, the dry cracks of her feet, the noticeable longing of her lungs for the fresh mountain breeze. It took me a few seconds to accept the loss of her ethereal vividness and the unwelcoming presence of a tragedy.
“Pull up your mask. It's actually safer if you put one more over that. And take these rubber gloves, the meds and the- the syringes. You know how to use a syringe, don’t you?”
“I can-”
“Never mind. I’ll send someone from the hospital in a day or two. Take these, here”, said one of the two men while handing me a paper bag full of hospital supplies and an untainted pair of rubber gloves, which I put on immediately before touching her luggage and carrying it inside. I could hardly hear the instructions above all their panting as they slowly pulled out my mother on a stretcher, then her oxygen concentrator and a purifier, finally closing the door of the van behind. The last question, which was spoken in a rather coarse tone, found me trapped in an unexpected box of sublime melancholy and terror: “Where do you want us to set up the ICU, Miss?” This was happening.
The first two days were rather quiet and unchanged; we didn’t converse much, except for the one time when she asked me to open the window for her and some occasional “What are you cooking for dinner?”, “Is the nurse here yet?”, “The weather seems pleasant today.” Her half of the room was ostracized using a thick plastic curtain running from the window to the wall adjacent to it. While a small stool, a single bed, the concentrator and the purifier took up almost all the space in her half, there was a couch outside the red area for the visitors. By visitors, I mean for me.
It was her third day here when one evening she asked me to have a cup of tea with her.
“You still have it.” I didn’t realize what she was talking about until I saw her trembling hand pointing towards the painting she'd gifted me last year. “Of course. I could use some colors.”
“No, you never were a fan of too many colors. That’s why I added more of black and white in yours. Now when you see your sister’s, wait have you seen your sister’s? That thing has more colours than a rainbow!” She gave out a noisy laugh and I could see her yellow, decaying teeth that stank of cheap cigarette tar and the roasted meat she had this morning.
“Nah, I haven’t seen it, or maybe I did. Can’t remember”, I mumbled while placing her lunch on the already congested side table on the left side of her bed, followed by some serious manoeuvres in order to keep the rest of the material from falling off.
“I know you haven’t. She seldom invites us to her big fancy mansion of a house. I know, that is why she didn’t take me with her and sent me here, to the hills to you. Couriered like a parcel.”
“Now you’re overthinking it, mum. She loves you. And what are you saying? We went to her house on Shan’s birthday.”
“One disease and she doesn’t want to see me anymore. I might as well be dead”, her voice low and agitated.
“No, No. It's not that simple mum, you know that. We decided to send you here because I have got much less responsibilities than she does. What if she gets the virus? Who’s gonna look after her? And worse, what if her kid gets it. Or Shan. It spreads like forest fire! Plus, the mountain air is good for you right now, you know, for healing.” The word bit me like a scorpion. Healing. I could see the strain in her eyes. She knows.
“I heard what she said in the hospital, while you were talking to the big-big doctors. ‘At least she gets to die a more peaceful death than the life she had lived’, were her words. She said that.”
“She didn’t mean it like-”
“I know I have stressed her enough, with the chain smoking and tantrums after your father passed, but I am a good momma. A good momma.” She trailed off and sank her head into the pillow. The plastic curtain was transparent but not enough for her to trace the infinite knots in my throat.
“Wait, let me check your pulse and saturation. Give me your-”
“I am going to die, aren’t I?” The sentences have always felt truer and more real from her mouth. Her face was a mosaic of coldness and the contradicting calmness that comes with it.
“The food is getting cold”, said a faint voice from inside me as I swiftly left the room, leaving the door wide open.
The room is dimly lit with a streak of sunlight carefully approaching the portrait on the kitchen wall of our old city house. My mother used to call it her “magnum opus”, the only piece of her art that had stayed with her longer than anyone else, the one that survived changing houses and turbulent relationships. The one that has seen it all. My mother spent all her young years as a working artist, painting and selling profound landscapes and gothic buildings, but the only riddle she could never resolve was her unwavering affection for a middle-aged woman hanging on the wall. Although considered an ordinary piece of art by mother herself, no one could ever move past the ambiguity of that woman’s age. No friend or relative could tell if the woman in the portrait was twenty-four or sixty-eight and my mother took pride in that. “That’s the purpose of art”, she said to my uncle one day, “to confuse people.”
Continued in Part B
Ayushi Sikka
English Honours
Shivaji College, University Of Delhi
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