My Life Among the Bodies

Guilt is like this: you're eating breakfast and the oatmeal doesn't taste like anything, so you add more jam, and it's your grandma's black raspberry jam, from when she was still alive, there's still jars and jars of it. You put your spoon down and rub the scruff on your chin and it hits you, that image again, her silent shriveled face, that gape.

I ask her does she want a Popsicle, she hasn't eaten or drank anything besides ice in days, and she can't talk anymore, but I think I see her chin move, and I rush over to the freezer, which flavor, which flavor, I don't have time to ask her, time to wait for an answer, a nonanswer. I pick the red because it's my favorite, and Gil and Irene knock and then come in, they're the main hands on our dairy farm, and we cut off pieces of it with a butter knife and stick them between her teeth and leave the rest melting in a bowl, all of us with chairs pulled up around her, watching her not move, she's the goddamn baby Jesus dying in a manger. And the guilty part is, I had asked my grandma what she was hanging on for, anyways. Just days before. And I told her I didn't respect her. And once when we were coming back from the hospital, I missed an exit and got us lost, and we ended up going right by a restaurant where she and Grandpa ate on their honeymoon. I took her in, and she ordered all this food and then didn't eat it. I guess the food had gotten worse through the years. I was annoyed, and flicked a french fry at her, all covered in ketchup. And I'm a grown man. It bounced off her glasses. And you know how good she is? She didn't say a word.

Irene brings a Crock-Pot of chili for me, and when their baby turned out to have a genetic disease, I didn't give them anything. I thought about it, but I couldn't figure out what to give that fit right with the situation.

So now I say I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, to my oatmeal. That's what guilt's like.

Even though this is a family farm, my mom disappeared on the Pacific Whale, a cruise liner, when I was nine. They believe she fell overboard. Now that Grandma's gone, it's just mine. I know it's me that drove my mom away. She had me so young anyway, it's really my grandparents that raised me.

Grandpa died of a heart attack when I was still in middle school. I woke up in the middle of it, and heard him sort of choking. I could even picture him on his hands and knees. I knew he was dying but I thought I was dreaming, so I went back to sleep. And when I woke up again we were taking him to the hospital.

I donate plasma twice a week for extra cash, and when they stick the needle in my arm, I think of how Grandpa died with a needle in his arm. The doctor was putting a catheter up Grandpa's arm into his heart to see what the deal was, but before he could find out, Grandpa died on us. I imagine his shoulders stiffening up while that tube's snaking through his body, and then his eyes glaze over and they begin to look like tomato soup when you haven't stirred it for a few minutes. Except instead of orange, blue.

I wish I had just woken up the first time.

A farm needs kids, and animals. I've had a few pets but they don't last, and Gil and Irene have a kid but she has that genetic disease I was talking about. She gets fed through a tube in her belly button. They're afraid to have more. They help...