Heart

Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.

—Susan Sontag

"Mami, can you hand me that, eso, esa cosa, over there." I'm pointing to a broom, shaking my index finger frantically. I need to sweep the living room. There's dog hair everywhere, and dirt, and dust that is making me feel itchy and I need her to get it for me because I'm already out of breath from folding clothes. And I want the thing across the room, but I can't remember what the thing is called.

I'm on steroids again for my lupus, and I have energy, or at least a false sense of it, and I need to get things done but my body is moving faster than my brain and my words just can't catch up to a mouth that speaks before it even knows what it's ready to say.

"¿El que? What?" She's looking back and forth at my finger and the pantry and speaking to me in English because after thirty years in America she finally feels confident enough to speak it with me and not just at work.

"The … the. ¡Tu sabes! ¡Eso!" My hands are wailing like a bird whose wings have been set on fire. I can't think of the word in English or in Spanish and my legs are heavy with the weight of exhaustion and lupus-induced inflammation that the fifty-foot walk across the room seems daunting and too much like trying to wade through oil or mud.

Mami walks over to me and places her palm on my shoulder and with a tender but demanding touch she sits me down on the couch.

"Ya, sit down. What are you trying to do? Te vas a cansar. Sit down." I imagine this is how she used to speak to the four-year-olds she taught in preschool before retiring to spend her days taking care of me. And because I resent being treated like a child I get back up and try to move past her but she stands tall and relaxed staring me down like a Dominican guachimán who's sworn to protect the entrance of a five-star resort filled with gringos.

"Please, Ma. The floor. It's dirty." I'm shaking my hands again gesticulating at the floor and rubbing my nose to indicate that the dust bunnies and clusters of dog hair are irritating and unacceptable. I point again across the room to the broom. Like playing a game of unsuccessful charades, I pantomime sweeping the floor. Her feet remain planted in front of the couch unmoved by my pleas and cries for attention. But I am relentless.

"Quiero the … the … eso," I point. "¿Como se llama?" Mami frowns. "¿La escoba?" "Sí. Yes. Eso." And I plop down on the couch fatigued and sigh with relief because she's figured it out and I didn't have to.

"Ay Dios mío. No, you're not going to sweep. You can't even breathe. Siéntate. Yo lo hago."

"Ma, I feel fine." I get up, cough, catch my breath and wipe my brow.

"No. Antes nunca querías limpiar. Y ahora que no puedes …" She shakes her head. "No. Siéntate." It is not a request or a suggestion. It's Mami's definitive "haz lo que te digo" or else kind of "No," so I sit down. She's right, I hated doing chores as a kid. Mami used to have to force me out of bed on Saturday mornings by turning up the merengue music nice and loud on the boom box, entering my room with the roaring Rainbow vacuum cleaner and shaking the covers off of me, so I'd wake up startled knowing it was time to get up...