Terra Infirma

TERRA INFIRMA / Rodger Kamenetz HER FACE WAS SWOLLEN and on one side flushed with injected dye. Stubble surrounded a plastic bubble on the top of her head. Her hair had grown back curly after the radiation treatments, a mild gray like ash. She held her back stiffly, and when she stood, she felt pain in the back of her neck that seemed to emanate from the purple surgical scar. She stood with great difficulty. She liked to sit in stiff wooden chairs with pillows cushioning her back. When she wished to stand, she held out her arms, somnambulist-style and I would help lift her, for her legs were weak. Sometimes she would get stuck halfway. There would be a panic in her eyes then and I would pull hard to get her up. "Ooohoooh " she would cry, almost comically, but it was pain. When she had straightened all the way, she would rest in my arms from the effort. Then, steadied, she'd shuffle off by herself, leaving her walker. She'd hold the walls for support. Her feet were quite swollen. You could no longer make out her ankle bones, the skin ballooned over them. My father had split a pair of black lace-ups and fit them around her feet, taping up the sides with bandages. The Decadron kept her alive by squeezing fluid from her tumors. But the fluid settled in her feet and legs. It was like walking with your shoes full of water. Her body was so swollen her cheeks cracked and bled. Beneath her skin, in neat scripture, her veins wrote red and thin. She fell twice. First in the kitchen. My brother heard her head hit the counter edge with a smack. He came running over to where she lay on the floor. She was bleeding heavily above the right eye. I saw her the next day. She had done what she could to repair herself. She had the old rituals to protect her. She peered into a magnifying mirror, combing patches of hair, then tied a kerchief to cover her skull. Her face was perfectly round now from the swelling of her cheeks. Both eyes were black from the fall; she covered them over with flesh-tint makeup. She wrapped a bandage over the cut, a little thickly, and now asked me to trim it with manicure scissors, as a flap was troubling her vision. "I'm going out tonight to a surprise party." Two days later I saw her again. The "surprise party" had gone badly for her. "They stared at me," she said. Her voice had gotten as small as a child's calling out from a well. The Missouri Review · 235 She hated those eyes. Eyes of disapproval, eyes coldly measuring her and registering her appearance. She saw a depth to surfaces, an implied social order. My mother believed in the aristocracy of good looks. She was born to nothing. She owed no allegiance to hidden treasures. She owed all her loyalty to what appeared to the eye. I don't believe she was vain. To my mother, appearances were not deceiving, they were glorifying. What she found in the right dress, the right "outfit," was herself. My mother never went out without dressing herself completely two times. I remember my childhood as an involuntary spectator at a fashion show. "How do I look?" But no matter how enthusiastic I pretended to be, she would always turn back, with disappointment, turn back to the mirror, the dressing table, the closet, and begin again. My father could tap his foot, point to his watch, stalk back and forth in the living room with his overcoat on, but his time was only by the clock. She was creating a different time, one in which she could emerge, perfumed, furred, marvelous. The delay was part of the presentation, a ripple in time. And so as my father would grab her arm at last, and huff, "We're late" the emphasis was lost in her knowing smile. She was beautiful. How could she be "late"? This was my mother in full confidence. When depressed, she would lounge for days in a ratty...