The $10,000 Chicken

I'm taking breaks in between posts as I write about my mother dying, since I know it's hard for people to read about. Meanwhile, shooting starts soon on "Kill Your Inner Child" the digi-series. I'll keep you posted.

After the Santeria ritual in Chicago, Mom and I eat a subdued dinner in our room at the hotel. We avoid the chicken, having experienced one being ritualistically sacrificed just hours earlier. The chicken's blood is supposed to give my mother new life and cancer-free breasts.

"This is the only thing that makes sense," she says.

We both act like we believe what the babalao has said, that the cancer is gone, that anything left will dissipate as she drinks a specially prepared tea during the next ten days. She is also nervous because she has written a post-dated check for $10,000 to pay for the ritual. The babalao was none too pleased about that. But to get that kind of money Mom has to raid a stock account my grandfather has set aside for her. (My grandparents are not her parents of course, but Mom and Dad's divorce did nothing to alter their relationship with their former daughter-in-law, who is kinder to them than either of their sons will ever be.)

I am glad we do the Santeria blood ritual even though I know in my heart that she isn't cured. I am glad because I know I'll never have to wonder if it might have been the one thing to keep her alive. My brother Aaron and step-father David know what we have done but no one else does, ever. Until now. I can't have a conversation about it but I can write it down for strangers to read.
When Mom and I arrive back in Texas from the Chicago Santeria pilgrimage, the matter of the postdated $10,000 check looms large. Mom calls up my grandfather and tells him she needs the $10,000 from her stock account immediately to cover a check she has written for an experimental treatment. She is shocked by the fact that he cops out and asks her to call my uncle, who raises what I have to now acknowledge are perfectly rational red flags – particularly in light of what we really have spent that money on. What is this treatment and why does it cost so much? Is a charlatan taking advantage of a sick woman? Mom and I don't see this foot dragging in a reasonable way at all, and she is terrified that some black magic from the babalao will take her cure away if the check bounces.

"Don’t they understand," she says to me crying, "I'm fighting for my life." You hear people say that in the movies and on television all the time and it's meaningless, but when someone you love is dying and says it to you, it cuts you in half. I want to die instead of her. With her. I want to kill my grandfather and my uncle. I hate them. My uncle gives her the money. The check to the babalao clears. We settle in for the rest of the ride, never mentioning to one another how quickly things turn bad, how little the Santeria accomplished. David is exhausted from being the main caretaker for the year before things turn bad and he is too terrified she will die to object to black magic, whatever his private misgivings. Aaron probably doesn't dare cross me on the issue. At the same time I am opening up, finding bottomless sources of emotion to share with Mom, I am becoming a tyrant with everyone else, particularly Aaron, because I have no feeling for him at the time, for anyone else, just for her. Instead of spending time with her on the rare occasions when I leave for the supermarket Aaron rigs up a bell system so he can sit out in the garage and smoke. Mom just has to ring the bell if she needs anything. He should stay with her every minute. She is the only thing that matters. I even threaten Beelzebubbe after a visit where I think she has said one too many upsetting things. I tell her if she doesn't stop talking like that I will forbid her from seeing Mom at all. It's one of the few times she backs off. Even she can tell I mean business.

Aaron may not cross me on the Santeria but he does about one other thing. When the doctor says Mom has about two weeks left David and I don't want to tell her that specifically, we don't want to give her the time limit. She doesn't talk about dying and never reaches the stage of acceptance, and as far as I am concerned, it isn't our right to force it on her. Aaron disagrees, but I don't know how much so until he tells me someone is on the phone for me, and I am ambushed into talking to our father.

At this point Adam and I haven't spoken for about five years. He is a smoothie on the call, at his oiliest and most condescending, his dulcet tones trying to lull me into agreement by telling me how I am doing everything right, how I am caring for her with such love and courage, but that I am horribly wrong to keep the news from her about how long she has to live. He then blows whatever tidbit of goodwill he might squeeze out of me by saying how he knows she is dying, that if he thought there was any chance for a recovery he would be there himself, not leaving it in my inexperienced hands. He says that through nutrition and herbs he would cure her if there were still any hope. At that moment I want him to get cancer. I want it to travel up his spine, reach into his skull, envelope his brain and stop him from talking.

That is what I want to say.

Instead I calmly, rationally explain how and why David and I believe not giving her the time limit is proper, that she knows how serious things are anyway. With every word, every syllable I resent having to talk to him about my mother. The woman he abused. The woman he kept me from. But then the wind goes out of my sails and I just finish the call without complaint. There is so much else to deal with, and who cares about my father anyway, who cares about Aaron. Who cares.

Aaron and I are estranged for a number of years after Mom's death, for complicated reasons, some financial, some having to do with a bitter falling out between Aaron and our uncle. The fact that I can't forgive him for making me take that call from Adam doesn't help matters. I treat Aaron badly during her death but I have no way of quantifying any of it. When you're in the trenches, there every day with creeping death, there's nothing anyone can contribute that you really care to hear. They're just tourists. You live there.

But Aaron does finally dive into the trenches when Mom is in the hospital, during her last days. She is barely conscious most of the time. David and I are fried, overwrought, unable to function. Aaron stays awake the whole time, Led Zeppelin in his Walkman keeping him alert, so he can make sure the morphine drip is working, that the nurses are doing their jobs. He is determined that Mom have whatever comfort is possible while she is dying in front of our eyes.
The day before Mom dies her chest is a mess. The cancer has broken to the surface everywhere and she is a sea of ruptured flesh.

When my uncle comes for what will be his last visit, he can't hide how repulsed he is. He tries to pull the sheet over her chest, but I don't let him, saying she is too hot and shouldn't be covered. I don't remember now if she really was hot, but I do remember that I don't want him to cover her because I want him to have to see what her death is like. Making my uncle look at her bloodied chest is my way of punishing him. I have to punish someone.

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