Warnings: Cancer, death, and hard truths
Lucky Child
Chapter 04:
"If This Is Adulthood"
It was the night of the Fourth of July, and my aunt Diana was dying.
I'd seen her the month before, when she elected to forego more treatments. She hadn't looked like this a month ago. She'd had hair, then, thin and grey but even. Her skin had been a normal peachy shade, age spots dotting her like some topographic map of life lived and experiences shared.
Now she was yellow. Her kidneys and liver were shutting down.
She had three days left. Five at the most.
Cancer is an asshole.
My other aunts had been taking of Diana the past few days. Day, night, morning, afternoon. They looked at me with tired, glassy eyes and asked, "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Yes. She's family."
(I loved my Aunt Diana. Her only daughter had died a few years before. I needed to step up.)
"You're not scared?"
"No."
(A lie. I was terrified. I was to be left alone with a living ghost.)
"You don't have to do this if you don't want to."
"Gotta pull my weight. I'm an adult. Let me do my part."
(I was 26. I had taxes and rent and health insurance. My family liked to leave me out of decisions, since I'd been the family baby for so long, but I wouldn't allow that anymore. Not now. Not with Diana.)
They left for the night with instructions. Pills at these hours. Morphine at these. Food if she wanted it. Water every half hour, even if she didn't want it. Sing to her. Read to her. She won't acknowledge you, but she knows you're there. Tell her you love her. Tell her she left a mark.
And then my aunts left Diana and I alone.
Most of the night passed quietly, save for the fireworks going off up the road. For the first few hours, Diana slept. She moaned occasionally. I watched her breathe, my own breath bated at every exhale. Didn't know if her chest would rise again. Didn't know if I'd be the one making the call to tell the rest of the family she'd died. We were playing Musical Chairs with that duty, all of us, every time we agreed to watch her.
When she woke, around 8 PM, I fed her soup and mashed potatoes—the only things her tired, inflamed gums could stand. She drank water slowly, but with eagerness. Her eyes fluttered when I read from The Wizard of Oz. She'd read it to me as a child when I couldn't sleep. This felt like returning an overdue favor. Hopefully she knew how I felt.
At some point, I must have fallen asleep in my chair to the tune of popping fireworks. A gurgling moan woke me, and then I heard a retching heave. Diana lay on her back, just barely propped up on her elbows. Brown foam frothed from her mouth and down the front of her pajamas, over her cheeks and chin, soup and mashed potatoes pouring like a debris-glutted stream. It glittered in the light of her bedside lamp. It smelled like decay and spoiled meat. I lurched up and shoved her empty soup bowl under her chin. She started to choke, so I set the bowl aside and hauled her up—and she screamed.
Multiple myeloma. Bone cancer, aggressive. Her skeleton was like glass at this point. I laid her back down again, apologizing.
Screams quieted into whimpers.
There was no getting the shirt off her. I cut it from her body with scissors. I cleaned her face and hair with wet cloths. I couldn't get a shirt over her head, so I just draped her with a dressing gown. I'd need help to clothe her in the morning. To change the sheets I had to roll her on her side. She screamed again, short "oh" sounds, like the barking of a coyote in a claw trap.
More than once she asked me to kill her.
She looked at me with eyes clear for the first time in days, spoke the name I can't recall, and begged me to end her life.
And honestly, at that point, it would've been a mercy.
After I gave Diana her morphine injection (the correct dosage and no more, despite her wishes, despite the amount of pity inside me), I called my father on the old rotary phone in the kitchen. My clothes stank of vomit and death as I told him what happened.
"Sounds like you handled it OK," he said. "Is she sleeping?"
"Barely. The morphine's not enough."
"Shit." He rarely cursed. "I'll call the doctor tomorrow. You try to sleep if you can, while she's not awake."
"OK," I said.
"I'll help you put real clothes on her in the morning."
"She screams if you move her."
"Shit." He paused. "Are you OK?"
My hand tightened around the grip of the rotary phone.
"Yes," I said.
But that was a lie.
When we hung up, I curled into a ball and cried. I cried in a way I hadn't cried since I was a small child—a child longing to be one of the adults in the family, who made decisions, whose voice and opinions mattered.
If this was adulthood, it didn't seem like such a great deal anymore.
If this was adulthood, why did I feel like such a helpless child?
If this was adulthood, I wished I was a kid again.
The front door was unlocked. I tried the knob because no one answered when I knocked.
Atsuko was on the couch, like always. I said hello to her before walking into the kitchen. She nodded, but didn't otherwise respond. Typical. She loved her daytime soaps.
Today, I'd brought some groceries from my mother. Fresh veggies, fruit, and meat. A bottle of milk. A bag of rice. The previous bottle of milk I'd brought was still in the fridge. It had gone bad. I smelled it the second I opened the door. Once I discarded every bad bit of food I could find in the fridge, I filled it with my offerings.
Not that Atsuko would cook anything. She rarely did.
I wandered back into the living room and began cleaning up. Atsuko still didn't say anything. Wrappers and cans and tissues went into the garbage. The beer bottles I collected for recycling.
"Yusuke didn't go to school today," I said.
Atsuko looked up, finally. "Oh?"
"He's been skipping a day every week or so," I said. "Don't know where he's going. Do you?"
Atsuko regarded the ceiling.
"Nope," she eventually said. "Little shit'll have to get a job soon if he keeps that up."
I didn't comment. I just said: "Yusuke's worn through his shoes again."
"OK. There's money in my purse. Kitchen table."
I went to the table and fished out her wallet. "We'll get him the same brand as last time."
"Sounds fine," she said.
Atsuko and I had come to something of an understanding over the past couple of years. I brought food and tidied up, and she made sure to keep Yusuke clothed in stuff that actually fit him. Granted, I had to tell her when to give me money so my mother and I could go buy Yusuke new outfits, but still. She provided the money needed to care for him.
I just wished she'd provide him some attention and support, too.
Don't get me wrong. Get Atsuko and Yusuke in the same room, and they could laugh up a storm. They got along fine, when Atsuko was sober and Yusuke in a good mood. But when they weren't, and Yusuke stormed off, I'd sometimes lose track of him for days.
Today was one of those days.
He started skipping school as early as the second or third grade. I'd tried to stop him, but there was only so much I could do to keep him in the classroom—I couldn't install a GPS tracker in his head, now could I? The tech didn't exist, for one thing. And it didn't help that I hated school as much as he did. Fourth grade math and English could only hold my attention for so long, given my mental age.
Oh, I pretended to be interested to keep the teachers off my back (my perfect grades were good camouflage for my disdain and lack of enthusiasm) but I couldn't very well judge Yusuke for being disinterested when I felt the same way. For different reasons, of course, but still. He thought school was stupid, and so did I.
It also didn't help that Atsuko just laughed off his truancy. The one person who could change things just found the situation funny.
"He takes after his dad," she'd joke. "That punk dropped out of middle school. Yusuke's a chip off the old block. He'll even out as he gets older. Just let him be a kid for now, is what I say."
Her blasé attitude drove me nuts.
That morning, I'd waited for Yusuke on the corner, hoping to walk to school like normal. He'd never showed. I'd looked in all his favorite haunts after school but hadn't seen him. Stopping by Atsuko's apartment with groceries was just a pretense as I looked for Yusuke. And now, here she was, as unhelpful as ever.
I don't know what I'd been expecting.
"You don't like me much, do you?"
I froze, then turned with Atsuko's money still clutched in my hand. She lay on her back on the couch. Elbows propped her up; black hair tumbled over her shoulders in a glossy wave. I started to force childish confusion, make her think I didn't understand—but she didn't look mad. She just looked curious.
I let the act drop, and for a moment, I was myself.
Not Keiko, necessarily.
Just…me.
It felt pretty good.
I ducked my chin. Then I looked Atsuko dead in the eye and said, "Does it matter, if I like you or not?"
If my brusque tone and impolite eye contact phased her, she didn't let it show.
"Not to me. But it sure makes me curious." She reached into her nest of blankets and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Started to light up. "I've never done shit to you.
"And you've never done shit for Yusuke."
That time, my cursing rattled her. She sat up, blinked, and let the unlit cigarette fall into her lap. But then the shock wore off and she grit her teeth.
"You brat," she said. "I've done more for Yusuke than—"
"Why do I have to be the one to tell you when he needs new shoes?" I interjected. The words died in her throat. "I'm a kid. But I'm the one who notices when he needs them, instead of you, his mother. The adult of the household." I stepped toward her, boldly meeting her stunned eyes. "Why is that, Atsuko? You want to tell me why that is? Because I'd sure as hell love to know."
At first, Atsuko didn't say anything. But then she closed her eyes and chuckled. The chuckle bloomed into an outright laugh, head back, shoulders lurching, like she'd just heard the funniest joke of her life.
When she quieted, her eyes were wet.
I didn't know if they were tears of humor, or tears of pain.
"Keiko," she said. "How old are you?"
"9."
"Do you know how old I am?"
"No." That was a lie.
"23. When I was 14, I got knocked up. You know what 'knocked up' means?"
"Yeah." That was the truth.
Atsuko lit her cigarette. The sparking lighter set pinpricks of gold in her dark eyes. When she took a drag and exhaled, a plume of blue smoke streamed toward the ceiling like a fleeing ghost. Atsuko watched its climb, not acknowledging me when she next spoke.
"I was so scared, when I found out," she said. "My parents kicked me to the curb. Said if I was adult enough to have sex, I was old enough to be on my own. Hideki's the one who gave me a place to stay. Said we'd start a family, like real adults."
Hideki was Yusuke's dad, I'd learned. He'd come around a few times but I'd only met him once. He had Yusuke's dark eyes, that same mop of black hair, the same devil-may-care manner, and a charismatic way of speaking that reminded me of a used car salesman.
Yusuke hadn't liked the guy. Never would say why.
But whenever Hideki visited, Atsuko wore long sleeves.
That was all I needed to know, really. I was ecstatic when Hideki left for good.
"When I was 14," Atsuko said, "21 looked like such a grownup age to be." That made her chuckle. "Hell, even 18 looked wise at that age, and at 18, you're still just a stupid kid."
She spread her hands, indicating her prone body. The wetness in her eyes had dried. Now she just looked…brittle. Like a faint wind could snap her in half.
"And now, here I am," she said. "An adult with a child. I should feel pretty grown up, don't you think?"
I didn't reply.
"The thing is," she said, "giving birth doesn't give you the ability to be a good parent overnight. Not when you're still a kid, yourself. In those early days with Hideki, I remember thinking, 'If this is adulthood, I wish I was a kid again.'"
My stomach went cold.
Atsuko didn't know it, I knew what she'd say next.
I'd been where she was, many times before.
We were more alike than I wanted to admit.
"Thing is, Keiko…I don't feel any older than I did when I was that scared little girl." She chuckled, and the brittle look intensified. "Ironic. A child with a child. It's a wonder I can even take care of myself."
"Atsuko."
She startled when I said her name. Maybe she'd forgotten I was there. Who knows? Whatever the case, when she looked at me, it made me feel…responsible. Like I had a job to do.
She was younger than me, in some ways. But I remembered what it was like to be her too well to condemn everything she was.
Maybe it wasn't just my job to look out for Yusuke.
Maybe I was supposed to look out for his mother, too.
No one was looking out for her, after all. And in many ways, she was just a kid—like me.
For all my professed maturity, I was still a kid, too.
And we kids had to stick together.
Took me a minute, but eventually I found the words I wanted.
"I know I'm just a kid," I wound up saying, "but I'm here to help, if you need it." Then I smiled. "I always have been. And I always will be"
Her lips curved around the cigarette.
"Thanks, kiddo," she said. "Want to watch some TV?"
I watched her soap opera for about an hour before heading home.
She didn't become a different person after that. Understanding didn't make her a better mother overnight. No matter how much better I knew her, she was the same Atsuko I'd met when I was six.
But from then on, I saw her in a different light—and that was change enough.
[[NOTES: I miss my aunt every day. I'm still dealing with her loss and writing about it has been the first thing that's helped since it happened.
I don't think Atsuko is a bad person. As mentioned, my grandmother was her age when she had my mother. They were both girls who grew up too fast, and need a little help. But I think it would take me a while to remember that, because I'd be blinded by Yusuke's situation and my desire to help him first.
Anyway. Next chapter we get a dose of Kuwabara. Stay tuned!
MANY THANKS to kouhas, Life Dealer, choasrin, and an anonymous guest for reviewing! You made my day.]]
