The Gift
I stand some way from the foot of M.’s hospital bed. Her dark, red hair etched clammily about pallid cheeks, she lies propped up on pillows gazing about unhappily. Nearby, monitoring a medical chart, stands a white coated doctor. Two nurses busy themselves about the bed, one with a bedpan, the other with an IV dripfeed attached to M.'s limp left arm which, as if she is in the act of beseeching mercy from some stone God lies, the hand palm up and fingers splayed, above the covers.
Two attendants in white, linen jackets and gray slacks approach the bed, pushing a stretcher covered carelessly with a light tan blanket. The doctor looks up with a proprietary air and raises his left hand slightly, signaling them to wait. Withdrawing from his coat pocket an envelope, he extracts several folded sheets of onion skin covered with inked writing. Unfolding them he begins to read their contents thoughtfully.
From time to time he nods with satisfaction, as if finding his own thoughts confirmed by those of the writer. There is the sense of a slight rustling as he turns the delicate sheets, and the nurses stop what they are doing, attracted by his intent appearance. The fingers of M.'s right hand fret nervously with a crumpled white lace handkerchief, her eyes questioning forlornly the unresponsive figures surrounding her.
At last the doctor finishes reading, folds the letter and, replacing it in the envelope, puts it into his pocket with an air of decision. He nods affirmatively to the nurses. One on either side of the bed they turn towards M., whose head swivels evasively, a look of fear on her face. The nurses slide their hands beneath the bedclothes that cover M.'s torso. For a moment M. struggles fiercely, her cornflower blue eyes momentarily ablaze with anger. But the attendants quickly pin her legs, and one of the nurses forces her shoulders back against the pillows. The other nurse then begins a series of delicate movements beneath the sheets. M. quivers, her lips squeezed together in pain, her fists tightly clenched. At last the nurse withdraws one of her breasts.
Large and pendulous, a pale motherlode, a gigantic white tear of sorrow, the nurse cradles it reverently in her arms. There are no marks indicating its removal, only M.'s hysterical grief at the sight. Tears roll down her cheeks as she wails pathetically, her body limp in defeat. No one pays the slightest attention to her. Then the nurse holding the breast turns, revealing the nipple flushed and bruised like an overripe damson. Approaching the stretcher she deposits it gently, a slight tremor shivering the fatty tissue as its mass subsides in a hollow of the blanket. With a professional air of detachment the attendants bend about the stretcher, one of them drawing a canvas restraint across the bloated form to secure it. The resulting compression forces a small trickle of blood to flow from the nipple onto the blanket, where it creates an irregular, glistening splotch. They wheel away the stretcher with as much care as if the breast it bore were the patient, rather than its recent owner, who yet lies distraught and forgotten on the bed.
An old Victorian mansion with pretentious, crenellated stonework and towering, brick flues casts long shadows across a graveled driveway that, encircling a well groomed lawn, leads to a huge pair of black, wrought iron gates. Through these gates is seen the white glare from a distant beach, beyond which sunlight glitters off an ocean's wavelets. I stand, white coated and now the doctor, at the edge of the lawn, observing a glassed-in conservatory attached to one end of the mansion, which meanders through a wood of rustling poplar trees. Condensation on the windows obscures my view of the interior. Yet I can faintly make out the blurred shapes of large, dark plants, whose intertwining tendrils curve about the roof threatening to burst through. The malignancy of their attitude is enhanced by a dull, brown mist that rises languidly behind the building off a distant pasture, all but obscuring the blaze of the early morning sun beyond.
M. is on the driveway, a large box, the size and color of a tea chest, rests before her. She is attached to it by a rope that encircles her neck, the ends secured to the two nearest corners. A low hum of voices in steady conversation come from within the box. Hoisting it in both hands with a grimace, she carries it forward a few steps until, overcome with the effort, she sets it down again. This she repeats in a succession of agonized shuffling movements. She wears a dark orange shift and sandals. There is a small, gold, antique locket on a chain at her throat. Her thick hair now falling freely about her neck, she looks beautiful yet ineffably sad.
In my hands I hold the letter, the onion skin sheets wrinkled and creased, their edges occasionally curling in a slight breeze. Each page bears in the top right hand corner the number nine in bold type. On some pages it is lying on its back like a man reclining with his feet in the air; on others it is a reversed six like a man standing on his head; and elsewhere it is a simple six. The script, in tall, lean, blue inked characters bearing a bold authoritative imprint, proceeds evenly across the pages. I skim the contents catching phrases and sometimes whole sentences.
“…cannot be allowed to see her child. Dr. Meikel says she suffers from aggravated gerontoidism. This is…sometimes the arms wither away and there is no known cure. Breasts are…cavecsto-…by simple excision. She has little chance of full recovery as she refuses…Cannot be held accountable for her childish refusal to accept the obvious. …black beetles on her instep…washed her in white solution…much unnecessary pain…”
I interrupt my reading, my eyes drawn to the center of the lawn, where a group is gathered about a black and white pram. In its midst a tall, thin, middle-aged man with short cropped, gray hair and pale skin, steel rimmed spectacles perched on a hooked nose, is giving a lecture. A small, blond haired boy clings to one of his legs, demanding his attention with repeated cries of 'Daddy, daddy!'. The man, ignoring him, reaches down into the pram and draws from it the breast. He holds it up in the air displaying it's swelling form, the bulging nipple lowermost. There are dark veins evident upon its surface, and the skin bears the livid creasing of stretch marks. The dark swollen sac that is the nipple looks ready to burst. There is a cry of protest from M. but nobody notices. They are all intent upon the exhibition. Even the boy is momentarily shocked into silence by the bloated form hanging above his head.
Now M. and I are at the gates staring out beyond them. There are small, white, iron tables with gaily colored parasols advertising brand name drinks. At one sits my sister-in-law in deep conversation with an American Indian. His copper face is heavily lined and he sports gaily colored, enameled jewelry that contrasts nicely with his tan buckskins. My sister-in-law, attentive to the Indian, is slightly flushed from the wine she drinks. Gazing into an empty space before him, the Indian quietly intones ancient lore. I catch an instruction: "You must learn to watch your foot as it falls."
Not far away at another table sits a favorite niece of mine. She has a boyfriend with her and they are bantering good-naturedly. I think they are in love. I feel a wave of happiness go out to her.
Further out amongst the bathers moving gaily to and fro, I spy my oldest brother. He wears only a pair of khaki shorts and is seated in a wheelchair. His handsome chiseled features impress me with their durability, for he is well into his sixties. His wife, dark and attractive, twenty years his junior, sits in a one piece, navy blue swimsuit propped up against his crippled knees. She is staring out to sea, one arm protectively resting across my brother's thighs. I feel gratitude towards her.
Even my foster mother, in her dour, churchgoing clothes, seems affected by the lighthearted atmosphere. A smile nestles between her heavy jowls, beneath the furrows of long disappointment that crease her brow. In her hands she kneads a gray, silk scarf. Next to her and slightly to the rear sits, deferentially, an aging Irish family retainer. Her wrinkled hands mottled with age are clasped in an apron covered lap. She looks down serenely, a beatific smile on thin, pale lips.
I feel M. yearning for them all, and she thrusts her arms through the wrought iron as if to attract their attention. At that moment a nun in a black habit appears and, grabbing M. roughly by the shoulders, drags her away from the gate. She shouts angrily at her, while slapping her face hard several times. M. tries to ward off the blows by raising her arms protectively, but the nun is too deft for her. M. cries out in pain and shock as the blows fall. Then the nun grabs the locket and tears it from M.'s neck. She opens it and, pointing at a picture of me inside, screams abuse at her. M. backs away defensively and stumbles against the box. Unbalanced, her hands fly away from her body enabling the nun to deliver another ringing blow to the side of her head. Whimpering, M. falls to the ground by the side of the box, which she grasps fiercely as if seeking its protection. The low hum of voices from within continues unabated.
I return to the letter which is still in my hands.
"....................... last time we saw him he was weeping. There are no knives in the kitchen, now; he will not kill himself. She has never taken Latin but she knows the French are passionate. Number nine has always bowled well."
Now M. is back on the driveway, this time pushing the box ahead of her. The intermittent gravel sounds evoke those of a cripple’s game leg drawn behind the other. Stopping, she faces me and looks up, pleading. Her cheeks are wet with tears; her hair now streaked with gray hangs in tangled strands about her shoulders. She draws the shift from her thighs revealing a neat, triangular bush of pubic hair. But in so doing the cloth inadvertently falls away from her chest and I observe a gory pit where her left breast once had been. Drawn by shouts nearby, I look back towards the group. The breast, which the tall thin man still holds aloft, is bursting. Dark liquids drip copiously from the rotten, purple mass that it has become. The nipple is no longer visible amidst the sodden, decaying tissue. Some of the onlookers have gathered about beneath the collapsing mass of flesh and are greedily licking the escaping fluids. The child jumps and screams repeatedly: "I want some! Gimme some daddy! I want some!" M., her shoulders hunched and shaking, is sobbing beside me. "Help me!" she wails, looking up pitifully. I respond angrily. "Nine. Nine. NINE!" I scream, slapping her across the face with the sheets of onion skin repeatedly. "Nine. Nine. Nine. NINE! NINE! NINE!!!'
“NI - . " I awoke, my lips parted, the word half formed, a deafening clamor still ringing in my ears. I gasped in shock as I lay in the dark, vainly trying to cast aside the hideous images that had attended my sleep. They were jumbled and tore at my senses, so that I felt naked and abused. Frustrated, I twisted and moaned in an effort to escape their clutches. I thought of M. and wept. I thought of myself and felt horror. I thought of us both and suffered unutterable sadness. Hopelessness engulfed me as it had so often recently. My love for M. seemed to have been in vain. The world remained mute and immutable about us - a stone wall, perverse and indifferent. Even total selflessness on my part had failed to have effect. Could nothing move heaven and earth, or was this simply hell? I had done everything I could to enable her release from the dependant relationship that stifled her as surely as an infinitely slow garrote, and from which she had begged to be freed. And then, when I had left her in self defense, unable to confront her fear and indecision any longer, she had abused me ruthlessly out of wounded pride, shaming me publicly, so that no vestige of dignity was left and my only salvation was to go into hiding.
Months had gone by. I had known despair unto the point of self destruction, followed by anger that would, if I had allowed it free rein, have sought to destroy the selfish and conniving boyfriend she clung to out of fear of freedom. I had gone away to escape the associations and been able at last to free myself from her continual presence in my mind. Still, the pain remained great and anger yet raged within me. I felt torn between the desire to wreak havoc on those who had taken advantage of my integrity - and there were several that M. had conscripted in her attacks on me - and the need to rise above such degrading emotions. Day in, day out I warred with myself, the vilest of curses rising from my breast, only to be followed by bouts of pitiful contrition, in which I beseeched God to give me ease from this madness. Now, in the dream I had at last come face to face with the raw emotions of my passion for M., the true, sole cause of my misery.
Slowly I pieced together the two sections of the dream. Fragments, in particular the rotting breast, kept intruding on the process, and I endured cringing shame each time in an effort to atone. I understood all too well the reason for the image: M. had frequently articulated a great fear of breast cancer. The tall, thin man I recognized as her boyfriend, the child theirs. A child, to whom my love had gone out, as I watched him being destroyed by the selfishness of his parents and their frequent disputes.
My relatives amongst the beachgoers were still alive, except for my foster mother whom I had failed to please throughout her life despite all my efforts. The gray, silk scarf I had seen before in another dream.
Following my foster mother's death, which I accepted with the same helplessness as I had felt during her life, I adopted my own quiet form of mourning. It was early summer and I planted some carnations, her favorite flower. I also found myself taking trips to nearby woods, where I would lie or sit, seeking relief in silent abandonment to nature. I felt no guilt for things undone, yet I could not accept the failure in our relationship that her death had finalized. One night at the end of summer I dreamed of her.
As a child I had been reared by a succession of nannies. Later, my foster mother had hired a woman, a schoolteacher, to chaperone me on European trips during school vacations. This companion tutored me as we wandered through foreign capitals in search of culture. Always I would bring home a gift for my foster mother. But it was hard to know what she wanted, for there was little that I could find that seemed to give her pleasure. To my increasing relief, the present frequently would be suggested by my companion, who sensibly selected what might be termed 'safe' items: scarves, gloves, small enameled jewel boxes and so forth. These were accepted with a polite show of appreciation, following which they would disappear into some draw or other, never to be seen again. Now, one of these objects appeared in my dream. It was a gray, silk scarf selected for me not by my chaperone but by my foster mother's personal maid.
This maid, Liana, an Irish catholic, had stayed in service for forty years until my foster mother's death. She had grown up a poorly educated farm girl on the rough Atlantic coast of Ireland. She came to know all the family secrets and was remarkably intuitive. Though usually respectful, she would on occasion oppose my mother, whose capricious and selfish ways often harmed us. She sensed problems as they developed, and did her best to diminish their impact by means of casually offered bits of advice. Mother seldom openly acknowledged the validity of Liana's point of view but, in tempering her behavior, would demonstrate its effect. Now, in the dream, Liana suggested that I present my mother with a gray, silk scarf. "Sure, it's the very thing she's wanting," she encouraged me in her soft brogue.
As I gave it to my mother she responded with a kind smile that seemed to acknowledge more than the gift itself. I sensed there was at last a quiet acceptance of my presence that relieved me of the burden I had been carrying. I was not sure that all had been resolved, but I felt buoyed by this encounter. Now, here for the second time in my dreams was the gray, silk scarf. Was it an augury?
As for the others I had just witnessed, the Indian I recognized as symbolizing the good counsel that the sister-in-law with whom he sat had often offered me in times of trouble. She, an American, had more than once related to me wisdom derived from Indian ways previously studied. My niece and her boyfriend, my brother and his wife, all were members of my family with whom I felt particularly comfortable.
Some other aspects of the dreams were more cryptic: the nun, though M. had been raised a Catholic; the crowd gathered about the pram; the nurses, the attendants, even perhaps the first doctor. The fragments from the letter were jumbled in their references: Dr. Meikel had been my physician as a child; gerontology - the study of the process of aging - was as close as I could come to 'gerontoidism'; it was a fact that I had wept a lot over M. and had contemplated suicide; and my natural mother was French. The figure nine seemed like a strange joke. The box with voices and the action involving it were beyond my comprehension. The antique locket containing my picture was too painful for me to contemplate.
I ran the sequences repeatedly until I had smoothed out the rough edges. I was well aware that it was an imperfect exercise, yet sensed that the strongest elements accurately represented my rawest feelings. M.'s tearstained face now came to the fore causing me utmost misery, and I would have dried her cheeks and kissed the tears from her eyes if such had been possible. I still so loved her.
At last I began to doze in a welter of trivial, half realized images that afforded me partial release from my distress. Still, amidst them, like a dull headache, nagged the image of M., distraught and despairing. Slowly, like a ship gradually discerned in the fog, the vision of M. attached to the box on the graveled driveway regains focus. I seek escape but there is none. I want to weep but no tears will flow. It is as if I have been put into an inanimate state; I am paralyzed. Summoning courage, I will myself to confront her pleading form. Helpless to respond, I turn away and catch sight once again of the tall, thin man and the child amidst the group. I am beset by indecision, and in my confusion I let the pages of onion skin slip from my fingers. I think to pick them up and, stooping, feel something sharp against my leg in the pocket of my coat. I put my hand in and withdraw a large pair of scissors. All at once I feet excitement and a surge of hope.
Approaching M., I cut through the rope that binds her to the box. She looks up at me with surprise as if I have performed a miracle. I smile reassuringly and, taking her hand, lead her toward the gates. Passing the group on the lawn, I observe the boy clawing at the pants leg of the tall, thin man who is holding the breast aloft for all to see. As before, no one pays any attention to us. I turn back to M., who is looking fearfully at the group. Quickly I place my arm protectively about her shoulders and, putting my body between her and the group, bid her pay no attention. We walk on, she nestling against me as I stroke her head with my left hand. I do not know what to do about the boy.
At the gates, beyond which the sun shines on the distant blue of the ocean and the happy throng of beachgoers at its edge, I stop and, drawing one aside, lead M. through. No nun impedes our progress this time. Approaching the table where sit my sister-in-law and the Indian, I introduce her. My sister-in-law greets us with a friendly smile, while the Indian bends down and, gently removing M.'s sandals, strokes her feet. M. looks down with a puzzled air at the long, brown fingers caressing her pale skin. Then a brilliant smile of recognition breaks across her face, illuminating it like the sun when it breaks through the clouds after a storm. The Indian nods indulgently.
Moving on, we come upon my niece and her boyfriend, who smile conspiratorially as if referring to a love we all share. Then it is my brother in his wheelchair, his wife seated before him. Again I effect introductions. He looks pleased to see us and she, rising from the sand and taking M. in her arms, embraces her with natural affection. M. smiles, a few tears of happiness involuntarily escaping from her eyes. It is as if we are engaged in a family reunion. Breaking away, with further gestures of friendship, we move amongst the bathers, holding hands and making merriment as if newly in love. Then I catch sight of my foster mother at the table where she sits, still kneading the gray, silk scarf. I lead M. over.
I have never seen my foster mother look so pleased in all her life. So unaccustomed am I to this expression that I am stricken with distrust and apprehension. Turning to M., I am shocked to observe that, in our frolicking amongst the bathers, her shift has fallen open, exposing the ugly wound at her chest. I turn anxiously back to my foster mother, ready to make explanation and apology. But she ignores me and, still smiling, proffers the gray, silk scarf to M.. A look of gratitude suffuses M.'s face as she takes the scarf, clasping it to her bosom. She lowers her eyes humbly and, after a pause during which I experience extreme pain for her, drops her arms, the scarf retained between the fingertips of her left hand. In place of the awful blemish that disfigured her chest, now lies a healthy breast to match the other. I turn back to my foster mother in astonishment. She is looking at me directly, a smile of approval on her face. It is the first such smile she has ever accorded me. Behind her sits Liana, meekly describing the positions of the cross.