W
The stitches are a crude purple " W " on my mother's scalp. I am so afraid to clean her wounds, even with my latex gloves and bottle of saline, even with my Neosporin and my sterile swabs. How beautiful my mother was as a bride, her upswept wisps, the long sleeves of her gown ending in a vee on each of her hands. How beautiful she was on the Staten Island ferry with her long hair tossed to one side by the wind. I think about her Shirley Temple ringlets as a kid and her long spiral curls that covered her nipples — she wore a grass skirt that my uncle brought home from the war — as her arms waved in a hula dance in 1946, the way millions of girls have danced the hula dance ever since. But now her hair is all gone, her head a labyrinth of pus and scabs. A hurried rat can't figure out a maze , someone told me recently. He was talking about creativity and now I am the rat, the stunned one, trying to find my way with my Neosporined swab.
No one expected I'd be the strong one — facing the swelling, the blue and pickled bulges. My father turns away when I peel off my mother's dressing, the sterile tape, the big sterile pads, the shredding cotton dotted with blood. He's reliving the accident, I can tell. My sister sinks into the chair, blanched. I tell my mother to keep her dressing on when she brushes her teeth, afraid she'll glimpse her torn scalp when she raises her head after spitting in the sink. She lifts her head slowly, like she's wearing a Carmen Miranda headdress. We called her Marge Simpson in the hospital, the first joke, her bandages piled high like a bouffant. She can only brush her teeth with her left hand, her right not strong enough yet, the flecks of toothpaste going every-which-way on the mirror driving her crazy.
Even the new surgeon says, " Oh dear, " when my mother takes off her glamorous kerchief and Jackie O sunglasses (my idea) to cover the yellow pools of blood that have replaced her cheeks. The surgeon who stitched my mother up promised that he indeed was a good surgeon — it's just that he had to act fast, before she bled to death, her scar a big sloppy W — for Woonsocket, her hometown, for Warrior Woman, for Wonder and Willingness and Wishing her Well.
No one expected I'd be the strong one — facing the swelling, the blue and pickled bulges. My father turns away when I peel off my mother's dressing, the sterile tape, the big sterile pads, the shredding cotton dotted with blood. He's reliving the accident, I can tell. My sister sinks into the chair, blanched. I tell my mother to keep her dressing on when she brushes her teeth, afraid she'll glimpse her torn scalp when she raises her head after spitting in the sink. She lifts her head slowly, like she's wearing a Carmen Miranda headdress. We called her Marge Simpson in the hospital, the first joke, her bandages piled high like a bouffant. She can only brush her teeth with her left hand, her right not strong enough yet, the flecks of toothpaste going every-which-way on the mirror driving her crazy.
Even the new surgeon says, " Oh dear, " when my mother takes off her glamorous kerchief and Jackie O sunglasses (my idea) to cover the yellow pools of blood that have replaced her cheeks. The surgeon who stitched my mother up promised that he indeed was a good surgeon — it's just that he had to act fast, before she bled to death, her scar a big sloppy W — for Woonsocket, her hometown, for Warrior Woman, for Wonder and Willingness and Wishing her Well.
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