|
The sound began at eight that morning.
Chainsaws, buzzing like seventy-pound mosquitoes. The walls trembled and
cracked. Plaster fell from the ceiling. Cora held a blanket over her head
like a shawl to catch shards of sheet rock. Glass shattered in a room at
the other end of the house, a room she hadn’t seen in twenty years.
Yesterday, Anna Lee asked her what she most looked forward to, after the
move. Cora said, “To feel water all over me. All around me.”
Cora hadn’t stood under a shower or lain in a tub since two years after
William died. Hadn’t peed in a toilet. Hadn’t seen the sky. Anna Lee
washed her with a sponge, a hose screwed into the bathroom faucet, and a
bucket. Helped her stand long enough to get situated over a plastic tub
when she had to relieve herself. Boarded up the windows when people started
looking in, like Cora was an exhibit at a freak show. Anna Lee took care
of her. Brought her things to eat.
She’d never been a slight girl, but when she married William, Cora was the
biggest she’d ever been, over two hundred and fifty pounds. When he died,
things got out of hand. For some time now, she hadn’t been able to fit
through the bedroom door. Then it got hard just to stand.
The sawing hurt Cora’s ears. Anna Lee sat in her chair beside the bed and
handed donuts to Cora. Cora held a donut to her mouth but for once she didn
’t eat. She held the donut for hours, listening as the beams cracked and
snapped, as the shingles ripped. A fine coating of dust settled on the
blanket over Cora’s head, the donut and Anna Lee.
Cora wondered what her new home would be like. Whether the promises the
doctors made to her would be kept. Whether they would remember to cover her
eyes with a black line in photographs. Whether they would be able to find a
stomach to staple under all that blubber when they cut her open. Whether
they would have the decency to clear the neighborhood before they lifted her
from the house and placed her on whatever was waiting for her. A flatbed
truck, she imagined. Would they have the decency to cover her with a tarp
before they strung the “Wide Load” sign from one big toe to another and
hauled her away. Not to a hospital, Anna Lee said. Like a hospital, but
with a pool. Where Cora could feel water all around her.
As Cora wondered, the roof cracked apart. She saw, with eyes so old, so
deprived, they became new and rich. She saw, between the jagged edges of
shingles, the blue sky.
|
