Transfiguration
- Dec 8, 2021
- 3 min read
by Michelle Guerrero Henry
Move back home after three college semesters away. Get the first job you can. Your father is furious you moved back. Agree to be a companion to a short, elderly woman whose brown eyes light up when she smiles; observe the constellations on her round freckled cheeks. Listen to her mischievous laughter when she asks, Guess where I’m from? Lean in when she whispers about the song of her Jamaican accent, about also being Chinese, about all the things people seem to get wrong. Spend almost two years caring for her. Listen to her excuses about why her only child isn’t around. She’s busy. She’s a doctor. When the daughter tells you about her childhood, something about the smell of liquor, something about not being pretty enough, learn to understand why some stay away. See what age and time do to the mind. How it eats memories, scrambling them into disfigured puzzle pieces. Become familiar with the sounds of prescription medicine clicking into a large weekly pillbox. Watch how she begins to burn dishes she’s always made, forgetting the stove is on. When she answers the door nude, not knowing how she got there, dress her, delicately, so as not to break a bone or tear a stocking.
Observe sagging breasts; learn to understand the meaning of an absent nipple, the grayness of pubic hair, the droop of the labia. Look at the translucent skin and tender dark spots. Bumps that happen on the way to the bathroom after you’re gone for the night, blooming into shades of green, blue, and purple. Call them mysteries and look to care for them like a good Catholic. Observe the wild mane of dark curly hair cascading over your small breasts, the smooth radiance of your skin—everywhere—the simpleness of elasticity.
Feel the protrusion of bone around her collar, her shoulders, her elbows. Watch as she forgets her teeth, clothes, language. Feel the steps become less, shorter strides mimicking her shrinking frame. Say you will never change an adult diaper or bathe her. Inhale the faint urine odor mixed with baby powder. Notice the feces under her nails and learn how to safely sit her in a shower chair. See how fragile hair can become. Thin and broken, wiry where it was once a smooth jet black. Watch as the scalp begins to appear and wash gently. Watch as her smile fades and laughter dims. They eventually become screams. On a good day, listen for the echoes of her silenced laughter. Begin to miss her favorite phrases: “a belly full is a belly full” and “cash money.” Watch as she tries to eat a notebook when you step away for a moment to answer the door, deliveries of more medicine. Remember she believed any restaurant with white tablecloths is fancy. Laugh. Remember her saying, I’m going to come back as a duppy and pull on your toes. Feel as the muscles melt away, watch as irises become clouds.
Learn the various entrances to hospitals, the echoes your shoes make in corridors, the names of all the buildings. Watch as they deliver a hospital bed. Learn what a DNR is; tape it to the back of the front door. Learn that folks who are not visited frequently are not treated quite the same. But learn this from a kind nurse. Dream of her after she’s gone. Track the progress of her spirit.
Wait for your toes to tingle.
Michelle Guerrero Henry is a Cuban/Ecuadorian writer living in an old farmhouse just outside NYC. She is a 2016–2018 Think Write Publish Fellow, 2017 VONA Fellow, and Writing Our Lives alum. Her work has appeared in Longleaf Review and Hispanecdotes. She is a current MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Randolph College and a Nancy Craig Blackburn ’71 Fellow.
