I experienced a warm sense of pride and kinship that fellow musicians felt so strongly, that they had gotten together and through song drawn people of goodwill together.
They made a difference…as I almost had. Thanks to Gentle, I had joined in. My motive was simply to get my songs heard. That the concert was organized to restore Indian lands pleased me. But it was not the main factor.
Some of the idealism must have rubbed off on me, however, because one way or another, I was part of this courageous group. I even began to think of myself as a casualty in the on-going battle between the makers and the takers.
I clicked off the viewer. There were different images that could come now when I thought of our benefit concert. I rejoined Abram in Philosophy, my heart singing, and for the first time there was music in my head.
Once again Abram had known what to do and how to help me. Now I had to help myself, and to do this I had to think a few things through.
Chapter Eighteen
APRIL 1982, almost three years since my accident, but in my mind it was both yesterday and forever. I couldn’t walk. That question seemed to have answered itself.
Aside from a rest in the afternoon I no longer spent time in bed. In the morning I got up, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. I soaped, scrubbed, and rinsed myself in the shower chair. Applying makeup gave me a positive lift. I looked exactly like Kathy Little Bird, the famous singer. Twice a week Pam shampooed my hair, but soon I planned to take that over. Just as someday I would drive the Lincoln, which Pam thoughtfully kept limber by taking it into town.
A more urgent problem hovered in my mind. Nature helped me formulate it by devising a test. Not the winter that closed the port for months, whose thirty-below weather packed snowdrifts to fifteen feet, sweeping traffic, pedestrian and vehicular, from sidewalk and streets, and livestock into heated barns. I was Canadian, I knew these winters.
The test reserved for me was more cruel; it showed me that walking was the least of my problems. Later in the week I was bundled into the car. I watched Abram and imagined my hands on the wheel. Getting back a semblance of health was a career, a job that took all available time and energy. But it was lovely to be out of doors. On this crisp snowy day the sun shone brightly and I forgot I was on my way to the doctor’s office.
I enjoyed the trees, whose leaves cried clear tears of ice. The smell of outdoors held the promise of spring. I inhaled it like a glass of cold water. I like water. I like the world.
I don’t like doctors’ offices or the way they smell—suspiciously clean. What disease or ailment lay on this sterile examination table before I did? For they had transferred me to a small partitioned space. Dye was injected into my spinal cord, which was then X-rayed for comparison with earlier pictures. Then small probes like needles under my skin to measure muscle potential. “A nerve conduction test,” they told me.
Have fun, guys. It’s my body, but what the hell, I don’t feel anything anyway. They did a Babinski, scratching the soles of my feet with a silver metal pen.
Abram explained that they also needed a psychological evaluation. I was asked to repeat seven digits forward and four in reverse order, to spell backward, to remember three unrelated words. Later, when I thought we were all through, they asked for the words. Traps, one after the other. Now as a last trial I was required to darken boxes, while the doctor spoke to Abram.
I listened instead.
“Two major areas associated with language deficit are Broca’s in the third frontal convolution and Wernicke’s in the posterior third of the upper temporal convolution. In a right-handed person this is relatively easy to identify. Unfortunately, I suspect your wife to have originally been left-handed, and in such cases opinions differ.”
He too blamed me for my left-handedness. Later when he spoke to me directly, I wouldn’t answer.
On the drive back, Pam chatted about a quilt the ladies of the church were making. Yes, Pam was with us. Pam was always with us.
Abram concentrated on driving. I remembered reading that in the old days to get a brain like mine functioning, they’d blister the skull, bleed you with leeches, and suck up the skin by applying heated bottles. So it could have been worse.
This time I didn’t notice trees or sky. I didn’t notice anything. A gray membrane drew itself over my thoughts. I overload easily, can’t take in too much, don’t want to.
I WAS grateful to Abram, who carried me upstairs and put me to bed. He’d done this before, countless times. This was different. He touched me in a different way, a way I seemed to remember. I responded to his fingers, which ran lightly over my hair, my throat and breasts. It had been so long, I had almost forgotten I was a woman. He leaned over me and I felt his body warmth, his body that had lent me pulses of pleasure and charged me with life. With expectant eagerness I reached out my arms and pulled him close. Oh yes, this is the way it is between us, the way it has always been.
His lips pressed mine gently open. The prickling sensations of pleasure started in my veins. The throbbing, the desire…desire that was anguish barely in abatement. Abram bore down and I waited for the ultimate, the incredible moment that had always been there for us.
Nothing.
I didn’t feel anything. I was an inert mass, a stone.
When Mum died, Jas tried to shake her alive. Couldn’t someone do that for me? Shake me alive?
I started to cry. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I lay there and sobbed.
Abram froze, then pulled himself up and stumbled to his feet. A moment later he sank to his knees and whispered, “Give it time, Kathy. It will be all right, just give it time.”
I’d given it time. My mind was functioning again in fits and starts. My speech center could be brought back. My internal organs had resettled, I thought, in their normal places. Only it wasn’t true of my woman’s parts. The rush of wanting was there, but the excruciating pleasure that I strained for did not come. If I couldn’t be a wife to Abram, if I couldn’t be a woman, I wanted to be dead.
Pam, who slept over most nights, heard my uncontrollable weeping. She knocked timidly on the door and, receiving no answer, opened it and came in. “Abram, what is it? Is Kathy all right?” Pam took Abram’s place at the side of the bed, stroking me into quietness, and then kissed me on the eyelids.
I heard Abram say, “She had a nightmare, that’s all.”
Speaking over my head, Pam replied, “She probably knows.”
Knows? Knows what?
There followed a term I was becoming familiar with—“catastrophic neurological event,” my condition, which made it impossible to concentrate, remember, spell, conceptualize, even think. This “deficit” of mine apparently had determined that I could no longer physically know the love of a man. It didn’t matter how much or how hard I tried—it wasn’t there.
Had Pam’s moment come? Her piousness and prissiness were always more pronounced when Abram was present. Had she exaggerated those qualities to appeal to him?
Was that her strategy? Holier than thou, demure, always a pious saying on her lips. Abram approved of Pam, so helpful, so willing. Had she been willing? How willing? Was she willing now?
Still speaking over my head, Pam said, “You’re going to tell her, aren’t you?”
“Hush, Pam.” He knows, or at least suspects that I understand.
Not Pam, she has no such sensibilities. “It’s only a question of time, Abram, until she discovers for herself.”
Discovers? Discovers?
I craned up, staring from one to the other. It was as though I weren’t here. It had been so long since I was here that they had gotten used to discounting my presence.
Pam went over to him. She was wearing a proper flannel nightgown, but underneath she was naked. He knew this.
Her hair, so neatly pulled back during the day, was lying fluffy and soft on her shoulders. And her breasts, usually buttoned in, now spread out full and womanly.
“Abram,” she said in a breathy whisper, “I ha
ven’t said anything all this while. But now, the tests confirm that nerve conduction may not regenerate for years. Maybe never.”
“Pam, that’s enough.”
“Why? She doesn’t understand.”
“She does.”
—Oh Abram, it could be never. And here is Pam, very much a woman. A woman who can feel and react to you. A woman who could be roused and return your passion. That’s what you deserve, a woman, not a stone. Reach out a hand to her. I wouldn’t mind that much. I might not even mind at all.
I HUNG out bird feeders and gardened at large tubs that Abram rolled into the backyard. Since making a new start I did everything with my left hand. It’s completely irrational, I know, but from the moment I gave in to the impulse to reach out with my left hand, to grasp, turn, twist, use my left hand exclusively—from that moment my speech began to return. Something in me seemed to have been freed, and the difficulty of getting my mouth and tongue around sounds disappeared. It still took a great deal of concentration, but I started to place telephone calls myself. I called my father and I called Jas. I laughed to hear how incredulous they were. “It’s me,” I answered them, “it’s me!”
“Isn’t it marvelous,” we said to each other. Then, within days, I received a phone call that changed my life.
“Kathy,” Jas was at the other end, “you won’t believe this—I’ve just talked to your daughter. Kathy Mason was right here in the pub.”
“Oh, Jas.” I almost dropped the phone.
“She knows I’m her uncle. Elk Woman told her. She’s a great kid; with that red hair of hers she’s a knockout.”
“Jas—” A horrible possibility occurred to me. I reverted to a month ago. I couldn’t get the words out. My tongue almost quit on me, and my brain was ready to quit too. But I focused hard on Kathy. I’d never run out on her again. “Jas, you didn’t say anything? You didn’t tell her about me?”
“Of course I didn’t, but I sure was tempted to. She came up here looking for her roots; you know how kids are. Asked all about you and her father. It seems a shame, her wanting to know about you, and you wanting her. Couldn’t you—?”
“No! I couldn’t. Jas, you promised me.”
“I haven’t said a word, and I wouldn’t without your say-so. But if you ask me it’s a rotten shame.”
“Yes, it is, Jas. I agree with you. But it’s the only way…. I still can’t take it in. You met Kathy? You talked with her? What’s she like, Jas?”
“Like I said, she’s a great little gal. You’d be proud of her.”
“Who does she look like? Mum? Does she resemble Mum at all?”
“Gosh Kathy, she’s a looker, that’s all I can say. She’s got your eyes, dark, flashy ones. And when she smiles she reminds me of you.”
“What did you talk about? Tell me everything.”
“Well, she wanted to know why there was no record of you anywhere, so I explained how Jellet was, that us kids didn’t attend school even, but lived like recluses. Oh, and she wanted to know what the J stood for.”
“The J?”
“Yeah, on her birth certificate her father is listed as J. Sullivan. She laughed when I told her it was Jack.”
I had a thousand questions. Most I thought of after we’d hung up, so I called back, spoke carefully, and the words said what I wanted them to.
Abram came in quietly and sat by the window smiling. He was happy that I had such recent news of my girl. I told Jas to be sure and tell Kathy the family stories, especially about Katherine Mary Flannigan, so she would understand about her name. To tell her all about Mum and about Erich. And he wasn’t to leave out Crazy Dancer. Or me, the me he remembered as a girl—if there was anything good he could think of to say about me.
I told Jas that every time he saw Kathy Mason he was to call me. My picture of her was filling in. The insubstantial musings were more vivid, more real.
I remembered when I had thought myself so alone, so friendless. But the return of speech was due, I recognized, to Abram, and to friends, good friends like John and Lucinda, and yes, my father, Jas, and Elk Woman. I’d had an extraordinary amount of help. Following Lucinda’s example, the ladies of the choir, followed by the ladies of the congregation, gradually filtered back to us.
The elders had made their statement. They had prayed about it, and that fulfilled any obligation they had toward us. The women no longer stole in the back door, washed the kitchen floor, changed the sheets on my bed, and left soup simmering on the stove. Now they came as neighbors, as friends. They came to sit a while, as they took out knitting and chatted.
This made a deep impression on Abram. “You know, Kathy, I dig into my books these days in the hope of finding answers. The Greeks believed wisdom was to be found at the bottom of a well. Philosophers look for it in the end notes of weighty tomes. The Buddha’s enlightenment came only after profound meditation. These good women answered in another way. When our need was urgent, they answered by doing, caring, thoughtfulness, and devotion…. Just knowing these qualities are in the world gives meaning, don’t you think?”
“I do. Oh yes, Abram, I do.” And I performed one of the tasks I had taught myself. I made cocoa in the kitchen, getting down the cups with my handy picker-upper.
Abram’s lonely search for answers was alleviated by John’s company. Many evenings now John sat and debated with him, toasting stockinged feet at our hearth. I brought them pots of cocoa.
LIKE the ladies of the congregation, Abram gave and gave and asked for nothing, which was lucky because I had nothing to give.
He, on the other hand, invented a world for me. I was broken and he put me together. I couldn’t think, and he unscrambled my brain and made a life for me.
This one.
With infinite patience he taught me to drive the car my father had bought me, the Lincoln with leather seats. The car was a soft blue-gray, and I loved the way it smelled. Still, it was difficult for me to drive. It took concentrated effort because the controls were managed from the steering wheel. Mostly it was Pam who took it for spins.
Abram had the kitchen remodeled with new cabinets and easy-glide drawers. I began somewhat tentatively to do a little cooking. But Pam was so much quicker that she was soon doing the majority of the meals.
For a while Abram and I teamed up to prepare gourmet Sunday dinners. I was a great salad tosser and expert at arranging food to look appetizing. Abram did the serious cooking. He was a master of aromas. He claimed that sixty percent of what you think you taste, you really smell. Then one day I had a headache and Pam took over. And for some reason that’s the way it seemed to fall out from then on: Pam freeing me of one more task.
One day a half-grown, forlorn Siamese cat found us. We fed her, petted her, and she took over. In no time she became a sleek beauty we called Ming-Ling. A favorite pastime for both Ming-Ling and me was to watch Abram shave. When he left the Believing Church the beard had come off. For him it was symbolic; for Ming-Ling and me the daily process of scraping off stubble was fascinating. I couldn’t say why—except that Abram did it. So a small custom was initiated. But Pam didn’t think it was hygienic to allow the cat on the counter.
I was thinking about this as I sat drowsing in the last of the sun. The warm June day was cooling off and I was glad of the throw Abram had tucked around me. Or was I? I didn’t like the picture it generated—blanket, wheelchair, cripple. My mind jumped to the First Nation people of the Arctic Circle. They have a custom that when a member of the family is too old or too sick to contribute, they are set on an ice floe with a few days’ provisions to gradually fall into frozen sleep. Cruel? No, it is the natural way. The proof is that it is the person herself who makes the decision and pushes off on the ice.
The Cree always begin stories by saying, “This is a true thing I tell you.” So I suppose it’s true about the ice floe and I wonder about the story Pam read me this morning. It was a Bible story. Genesis, I think, Abraham and Sarah. Sarah had an Egyptain slave girl whose name was Hag
ar. Sarah told Abraham to go in to her slave girl. And Abraham listened to the voice of Sarah, his wife.
I could hear Pam bustling about. She was very much at home in my kitchen; she knew where everything was. Abram had gone in to lift out the roast. I could hear them laughing.
Abram came out. “The sun is almost gone. Let me bring you in.”
I smiled at him.
“You were sitting here so quietly,” he said, “I thought you’d fallen asleep.”
“I was thinking of Bible stories. Do you have a favorite?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“I do, the one about Abraham and his wife.”
“Where Sarah conceives at the age of…”
“No, the part about Hagar.”
Abram didn’t answer, but released the brake on my chair. “What about Hagar?” he asked.
“Nothing much. Just that I like the story.”
Pam called from the kitchen; he brought me into the living room and went to help her. He wouldn’t attach importance to it now. Later he’d remember.
I didn’t want to traumatize him further. I hoped he’d attribute it to my music. He’d think, “She couldn’t live without her music.” The truth is, Abram…I’m not in pain. I don’t lack for anything. Everyone is kind to me. And from the beginning you’ve been Abram, which is my highest praise. But I can’t live any longer without living.
People will say, “She knew success, fame, fortune….” But I was what they made me: Mac, the agency men, producers, sound mixers, all those years. In that time of tinsel and glamour, there’d been no more than an occasional glimpse of me. So now there was not much to hold to. Too late I’d married Abram. Too late the Cree songs. Too late I became left-handed. The time of the benefit—I think I was meant to go then; it would have been a fitting climax.
Abram returned to wheel me to the table. Recently he seemed light of heart. The haggard look he’d worn had lifted. Just when had this happened? I tried to think back. My mind came to the night I made that discovery about my inability—about my body. And there it stalled. Perhaps he hadn’t waited for my tacit complicity. Perhaps he had no need of Bible stories. Was it from that time that Pam had begun bustling about in my home so efficiently?