Cumberland. Megan Gannon

of her nightgown I try to whip it out from under her in one motion. It never works. Once she got three cuts on her back where the buttons scraped underneath. This time it all gets bunched up under her butt. I wrestle the cloth out from under her, grunting and wheezing and making a show of it until finally it’s balled up in my hand. “Ta-dah! Ladies and gentlemen, please note, not a fork overturned, not a drop of wine spilled from the goblets.”

      I pull her diaper off, trying not to breathe or notice the sharp box that her hipbones make of her body, the thin flow of skin over the bones of her legs and what little muscle is left. Every day my own body gets softer and rounder while Izzy’s stays the same from the waist down—or worse, shrinks, grows backwards. Someday maybe she’ll have the eight-year-old legs we had when we first came to live here.

      I get a wet washcloth and wipe and rinse until she’s clean, then clamp the catheter, scrub my hands and fingernails and root around under the sink for a new catheter pack, tape, gloves, and gauze. Laughing like a mad scientist, I snap on the gloves, then creep over to the tub where Izzy’s giggling. “Let’s seeeeee here,” I say, holding the tubing as I pull off the tape and gauze just above her left hipbone and inspect the opening. The skin around the port is red, puffy, and when I dab with a piece of soapy gauze around the plastic cap of the stoma an edge of yogurty liquid peeks out.

      “Shit,” I say, and Izzy looks at me sharply, then down at her hip where I’m swabbing with a new piece of gauze. Her cheek was hot—a fever? For how long? I smile—she’s watching my face—and clear my throat. “Yes, yes, yes, veeery nice,” I say. Her eyes are a little bleary, but she hasn’t been cranky or lethargic like the last time she had an infection. I finish swabbing the stoma, then snip the old inflation port tubing and wait for the water to drain out, pulling the catheter out slowly. There’s a little blood, so I snap on some new gloves, swab the blood up with gauze, then measure out with my fingers how far to slide the tubing in, moving fast to get the new catheter slipped in and the balloon inflated. Then I clean around the stoma again, dab on some Neosporin, and lay the empty bag on the side of the tub.

      The water is cold when I turn on the faucet, but by the time it creeps up to where Izzy can feel, it’s tolerably warm. I dump in some shampoo for makeshift bubble bath and swish it around with one hand. When there’s an inch or two of water I scrub her feet and her legs up to her thighs. She doesn’t move, just lays with her eyes closed, waiting for me to wash all her parts. “Izzy.” A faint smile creeps onto her lips.

      “Izzy, here.” I suds the washcloth and drop it in her hand. “Open your eyes.” Her chin is lifted to the ceiling and her smile brightens. She snaps her eyes open and gives me a look like, What?

      “You do it,” I say.

      She tilts her head into a little shrug and then starts right in on her privates, skipping the tops of her thighs. She shuts her eyes again just to bug me.

      “Izzy, it’s creepy.”

      She looks straight at me, furrowing her brow, then finishes and dunks the washcloth. We watch a patch of soap bubbles form on the water and she takes the soap again from my hand. I sit on the toilet and look away when she washes her chest. She wrings the washcloth out and drapes it over the side of the tub, and I pull the stopper, wait for the water to drain. She’s staring at me hard like I’m supposed to know what she’s thinking, and I don’t meet her eye as I dry her off and tape the new tubing down, then attach the new bag to her thigh with elastic bands. When I pull her from the tub and cart her back to the bed I can still feel her eyes on me.

      “What, Izzy?” I say, turning back to the bathroom for the thermometer.

      She gives me an exasperated look, then rolls her eyes and reaches for the notepad. She writes in big letters, the pencil digging in a little more than usual. It’s not like you. I can’t feel it.

      Fresh from the hospital, I had to learn my new body, how fingers traveled to the edge of feeling skin, blood pumping into dead toes, and the light inside always pulling this half of my body back into living. Too much body over the dead edge, I spent days concentrating on keeping myself alive. Teeth clenched, staring at one spot, it took a lot of pulling until I learned that every new knowing was ballast on this side. So books and more books she brings at my bidding to anchor me here with words and thoughts and lines. Glutting myself with held-inside sound, some days I’m so heavy in this world I’m a rock watching tides without a light-lick of fear.

      Four

      The rain’s coming down so hard it’s erased any horizon, and when I go downstairs Grand is sitting at the table making one of her lists. Presidents’ names, church members, state capitals, the addresses of buildings the Carson brothers built—lists and lists she keeps in a stack on the desk, sometimes duplicating the same lists without looking. I pour myself some coffee, then top off her cup. Rings that must be from a week’s worth of breakfasts line the saucer.

      She nods sideways at me without looking up. Somehow, she’s always reminded me of a scarecrow in a clown’s wig—rigid-backed, with grey curls surrounding her flat-faced, round head. Her dark eyes are like two holes punched through paper and I pretend it feels good to have someone’s eyes on me when she glances up. “Was there something you needed?”

      I get the words out fast. “Izzy has a slight temperature. I think she has an infection.”

      “Well.” Grand crosses out a name on her list and I wait for her to say something else as the rain slows from torrents to a hard fall of thick drops. Over the drumming, one high drip drip drip chimes out, the leak in the gutter at the end of the porch I’ve yet to fix.

      “So… I think we need to call the doctor.”

      The room is silent as I brace myself—is she so far inside herself she hardly hears me, or just gathering her breath the way a storm gathers clouds? She writes a few more names and sighs. “Did you clean her up?”

      “Yes,” I say.

      “Give her an aspirin?”

      “…Not yet.”

      “Well. Go get her an aspirin and see if that doesn’t help.” She screws her mouth into a sideways pucker as she prints two more names in exact block letters.

      My chest feels fluttery as I pass through the living room to the back bedroom door that’s always closed. The blinds in Grand’s room are drawn as always, but the faint light that seeps in around the cracks shows rumpled bed-sheets musty with the scent of old coffee grounds and stale perfume. The wardrobe door stands open, overflowing with dresses hanging in clear plastic, and lidless hat-boxes litter the room, one bursting with scarves, another with purses.

      I cross to the corner and pull open the bathroom door, turning on the light to see the bathtub with a deep rust stain streaking up the center, the chalky, dank-smelling tile gritty under my bare feet. The toilet has dark rings inside it and I put the lid down to dampen the swampy smell. Lipsticks and hairpins and a round tin of face powder clutter a little doily-draped table beside the sink. I pull open the medicine cabinet and sift through the rows of orange prescription bottles where Grand has always kept the aspirin, pick one and turn the bottle over so I can read the name on the typed prescription label: John Mackenzie.

      It’s hard to imagine there was ever someone else here trying to shore this old house up against rotting. I glance upstairs, but since she’s in a good mood today I walk back into the kitchen and try to ask in a voice so casual she won’t even notice she’s responding, “What was Granddad like?”

      Grand looks up quickly, squints, then puts down her pen and takes a sip of coffee. “Well, it’s hard to say. When you live with someone, it’s… hard to describe a person.” She sets her chin, turning her cup in the groove of the saucer, and clears her throat. “How would you describe Isabel, for instance?”

      “I wouldn’t,” I say, and Grand sees her mistake, since she’s the one who forbids me to talk about Izzy. She purses her lips and looks down at her list.

      “Well.”

      “I mean, I wouldn’t... know where to begin.”