Asleep but fully conscious, the curse of full consciousness, even in the grave, even in death, this terror. She feels them in her hair, crawling over her face, her breasts, her unprotected belly.
Graice help me. Graice. Her nipples ache as if she's been nursing.
She has died, they've buried her alive.
Sweating like a pig.
No amount of talcum powder can disguise the smell, nor can face powder disguise the tainted cast of her skin. the color of rancid butter.
Is the telephone ringing? It's Duke Courtney come to save her.
Begging her forgiveness but it's too late.
In any case, she won't touch the phone any longer. She has felt it quiver in her hand, heard the tiny mocking whispers inside.
Graice please help me. honey where are you?
It's spring. The fragrance of blossoms and death. She's screaming and sobbing and someone begins knocking at the front door and she jams the pillowcase against her mouth to stifle her cries until the danger is past.
It might be the police, come to bury her alive.
Police with grinning faces, leering eyes, standing over her.
How they'd laugh, seeing the infestation of re d ants! A frenzy of re d ants! In her pubic hair. inside her vagina.
Cunt, they'd say, laughing. Filthy cunt.
She's pouring the last of the gin into a glass and the surprise of it, the precious liquid sloshing out, the smell in the bedclothes, soaking into the mattress. So quickly! An old faded lizard shaped stain of menstrual blood in the mattress. years old. Persia has not had a menstrual period in a year, still she's fearful that one of her men friends will see, will smell her, will re coil in disgust.
The ants! Red stinging ants! She runs water in the tub, lowers herself desperately, slipping, losing her balance, knocking the back of her head against the tub, she's partly unconscious but still the hot water splashes frothing into the tub. Her mind is a stained porcelain tub on old fashioned claw feet splashing with frothing water.
Time pleats. The sun swerves overhead.
She's in the bedroom. she's in the kitchen and her mind is clear.
Like a windowpane briskly washed, a flood of light shining through.
God help me, please God help me. It isn't too late.
Again, the furry black creature, the bright eyed beast, skulking in the corners, watching. As soon as she weakens and lies down it will settle itself over her mouth and suck away her breath.
Devil. Devil.
Her bare toes and the heel of her right foot are bleeding from fragments of broken glass. Yet there is no glass that she can see.
the floor has been swept fastidiously clean.
She's a good homemaker. Old Dutch Cleanser, Brillo pads, Oxydol. But she's out of cigarettes and it's a thousand thousand miles to the store.
Here's what she does: fills a three quart pan with water, sets It on the stove, turns the gas burner on high. Panting, excited. Hair sticking to her sweaty forehead. Calling, Kitty! Kitty kitty kitty.
But the creature is smart, wary, apprehensive. The cunning of the devil. Green tawny eyes flaring up. claws on the linoleum floor stumpy tail erect in arrogance. Persia's enemies sent this creature home with Graice to smother them both in their sleep but Persia has a plan, calling, Kitty. Here, kitty kitty kitty! She's in her old glamorous negligee, champagne colored, lace, pleats, tiny bows, a present from her husband, her adoring young husband, many years ago Here, kitty! Pretty kitty.
The water is slow to come to a boil.
Eventually, it comes to a boil, the big pan rattling on the burner.
Hunger lures the black cat out of his hiding place. suddenly he's in the kitchen, underfoot, mewing his plaintive hopeful meow. Persia's eyes flare up too. Persia is barefoot too, toenails braced against the floor. Kitty, here kitty. she calls in her hoarse voice and as Houdini rubs and preens against her leg Persia re aches for the pan of boiling water, lifts it by both hands, no time for pot holders; she tries to step out of the way as she pours the seething water onto the cat but the cat trips her, the cat is wild, frenzied, the two of them are screaming.
Help me! Help me Graice.
It seems that Persia's negligee is on fire, her very flesh is on fire.
She runs to the door, throws open the door, runs out onto the landing, and the stairs are gone, the apartment building below is gone, Buena Vista Street, the city of Hammond, New York, all Persia knows, gone.
Graice Courtney notes in her journal merely: May 18. Mother was taken to Hammond General Hospital today by ambulance. Uncle Leslie and I followed.
Not until years have passed will Graice understand that Persia's story is a familiar one: an alcoholic's slow, then rapid, decline; dizzying rapidity at the end. A familiar story but utterly new and strange and terrible to Graice and she will never learn to tell it properly, even to herself: only in pieces, shreds, quick short takes.
Hearing Persia's screams on the stairway landing outside the apartment, a neighbor came and saw and called an ambulance, and now it's through others' eyes that Graice Courtney begins to see her mother.
How had Persia become so emaciated? Nearly skeletal except for her grotesquely swollen belly, astonishing to observe. And astonishing too the breasts collapsed and flaccid as balloons emptied of air.
Persia's lovely breasts!
And her skin, coarse, a sickly orangish yellow, even the whites of her eyes jaundiced: the hue of urine.
And her breath, rasping, labored, foul. And a grainy white powder at the corners of her mouth.
Graice Courtney sees. Yet somehow cannot see. cannot comprehend.
Recording neatly and succinctly in her journal: May 19.
Mother is in intensive care. The doctor says it will be a while before she'll be well enough to come home.
Graice's thinking is initially optimistic, and Persia's relatives and friends seem to agree: now that Persia is safely in the hospital she will receive the treatment she needs. No more making appointments with doctors, then breaking them at the last minute. as, it turns out, she'd been doing for more than a year.
Says Madelyn Daiches, Now that Persia is in the hospital she can't drink, and she'll be so scared, when she gets out, she won't drink.
And when it's explained to Graice that her mother has a condition called cirrhosis of the liver, among other medical problems of varying degrees of seriousness, Graice's first response is one of childlike relief: It isn't anything serious, then. Like cancer or heart disease.
As for the second degree burns on her legs and feet, the burns are only external, superficial. They'll heal.
Those days, weeks. slate colored skies streaked with rain.
accelerating gradually like water approaching a falls. The roaring deepens so slowly you can t hear it.
Persia re mains in the intensive care ward, kept alive by IV fluids dripping into her exhausted veins and by a tube sucking bile and body fluids into a clear plastic bag taped to the side of her bed.
A somber proposition, the body as a mechanism for taking in and expelling fluids. Persia's few visitors Madelyn, women friends, a neighbor or two Persia is conscious enough to forbid all male visitors, including Leslie Courtney are shocked by her appearance, claim they wouldn't recognize her: the eerily discolored skin, the eyes swollen nearly shut, a look of weariness, fatigue, age. And that puffed up little belly, the belly of a woman in an advanced state of pregnancy, mysteriously out of proportion to the re st of her body.
The first time Graice Courtney sees her mother in the hospital, in that unnaturally high cranked bed, she stares uncomprehendingly Is that frail, motionless figure Persia? A thick rubber tube has been forced through one of Persia's nostrils, with a weight attached, so that the weight will force its way down through her throat, through her chest, into her stomach. Thus one nostril is grotesquely distended, the other pinched shut. Persia's eyes are swollen as if they've been blackened and it isn't possible to determine if they are open, exactly. or whether, open, they are in focus.
Graice cries, Oh, Momma! in a voice of hurt, shock, accusation.
There's no response
For the next several weeks, Graice Courtney spends her days sitting at her mother's bedside waiting for Persia to emerge from this terribly sick woman. she no longer attends, or even thinks of, her classes at Hammond Central High School. Maybe she'll make up papers and exams later in the summer, maybe not at all.
She's here at the hospital waiting for Persia to wake, to look at her to say she's sorry. Waiting for Persia to begin to re cover up to the very hour of Persia's death.
One morning, early in the second week, Persia is conscious enough to speak in a faint, exhausted voice, and Graice grips her hand hard; Graice leans close as possible desperate not to miss a word. Wanted not to be lonely. like God made a promise. my baby girl.
little baby girl. I know I failed. failed to be a good mother a mother. Honey, I know I. failed.
When it seems she isn't going to speak further Graice says quickly, a little loudly, Momma, you were a good mother, you are.
Persia tries to look at her. It's remarkable the strength she must summon just to look; there seems to be a scrim across her eyes, a fever blur. Persia has contracted a hospital infection, her temperature is high.
Graice re peats several times, Momma, you were a good mother, you always were a good mother, thinking Liar' liar why do you lie, gripping Persia's hand hard, and how frail, how without strength, that hand, the hand of an elderly woman.
Persia says hoarsely, I could have been better. I am better inside.
Don't you believe me? For a moment she seems to be almost angry; there's a flurry of purpose and resistance the old Persia, flaring up at a word of opposition. Saying, I know.
could have been better. lost control. you think I'm not a better person than I. showed?
Graice stares at Persia's bloated, discolored face, at those jaundiced crescents of eyes, and wonders, Are we arguing? Is this an argument?
Here? Now? Quickly Graice murmurs yes Momma, yes Momma you're right.
Persia says passionately, You don't know. too young.
Shouldn't judge, and Graice says she isn't judging anyone, and Persia says, Loved you. my little girl. But it didn't help, did it? and Graice says yes yes it did help of course it helped, and Persia says impatiently, Don't lie, damn you, there isn't time, don't try to lie to me, just promise. promise you won't make the mistake I made.
Graice says, What mistake, Momma? and Persia says, her voice beginning to wander, to weaken, Just like me. Graice. But don't be like me, and Graice says desperately, Momma, what do you mean?
What mistake? and Persia says vaguely, Knew what goodness was.
But I was always. bored with it. That kind of. man. That kind of life. Don't make that mistake, honey. don't turn away from goodness if you can find it. I knew what your father was.
didn't care, I loved him so. I don't care now, I guess. it's too late now. and other things She's becoming sleepy; it's as if a powerful drug were overcoming her; Graice can feel her mother's consciousness, her strength, life, seemingly ebbing through Graice's own fingers. it's unbearable to Graice that she can't stop this draining away.
Persia's final words that day are, Promise me and Graice says, Yes, Momma, without knowing what she says, what she is promising.
Still, she's faithful to her vision of the re al Persia: the healthy Persia: the woman so frequently and so lovingly photographed with her daughter, throughout their lives. the two of them even now on display, on seemingly permanent display, in the window of Court they's Photography Studio on North Main Street.
It's a matter of waiting for this woman to re turn.
It's a matter of thinking optimistically. Or not thinking.
Leslie Courtney seems to feel the way Graice does. When Persia leaves the hospital. When Persia gets well. There are plans for a summer excursion to Crystal Beach, in Ontario; to Lake Placid, in the Adirondack Mountains; plans for a new apartment or duplex in a better neighborhood. Leslie Courtney is hopeful but it seems he's been sufficiently shocked by his sister in law's collapse to have stopped drinking himself.
Permanently, Leslie swears. Permanently one day at a time.
Eleven o'clock in the evening of the twenty first day of Persia's hospitalization and the telephone rings in the apartment in the Buena Vista Arms and it's Duke Courtney, from whom Graice has not heard in more than a year, complaining bitterly that he's being kept from Persia's bedside: Came at once when I heard. it's outrageous. at the hospital yesterday, and again today, and I said. I have a right, I said. this woman's husband of sixteen years, I said whohasarightifIdon't? want to see you both, Graice.