A Half-Eaten Rose

At the sink. The tepid water splashing over the plain white plates which clang abruptly and deceptively loud against the porcelain basin. The hands that scrub are scratched, and worn and cracked and pink with red stripes. One of the fingers is wrapped in gauze and tape. The water, which is somewhat less hot than desirable to clean the dishes, is the warmest the hand can stand. Under the gauze is a patch of oozing, white, burned flesh. The knuckles are wide, but the stalk of each finger is slim. Each joint swells full of fluid. The arms are short and smooth and slim. They run at a sharp angle to a body, slender, emaciated with droopy shoulders that hunch forward as if the swollen hands are a burden to which the little back will soon succumb. On top of the shoulders is a neck with a head with a long chin and sunken in cheeks. The lower jaw is clenched tightly to the upper. A permanent wince of pain from the burned finger tip. This face is clean and wears no makeup, but the eyes have a puffy, grey abscess around them. These eyes are clear though. The iris is a deep penetrating blue with crisp whites around that bounce light back like the moon.  They are blue like their tears are held there, instead of the duct. The duct wasn’t big enough.

This woman’s name is Modie. She is thirty-one years old and she knows she’s going to have a hunch back if she doesn’t pull her round shoulders back a bit. She tries to straighten them up, now but her neck is sore and when she tries to uncurve her spine it feels like running a hand rake over a raw nerve. She winces and recoils back into the bow. It looks like she is being sucked down the drain with the dirty dish water head first.

The house is small and clean. The floors shine and there are stickers on the sliding glass door because it is so completely clear that the little boy in the living room could easily crash through it thinking is was open otherwise.  His name is Seth. He has curly black hair and Modie’s blue eyes. He has large hearing aids in his ears, but he would rather leave them out. They don’t make him hear. They only make different intensities of painful vibrations in his small sea shell ears. He is watching TV. He is seven years old and he would like to be a pilot when he grows up. He sits on a round pillow in the parquet living room floor. His gaunt knees are pulled up to his chin and he practices moving his lips like the characters on TV, but only with the mask of his knees to keep anyone from seeing.

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Eight weeks and some odd days ago, Modie went to dinner with her husband. He ordered her a salad and an iced tea and a chicken fried steak for himself. Her husband’s name is Byron. Modie didn’t eat her salad because the lettuce was withered, but she drank three glasses of sweet tea. It was Byron’s birthday and he ordered them two slices of pecan pie. She took hers to go because the sitter called her cell phone and was ready to go home. Modie never keeps the sitter later than expected, but tonight they had to sit and wait for a very long time before they got a table.

When Modie and Byron returned home, Byron went outside to get his dog. He came toward the back door with the hound named Archie. Archie was shaking and whining as Byron pulls him in by his front left leg. Byron, with the dog’s leg in his right hand, reared his arm back for momentum and then gruffly tossed the dog through the door way as if he were luggage to be loaded into the coach section of an airplane. The dog limped away under the kitchen table like the losing bear into his cave after a fight.

“Well now we know where he gets it from,” Byron said cooly.

Modie doesn’t respond. She counts out scoops of coffee and places them softly and silently into the coffee maker.

“Tell me what I did to get a son that don’t hear and a wife that don’t listen. I told you umpty somethin’ times to keep that dog inside when we leave. He dug up my mom’s rose bush again.”

He grabbed his set of garden gloves from the drawer in the desk next to the back door. He pulled out a small pinkish red rose from his pocket and held it out to her. It was covered in slobber and there were teeth marks in the stem. She looked closely and saw blood smeared on the thorns and soft petals.  Then he puts arm up on the door and rests his chin on it, looking out the glass into the yard, facing decisively away from Modie.

“You know, I’m starting to think maybe he hear just fine. He just don’t think he has to listen ‘cause his momma don’t. “

Modie watched out the window as he walked over to the fence line in the moonlight with a shovel and started digging a deeper hole for the rose bush. After he was out of ear shot, she moved over to the table lifted the table cloth to see the Archie laying coiled up like a snake on the rug. He was licking his paw, but his mouth was bleeding and the more he licked, the more his tan fur became tinged with the irony red. She reached out to touch his paw and he began to growl fiercely at her. Then, as she tried to move her hand away, he snapped at her sharply, narrowly missing her.

That night, Byron was already in bed when Modie came into the room. He was reading a his red leather bound King James Bible and his mouth was whistling and clicking a little bit as he slowly mouthed the words. When she went to the closet and took off her terry cloth navy blue robe, he set the bible down, bowed his head in prayer, touched a finger kiss to the picture of his mother on his nightstand and turned out the light before Modie had made it back to the bedside. She made her way across the room in the moonlight pouring in through the window, took some hand lotion of her dresser top and in the dark she began rubbing it slowly into all of the crannies of her palms and up to her wrists.

“I’m sorry I said that earlier. I know he’s deaf as can be. Just that rose bush was so important to my Momma, you know.”

“Yes.”

“Take your gown off before you get in bed.”

The next morning, Sunday, Byron dressed himself in his dusty blue suit and shaved the scruff from his leather face. He came downstairs and grunted at Modie and Seth sitting at the kitchen table. Modie was holding a stack of multiplication flash cards as Seth signed the answers to them, rarely missing a question except when got to the multiples of twelve which were somewhat trickier for him.

Byron pulled the carton of eggs and the opaque jug of milk out of the refrigerator and then a fry pan out of the cabinet. He looked at it intensely and then slammed it hard onto the stove top. He turned the stove to high heat and then poured himself some milk into a little glass with chickens enamel-painted around it. He stared at his son and a grimace of disgust started to turn his lips upward toward his ears. Tersely, he turned his back on them and threw the glass in the sink. As it shattered Modie jerked sharply and winced at the shrill reverberating sound. Seth did not. 

There was a little puff of steam coming out of the skillet now and Byron shifted back to the stove top. With his back still to his family, he motioned backward with one wiggling index finger for his wife.

“Come here.”

Upon reaching her husband’s side, Modie’s own index finger is caught up in the grasp of her husband’s large hand. He held it straight out pointing with it into the skillet. Modie could feel the intense heat of the steaming metal pan on it. Her finger nail, a more solid conductor of heat than her finger tips, was actually heating faster and even though she had not actually touched the pan, it hurt immensely.

“You see that? That greasy stain right there in the center of the pan?” Byron said, his face so close to hers she could feel the warm spittle coming from his mouth and smell rather distinctly the toothpaste he had just brushed his teeth with.

“I don’t know. Maybe I got a deaf son and a blind wife. Maybe you can’t see it. What, you got to feel it like one of them blind books. Let me show you.” He pressed her finger tip hard into the grease spot and held it there for close to five seconds. Modie could smell her own flesh burning. Seth looked up from the table, also smelling the putrid skin. The searing heat on her tissue puffed up a little cloud which, hitting her hard in the eyes, making them change from wide in surprise and pain to squinting from the smoke.  She let out a cry, and a whimper and then a sigh as he finally let her hand free. Seth had heard none of it.

Then Byron threw the carton of eggs into the sink and they all bubbled out of the Styrofoam container. He grabbed his coat and walked over to the kitchen doorway and turned around.

“I’ll see you after church. I was thinking chicken for lunch.” He looked at Seth who was reading the cereal box. “I’d take him, but it’s not like he would get much of a thrill out of it.”

But now, this morning, eight weeks and some odd days minus one later, as Modie washes the dishes, she knows her finger is infected. It was green on the tip that morning when she changed the gauze and she knows she has to go to the doctor. She looks at the empty dog bed by the back door and is reminded of the last member of the family to have an infection, now buried next to the pink rose bush with a fresh mound of powdery dirt on top. The sky, grey, puffy and afflicted rumbles as she loads Seth into the car. When they pull into the parking lot, she signs “Be good” to Seth. He smiles back at her. Halfway to the large glass double doors, a loud crack of thunder rings out and Modie is so startled that her foot slips a little bit and she has to catch her balance on the car next to her. Seth, who is in front of her, does not notice.

In the exam room, Seth sits in the chair opposite of Modie, who is propped up on the examination table. Modie sits signing, quizzing him on his multiples when the doctor walks in. She handshim his Nintendo game out of her blue denim purse.

“Well, Modie, I know you just came in for the burn on your finger, which is infected, but we hadn’t seen you in a while so I did full work up on you,” he says before he looks up from the clipboard chart. When he notices Seth, he becomes uncomfortable. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have your son wait with the nurse? We need to go over some personal stuff.”

“He can’t hear you. He’ll be fine playing his game. He needs to be with me because he may need something and he has to sign.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot that he hadn’t regained his hearing after that fever a few years ago. I guess the hearing aids haven’t really helped.”

Modie shakes her head.

“First, we’ll get you some antibiotics for the finger. I know it hurts badly, and this will help, but try to take it easy for a few days. Bending it very often is causing the skin to reopen again and again and it can’t heal.”

Modie nods. Not making eye contact. She knows.

“Also, I’m sorry, but I can’t give you any pain medicine. You’re pregnant. I am referring you to the OB for an ultrasound. Your levels put you right at seven to ten weeks.”

“Eight.”

“Well, I guess you aren’t that surprised then. Will your husband be excited?”

“No. He won’t. I can’t.”

“You can’t?”

“I can’t have a baby. I’m not having a baby.”

“I know that having one child with special needs is a challenge, but you need to really think before you do something rash. Before you do something you can’t take back.”

“I can’t.”

That afternoon, she swallows three pills. One is blue, and two are yellow. She drinks two glasses of cold water and then sits on the couch and waits. Half an hour later, she begins sweating and her stomach begins severe cramping. She is massaging it like it is a charlie horse, Looking at Seth on his pillow. Watching a show on the Disney channel. She realizes that the sound was off and she hadn’t noticed.

Seth signs “Hungry.”

She corrects him “I am hungry.”

She shuffles slowly into the kitchen pulls out the bread, peanut butter, and grape jelly from the refrigerator. Smears one condiment on each slice of bread, slaps them together and cuts off the crusts. She brings it into the living room and hands it to him. He gives her the thumbs up.  Then she goes to her bed room, lies down on the bed, and as she is counting how many clicks the ceiling fan made, drifts into a deep sleep.

When she wakes, she feels that she is floating in the bed. Warm liquid is running between her legs. It is like lava spilling out of the crack in the earth’s crust and then cooling on the cliff side of the bed. Her vagina feels like a thorny branch is being pulled through it, slowly.  She sits up swiftly. It is dusk and raining steadily. Almost time for Byron to be home.  She goes to the bathroom with fresh clothes. Cleans herself. Puts a maxipad into her fresh underwear. Then she rolls her sweat pants and panties into the flannel sheets. She slips them into a black trash bag and carries them to the trunk of her car. She looks around the neighborhood with darting eyes, as if she were disposing of a body. Then, she goes back inside

She fries chicken, mashes potatoes, and bakes green beans with bacon pieces. She is setting the table as Byron comes in. Seth has a fever, he is already gone to bed.

“I’m not feeling well. I think I’ll just leave you to dinner. I’ll do the dishes tomorrow.”

Byron grunts in her direction, but to her relief doesn’t object to her postponing her chores.

She lays in her cool dark room, on the fresh, crisp linens and listens to the ceiling fan chirping like a little cricket. The fact that she can’t sleep makes her anxious. Her stomach begins to jumble, nauseated. Then she rolls onto her side and large, tear drop marbles begin to pour down her face. They slap the sheets and the small sounds seem so much louder to her as it reverberates on the springed mattress where her ear is resting. An hour or so later, Byron comes in and she can hear him undress next to the bed. He doesn’t turn on the lamp, and she is grateful. He lifts the sheet and comforter and slips in next to her. He comes in to her ear and she feels his hot breath on her neck. The breath causes a trembling shiver to pass through her spine.

“You went to the doctor today. For your finger.”

Silence. If she opens her mouth to speak, she will start to sob again. Byron lifts his head a little bit as if he is trying to look at her, but it is dark and he can’t see her. He can’t see her eyes, puffy from crying.

“I’m sorry I did that. It was wrong. I bet you think I’m a cold son-of-a-bitch. Maybe I am.”

Silence still. She is strangling tears now, and it causing a painful lump to build up in her throat. She lets out a little croak, now to relieve the knife stabbing her larynx. Byron leans in close to her ear, again, now and whispers.

“But you know, I ain’t never killed no baby.”