I did because it was like money.
The other ladies splashed in it and for a good reason, it was money.
The second sister even went through eventually, but only because she was a big follower.
We doused our shoes in the water more than twice because it was like money.
What a peppy crowd we became. Making friends and praising peace. Our pants stained with prosperity.
25
My long Monday finally ended at three AM Tuesday morning, November 14th, 1995.
The Clean Up shift was close enough to my home that Claire agreed to drop me at the corner, though the other women were only getting a ride to the 7 train.
She left me out on the corner of 229th and 145th Avenue where I had to hide behind a parked car because four loose mutts wrestled, yipped and yawned in front of Candan’s home. His red Doberman barked then the four on the sidewalk whimpered. I was afraid of being snapped at like Ishkabibble at my cookout so I gave the dogs a few minutes to socialize. Soon, the quartet ran off, I thought they were done. But Candan’s red dog was still there, nose pressed against its gate, watching me open mine.
Grandma hopped in from the living room as I took off my coat in the kitchen. Before I could ask why she was awake Grandma whispered, — He can’t breathe. That boy.
I said, — Let him rest.
— Your sister sits with him the whole night.
I opened the basement door, but the lights were off. — They’re down there now?
Grandma said, — We couldn’t manage him down the stairs. He is as big as you. He is still in the living room.
He was in a sleeping bag on the ground with some couch cushions to prop him up. Between the sectional couch and the entertainment unit; his boots stood neatly with the other shoes in the kitchen.
Three in the morning and my sister was still awake kneeling by his side. She wasn’t saying prayers, but playing Tetris on her Game Boy. She wore a long yellow nightdress that went down to her ankles. Her bare feet tucked under her butt so that the toes were pointing toward me in the hallway. There was a bowl of water with a face cloth soaking in it, and another wet one resting on Ledric’s collarbone.
— What you’ll need to do is take hot baths, Nabisase told him.
He responded slowly.
— I wish I met you someplace else, he said. I look kind of nice when I’m dressed up.
She was thirteen and he was nineteen, a huge age gap only to parents of teenagers. Those adults should shut their eyes, firmly, at malls.
— I don’t care about that stuff, Nabisase said. Fat’s not the worst thing you could be.
— Your brother tell you how I got sick?
— He said it was bad fish.
— I just got desperate. I don’t want to look like this anymore.
She exchanged one wet cloth for the other; rubbing it on his face, his neck, his arms.
I didn’t interrupt them. I went back to the kitchen’s security door and slammed it as if this was my first time coming in. With that noise my sister rose and went right to bed. Ledric shut his eyes.
Grandma sat in the kitchen, waiting for me to carry her. — You need the hospital even more than he does, I said.
She told me, — I am fine.
This left the basement or my mother’s locked room for my first sleep since Lumpkin. But I refused either.
I crept to Ledric’s side and listened to him wheeze.
He slept for three hours while I never closed my eyes. I should have been exhausted.
At six I poked his ribs. — Get up, I said.
— Where?
— I guess we’re going to Queens General, I said. If you’re that sick.
Ledric whispered, — I’m not going to no hospital. His arms were above the covers, but he couldn’t lift them. Only his puffy hands shifting proved his agitation.
— Listen to you. You can’t inhale.
— No hospital.
— You still seeing double?
— I just won’t open my eyes. To prove it he closed them, but couldn’t even rally the energy to squeeze them theatrically. His big cheeks puffed out and he exhaled.
— My sister can’t take care of you with aspirin and soup.
— No hospital, he stressed. They’ll give me a disease.
His sentences were coming out between wheezes, murmurs really. I had to lean down close while on my knees. — I think you’ve got one already, I said.
He opened one eye to look at me. — Last year, this man went into Queens General to remove some warts and they took off both his legs. I’m telling you. I believe that shit.
I touched the top of Ledric’s head, but that only made it slide backward until he was looking at the ceiling. The boy had very little muscle control.
— Okay Ledric. At nine we’ll go over to the clinic on Brookville Boulevard.
The green-tiled one-story building at the southwest corner of 147th Avenue and Brookville Boulevard had been a Sons of Italy Lodge (Per Sempre) then changed to a cash-only medical clinic housing doctors from four continents, none of them North America.
It was shaped like a Cambodian pagoda, with a fenced lot next to it; I parked the Oldsmobile Firenza there. When I’d returned the Dodge Neon to the rental office I glued the trunk shut at the lock, hoping the people at National wouldn’t notice— they hadn’t.
I went into the clinic to borrow a wheelchair, but Ledric wouldn’t fit so I came back with one of the carts used for unloading medical equipment. Just a wide flat tray on wheels. Ledric slid out of the Oldsmobile’s backseat and flopped face-first on top of the cart. I had to push him through the delivery entrance.
We would have been in the waiting room three hours if Ledric hadn’t started gasping. Once that happened an angry elf-owl of a nurse let me roll my brother to a small room where a stubble-necked Russian doctor asked a few questions, moved Ledric’s head around. The doctor diagnosed this easily.
— Botulism, he said.
26
A condition that demands hospitalization.
The real torture to the Russian physician was that he’d have to release us from his highly profitable care there. He didn’t have the equipment in this tiny clinic on the tri-corner hat border of Laurelton, Rosedale and Far Rockaway.
Though Ledric tried to protest again he was making no sense because he couldn’t shape words; he might as well have been a manatee booing.
I wanted to take him to the hospital in the Oldsmobile, but the Russian doctor wouldn’t let me. He was afraid I’d ignore his diagnosis and take Ledric home hoping he’d pull through. The Russian was already well acquainted with the rational paranoia of people without health insurance. — Botulism is not like a fever, he said.
— How am I going to pay for an ambulance?
— Your brother will die without it.
— Can you get them to come down on the price?
The Doctor huffed, but only a little; I doubt he’d been well off when practicing in St. Petersburg. He touched my shoulder. — Your brother goes to Queens General. It is reasonable and his care is precise.
Queens General hospital in north Jamaica is a choir of gray buildings taller than most in Southern Queens. I could say that it’s run down but that would give the wrong impression, make you think the place was a quagmire. It was a decent operation and if money came into the coffers they spent it on equipment.
I followed the ambulance to the hospital the whole time wondering how I’d missed another day shift in the sticky mess of Ledric’s life. I parked and walked the overpass of the Grand Central Parkway then down 163rd Road. Made a left on the slight incline that leads into the emergency room. The place was pretty empty because it was only 11 AM. There were two hundred grievously wounded people waiting to get medical attention instead of the usual twelve hundred of most evenings.