THE SIKH PATIENT----Chapter 6----OPERATORS...(continued)

OPERATORS

“Ann Arbor what?” she asked as my grandfather became more comatose.  “I’ll walk there…” he mumbled again.

            “Michigan!” I almost yelled.

            “I have Yellow Cab.  Thank you….The number is 734-629-8850,” the computerized woman sang.  I panicked. She gave me the wrong number and I wrote it down anyways.  It was the wrong area code.  I called them back.

            “Excuse me, I just called to get the number for Yellow Cab and they gave me the wrong number, it’s for a different city, and the area code is wrong,” I was yelling at the woman at this point.

            “What was the number she gave you?” a different woman asked me.  Who cares?  I read her the number.

            “That is the correct area code.  Your area code is being changed, that’s the new one.”  She hung up on me before I could say sorry.  I knew our area code was being changed, why the hell was I wasting time?  I hung up and dialed the cab company.  “Hello, I need a cab and it’s an emergency.”

            “Please call 911,” the woman said and hung up.  I called back.

            “Excuse me, I just called you to tell you I need a cab.  I need to see someone in the hospital, I do not need an ambulance.  Can you please make it quick?”  My grandmother is dying.  I wanted to stop speaking in English because for some reason it wasn’t working, no one could understand what I was saying.  I should switch majors, I thought. I’m not good at English.

            “Well, we’ll do our best, what’s your address?”  I told her even though I’m not good with numbers, so math is out of the question.  My anger rose.  I knew they were chasing me, these were the bad guys, the telephone operators.   They were the reason I couldn’t get there, the reason we couldn’t move faster than death.

            We all sat with the TV off and waited for the cab.  All of a sudden the cab driver transformed into our new Guru, we were silently worshipping him in our minds.  He would drive us to our god; my grandmother meant more to us than any god.  He was probably an immigrant; that’s why cab drivers are so grand.  They’re not American.  My aunt kept looking down as if she was back in India where women must feel shame if they cannot take care of their families.  As if she was the villain.  My grandfather didn’t look at us.  He wasn’t in that room, his eyes were glazed and he would periodically say that he could walk.

            My aunt started fidgeting through her brown leather purse, “Oh, God, I found my key.”  She lifted it up for us to see as if these keys from a rental car could cure Cancer.  If you would have asked me at that moment, I would have given up all of my future earnings (which isn’t worth much since I’m an English major) for those keys. We used our own car, and never called Yellow Cab back.  We had forsaken the cab guru.  He probably came and honked outside my door at three o’clock in the morning.  I was hoping he would wake up the neighbors.

            I shook a little as I drove.  I thought that was the most important drive I ever had to make.  My father is obsessed with Murphy’s Law and has consequently created a paranoid child.  I had never gotten into an accident before, so it seemed all the more likely that it would happen right then.  The hospital was a five-minute drive.

            We came to the front entrance of the brown-bricked University of Michigan hospital and I dropped off my grandfather and aunt.  The University of Michigan is the most expensive public school in the universe.  If it couldn’t cure my grandmother, we need a new universe.  As I started driving away to park, my aunt turned around and her bun swept in the air.  She ran after the red Pontiac.  “Can you get my phone?  I need it in case I have to make calls, they don’t let us make long-distance calls from the hospital.”  I hate cell phones; in fact, I hate the regular phone.  Why was she begging me for a phone?  There were large circles under her eyes that squinted when she yelled through my rolled-down window.  Everyone was yelling now.

            “Yeah, I’ll go get it,” I almost whispered as she crossed her arms in the winter wind.

            “Thanks.”  I watched her go back to my grandfather, who would have walked to the room himself if he had known the way.  The hospital was a huge expensive maze because they wasted all of our money on an extravagant, useless building instead of spending money trying to find a cure for Cancer.  I decided that I would have to change schools.  Besides, I was sure my vocabulary would improve if I moved out of the Midwest.  My grandfather stood in front of the automatic glass doors, looking inside.  He would move his foot and the doors would open and then close again.  He never looked back at us.

            And these were my moments of freedom.  I was glad she asked me to go back; I was glad I was alone.  Maybe I could go crash the rental car and no one would even get mad at me because they would say it was the grief.  I wanted to drive for days, a few minutes wasn’t enough.  I could drive to California, without permission from the rental car company to drive over state lines.  In one day I could travel from snow-covered hills to the Atlantic Ocean, or was it the Pacific?  I knew I wasn’t smart enough to be in college.  I could quit school and see America the beautiful instead of seeing my family shake and sob.  My grandmother wasn’t that upset that she was dying and I wanted to make her upset.  I wanted to drive for hours while they cried.  My grandmother only cried once while she was sick.  Did she even love us?

            When I reached my apartment I didn’t see an angry cab driver.  I went inside and I couldn’t find the phone and so I decided to go back without it.  How much time was there anyways?  I remember reading about this dilemma: Your husband is dying in another room in a house full of guests.  Your sister comes to you and tells you that he only has a few minutes left, you are naked.  Would you put on your clothes?  Obviously, I would, since I enjoy wasting time when people are dying.

            I looked in a blue plastic grocery bag and found the phone next to some Cracker Jacks.  It probably took me as long as it would have taken the woman in the made-up scenario to put on a shirt.  I looked out the window; it takes that long to pull up your socks.  I saw a woman get into a yellow cab.  Was that the same cab that I called?  I am so frivolous that I deserve to die.

            I drove back with the radio off and the windows open in the almost freezing wind.  I decided that I hated music and I didn’t deserve any form of man-made comfort.  I wanted it to be just me and nature in that Pontiac.  It was then that I thought about Nani.  What if I never found anyone alive who was as good as she was?  What if she was the last good person alive?  Flannery O’Conner said a good man is hard to find and someone else said only the good die young and… I stopped my car in the middle of the road.  I waited for someone to run into me.  No one came; it was three in the morning.  From the corner of my eye, I saw a man walking and stroking his beard while drinking from a brown bag.  What would my grandfather have said about that man if he had managed to walk?  What about that brown bag?  That was it; it was that man’s fault.  It was the alcoholic’s fault; the one who had the daughter named Rimmi.  He was the guy who ruined everything.  Why did he drink?  I wanted to find him, ask him if he was still alive, and then kill him.  Why did he get to live and my grandmother, who had never had a drink in sixty-five years, had to die?  Then I thought I’m just assuming that Rimmi is a fellow nice person.  What if she is just a psychopath with alcoholic genes?  Maybe it’s a good thing we never met her. Maybe I should kill her.  What was she doing right now anyways?  Didn’t she know that the love of her life would cry today?  I’m sure she never really loved him.  I whispered die and got out of my car and stood in the middle of a road where brick houses stood and there was a parking lot next to me. 

            That’s when it was more real to me than ever before in my life.  I was the psychopath with the alcoholic genes.  I was the woman who ran around Kmart looking for comfy underwear while her grandmother is dying and her father is a drunk.  I took my aunt’s phone out of the car and stared at it.  I dialed my parent’s number quickly, then spent a long minute trying to figure out how to actually send the call into the cell phone waves.  It rang six times, “You have reached….” It was my damn voice and I have an aversion to listening to it on tape.  It’s not really deep-seated self-hatred, I just think I sound funny.    “Dad,” I yelled.  “Dad, wake up!  Dad!  Nani Ji is going to die, like in a few minutes.  She might already be dead.  You have to wake up.  You have to call mom.  I’ll pick you up so you can see her.”  It would take an hour to get him and an hour to get back.  I thought I should go to the hospital first.  “Dad, please wake up!”

A Volkswagen drove by and stopped.  “Do you need any help?” a man who was probably nice asked me.  Help?  Did he say help?  Yeah, I need help finding a cure for Cancer, quick.  I’m not smart enough.

“No, I’m OK.  I just needed some air.”  He smiled and drove off and I forgot to say “thank you”.   A few cars drove by, but the people in those cars didn’t even know what was happening.  I hated them. 

            All of a sudden I got back into my car and sped to the hospital.  I was wasting time, yet again.  I was turning into a lonely drama queen.  Maybe this would be my last hour, maybe the last few minutes.  I parked the car and walked through various doors and corridors and then into an elevator.  Should I have taken the stairs?  I walked over to the room. The door was closed.  A blond nurse looked at me.  “Can I go in?” I asked.

            “Are you… Your mother’s looking for you I think.”  OK, my mother’s looking for me.  I started walking toward the waiting room and I saw my mom on the phone at the nurse’s station.  I brought the phone; she didn’t have to ask the cheap hospital for it anymore.  I could see that her bun was coming loose and I could see that the purple back of her kurta was wrinkled.  I stood above her and she was silent.

            She turned around and her fair skin was red and her eyes were watering.  She looked up at me, “Nani passed away.  My mother died.”  She shook her head and started weeping.  I held her and she quickly let go and smiled.  “Go see Darji, make sure he’s OK.”

            “Are you OK?” I asked her as she started dialing.  Because I’m not.

            “Yeah.”  She shook her head and then grinned again.  I thought it was surreal that she was grinning.  I walked back towards the room while a few nurses stared at me.  They knew, they all knew.  But they didn’t know that I had wasted my time, maybe the only time I would ever have.  They couldn’t fathom how selfish I was, how I had wanted to be alone because I didn’t want to watch them cry.  They didn’t know that I knew she was dying, I knew I would miss her.  They didn’t know that I couldn’t watch someone die.

            I had never seen a dead body before.  I stood in front of the gray door that was opened a crack.  I pushed it slowly and waited, then walked in.  My grandfather was staring at her; my aunt was rocking back and forth, praying.  My grandmother’s face was covered with a white sheet.  How dare they hide her from me now.  I didn’t want to cry.  I wanted to scream.  I hugged Darji and my aunt.  I sat down in the empty chair.  My mother walked in and said they had some business they had to take care of, something about death certificates, and witnesses.  It was strange to me that they were witnesses as if a crime had been committed.  She was legally dead because there were witnesses.  “She was waiting for Darji,” my mother said as she looked down at Nani.  “She was waving her hands back and forth, waiting, she died a few minutes after he came in.”  I didn’t feel better; I still should have come sooner.  Later Darji would move back to India, waiting for us to forget about the country that couldn’t save his wife.  My mom looked at me. “Look how strong my daughter is, she isn’t even crying.”  I couldn’t look at her when she said that.  Did she say strong?  There are several witnesses, i.e. the cab guru, the alcoholic homeless man, and the nice citizen who can attest to the fact that I am by no means strong.  “Can you stay here while we talk to the doctor?”  I didn’t move.  How could she trust me alone with my grandmother, who wasn’t alive anymore?  My mother had to hold my aunt’s hand because she tried not to get up.  My aunt wouldn’t speak; she just kept nodding.  I wanted to slap her. 

            They left the room.  I was alone with my grandmother.  This was the first time in my life that I had ever been alone with her.  She made me the best food and gave me the best clothes, but we never talked about anything.  This was the first time we were allowed to talk.  There was music in the room; that didn’t have a steady beat.  I didn’t hear it though; I felt it and it chilled my bones and my eyes.  I knew what she was saying, and it wasn’t in English or Punjabi, or any human language.  She was telling me that I was the only one who understood that she didn’t die; that no one dies.  She said she was staying with me for a while, a few days.  She said that I was the only one who understood where she was, somewhere else, not dead.  She had migrated.  She never said a word to me, and I never said a word to anyone.  She said that she loved me.  There is no good word for love in Punjabi.  So I said it again, izzat.  That’s what I felt, izzat.

            When my family came back into the room, I didn’t tell them that I had communicated with the dead.  They never asked me and never told me if she spoke to them too.  I didn’t feel sad then.  I felt angry, annoyed, and pitiful, but not sad.  I wasn’t denying she was dead, I was happy for Nani.  This was not the first time I had spoken to the dead.  Six months before I had an experience with the Ouija board.  Mona and I had tried it in the closet of an old house.  When the thing on the board started moving, tears came into both of our eyes and chills went up and down our backs.  I felt that music for the first time then, like someone else singing inside me.  The board would go to different letters then all of a sudden the board started going in this rapid motion, of MA MA MA MA MA.  The M and A were on opposite sides of the board.  Then it would start swirling like crazy.  We got scared and tried it again in the sunlight.  We would have the normal spirit join us and in the middle, all of a sudden it would go MA, MA, MA, MA.  We finally figured out that it was my future son.  I believe this and am also aware that this is tangible evidence that I might be deranged.  I also asked if it was about my mother, but the board said nothing.  This was long before we knew my grandmother was sick.  I asked if it was about my grandmother, but it said nothing.  We tried it later with my friends and it did the same thing, but only if I was on the board.  My friends and I got so scared we threw the board away.  It was then that I understood that there was no such thing as death and that the dead talk to you.  Sometimes they even tell you secrets.

            I don’t know if my grandmother was still with me when I went down the elevator again to get my grandfather’s bag.  He had to make phone calls to India, he needed the numbers.  I went quickly to the car.  I wanted to do everything right from now on.  Before I reached the elevator on my way back up, I saw my uncle Amar.  I saw him from the back and I could see hair coming out of the back of his turban.  His brown plaid shirt looked odd with green pants.  “Amar Uncle,” I said and he turned his sweet face around.  He had the sweetest face of anyone on my mother’s side of the family.  His head was hung down low, but I didn’t know if he knew.  He was driving to the hospital when his mother died.  They could have called him on his car phone, but they would not have done that.

            “How is she doing?” he asked as he pushed the button and the red light went on.  It was a sign, this light, that I would do the wrong thing again.  Would it matter to him if he spent these minutes knowing his mother had died, these minutes in the elevator?  I couldn’t tell him his mother died because she hadn’t died.  I couldn’t lie to him.  I knew he wouldn’t want to break down in front of me.  I was his niece.

            How is she doing?  “Not so good,” I said flatly and didn’t look at him.  I stared at the red light.  The steel doors finally opened and we stepped into the mirrored enclosure.  I looked at him and then I looked at myself.  We both could see our reflections, we both knew that it didn’t matter who was beautiful.  It didn’t matter that his wife was beautiful once and his mother was beautiful once.  It didn’t matter that our bodies were ungroomed as we stood together and I lied to him.

            “When will she be able to go back home?” he asked as my eyes froze on his reflection.  Would he have taken her home then, would he have brought down his house?  No.  I moved my eyes; I couldn’t look at him anymore.

            “I don’t know.”  I felt bad for him because he wasn’t an evil guy, because evil guys actually murder people.  Evil guys have fantasies about murdering people they have never even met.  He didn’t kill his mother; he loved her.  I was the horrible human being, the bad girl who lacked the knowledge of the tree of good and evil, the liar.  Eve; reincarnated.

            “I hate these hospitals, why do they have to keep her here?” he asked as he moved his hand up and down.  I decided then that if I ever got Cancer, I would die by jumping off the Grand Canyon.  I wouldn’t tell anyone, I would just drive there in a rental car, and drive off the edge in that very car.  I wanted to tell my uncle that I was sorry.  First of all for having vicious fantasies about maiming the love of his life; and second of all for not telling him the truth.

            The steel doors opened again.  It was the longest walk of my life as we walked to the room.  There were other patients, they didn’t shut down the hospital because she was dead.  Nothing made sense to me.  My grandfather and my mother were standing outside the door.  My uncle looked at my grandfather, “Kee haal ha?”  How is she doing?

            “He doesn’t know?” my mother asked while she looked at me with her soft watery brown eyes.  I felt like I was on a witness stand and I had just committed perjury.

            “Know what?” my Amar uncle asked and his eyes widened.

            “Teri Ma mar gehi.”  Your mother died, my Darji said.  My uncle embraced him harder than I had ever seen anyone touch another person.  He wept in his arms.  My grandfather patted his back.  He let go after a while and turned around and looked at me. 

            “You knew?”  His eyes dropped as he said the words and he looked like a lost dog.  Yes, I knew.  Yes, I’m weak.

            “I’m sorry,” I whispered as my eyes glazed over.  Yes, she is dead.

            “It’s OK, I don’t know what I would have done,” Sarena Auntie said.  What?  How’d you get here?  What’s going on?  The world is spinning.  I stared at her beautiful flawless skin.  I don’t hate you.  No one hates you.  I think I kind of love you.  Stop thinking everyone hates you, it makes us hate you, it’s a vicious cycle. 

            I remember, Auntie.  I remember when you were in that car accident and you almost died.  We all cried.  But Amar Uncle cried the hardest.  I remember when, after a year of recovering from the accident they said you wouldn’t be able to have children, I remember how you cried.  I remember when your younger brother died, before his marriage, on an airplane flying to see you.  He was your best friend.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry I forgot you were a human being.  And by the way, how the fuck did you get here?  And by the way, your husband loves you, he just doesn’t love himself.

            “Don’t worry about it beta,” my mother said.  My uncle said nothing.  My mother forgave me, but did he?  Was it that easy to forgive someone?  I wanted to forgive him for not taking my Nani home; I wanted to say I didn’t know what I would do if I used my wife as a scapegoat and blamed her for the condition of my life.  I wanted to forgive Sarena Auntie, for having flaws, for making mistakes.  I wanted to tell them everything was OK.  But that would be a lie.  I wanted to forgive my father for not answering the phone, for sleeping through this, for drinking through us.  But that would be crazy. 

            Amar Uncle walked into the room slower than I did.  He saw his mother under a white sheet and dropped to her feet and wept.  “Ma, Ma,” he sang and as his hands touched her body.  That’s when the first tear came to my eyes.  Not because I missed her, but because now Nani knew that her son would have taken her home if he ever believed she was really going to die.  I wanted to tell him it wasn’t too late to take her home; that she was waiting in the songs, in the waves of his voice.  Amar Uncle used to sing when he was younger.  I wanted to tell him that all Nani ever wanted, was for him to sing to her.  I wanted to tell him that all I ever wanted was someone to sing to. 

By

Nina Kaur