__________________________________
Leaving North Star Place
By Stephanie Kemp
Leaving North Star Place
By Stephanie Kemp
“I can’t find her lipstick.”
I pull my hand out of the fur coat pocket with one of her don’t ask don’t tell tissues, wiping ash on my jeans and wondering, for the last time, why it is that phlegm never dries.
Wondering for the last time, is this raccoon?
Tracy is out of patience.
“The ambulance is downstairs.”
I don’t respond.
She would want her lipstick.
Ginny asks to go in the ambulance with her.
I think, meanly, that Ginny always gets what she wants.
She is the youngest.
I am furious even though I am not brave enough to go in the ambulance myself.
Where is the fucking lipstick.
“It’s in the bathroom drawer,” says Tracy.
“I already looked there."
I don’t want to go back in to the bathroom.
“This lighting makes feel like I’m in a microwave,” she said when we moved her here.
She was heartbroken.
There was no other choice.
Right?
She chose to be near Tracy and not me.
I find the lipstick in the drawer.
No top, tobacco stuck to the mangled half stick of peach wax, next to her travel sized L’Air du Temps.
Her comb and curling iron are the real reason I didn’t want to go back into the bathroom.
They are stowaways from her past life.
Real home.
My childhood.
I remember.
“Just wipe it off. It’s fine.”
I am furious that Tracy was right.
Tracy is annoyed that I am hesitating.
I am suddenly protective of tobacco.
I follow orders and then pocket the tiny perfume, hoping no-one sees me.
As a family, we follow protocol.
There are lists.
She rolls the lipstick on herself, with her left hand. She is surprisingly successful.
“How do I look?” She is sincere and nervous, as if preparing for a much different occasion.
I want to believe that if she had lipstick on her teeth that I would tell her and wipe it off, as I’d done for my entire life.
I am unable to look at her teeth.
I am ashamed.
I am afraid of her body.
I don’t want it to break.
I tried to help her get the fur coat on and she screamed.
I tried to help her stand steady getting out of bed and she pushed me because she thought the men were coming.
“Are you with Alfred Hitchcock?!”
What if that is what she thinks she remembers.
That I hurt her.
The paramedics arrive.
We greet them effusively. Maniacally. Pleadingly.
It is Saturday.
I know this because yesterday, on Friday the 13th, we sat around her in a circle and the priest (was he a priest?) began reciting last rites.
I wanted to scream a reminder that she was a sexy Presbyterian.
Has everyone forgotten everything?
As if she knew I was about to yell at a priest, she popped up and yelled, “Boo!”
She found this very funny, laughed, squeezed Tracy and Ginny’s hands and went back to sleep.
“The hearing is the last thing to go.”
I was furious at my sisters.
Why wasn’t I holding her hand at that moment?
She is so nice to the paramedics.
She tries to help lift herself on to the gurney.
Bone on bone in her right shoulder.
Still. Always. Proud.
Still. Always. Kind.
She is grateful to have her lipstick on as they wheel her through the lobby.
She is embarrassed.
She is beautiful.
Still. Always. Despite.
She hates this place.
Or maybe that is me.
So why am I trying to take it in and remember every detail of it?
The beautiful lobby that feels like a hotel!
The concierge who smiles at everyone! but wouldn’t bring her toilet paper when she ran out in the middle of night and called from her emergency bathroom phone.
The dining room with delicious cuisine! overcooked so that it can be swallowed when the mechanics of chewing are no longer guaranteed within the ranks of your clientele.
It can all be your loved one’s for only $8,000 a month!
It is my mom’s last home.
I am mad at my little sister for being braver than me.
Jealous of my older sister for being the daughter who has been with her for the last 3 years, even though I know how hard it was to be that daughter.
COPD.
"It will feel like drowning,” the doctor explained.
I am an asshole for being jealous.
A coward in hiding.
She would never let this - my - shit fly.
I won’t know how to be her middle daughter when she is gone.
“We are the luckiest people in the world,” she says as her finale.
I cover her feet (recent still perfect pedicure - coral) with the blanket we brought from (real) home.
I kiss her head.
She will be gone in 6 days.
I hold a pen 11 months later.
No longer furious, no longer jealous.
No longer a coward.
Only heartbroken.
And still unsure of how to be.
______________________________
I pull my hand out of the fur coat pocket with one of her don’t ask don’t tell tissues, wiping ash on my jeans and wondering, for the last time, why it is that phlegm never dries.
Wondering for the last time, is this raccoon?
Tracy is out of patience.
“The ambulance is downstairs.”
I don’t respond.
She would want her lipstick.
Ginny asks to go in the ambulance with her.
I think, meanly, that Ginny always gets what she wants.
She is the youngest.
I am furious even though I am not brave enough to go in the ambulance myself.
Where is the fucking lipstick.
“It’s in the bathroom drawer,” says Tracy.
“I already looked there."
I don’t want to go back in to the bathroom.
“This lighting makes feel like I’m in a microwave,” she said when we moved her here.
She was heartbroken.
There was no other choice.
Right?
She chose to be near Tracy and not me.
I find the lipstick in the drawer.
No top, tobacco stuck to the mangled half stick of peach wax, next to her travel sized L’Air du Temps.
Her comb and curling iron are the real reason I didn’t want to go back into the bathroom.
They are stowaways from her past life.
Real home.
My childhood.
I remember.
“Just wipe it off. It’s fine.”
I am furious that Tracy was right.
Tracy is annoyed that I am hesitating.
I am suddenly protective of tobacco.
I follow orders and then pocket the tiny perfume, hoping no-one sees me.
As a family, we follow protocol.
There are lists.
She rolls the lipstick on herself, with her left hand. She is surprisingly successful.
“How do I look?” She is sincere and nervous, as if preparing for a much different occasion.
I want to believe that if she had lipstick on her teeth that I would tell her and wipe it off, as I’d done for my entire life.
I am unable to look at her teeth.
I am ashamed.
I am afraid of her body.
I don’t want it to break.
I tried to help her get the fur coat on and she screamed.
I tried to help her stand steady getting out of bed and she pushed me because she thought the men were coming.
“Are you with Alfred Hitchcock?!”
What if that is what she thinks she remembers.
That I hurt her.
The paramedics arrive.
We greet them effusively. Maniacally. Pleadingly.
It is Saturday.
I know this because yesterday, on Friday the 13th, we sat around her in a circle and the priest (was he a priest?) began reciting last rites.
I wanted to scream a reminder that she was a sexy Presbyterian.
Has everyone forgotten everything?
As if she knew I was about to yell at a priest, she popped up and yelled, “Boo!”
She found this very funny, laughed, squeezed Tracy and Ginny’s hands and went back to sleep.
“The hearing is the last thing to go.”
I was furious at my sisters.
Why wasn’t I holding her hand at that moment?
She is so nice to the paramedics.
She tries to help lift herself on to the gurney.
Bone on bone in her right shoulder.
Still. Always. Proud.
Still. Always. Kind.
She is grateful to have her lipstick on as they wheel her through the lobby.
She is embarrassed.
She is beautiful.
Still. Always. Despite.
She hates this place.
Or maybe that is me.
So why am I trying to take it in and remember every detail of it?
The beautiful lobby that feels like a hotel!
The concierge who smiles at everyone! but wouldn’t bring her toilet paper when she ran out in the middle of night and called from her emergency bathroom phone.
The dining room with delicious cuisine! overcooked so that it can be swallowed when the mechanics of chewing are no longer guaranteed within the ranks of your clientele.
It can all be your loved one’s for only $8,000 a month!
It is my mom’s last home.
I am mad at my little sister for being braver than me.
Jealous of my older sister for being the daughter who has been with her for the last 3 years, even though I know how hard it was to be that daughter.
COPD.
"It will feel like drowning,” the doctor explained.
I am an asshole for being jealous.
A coward in hiding.
She would never let this - my - shit fly.
I won’t know how to be her middle daughter when she is gone.
“We are the luckiest people in the world,” she says as her finale.
I cover her feet (recent still perfect pedicure - coral) with the blanket we brought from (real) home.
I kiss her head.
She will be gone in 6 days.
I hold a pen 11 months later.
No longer furious, no longer jealous.
No longer a coward.
Only heartbroken.
And still unsure of how to be.
______________________________
