Caring for the Nest
Summary:
Lucía has spent six years caring for her sick mother. She knows every dose and controls every corner of the house. But the old woman has regained her strength, and her shuffling footsteps already echo down the hallway at night.
Single Chapter
The pill rolled under the bed, forcing Lucía to kneel and sink her hands into the grayish lint and caked dust. The floor smelled of dried urine and confinement. The white capsule lay beside a lock of gray hair; she picked it up and straightened with a crack in her knees.
—Clean it —her mother said from the bed.
Lucía rubbed the pill against her gray blouse before taking the glass of water from the nightstand. She held her mother’s head by the nape and pushed the medicine between her parched lips, then pressed the towel against her mouth to dry the water trickling out. She scrubbed the cloth over her chin until the skin turned red, but her mother did not complain, only swallowing the liquid with a guttural sound.
—The doctor called while you were sleeping.
Lucía let go of the towel.
—And?
—He says that in three months I won’t need the tube anymore. That my lungs are clear.
The old woman grabbed Lucía’s wrist, digging into the flesh with fingers that until recently had seemed flaccid.
—I’m going to change the sheets —Lucía said, and yanked the blankets back in one motion, leaving her mother exposed to the cold air of the room.
Downstairs, the smell of bleach wrapped around the kitchen, where the lined-up jars, the sterile gauze, and the purées measured to the millimeter showed that everything was still under control, with nothing wasted. It had been six years since Lucía had last set foot in an office, time in which her world had shrunk to that grid of white tiles and medication schedules.
When the doorbell rang, Lucía let in Sandra Ruiz, from Social Services, whom her mother had called to request an evaluation. The social worker’s shoes left marks of dried mud on the freshly mopped floor as the two of them went up the stairs.
Her mother was no longer in bed, but standing beside the dresser, leaning on her walker, wearing a nightgown stained with coffee on the chest.
—Mrs. Montero, thank you for seeing me.
The woman turned and dragged her feet across the parquet with a harsh sound that filled the room, then let herself drop into the wheelchair without waiting for Lucía to hold her.
—My daughter works very hard —her mother said, raising her right hand to point at the rug—. Yesterday she forgot to give me the eight o’clock dose, and I found it under the bed.
Lucía clenched her fists against her thighs.
—I was tired —Lucía said.
—Sometimes she dries me so hard she makes my gums bleed. —The old woman ran her tongue over her lips—. She’s losing her patience because, now that I walk, I’m not so easy to move anymore.
Sandra wrote on her clipboard, her eyes fixed on the red marks on the old woman’s neck.
—Do you have outside help? —Sandra asked.
—Lucía prefers to do it alone. —Her mother coughed, a wet sound that rumbled in her chest—. She likes emptying the bedpan.
Sandra left a card on the dresser. —If at any point you feel your safety is compromised, call me.
Lucía walked the woman to the door and, when she went back upstairs, found her mother peeling the label off a bottle of serum with her nails.
That night, sitting on the edge of her bed, Lucía slid her thumb across her phone screen and stopped on a photo where Carlos smiled with his arms around another woman in front of a lake. It had been four years since he had packed his things and stopped asking about the old woman.
Lucía locked the screen and looked toward the light from the hallway that lit up the pill bottle brought from the bathroom. It contained thirty capsules. She unscrewed the childproof cap, making the plastic crack in the silence of the house, then tipped the bottle over her open hand.
A sound in the hallway froze her.
Footsteps. Uneven, shuffling, but firm.
Her mother was making her way alone toward the bathroom without using the walker, leaning her weight on the walls and leaving traces of sweat on the peeling paint. The squeak of the hinge gave way to the stream of water hitting the toilet bowl and the roar of the cistern emptying.
Lucía screwed the cap back onto the bottle.
The next morning, as she came down the stairs, Lucía found her mother in the kitchen. She had taken a loaf of bread out of the pantry and, sitting at the table, was tearing off pieces with her hands to chew them with her mouth open. The crumbs rained down on the sterilized tablecloth and the tiles scrubbed with bleach, while a red blob from the open jar of jam stained the spotless countertop.
Lucía stopped in the doorway.
The old woman swallowed a dense mouthful with a sound that echoed off the tiled walls and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
—Are you going to stand there staring? —Her voice came out clear and metallic, with no trace of the old tremor in her hands as she grabbed the knife to cut another piece.
Lucía’s phone buzzed in the pocket of her robe, showing a message from Claudia: “Coffee today?”
Lucía took out the phone to look at the bright screen, then lowered her gaze to the crumbs scattered on the floor, the red liquid dripping over the edge of the glass, and the body in front of her swallowing greedily, before putting it back in her pocket.
Her mother chewed another piece of bread without taking her gray eyes off her.
On the nightstand, just inches from Lucía’s bed, the pill bottle remained untouched.
The End.
Kassfinol
Dedicated to those people who consume each other in a confinement they themselves choose to sustain.
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