Sister Joan settled me into the hospital room, then left. She told me that Frank would keep Bunny at the Red Eye and promised to return.
Most of the day I sat close and looked at Aunt Eleanor’s face. It’s funny how you can get to know somebody better just by watching them sleep, especially somebody contrary like Aunt Eleanor.
I had a parade of thoughts. I thought about her and my mother as little girls, imagined them in matching dresses and ponytails. I bet they played tricks on people. I bet they held hands when they walked. I bet they shared a bedroom and brushed each other’s hair. That’s what I would have done if I had a twin.
I thought about her baby. Mother had said how Eleanor got to hold her baby, just once—how they forced her fingers to sign the papers that gave the baby away. Then I thought, all at once: I have a cousin somewhere. A boy cousin walking around right here on this earth. He didn’t know anything about me, but I knew about him.
All day the nurses came in and gave Eleanor shots, adjusted her tubes, took her temperature, listened to her heart. The more I saw of nursing, the more I knew that’s what I wanted to do.
People came and went: Joe Brewer, Gaylord Lewis, Frank, Joan, doctors and nurses. Eleanor would wake up, then fuss about something she didn’t like, and fall back to sleep.
Joe Brewer agreed to let me stay until late that evening, if I promised to eat. Which I did, since Eleanor couldn’t eat her hospital food, but they brought it anyway on a plastic tray. Mystery meat, mashed something, green peas, pie, and milk in a little carton like at school. I ate her lunch and her dinner, which were almost identical.
There is not much you can say about waiting in a room with a sleeping person except—you wait. First off, time is so slow it won’t move at all, then whoosh! It’s over and you wonder where the day went. One thing I learned is this: time keeps moving, regardless of how you feel about it.
Once the sun went down, Aunt Eleanor woke up for real and was wiggly as a snake on hot rocks. She made me shut the window blinds tight and turn on every light in the room. That place was blazing bright. Nothing was right by her—up and down went the bed, on and off went the TV.
She rang for the nurses over and over. Finally, one of them came in and asked her to stop—called her a “sundowner.” That’s when hospital patients can’t stand the dark. The sun goes down and they go wild with fear, pacing and talking. When I’m a nurse I’m not going to tell scared patients to leave me alone, that’s for sure.
Aunt Eleanor tapped her bed rail with a deck of cards and said, “Want to play Go Fish?”
She pulled the rolling table across her lap and shuffled. I cut. She dealt.
“My mother taught me Go Fish.” She counted our hands, then made a pond with the remaining deck. “It’s the only good memory I have of her. Do you know how to play?”
“Might I remind you that your mother was my grandmother,” I said.
“Hot dog.” Eleanor pulled her cards to her chest and looked at me for a moment. “And you survived.”
That let loose a flood of mean grandmother stories, which made us both groan and laugh.
I gathered three books while telling her about having to live with Grandmother after my father was shot and killed. We didn’t have anywhere to go.
“I’m sorry, child. I never knew.”
“Would it have made a difference? Would you have come to help us?” I asked.
Eleanor frowned. “Give me all your twos.”
“Go fishing,” I said, waiting for her answer to my question.
“I don’t answer hypotheticals,” she said, and explained that a hypothetical is something that isn’t. “That’s the road to insanity, all the what-ifs in life.”
When Eleanor stacked four books in a row, she smiled like a baby. “But I left to get away from her, not you. After being raised by that woman, I’m surprised I got anywhere close to a church. But I learned that she was not the church. Thank God.”
“You left because of Grandmother? I thought it was because of me. Wasn’t it my fault you were stranged from my mother?”
“Estranged,” Eleanor corrected. “And it was not your fault. Why ever would you think such a thing?”
I shrugged. “Give me all your aces.”
“Ruby Clyde!” Then she waved her hand over the card. “Go fish, but listen to me.”
I drew a card and listened.
“At first you couldn’t tell me who you were, then you asked if I hated you. Now you think you are to blame for something that happened before you were born. That’s nonsense, you know. And what’s more important, you need to believe that. I shouldn’t have to tell you that. In fact, even if I sat here and told you that it was all your fault, you should be clearheaded enough to know that’s a load of bull.”
I smiled. Eleanor calls a bull a bull; that was the first thing she told me about herself. Usually when somebody tells you about herself it turns out to be the exact opposite, but that didn’t hold true for Eleanor.
“I’m serious, Ruby Clyde. Other people will dump guilt and shame all over you, and you are the only one who can shovel it back. Promise me you will remember this.”
I nodded and she nodded and we nodded together, sealing the deal.
Then I asked, “Why’d you leave then?”
“Your grandmother gave me plenty of reasons, and to be honest … there was something else, but that’s not something a little girl would understand.”
“I’m older than my body,” I said.
“Twelve, is it?” Eleanor asked as she fanned out her cards. She knew my age.
“That’s right, birthday on the day of the filling station robbery.” I made my book of twos and took her aces, which made her mad since it put me ahead. I’m very competitive, even when my opponent is in a hospital bed.
“And that’s why I have given up birthdays forever. Nothing but a crummy old day that has nothing to do with me, myself, and I.”
“So you plan to stay twelve years old forever?” she asked.
“There’s no law saying I need cake and presents and a stupid song. And forget those stupid candles and wishes. Nothing good comes of it. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.”
“Sounds like you do.” She drew a card from the pond, which made us even again. While she decided which card to throw down, she said, “Never liked birthdays myself. Don’t forget, I was an identical twin, so I never had a birthday all my own.”
Then Aunt Eleanor told me that even though they looked alike their mother had treated them differently. Eleanor had been the tough one, defiant. Barbara had been weak. “Even called her Babe,” Eleanor snorted. “That’s one way to keep her acting like a baby. When I did something wrong, I was punished. When Barbara did something wrong, she was coddled. It’s no wonder she couldn’t take care of you.” I hardly noticed she had taken in three more books and won the game.
“She’s been a good mother,” I said, trying not to remember that she wanted to give me away back at the jail.
She eyed me. “But you’ve been the adult, the one taking care of her.”
“Not a problem,” I said. “I’m glad to do it.”
“That’s impossible, child. Living with your hideous grandmother and tending to your own mother. You must be resentful, angry, disappointed.”
She raked in our books and shuffled until I took the cards from her hands. Twenty million shuffles is plenty. I cut the cards myself and dealt out a new game. As I swirled the cards into a big round pond I said, “I am what I am, and I don’t need people to be perfect.”
She looked at me long and soft, then she organized her hand and said, “Give me all your queens.”
But I had been thinking the whole time about resentments, anger, and disappointment. A thought floated around in my head and I tried to catch it. “Pieces of love,” I said.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“Everything is so mixed up, you can’t wait around for perfect. You just have to love what you get. You only get to love pieces of people. Mother has problems, but she loves me.” Grandmother and the Catfish, you had to dig deep to find something to love. Grandmother taught me how to get by in the world. And the Catfish gave me Bunny.
“Pieces of love,” I said again. “If you wait for perfect you will end up with nothing.”
Eleanor reached to her bedside table and squirted some lotion into her hands. She rubbed it on her fingers and up her wrists, avoiding the needle in the top of her left hand.
“Pieces of love,” she said. “You’re a little philosopher, Ruby Clyde.”
“Wordly Wizard,” I said quietly.
“Excuse me?”
I shrugged. “Philosopher. I know that word from my workbooks.”
“On second thought, I believe that you are mature enough to hear my story.” Then she told me that she had a baby once that she gave up for adoption. I didn’t tell her that Mother had already told me.
“It was the best thing for him,” she said. Adoption was a big sneaky secret, she told me. “They say it is nothing to be ashamed of.” She snorted. “But they sure are good at hiding it. My mother couldn’t wait to ship me off. She hid me away. That’s what I meant before. I was punished but Barbara was coddled. She was so happy when Barbara got pregnant. She arranged a fast wedding and pretended … Oh, never mind. Her Babe could do no wrong. Anyway, the reason I told you that story is what you said: pieces of love. That’s all I have of my son, pieces. The feeling of him kicking inside of me, the feeling of holding him in my arms, the hope that he is well. I understand pieces of love.”
I wanted to heal her. So I folded back the bottom of the bedsheet where I could reach her sad and swollen feet. I set myself up at that end of the bed and rubbed the lotion onto her tender soles, between her toes, around her lost ankles, up her calves to her knees. She closed her eyes and made a sound like a kitten.
Eleanor said, “Don’t be afraid, Ruby Clyde. I’m not going to quit you. I promise.”