EVERY NIGHT I USE to think, I have to get up, because it always like this. Wait, listen, hold my own breathing till I hear him. I would breathe in his rhythm, try and take in the air he done let out his mouth, back then when it was still sweet and warm, like years ago. Most of the time now it smell sick, and there not enough of it for him, so how can it be any left for me to pull in? Now it stink like sores cover up too long, like the mess inside his lungs, but then when I turn away, the wind blow through the cracks in the window, pushing past my shoulders so cold, and at least L. C. air warm on my face. His breathing use to be strong and deep, so loud I wonder how big them ribs must be. They curve up like a huge turtle shell, then his belly cave in below. I would have my face hard by his chest when we first marry, and the fold in his shirt rub my cheekbone real soft, fall and rub again, put me to sleep even if I were worried about something. I would start to sleep on his bones, be so tired after washing for all them people, and later in the night, I always wake up to find my head done slid down to his stomach, resting there. Now his coughing shake the whole bed, shake loose dreams I don’t want in my head. Everything just tremble for a minute when he stop, and I wait. I don’t sleep at all, the whole night. Sometimes I be tired, sometimes no. But I lay here all night with my head up in L. C. back, be afraid to dream, afraid to let him breathe without me. I know each breath count.
It was a time when I would just get up with the shaking, stay out in the kitchen till the sun come up. When I first know he was sick, I would wait every minute out there at the table, wait for him to leave this world, his breath sound so bad. The air catch in his chest like a fingernail drag down a screen. I hear him cough and wonder did he still see them tiny sparkles behind his eyes like I do when I cough real deep? Them little showers of light I used to watch when I were a baby girl, red and falling I use to see, and then I would cough even more. L. C. must don’t see them after all these months of coughing. They must be use up.
Back then, when I realize he were coughing all through the night, into each morning and don’t stop, not worse and not better, I couldn’t stay in the bed and listen. When the sky start to get purple then, I would put on the grits, the only thing he eat, and everything was quiet but for L. C. The cars ain’t started yet for the morning, the people still asleep, and the pot clink just a second, like money, on the stove. The grits falling out the bag, marking the minutes like sand in a egg timer I seen at a white lady’s house. One morning the light in the kitchen seem to turn pale so slow, and I couldn’t hold nothing inside. I let the tears sink into the grits and disappear, not like when you catch them on your cheek or in a tissue and they stays wet and clear. Salt sinking into the grits, salt I pour on top, through my fingers. I never cry so he can see me. I heard him pushing hisself up on his elbows, heard the bed cracking exactly that, and he call, “Pashion?” the way he do. I stood there next to him holding the water glass, but he just looked at me. That weren’t what he need. He lay back down, had his eyes open, shake two or three times like a cold bird. I know he trying to push that cough down in his chest so I won’t get out the bed every night. I seen the window shade moving in the draft, seen his eyes look away from me. Soon enough I be cold and trying to keep warm. I won’t be making no trail, whispering my feet across the floor like the widow upstairs, rubbing over my head back and forth trying to pass the night.
I stay in the bed now, keep my head in the hollow down his back. When we first marry, forty-nine years ago, I were sixteen. That winter, I use to watch L. C. put oil on his arms, his chest, reach up and try to get it on his back. He were always in a hurry to get to work, cause we been in the bed playing, and he couldn’t reach nothing but the sides of his back, under the shoulders. Gray skin got left all ashy in the valley between the muscles. I use to pull the oil in from the sides and rub it down the center, where his backbone like a river. Now when I lay here, I keep a ear to that valley and wait, listen to the bubble in his chest like water running.
The walls get settle long after midnight, cracking and popping, and I can hear the rats running through they trails. I know I’m fixing to think the same things all night, every night, like there only a few certain sounds and seeings left in me. I wait for those few. I can look at the wall and see wood, not cinderblock. When we first move to California, after the mine closed, I spent all my time looking in the street, seeing the light shine off the cars and puddles. All I want to look at then was West Virginia and my porch shadow, when the moon full and the birches outside my door look silver thin like needles in with the black trunks of the other trees. I use to watch the sun going down behind the buildings here, put my face up to the screen while I was cooking, and sometimes when it was a breeze, I could smell the night coming like we were at home, clean like water and trees was close by. The wind stop, and then I smell the air coming back out the room behind me, warm from the greens on the stove, but like somebody else’s air. L. C. knew. He came up behind me and said, “It get dark too fast here. It be light and then gone. No shadows.”
We came cause L. C. cousin Rosa tell us Rio Seco warm, better for his lung. But the rent so high. We have to stay in a senior apartment, no house.
I look at the walls and see wood floors, the wood I split for the stove, the sides of the washtub I had my face in trying to get the black out of L. C. clothes. I smell the boards and trunks of trees when they get wet, smell the smoke.
Sometimes I think I can’t lay here no more, I can’t wait for them seeings and listen to these walls with they little feet scrabbling and hear the sound L. C. make in his chest all night. I want to get up and be far away from him, take down them shirts I hang to dry in the kitchen, put one round my back and sit up in the front window. I see the shadows of them shirts from where I lay, I see the way they hanging over the stove. They L. C. old flannel ones, the only thing he wear now. This morning I caught myself fixing to pull out a sleeve turn the wrong way; it was light-color in the sun, all the checks and stripes pale as nothing, so I reach in to get the cuff and then I realize that is the right side. The shirt too soft and thin, like the back of L. C. arms when I pull him over on his side so he can breathe.
But if I get up, if I leave, he can feel the bed shake, and he call out for me. This bed tell you anything. Long time ago, he were trying to get in this bed real quiet, been out late and knew I was fixing to get mad. He was easing into the sheets and a spring busted and shot up through the mattress. Scratched him on the behind like a cat, long and deep, and I laughed so hard. He still got that scar. I use to run my finger down the scab when it were healing, wait for that right minute to catch him there, just to hear him cuss and fuss.
I seen how he got most all his scars, because we was together so young. When I marry him, Mama say, “Pashion, he a baby, only twenty. He got nothing.” She want me to wait for someone with more, a older man from town want a young wife. But I don’t want no old man like she had. I never remember my father, only my mother walking all them years, fourteen years, like the widow upstairs. A house empty, no deep voices and nobody to hear her feet on the floor, only the dogs sleeping under the house.
It start to rain. I can hear the cars on the streets blocks and blocks away, moving like a fast touch of wind. And a train, so tiny calling that it could be a dog howling in somebody trees. It be so cold now, in winter, and my fingers curl up like I’m fixing to push the scrub pad round the sink or the floor with my knuckles, getting a stain off. My hands don’t come straight. When I yawn, seem like my back relax and a big chill of air go in my mouth. Then I start shivering and can’t stop till I stiff up my back again. It like the air inside me now, and it determine to stay cold. Mama use to say, “That why you cover the mouth when you yawn, so nothin bad fly inside.” But my fingers too bent up, and if I put my hand close to my mouth, the nails touch my cheek hard like a rake.
I can see by the shadows in the kitchen it about five in the morning. It get darker for a while, the darkest cause the moon gone. I push my face closer to L. C. back, and I can feel the rib bone under my cheek, feel that rasp inside him come right out the skin. What kind of black they say in his lung? What color? Black like his eyebrows use. to be? Like when his fingernail use to fall off, a purple black? He use to bang one up every week at work. Black inside the nail, inside the finger. His skin still smooth like a flower petal beside his eyes, I look every day, and the sleep stay dry as dust in his lashes sometimes in the mornings. In a while, cars start passing on the street, sending noise up to the window to mix with his breath, with all the feet that start to walking in the building, on the sidewalk, all shaking and humming like waiting in a church.
I think of when I were sixteen and my neck soft as powder. It still soft now, when I touch it, but the wrinkles so many L. C. finger couldn’t run down the front like it use to, draw from my chin to my chestbone, not pulling hard. My neck darker now, muddy color. I hear the way he breathe wrong, it that time in the dawn when he do that, and I stop. It worse again, like rain, hitting the tin roof on the shed back in the woods, coming in waves and spattering. Forty-nine years and I lay in the bed thinking, long as I touch him, he still mine, and it keep me awake, listening. I keep a hand on his back and reach around with my other hand to feel the bottle. It stay under the mattress, tuck into a hole. They gave him pills at the clinic, to make him sleep. I take two out each time, and now I got eighteen, twenty, but I don’t know if that enough to let me go when I want, when I choose. His breath stop raining in his chest, soon, dry and finish, but not yet, not while I touching him and listen. Next week, when I get more pills, when I know, then it my choosing, when it stop for good. I remember his arm across my chest long time ago, his lips round my ear and then he fall asleep in the middle of a kiss, he so tired. How many years I listen, he always sleep before me, and wake up to call my name.