The trip to the hospital takes three and a half hours. We walk along the road, my mother and I, hitching a lift. Mamá seems a little happier, despite everything that has happened. My father has ended up at the police station, and my brother has gone to find out why.
We catch a bus and then a lieutenant colonel’s jeep drops us off outside the hospital. We arrive at the neurologist’s office fifteen minutes before our appointment. My mother has a lunatic smile that won’t go away. One of the other patients takes out a flask and offers us some coffee, saying she’s been there all night. I thank her for the gesture, but I don’t want to talk to anyone. If I accept the coffee, I’ll be walking into a trap. She’ll start prattling on and we’ll be forced to respond.
At precisely 8:30 a.m., the neurologist ushers us in. He doesn’t care that there were others in front of us. We walk along a dirty, dimly lit corridor and go into the third office on the right. Opposite, there is an admissions ward. Almost all of the beds are empty, made up with lime-green sheets. I can hear the grumbling of patients but I can’t see any. We sit on metal chairs, look around the consulting room. There is dust everywhere, papers and yellow forms are piled on shelves eaten away by termites. The venetian blinds are broken, the smell of the place is unpleasant. A smell of ampoules and injections, of contaminated syringes and bloody cotton swabs.
This is not a neurologist’s office, I think. The walls are hung with posters about preventing breast cancer and the terrible damage cigarettes inflict on the airways and the lungs. The cancer cell is the only cell that is immortal. When there is nothing left for it to devour, it devours itself, but nothing can kill it.
The doctor who ushered us in reappears with another man. They both introduce themselves. Next to the neurologist is a specialist oncologist. This must be his office. They say they have noticed a number of irregular markers, that this is why they asked to speak to a family member. I am here, but they have still not acknowledged me. They speak to my mother; she does not answer. And you are …? one of them says. I’m the daughter. Ah, the daughter! Perfect, he says.
The medical logorrhea goes on for some time, but my brain pinpoints and files away the important points. They are going to begin a new trial, they say. They are going to order new magnetic resonance images, new encephalograms, and new CT scans. They are not convinced that the temporal lobe epilepsy is the result of the chemotherapy prescribed for my mother after her radical hysterectomy. And there is more. They have reviewed the case from the beginning. They are struck by the fact that they have not yet come up with a definitive answer. They have spent months groping about for an answer, prescribing medications whose effectiveness has been proven in other patients. My mother’s expression seems both to advance and retreat.
There is something they need to know. The neurologist asks her whether she has actually followed the course of treatment. Have you been taking the tablets, Mariana? My mother does not answer. Her hands twitch. Dark circles bloom under her eyes. I slump back in the metal chair. The day before, in the coach on the way home, my brother and I were talking about things whose appearance can be deceptive, like the yellow chickens that, during the “difficult years,” families in the pueblo force-bred in wire cages under incandescent lights so hot that in the end they all died. They seem noble, he said to me, but chickens are cannibals.
I ask them why they have doubts. Not all patients react in the same way, every body is unique. The results of Mariana’s biopsy indicated only a small, insignificant tumor, the oncologist explains. After the operation, her mother was not recommended such an aggressive course of cytotoxic drugs. The oncologist wants to know how Mariana got the prescription for the course of chemotherapy. Who authorized it? Why did she deliberately poison herself? Mariana does not open her mouth.
Toe pecking occurs in early clutches, especially when, for some reason, newly hatched chicks are not fed within the first forty-eight hours. Before they can think, the more dominant chicks have learned to peck the toes of the weaker chicks.
I don’t know, Doctor, she says after a moment, the smile never leaving her face. I just couldn’t carry on, she says. Carry on with what? A minute or two pass in which no one says anything. I kiss the top of her head. She has ceased to be my mother. We will stay together, in silence, to the end, but she has ceased to be my mother. I cannot be upset by something done by someone who no longer has anything to do with me.
Pecking happens during molting; it can be triggered by the little drops of blood left when feathers are pulled out. Vent pecking is triggered by the reddish color of the cloaca, when laying is about to start. Then there’s the savage pecking in growing chicks. Feathering begins at about three weeks. The chicks peck at each other’s backs, at the root of the tail; sometimes they even end up pecking the intestines.
All the love she has managed to store up in me would be enough, would never run out, but between us there would no longer be a daily love, one renewed each day.
According to my brother, to withstand a night on sentry duty, a soldier on military service needs two things. The first is to make sure you have a raw recruit with you for as much time as possible. You quickly discover that, in these conditions, company, in any form, is a good thing. And it is not the duty sentry who needs to be kept entertained, but his companion, so that he does not leave. The second is to master the art of head-nodding, which is not a deep sleep, or even a doze, but a larval state that any half-decent soldier with more than six months’ experience should be able to achieve.
I thank the doctors and promise them I’ll oversee the treatment. The doctors say they’ll visit, that they don’t want to pressure us with questions right now. We say our goodbyes. It takes us another three hours to get home. On the way back I hug her and run my fingers through her hair; she sobs. When we get back, we take a deep breath. My mother sings the song about the old stewing hen and starts to dance.
There are various causes that can trigger cannibalism in poultry. Excessive heat, overcrowding in the hatchery, especially around the feeders and the drinking troughs, poor diet, and a lack of protein. Weak or crippled chicks suffer a lot. In battery cages, boredom is an inherited vice. And it is this boredom that is the main reason why innocuous chickens, terribly innocuous chickens, lethally innocuous chickens, end up pecking at each other, eating each other’s entrails.