Prologue: A Lesson in Numerical Value
I learned how to count at St. Mary's Home for the Elderly. First backwards, then forwards. Sitting idly in the nursing home's sunroom among the wrinkled and gray patients slumbering in their chairs, I would watch the numbers above their head. The white, rectangular cards decorated in black, bold-faced print would flip down from the empty air over their balding scalps, periodically subtracting days or miraculously adding them. To the right of the ever swishing number cards, a longer card reading "DAYS" hung suspended until the old men and women's time had tragically dropped to "MINUTES".
I witnessed miracles in numbers. The passing of lives counted above their heads like the tally marks of God; the extra, invaluable time added on to the remaining days.
One woman--a particularly sweet old lady with a cloud of fluffy white hair that reminded me of candy-floss at the carnival and seemed light enough to float up off her scalp in a breeze--was marked with ten days remaining. I overheard her telling a nurse her grandson was getting married in two weeks. She was overjoyed, for she loved the girl and thought they would be a handsome couple, but she was afraid she would be unable to attend the wedding ceremony due to her poor health. She was more correct than she could have imagined.
But low and behold, just as the guilt at my knowledge of her impending death was beginning to weigh on me like a sack of flour tossed onto my bony back, the numbers above her head flipped rapidly with a sound like flapping pigeon wings. From "1 0 DAYS" to "3 2 DAYS" the cards then read.
She told the nurses the wedding was beautiful.
I was only a child when this all happened: experiencing death alongside the dying. It was a heavy burden to bear, but I figured--even at so young an age--if someone had to do it, it might as well have been me. I was innately selfless that way.
My first memories are of the gray countertop of the front desk, of the too bright overhead lighting that gave everyone a sickly pallor, of the scent of bleach and nut bread and baby powder that all combined to form one atmospheric smell--the scent of old people. The memories were never characteristically pleasant, nor were they traumatizing. They managed to float somewhere in the middle ground, dull without being torturous.
The only reasons I never put up a fuss when my mom roused me from sleep early on the weekday mornings as she was curling her hair or applying red lipstick were the prospect of listening to the old tell their life's stories and observing the switching of the cards.
My mother worked in St. Mary's Home for the Elderly Resting Center in New York City's lower east side, taking tender care over her dying, graying patients in their final months, days, hours. She was an angel of healing-- bright, beautiful and kind. When I was a little over four years old, she decided neither of us were ready for me to be sent off to pre-school at the neighborhood church, so she compensated by taking me with her to work. I always felt guilty, burdensome, though I was her only child and I never caused much of a problem.
She called me intuitive, an old soul inside a young body. This aged outlook on life left me a constant worrier, heavy with the unmovable weight of the world I carried on my little shoulders.
Though her coworkers adored me, and she delighted in showing me off to her fawning patients, I felt like I was constantly in her way, an incautious cat sneaking slyly underfoot, only to trip its master in an attempt at affection and closeness. This anxiety, this caution made me shy but attentive, obedient but awkward.
When we entered the doors of the nursing home, either fully bundled in itchy, winter attire or outfitted in relaxed, warm weather cottons depending upon what point in my past I'm recalling, I snuck off around the front desk, down the central hall and into the sunroom. My mother knew I was still in the building, not getting into trouble and behaving oddly un-childlike, so she never worried when I disappeared in the mornings. She would clock in, retrieve her daily assignments, room numbers and such, and go about her job with the most delicate of grace, a smile on her red painted lips.
Inside the sunroom, where the elderly were situated in their chairs, wrapped in blankets and drooling and snoring in their sleep, I would curl up on the worn carpet and watch. The sagging of their pale, fleshy faces, the fluttering of eyelids, the gaping mouths and the steady rise and fall of fragile breasts. Someone's feet would twitch inside their stockings or someone would choke on saliva, stutter, then return to semi-motionless slumber.
But their rest was never entirely peaceful. Always floating above their balding scalps, the number cards would flip down: ten, nine, eight...
At the nursing home, I learned how to count. Backwards first, then forwards.
The cards--small, rectangular and white with black, bold-faced numbers--would swish and click as they fell into place, smaller numbers replacing their greater-valued predecessors. To the right of the row of cards--the number of digits varying depending on the quantity of place values--a longer card reading "DAYS" hung, motionless beside its ever moving companions. I would watch the cards for hours, learning that thee comes after two, four after three, five after four, and so on. It was as much entertainment as a child in a nursing home could ask for.
On days when it was too chilly to be in the sunroom, I would park beside the bed of a patient inside his or her room, listening to the gravely or whispery voice of the ancient being as he or she related his or her life's stories to me. I learned more than numbers at St. Mary's. I learned about the wars, about money and love and people on the opposite side of the planet. It was difficult to wrap my naive mind around the macrocosm of the adult world at times, but more than anything I enjoyed hearing the elderly speak.
The rooms were always the same pale beige, the beds dressed in pale pinks and white, glasses of water on bedside tables, liver-spotted hands curled around the edges of sheets. All my early memories resembled each other. There was little variation in the routine, little change of scenery or color.
My mom worked five days out of the week, carting me outside of the house on her days of rest only to go to church or to take a stroll about the neighborhood. Not much happened in my early years. At least nothing worth remembering.
Until I told her about the number cards.
We were walking home one evening, the sun was beginning its descent behind the treetops, the weather was pleasant and warm, for it was late summer. I held her hand and watched my feet; I was a clumsy little kid. I could smell her perfume mingle with the heady scents of summer--roses, freshly cut grass, sweat. Her manufactured scent of Chanel No. 5 was a comforting smell, one that whenever I caught a whiff later in my life, I was sent reeling back into my childhood, headfirst.
Her wavy, yellow hair caught the setting sun, and her warm, open face was framed by a halo of red and yellow light. I stole glances at her, looking back at the cracked concrete under my shoes so I wouldn't trip.
"So, how was your day, Phonsie?" she asked me, addressing me by nickname. I didn't need to look at her to know the smile she shed on me. I could feel its warmth in her voice.
Normally, I would have replied with a vaguely satisfying answer, then ask her of her own day, being much more interested in her wellbeing than my own. But today was different. I had something truly important on my mind. Interesting. The number cards had seemed even more present than usual, more real, and I was beginning to wonder, Does everyone else see them, too?
I had to ask.
And then I asked, and when the words left my mouth, Do you know when people are going to die? she just looked at me strangely, her brown eyes too dark to match the luminous face of my mother. She batter her eyelashes in confusion, then put on her best motherly-concern expression before asking me to elaborate.
"Do you see cards," I began, trying to be more precise in what I was asking, but her expression instilled an unfamiliar anxiety inside my small chest, and I was suddenly very unsure of whether or not I should be talking about this. "Over people's heads," I finished in a tiny voice, and I worried my lip between my baby teeth.
My mother blinked once, the dark look passed, and she pressed her lips into a tense line. Grabbing my hand into hers, she started walking a little faster, a little too fast for my taste, and I suddenly felt like a sideshow attraction or a fish out of water or a Communist. I knew then, not everyone saw the cards with the numbers. Actually, I was almost certain in that moment of clarity that no one saw the cards. Mother did not approach the subject at the dinner table that evening, and I certainly didn't. It was better for us to remain silent and eat our green beans and pretend that nothing had changed and that I wasn't some freak having hallucinations.
The cards never left, though, no matter how little charm they held for me now that my pristine little world of wonder had been shattered by doubt and fear. Slowly, I developed the ability to all but erase their visibility from my line of sight, just ghostly traces of black numbers floating in my peripheral vision. I was fine without the numbers, I figured. I could count very well by that point, and kindergarten would be starting, and I would make great friends that didn't see things, so I could safely hide behind their normalcy. But kindergarten passed, and the elderly passed, and time passed, too. Before long, there were just some cards that not even I, Alphonse of the Magical Ignore-It-And-It-Isn't-There Ability, could ignore.
My mother's cards.
No miracle would save her like the one that saved the old woman with the cloud of white, candy-floss hair. She'd witness no wedding of mine or my of grandkids' and be able to tell the nurse how beautiful it all was. She wouldn't grow gray and she wouldn't whisper stories of her half-forgotten youth. She wouldn't ever know how much I loved her nor how much I wanted her to understand what I saw hanging above her head like a suspended blade, anticipating her execution.
She wouldn't live to bake me a cake for my eighth birthday.
A/N: Please review. I'm quite new to this site and would love any help you may offer, whether on the story itself or with formatting and such. :3 Much love, Bunny
oh, and if you post anything of that novel idea you mentioned, be sure to let me know!
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