You Can't Help Yourself by Cathy Eaton (imagining being trapped in a partially paralyzed body)
You Can’t Help Yourself
Cathy Eaton
The mockingbird chitters, chirps, and whistles awake the morning. Your bladder is about to explode. Why does Kate forget to pull shut the curtains? You’re not ready for the sunshine flooding past your eyelids. It’s been two months since she swooped down to rescue you from the marriage you blundered into. Your daughter’s rescue got that woman out of your life and saved you from returning to assisted living. You should be grateful.
Sea-borne fog hovers outside the ranch house Kate rented for the two of you. Damp blasts of air raise a crop of goose bumps on your leathery skin, scarred and ugly with basil skin cancerous lesions. It’s cold. The blanket has fallen on the floor out of reach, and your caretaker won’t be here for sixty-three minutes to help you get out of bed, shave, and dress.
You start worrying about what to say to your best friend who wants to leave her husband – your other best friend – because his Alzheimer’s is driving her bonkers. How can you convince her not to give up on the guy you both love, the guy whose mind is splintering as it sinks into a dark abyss? Before you come up with a plan to salvage their disintegrating marriage, you fall back asleep.
7:30, and you can’t bear to wait in bed a minute longer for your caregiver, so you decide to get up on your own. No big deal. The rest of the world rises in the morning without help. They don’t have to shake a bell so someone can come supervise what any five-year-old can do. You stretch your one good arm (the left one that one that the stroke didn’t paralyze) until you clutch the cold bars of the hospital bed even though this isn’t a hospital. Then you bend your knees so you can shove yourself closer to the head of the bed. You shoot a quick prayer to the god you don’t believe in and beg him that the straining, pushing, pulling your arms, your legs, your torso won’t make you crap in your pants. It’s bad enough wearing Adult Depends and having your caregiver tug off diapers heavy with pee. But you’ve gotten used to that. What good will it if you torture yourself with shame?
You hope you’ll be able to stand up even though you’ll have to hobble to the bathroom like a prisoner in shackles to poop in the raised plastic toilet specially designed for handicapped people. You hate how the shit stains the sides for everyone to see; it’s bad enough when you squirt pee that dribbles to the floor instead of landing in the toilet. Flushing – well that’s not happening because the handle’s on the left side of the toilet and your right hand doesn’t cooperate since the stroke. It’s more like a claw. You have to pry open each finger, and then the only way you can keep your hand open is to stuff a padded gadget or a tennis ball inside your palm and fingers so they don’t shrink back to the claw.
Remember the days when it was easy to toss a tennis ball for your dog to fetch. Zemoya was the best pet you ever owned. The scruffy half terrier, half collie always loved you, no matter what. She never talked behind your back to plan your life. Not like your kids feel obligated to do nowadays.
They’re always meeting on the patio, where you can’t quite hear them as they tighten the noose a little more. They control your bank account because they say you can’t manage your money. But damn it – it’s your money and you have the right to send your money to your friend. His medical bills would kill him if he weren’t already dying. He needs your help. It’s not like any one else needs you. Not anymore.
Zemoya needed you. Remember her bouncing up and down like a jackrabbit when she wanted to trot beside you on your cross-country skiing treks. Up and down hills, swerving in and out trees, feeling the wind whisk past your face. Feeling alive. But, she’s gone now.
What happened to her? And why can’t you remember? She never felt it was her duty to tell you how to live your life. Why didn’t you get another dog? Maybe you should get one now. But how could you take care of one? Feed it? Walk it? You’d have to ask Kate to exercise the dog for you. Just one more chore for her. She wouldn’t complain. She never does. Except maybe in the clenching of her jaw or the quiver in her cheek muscle. She’s a peach, your daughter. One that’s been left too long on the shelf. She’s given up her life to take care of you, and she’s lost her spunk.
Zemoya loved chasing a tennis ball. Remember the days when you could toss a ball over your head and blast it down the service line for an ace. Or when you sliced a backhand, forcing your opponent to charge the net because you changed the pace. Now, the pace never changes. It takes forever to do something, and when you do it, you haven’t accomplished anything besides climbing into your clothes or eating a meal in cut-up chunks that you have to scoop up with the fingers of your left hand.
You’re not really a prisoner, but you never leave the house except to go soak up the California sunshine. That’s the wonderful thing about living in Sebastopol. No iceberg winters that chill your bones and trap you inside a stuffy apartment for months at a time. Your caretaker insists you wear a hat and then she smears on sunscreen. She lectures about harmful sunrays and points to suspicious scabs on your skin. Sun is good for you. Everybody knows that. When she’s not looking, you stuff the baseball cap under the wheelchair.
Your son, the one that didn’t talk to you for three years, offers to take you places besides the patio where you doze in the sun, but you hate the gymnastic contortions it takes to maneuver into the passenger seat of the car. Your son and daughter hover around you as they rotate you and lower you into the seat. Then, of course, one of them has to lift your legs. God forbid you should have to pee before you arrive where you’re going.
You used to love driving. That ‘57 Cadillac was one for the books. Convertible roof tucked behind you. Driving fast. King of the world. How the kids laughed when you zoomed up a hill and bounced them out of their seats at the beginning of the descent. No one wore seatbelts then, and now they want you to wear a seatbelt when you’re sitting in your wheelchair.
It was just an accident last week when you pressed the acceleration button on your electric wheelchair, collided with a granite column, and smacked your head. Anyone could have done that. It wasn’t like you needed stitches. Now they think you need a guardian, more like a guard, to escort you whenever you go anywhere in the wheelchair. Makes you feel like an inmate, one that can’t be trusted.
Hell, you used to fly a Bonanza and ferry your kids to Florida. For Christ’s sake, you used to pilot a B 26 Bomber in the war, and if the Nazis hadn’t strafed it and sent it plummeting into the drink and if you hadn’t spent two years in prison camp, then maybe your body and your innards wouldn’t feel like a train wreck that will never get back on track.
You know you should be grateful for being alive. For having your mind intact. For being surrounded by loving family. And you are. Really. But don’t they get it? Your life isn’t yours anymore.
You have nothing to look forward to. You can’t even walk to the mailbox to see if anybody remembers that you’re still alive. When your daughter entreats you to accompany her in your electric chair, the bumpy road makes you feel like you’re going to tip over and slam onto the gravel.
~ ~ ~
Fooled everyone. You made it down the hall and into the bathroom without anyone hovering over you. Everything came out all right. Didn’t miss the toilet. Didn’t have an accident. Didn’t fall.
And now you can do your morning ritual. Where the hell is your caregiver anyway? Why isn’t she here like she’s supposed to be? Oh yeah, she had a teacher conference for her kid and you told her she could start work a little late. Always Mr. Nice Guy except when you snipe at your daughter. Why can’t the two of you get along better? She’s given up her job and a shot at a life just to take care of you and keep you from going back to Assisted Living, which you hated.
Okay, need to get this show on the road. It’s almost eight. Morning ritual. No reason to change the order you do things. Start with brushing your teeth. Thank God for the electric toothbrush. Raise your head so you can see the mirror. Well look at you. You’re stooped over, just like an old man. Every morning, your caregiver reminds you to stand up straighter so that’s she not taller than you. And how tall is she? Shorter than your wife, not more than five feet. You used to be six feet tall, give or take. But when you stand up straighter, you feel wobbly. Thank God for the sink to prop you up. Your hair looks like a mouse nested in it. Twisting off the toothpaste cap with one hand takes too damn long. Oh God, you dribbled on your tee shirt. No big deal. You can still wear it for another day under your golf shirt, the pink one that isn’t stained with barbecue sauce.
“Dad, what do you think you’re doing?” Your daughter practically scares the crap out of you. Good thing that’s already taken care of.
Pretend you don’t know what she’s talking about. “Morning, dear.”
“You know you’re supposed to wait for the caregiver or ring the bell if you need me.” Kate can’t keep the annoyance out of her voice. Without your glasses, you can only imagine the weary worry lines that pull her mouth down in a frown. Without glasses, you can’t see her martyred glare of accusation.
“I didn’t want to wake you.” It’s best if you change the subject. “Did you hear the mocking bird?”
“Yes, Dad.” Her sigh is exaggerated. “Here, let me help you.”