Yellow Sick
When I was born, they said I was half sick. Jaundiced- something like that. I remember they told me that when I was old enough to understand and I tried to imagine what it feels like to be yellow, to remember what it was like to be that sick. But I couldn’t remember being born, no matter how hard I tried. So I imagined that sour feeling in my stomach right after eating too much of a lemon on a dare. Sick and yellow. That must be what it was like just right when I was born. Getting older was easy from there. I became less and less yellow and less young and got bigger and was more. I was glad that I was done with being sick. In the early fall, in the circular courtyard by the flagpole at the front of school I waited for my Mother to arrive in her silver van with the doors that moved themselves and I would get in to go back home again. When I saw the other mothers with their cars, I saw that some doors moved more smoothly, with shinier headlights and TV screens protruding from the ceiling. I saw that some doors did not move themselves at all. I thought that there must be something important behind it: the reason for all the things that people have and the things they don’t.
At the hospital with my Mother’s Mother I held her swollen spotted hand that was so much rounder than anyone else's hand I had held. She had more tubes than usual then and I didn’t know why I was scared to ask her about them. I was never scared of the rubbery clear tube that she always wore around her ears with the little ends in each nostril, or the machine that the long ribbon snaked into. That was what Grammy wore. But these tubes were different- sharp. The way they reached into her through her skin with liquids and wires- I knew. These were different and angrier tubes that I wasn’t old enough to ask about. This year she was living with us, and it seemed to be alright. My brother and I went to school and Grammy went to the hospital with Mom and then they picked us up. My brother and I had to give her our room because Grammy only moved around with wheels and she didn’t like stairs. I had learned early on that some people walked on legs while others rolled from place to place. But lately there was something else different about her. Her orange hair was white at the roots and when the light shined through it I could see the shape of her whole head. She was always falling asleep, even during the most exciting parts of movies or one time when she was sitting at the table eating my mothers meatloaf, which was mostly just ketchup.
Being sick is okay, Mom would tell me with the deep crease in between her eyebrows looking very permanent, even when she smiled. I had been sick, throwing up into little buckets while I sat on the toilet. Everyone else got to dress up and get sweets from every house in the neighborhood. I was happier that my brother was not sick than I was sad to be sick. These things do not always make sense. But I had never been sick with something that had a name, with some long name unlike, cold or flu. I didn’t understand what it meant for something to be in the lymphatic system now, Royette. That was her name. Royette was Grammy’s name before she was Grammy or Mother. And something with a different name was in her lymphatic system.
Uncle Craig tells ghost stories. I never believed them. His ghosts always wanted something from us. To open up the door for them. A phantom kiss in a dim hotel room. To be frightened by them. I did not believe in these ghosts. And the smiles and rolling eyes of Mom and Grammy’s other children did not believe in them either. I did not believe in ghosts at all. But just because you do not believe in something does not mean it is not real. Just because something is real does mean you believe in it.
When Grammy got sicker and even her big round body started looking tired, I did not believe in it. When Patrick and I had to go home and the phone was ringing in the dark middle of the night up on Mom and Dad’s bed with just dad next to us, I did not believe in it. I listened to the voice on the phone and felt for the first time that ghosts are not so scary and much more real than many things I might really encounter. I remember thinking that not all ghosts can be bad. I remember thinking of a yellow undercurrent washing over my skin, from head to toe. Half sick. Lemon sour twisting in my gut. I remember falling asleep wishing that all the lemons and ghosts would meet and mix and twist into something more real and less sick than anything I could imagine.
