The Foot Was the Vessel

It’s a dry rasp. The sound of the safety scissors against the construction paper. They’re so dull, the yellow and orange paper so cheap, the scissors more or less tear the paper as opposed to snip. But it beats the rasp of the papery breathing from the woman in the bed beside mine in the first hospital. The first Guatemala hospital. My “leaves” look more like clouds because crisp edges are beyond someone’s skill. Mine or the scissors?

And Mom – god bless her – trying to cheer me up, trying to keep my mind off the pain. Sweet, frustrating woman, thinks I care about the pain. No, we’ll cut out the leaves. We’ll hang them all over my hospital room. It will be festive. Like someone blew up a calico kitten. Orange and red and brown.

Since the last surgery…number nine? I can’t remember. Whichever one did the skin graft we’re trying desperately to keep alive (though sections of it are already a necrotic black)… Since that surgery my leg cannot be lowered below my heart. Even a wheelchair ride is off-limits, so getting outside to watch the glow of autumn roll in is out of the question. It’s my favorite time of year, the way the sunlight becomes golden first and then – day by day – the leaves absorb the color.

When I left Guatemala, everything had been green. The leaves were so green they were luminescent. It was like the rainstorms watered the forests with emeralds instead of water. They radiated green, distorted just slightly by the constant screen of humidity, lit from within.

Not long before my accident, I had come into a couple servings of mushrooms. I had eaten one serving, then vomited. Then hiked for hours up the forested trail to a volcanic summit (dormant, I assume. Or maybe, like me in the hospital bed, simply paused mid-story.), vomiting once or twice along the way. The view of Lago de Atitlan that was supposed to be the reward of the hike, but the haze of humidity dulled my interest. I sat beneath a canopy of leaves and imagined they were raining green on top of me. I examined the keen contours of individual leaves as if they were fallen stars on my palms.

Now when I think of it, I try to keep my imagination off the uneaten serving of mushrooms in the dresser drawer at my guesthouse. They had been getting little worms, and I thought when I left that morning, ‘I need to wash these and eat them soon or throw them out.’ But that was the day I shattered my leg and I’d never returned to the rented room. I pictured them now, writhing with worms, turning the solid flesh of the mushrooms into foul-smelling goo, abandoned with all my other belongings.

“Did I tell you Dr. Bell thinks you can get out in a wheelchair?” Mom says cheerfully. “Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. You’ll have to keep your leg elevated, of course, but you can at least get out of bed.”

I nod and make an “mmm,” sound. She reaches on my lap and pats my hand. “At least we’ll get this room spruced up.” She looks around with the satisfaction that only a pile of raspy construction paper leaves can elicit. “It will be just like fall.”

But I didn’t want fall. Granted, I didn’t want saran-wrapped hospital white either. And, truly, it was better than the hospital in Guatemala, the windowsills speckled with flies, the scratchy wool of the blanket not concealing the crack in the foam mattress beneath. The hospital was short on beds in the women’s ward, if I understood the post-anesthesia explanation in Spanish. My bed was brought in. From a barn, maybe? From a defunct military hospital? The war wasn’t that long ago.

There were a half dozen women in my cubicle with six other pods similarly filled on the vast floor. It was open like an elementary school cafeteria. When I pushed myself up with my hands, I could see over the partial walls at the sea of women in hospital beds and the two nurses in their plastic dome on the far wall.

My quiet, private hospital room now seems like a luxury I don’t deserve, with my own bathroom (toilet paper provided without having to call friends outside the hospital!), my own heart monitors - with prescriptions delivered to me right here in my bed! It’s so quiet, I hear those women a half-continent away. Their breath. Their coughing. Moaning. There was an awful lot of moaning. I remember watching the old crone across from me, probably from one of the highland villages, probably brought in on a cart pulled by a donkey. She’s moaning in a Maya language. The doctor filled her leg with saline like it was a vase, then lifted her foot and poured it all back out, catching it in a bedpan. And I thought of something biblical, anointing feet with a vessel of oil – only this time the foot was the vessel – and gathering what pours out. Is it a blessing? A benediction to hold someone in their suffering?

My fever had been growing as I watched, my sweat gluing me to the wool blanket, my own infection creeping up my leg in a flaming red lace. I watched myself in the mirror of the old Maya woman across from me and fainted, the sound of the waterfall of pus and saltwater following me into unconsciousness. The second hospital was better. And the third. By the fourth, I was back in the US. Now, on the sixth, the silence reminded me of the sea of suffering women I had left behind. I think it’s called Survivors Guilt. And a bunch of horribly-cut construction paper leaves were supposed to cheer me up about missing fall.  

I had felt vast. So lush and vibrant, it was like I glowed with emeralds. For the first time in my life: alive. Fearless, a woman traveling the world alone and so immense and limitless that even the ends of the earth couldn’t contain me. Fertile and fecund, like a goddess, like all growing things began and ended in my flesh. No, it wasn’t the pain I needed distraction from now.

“Close your eyes,” my mom instructs as she tapes the paper leaves around my room. I comply, letting the anticipation build. “Ta-daaa!” she announces, and I open my eyes. It looks exactly like I expected, but I summon a meek smile.

“Thanks, Mom. That makes a big difference.” She sits on my bed and puts her arm around my shoulder.

“You’ll feel better soon, honey. It won’t be long. Tomorrow, even, you might be able to go for a ride in a wheelchair! We can go outside and see real leaves.” I nod. I know as soon as she leaves, I’m calling for more pain medicine.

But, it’s true. The next day I do feel a little better. And when the asshole Dr. Bell gives me permission to take a wheelchair ride, I’m almost euphoric. It's like a dad giving a sixteen-year-old the family car for the next. By the time we “step” outside, the leaves are on fire, the blaze endless between the sun and the trees. I haven’t missed fall. I feel something flame inside my chest, the image of the Maya crone from the hospital incinerated in my heart. Me, whatever I am – goddess, crone, a vessel of pussy blessings – rising from the ashes.