January 27, 2010

Beatrice is asleep on the couch. Nikola's asleep in her crib. The cats snooze, in and out of consciousness on the edges of chairs and windowsills.

I am awake.

Beatrice's husband comes in and out of the house, runs errands, gardens, goes to work, and sighs loudly, but not to offend, simply to get the tension out of his body.

His wife cried today on the couch after returning from the bedroom where she took some anti-anxiety medicine. "You're going to have to drive me to the hospital for the steroid shots today, I'm too weak to go by myself." She picked up the flip photo album and began naming the people in it to her daughter who stood briefly, wobbling, before dropping down on her cushioned diapered bottom.

"This is gopa and mimi and your great-grandpa. Do you remember them? And here's nana and poppa. And look, here's mommy with Nikola when you were a little baby." Her eyes were red but determined as she tried to teach her young daughter names and faces.

I stand in the kitchen doing dishes.

* * *

"Ha ha!" Grant laughed, pleased at himself for having made it all the way through the night without his wife. "Each time I went into her room during the night, she had thrown her pacifier out of the crib. The third time I wised up and lined every pacifier in the house on the inside of her crib. This morning, there they were, all in a line outside the crib, having been thrown onto the floor!"

Beatrice had been in the hospital since Monday. I didn't choose to stay the night to help out with the baby because I hadn't known in time that it would be a three day stint. He kissed Tessla on top of the head. "Silly girl." He grabbed his coat and headed to the car to head to the hospital where doctors would try and head off his wife's cancer.

I changed the baby out of her pajamas.

* * *

Beatrice eats a bowl of cereal sullenly on the couch. She gets up only to put the empty dish on the kitchen counter. The diswasher is broken so her husband and I have been doing all the dishes by hand. The cat meows though he's already been fed. That fat cat who pees in the baby's room and stinks up everything. "My mother's hired a cleaning crew to come in and give the house a once-over tomorrow," Beatrice says and sinks back into the couch, tired. "Thank goodness," I think. But they don't end up doing the dishes which they leave in the sink.

I let them in the house, and say thanks when they leave.

Gracias. Gracias.