1 - waking up

It was like waking up after surgery. My head was immobile, lodged in a stiff pillow. I stared up at a globe-shaped light fixture hanging from a white plaster ceiling. The ceiling was cracked and had a yellow water stain the shape of Texas. There was no sense of time passing since I fell down. Expending a tremendous effort I lifted my head and looked down at the crisp sheet that covered my body.

Something was wrong with me. The sheet seemed too flat. I was thin.

Then I saw other people in the room. They weren’t right either. They were supposed to be dead.

There was my father. He sat next to a window. He seemed to be sleeping, with his hands propped, as in prayer, against his chest.

(It was dark outside. The window was open and I could feel the breeze and smell ozone and summer rain.)

My mother Wilda was bent forward in a chair close to my bed, her forearms resting on the sheet near my feet. She seemed tired. Then she looked up at me and the strained expression on her face relaxed into a smile.

Even Tommy, my older brother, was present. He leaned against the open door, talking to a pretty young woman in a white uniform – a nurse it seemed, with her hair permed in a style I had not seen in 50 years. Tommy, whose hair was done in a modest pompadour, smoked. The cigarette dangled from one side of his mouth and the smoke curled around his eye causing him to squint. I could smell the burning tobacco plus a strong disinfectant odor. In the distance, coming from down the hall, I heard Buddy Holly singing Peggy Sue.

My mother, who appeared to be about 45 years old now, got up and leaned across the bed to kiss me on the cheek. She was wearing a green print dress with wide lapels. Her clothes smelled of cooking and her breath smelled of cigarettes. Speaking in a lilting Alabama twang that I had not heard for 40 years, she said, “Welcome back stranger.”

I closed my eyes and felt my heart pound. I heard her say, her voice alarmed, “T.G.?” I had an irresistible urge to sleep and I did.