Variations on the Word Bed
- A piece of furniture for reclining and sleeping, typically consisting of a flat, rectangular frame and a mattress resting on springs.
At 20, I bought my own bed. I was in love with its newness. The flowers on the mattress whispered to me of promise. I stretched across it, imagining its dimensions would match the dimensions of my life. Here comes the future, I told myself. It seemed so symbolic.
- Accommodations for a single person at a hospital or institution: a ward with 30 beds.
She will have her own room. I have seen to that. My sister says this is magnanimous of us. Growing up, we had to share a room. But the situation is not at all the same, and we know this.
I check her in. With each form I complete, I pray that she will jump up from her chair, smiling the special grin she reserved for birthdays, holidays, celebrations. "Just kidding!" she will tell me. She will not be this way. Everything will be normal again. We will drive back down the willow-lined road with our windows rolled down, laughing at how crazy she acted, how well she convinced us all. "Remember when I disappeared for a week, until the police found me in Florida? I was just taking a vacation," she will explain. The lost days of her life will be accounted for, the erratic behavior dismissed as a joke, the confused violence only a prank.
That does not happen. Instead, she places her head on my shoulder and begins to sing "Irish Lullaby," which she has been singing to me since I was a baby. "I'm sorry," I whisper to her again and again.
The doctor tells me this is a testament to my strength. "Not everyone is brave enough to suffer through this with their mother," he tells me with a nod. But he's lying. I am weak. I have always been weak. I don't know how to fix her, don't know how to make her strong and charming and beautiful again, so I am forsaking her.
At least she'll have her own room.
- A time at which one goes to sleep: drank milk before bed.
He told us to go to bed. His arms were like writhing snakes; spittle was flying from his mouth. I felt it on my face, just beneath my right eye. I looked behind me, where the others were. Mark had already disappeared. "Come on," I told the girls, "come with me." I lifted the baby from the floor, hurrying. My father's back was to us, but I never knew when he would turn. My mother was slumped in the corner, watching the blood drip from one knee. She could not help us.
We ran, a frantic parade of children, into my room. They whimpered when I told them I told them to stay put. "Stay with us," Grace whispered. But I had to find Mark.
I hummed to myself in the hall. "You are my sunshine," I sang in my head. "My only sunshine." I could not drown them out.
Mark's room was dark, but I heard his ragged breathing. I dropped to my stomach and shimmied under his bed. "Come on, Mark," I told him. "We're going to bed in my room." He was there, but gone; eyes squeezed shut, he shook his head. "Come," I ordered, pulling him toward me by the shoulder. His eyes shot open and he jerked his head down and bit me, hard on the back of my hand. I kept pulling as he cried. I forgave him; he hadn't meant it.
We all gathered together in my bed, which lay on the floor, piled high with blankets to hide beneath. "Let's play the story game," I said to them. "This one will be about a monster." They were always about monsters.
Too small to hold the baby in my arms for long, I laid him in my lap and swayed my legs until he was rocked to sleep. The others followed, and then me.
- A place for lovemaking.
You used to cry when we made love. You used to swear it would be forever and pray the dawn would never come. "Marry me. Be my wife. Have my children." I wanted it all from you, and you would smile and nod and tell me how tall our children would be. How fair their eyes, how poor their vision. You wanted them to have my hands. I hoped they would have your smile. Lips, teeth, tongue. I loved them. Everyone should have a smile like that.
- A small plot of cultivated or planted land: a flower bed.
We have been married for fifty-seven years. She plants new flowers for every anniversary. We make a beautiful garden -- always in bloom.
- The bottom of a body of water, such as a stream.
He taught me to be a man in this river. He taught me variations of everything I needed to know. Act with patience and precision. Do not be so wild as to drive everything away. Learn to stand still. Learn to move. Enjoy the sunshine on your face. Find peace in the small things.
I return here now. By forcing me to let him go, he is teaching me a final lesson, and I look for it in the water. Coarse and white, his ashes sink into the riverbed.
- The part of a truck, trailer, or freight car designed to carry loads.
He loaded his things, one by one, into the truck. The children cried from their bedrooms. I saw their pink faces in the windows, watching us in the driveway.
I did nothing to stop him from leaving. He turned his back on me, so I turned mine even farther on him. We were always that way.
He sends us nothing, not even word. The children hate me for letting him leave, or possibly for driving him away. He is the one who could fit everything he wanted in the bed of his truck, but they idolize him, believing he will return someday for them.
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