Chapter 31
From the depressing community room at the Whispering Pines Nursing Home
10/17/92
Dear Frida,
I’ve read your notebook twice. It’s like you wrote it in another world. But it’s not, which makes everything even harder to comprehend. If you were writing from Mars, I could understand. But you were writing from this very same planet with the very same human beings as the human beings here in Seattle.
You have no idea what a magnificent writer you are, do you? You totally should have told Niko and his “little human interest stories” to kiss your grits. You’re writing about people’s daily lives like Martha wrote about people’s daily lives during wartime in Madrid, and she sure proved there’s nothing little about that. You’re brave. You’re generous. I wish I could hug you right now and tell you something brilliant and comforting, but it’s safe to say I’m hardly qualified. Not only am I unbrilliant, I’m a bad person. I’m the only one in the family who lives close enough to see Bumpa during the week as well as on weekends, and sometimes when I’m here I have the most unforgivable thoughts. How much longer do I have to stay? It smells sickly sweet and acrid from the How disgusting am I? Bumpa has to be here twenty-four hours a day, and I complain about afternoon visits.
This has been an extra crummy day. When I got here Bumpa was slouched in his wheelchair by the front window. It shouldn’t be such a big deal that one of the nurses parted his hair on the wrong side, but it makes him look like a stranger. We’re staring out at gray rain dripping off the fir trees. Actually, I’m the only one staring. He won’t open his eyes even though I don’t think he’s asleep. A nurse yelled in his good ear, “Buck, wake up, you have a visitor!” He blinked a few times and smiled at her. After she left he closed his eyes, and I teased him and said, so you smile for the pretty nurse but not me. He shook his head. I keep telling myself he’s not mad at me. He can’t walk. He can’t feed himself. He’s embarrassed. I barely made it to the bathroom before I started bawling.
I’m sorry. I know he’s lucky. He has food. He has a safe bed. I know there are more important things in the world. The IRA, Afghanistan, Bosnia. But how are we supposed to get through the day when good men like Bumpa are betrayed by their own bodies and bombs are falling on sweet girls like Branka? How are we supposed to feel all that and function? I only have enough tears for Bumpa. After that, I’m empty. I guess I’m one of those gross selfish twentysomethings who only cares about what happens in my own life.
I mean, look at this letter. You saw brutal things, and I’m whining about this visit. I stopped breathing when I read about snipers shooting at you. I dreamed about it last night. You were in the line of people passing books out of the library, and the books turned into babies. At first when I woke up I thought it was one of those nonsensical things that happens in dreams. But is it? I mean isn’t every book its own life? An individual life that lives countless different lives with each different person who reads it. Imagine if every copy of Are You There God in the whole world disappeared? I know it’s not scientific proof or anything that different cultures can get along, but look how it shows we have some life in common even though I grew up in small towns and you grew up in a big city and Lejla grew up in a Communist country. Think about all the languages Maya Angelou or J. D. Salinger are translated into. Every book is a conversation we can have around the world. Every book is a conversation we can have with ourselves.
Did you ever feel guilty when you were reading Little Women in Sarajevo? Sometimes I look up from a book and hours have passed, and I haven’t thought about Bumpa once. He can’t escape his situation. Am I a terrible person for escaping? It’s not like I never go back to reality. The second I shut a book, life’s right there, front and center. The bees buzzing under my skin. Cement hardening in my throat.
…I’m back at my apartment now. I had to stop writing when the nurse brought Bumpa his lunch. Then we watched an I Love Lucy rerun, and he likes “All in a Day’s Work” in Reader’s Digest , so I read him that. Now it’s eight hours later. I got a bug to dig through the boxes in the back of my loft. I was looking for my Judy Blumes, but I ended up taking a trip down memory lane. I found some letters Dad wrote when he traveled on business. He used pictures instead of words so Franny and I had to figure them out like puzzles. And I came across the lobster harmonica Franny bought me the time I got so mad at her for telling me what all my birthday presents were right before I opened them. Why my seven-year-old sister thought that was a good apology, I’ll never know, but we still laugh about it.
I didn’t find the books I was looking for (Franny probably has them), but it’s like my childhood memories were leading me to The House at Pooh Corner instead. I just finished reading it. I’m still crying. When Christopher Robin has to grow up and leave the Hundred Acre Wood, I feel like that’s what’s happening to me. I’m being shoved out of the woods. I can’t do “Nothing” anymore. I have to be a grown-up now. That sounds dumb since a person’s twenties are obviously in the grown-up realm, but I don’t feel grown-up. It’s tattered, but I want you to have my copy.
Love,
Kate