It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.
Herman Melville Moby-Dick
He was a fair-haired man, with fair skin. His white legs were swollen and mottled from the disease.
Something about the whiteness of the body – legs splayed and butt naked, draped over the side of the tub, his head and shoulders covered by the shower curtain, his buttocks presented to me as I turned the corner to the bathroom. Black excrement streaked the white skin, dribbled down his scrotum and penis to a mound of black on the shining blue and white tiles of the bathroom floor.
I take a circle around the apartment hyperventilating and saying out loud Jesus Jesus Jesus even though I am no longer of the faith. Then I find the phone and dial 911. A female voice asks me a lot of questions including – am I sure he is dead. Well, no, I am not a doctor. He appears to be dead. I am near panic now. Do I want to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation? I can’t do that. Just send someone over, NOW. I do lay my hand upon his back. It’s as cold as the floor. What if he isn’t dead? I should be giving him mouth to mouth resuscitation, but I can’t bear to lift the curtain to look at his face.
My father was four years in a war. Four years he never got over. He never let anyone else in on them. I wonder how much the war made him crazy.
D DAY, The Battle of the Bulge, Omaha Beach, the Ardennes, Eisenhower, Patton – these were not just names in a book, old photos, black and white Movietone news clips…these were events he survived, places in which he had been scared, cold, and hungry, and people he had met and loved or hated.
I was four years in a war. Four years I’ll never get over. Even though it’s not a fair comparison; I was never cold, hungry or in the line of fire. Still …. PCP, Kaposi’s Sarcoma, wasting, dementia – these were not just terms I’d read in Time Magazine. They had names and faces. Danny, in the hospital for the third time on oxygen and IVs. Bruce, his face and body streaked with brown – patches of brown cancer that looked like old bruises from a blunt object. Peter, the feel of his hand beneath my own – just a little pile of bones; beside him, his beloved Luke, the joy of his life, the golden retriever he’d raised from a pup, Luke, who now never left his side except to be taken out for walks by the volunteers – and Peter asking me, “What’s his name?”
Relating old war stories, I wonder if my father saw eyes glaze over, heard people clear their throats as they maneuvered to change the subject. Nobody wants to hear about war in another country.
In the training for my war, they told us about anger, grief, frustration. They did not use words like horror, sorrow, rage, nor did they tell us how understanding would come, not like a light, but in sad and terrible darkness.
I was not prepared for the rage I felt toward a client for eating cake. For getting a sunburn. Don’t you know anything about your immune system for christs sake?– or my fury – I who have always held sacred a person’s right to die – at Mike for committing suicide and leaving himself naked, white, splayed over the cold tub for me to find. Not on my shift, you bastard! Not on my shift!
Some time during that war, I grew up, grew old, got tired. Sometime during that war, I stopped praying.
I lasted just under four years. Many stayed on the frontlines much longer. But I learned my limits. Because I reached them. War, even my kind of war, if nothing else, teaches you your limits.
I begin now to understand why my father could not speak of his war.
For months, I saw splayed legs everywhere…jeans draped over a chair, cloud formations, “V” shapes on billboards. And I smelled stale excrement wherever I went. In New York City, often this is real. But then, I could not tell whether it was real or not.
My own physical condition worsened. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. which I’d suffered for years, became so debilitating that I went to a doctor who diagnosed me clinically depressed. I was down to 130 pounds (my normal weight being around 170). I was weak and tired and sad, and scared. Prozac was the magic bullet, the talisman, the crucifix and wafer that drove off the darkness, or at least, held it at bay. My pills – the good little Rottweilers of my psyche.
Paulette Callen has returned to her home state of South Dakota in retirement, after 30+ years in New York City. Varying degrees of culture shock in both directions — but always, the space she returned to has been made home by a dog.