{"id":263,"date":"2021-11-15T00:40:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T07:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underwoodpress.com\/BlackWorks\/?p=263"},"modified":"2021-11-03T09:58:31","modified_gmt":"2021-11-03T16:58:31","slug":"plague-years-by-paulette-callen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackworksmag.com\/?p=263","title":{"rendered":"“Plague Years” by Paulette Callen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n


It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Herman Melville Moby-Dick<\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was a fair-haired man, with fair skin. His white legs were swollen and mottled from the disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something about the whiteness of the body \u2013 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u2013 am I sure he is dead. Well, no, I am not a doctor. He appears<\/em> to be dead. I am near panic now. Do I want to give him mouth to mouth resuscitation? I can\u2019t do that. Just send someone over, NOW. I do lay my hand upon his back. It\u2019s as cold as the floor. What if he isn\u2019t dead? I should be giving him mouth to mouth resuscitation, but I can\u2019t bear to lift the curtain to look at his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

D DAY, The Battle of the Bulge, Omaha Beach, the Ardennes, Eisenhower, Patton \u2013 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was four years in a war. Four years I\u2019ll never get over. Even though it\u2019s not a fair comparison; I was never cold, hungry or in the line of fire. Still \u2026. PCP, Kaposi\u2019s Sarcoma, wasting, dementia \u2013 these were not just terms I\u2019d read in Time Magazine<\/em>. 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 \u2013 patches of brown cancer that looked like old bruises from a blunt object. Peter, the feel of his hand beneath my own \u2013 just a little pile of bones; beside him, his beloved Luke, the joy of his life, the golden retriever he\u2019d raised from a pup, Luke, who now never left his side except to be taken out for walks by the volunteers \u2013 and Peter asking me, \u201cWhat\u2019s his name?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was not prepared for the rage I felt toward a client for eating cake<\/em>. For getting a sunburn. Don\u2019t you know anything about your immune system for christs sake?<\/em>\u2013 or my fury \u2013 I who have always held sacred a person’s right to die \u2013 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!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some time during that war, I grew up, grew old, got tired. Sometime during that war, I stopped praying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I begin now to understand why my father could not speak of his war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For months, I saw splayed legs everywhere…jeans draped over a chair, cloud formations, \u201cV” 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My own physical condition worsened. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. which I\u2019d 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 \u2013 the good little Rottweilers of my psyche.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


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 \u2014 but always, the space she returned to has been made home by a dog.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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 \u2013 legs splayed and butt naked, draped over the side of the tub, … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackworksmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackworksmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackworksmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackworksmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackworksmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blackworksmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264,"href":"https:\/\/blackworksmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions\/264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackworksmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackworksmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackworksmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}