The Knower
Chapter 13
When Major pulls into my driveway, without saying anything, she gets out of the vehicle and comes around to my door. She opens it and waits for me to unbuckle my seatbelt.
“Do you need a hand?” she asks.
I frown and start to say that I've got it, but I have a sudden sense of vertigo, not in my body but in my brain, accompanied by a buzzing that turns Major's words into a distant slur.
“I'm okay, but I do feel a little...” I search for the right word but there doesn't seem to be one. “Out of it?”
“I noticed on the drive. You were kind of in another world.” I barely notice when she reaches across me and releases the seatbelt.
“Oh. Sorry about that. I guess the tea? Or just the day. I feel okay physically – actually pretty good – but I am so sleepy. I think I'm going to need to lie down.”
Major walks me inside and once in the foyer, calls out for my sister.
Tricia comes out of her bedroom and down the stairs to greet us.
“Nothing to worry about, she's just tired. Can you help her up the stairs?”
“I'm sure I don't need help up the stairs,” I say, slipping my shoes off very deliberately, and to my credit, neatly.
“You got day drunk and didn't invite me?” Tricia says, crossing her arms over her chest and giving me a fake glare.
“Yeah, I day-drank some mystery tea,” I say. I laugh and realize how incredible it is to laugh without an echo of pain across my back and abdomen. It makes me want to laugh again, so I do.
Tricia's fake angry demeanour changes to concern and she looks at Major. I catch Major's shrug and copy it.
“I'll just lie on the couch,” I say, crossing into the living room and sitting down hard before either my sister or Major can cajole me up the stairs. I twist into a horizontal position and put my hand protectively on my belly, where my cancerous organs had been pulled through and discarded. The surgery had been messy and frightening, not for me who experienced it, but for my mom in the waiting room and the doctor, who'd had a hard time stopping the bleed of a tumour that had rerouted my blood supply to feed it. The tumour capsule had burst, an explosion of cancer cells in the open cavity of my abdomen. I know they did their best to wash away and remove any cancer, but only a few years later and the cancer has taken hold again, despite monitoring.
And the last time I'd had no pain was a year before my diagnosis, when my periods starting causing terrible cramps that eventually just never stopped. A brief respite from that particular pain came after the surgery, which brought its own pain secondae that never really resolved. Then the reoccurrences, and now the pain that I have had to grow familiar with and accept as an inevitable part of my life story.
Tricia brings me a glass of water and I drink from it, handing it back to her empty.
“I'm okay,” I say, trying to reassure her. She's got that forehead muscle twitch that shows up when something is bothering her. “Are you? Is everything okay here?”
“Yeah. Listen, stay put, have a rest, okay? I'm going to go with Major for a bit. She needs to get gas and I've heard the gas stations are a little dicey.”
“What do you mean?” I start to sit up but a fatigue has settled in and I have to give in to it. “Are you bringing a gun? Or an axe?” My mind does not drift but snaps back to the bearish woman in the forest with the axe.
Tricia shakes her head. “Hard to believe, but I thought about it. But Major says not to – it's too likely to get used against us. If it isn't safe, we'll just... try another station. Maybe one on a reserve.”
“What's going to happen... if there's no more fuel?” I whisper.
“Nothing to worry about right now. Right now, you're safe and cosy. Mom's in the kitchen and the doors are locked. Have a good sleep.”
“Wake me when you come back?”
“Not a chance.”
The house is quiet so that I can dream. A medication-free sleep, a rarity for me. There's a battle in my subconscious for my attention. The lizard part of my brain wants me to stay alert, so as I tumble into sleep, my body jerks awake again and again, setting my heart to race and warning me that it isn't safe to let go like this. To succumb.
But there's another part of me, some part that I rarely see. The Knower. Not the me that experiences things, but the one who watches me experiencing. And though calling that being 'she' threatens to humanize her, preternatural as she is, there's also no denying that this is a woman-figure, a goddess type. An Earth mother? The cheesiness makes me smile in my sleep but it's like I can sense she is made of the same elements, came from the same star as the earth, as my body.
And somehow, she creates her own warmth, something I struggle to do. I let it drape over me, tuck my face into it, and fall.