Scott McClanahan - Crapalachia - A Biography of Place

SHIT!

I didn’t want to see her after the operation, but she said I had to. Ruby had her gallstones removed the day before and now she was at home sitting up in bed with this plastic pill bottle beside her on the table. I walked slow and scared to her. I walked with a little-boy walk and she propped herself up on the bed. I moved sideways with a slow step and then another slow step and then another. Then she took her plastic pill bottle and shook it in my face. It rattled like a rattle except it was full of something strange.

“What is it, Grandma?”

She shook them again and said, “They’re my gallstones. All 21 of them. Doctor cut them out of me and let me take them home. He wouldn’t let me take home the biggest though. He said he wanted to keep it on his desk.”

Then she shook the pill bottle in my face a rat a tat tat . She said, “I’m going to make a flower bed with them.”

Then she handed me the pill bottle and told me to put them in the flower bed. “Don’t you eat them now, Todd.”

I shook my head like she was crazy.

Then I went over to the window and opened the pill bottle and I put the gallstones in the bottom of a flower pot. “Nothing is growing,” I told her. She told me they would. I didn’t believe her.

The next day a flower was blooming.

And now…

I don’t know who named AIDS cat AIDS cat, but Grandma always hated him. She always said, “You better stay away from them hogs,” but AIDS cat never listened. He was AIDS cat. He had big patches of hair missing and he was all bony and skinny and looking like he was going to die any minute.

So one day we were outside feeding the hogs and she told AIDS to stay away from the hogs just like usual, but he wasn’t listening.

Of course, AIDS cat used to go around and steal slop off the hogs. There was a knot hole in the slop bucket this big bad daddy hog used to eat out of. And so the big daddy hawg was standing at the trough eating the slop, and AIDS cat just kept sticking its head through the knot hole and eating some of that grub. AIDS cat did it once. And then he did it twice. Then he did it three times. He stuck his head through and scooped up some of the slop with a paw.

“You better watch it,” Ruby warned him one last time.

He did it again and looked at us with a greedy grin.

So finally the big daddy hog had enough and reached up and bit AIDS cat’s head plumb off— gulp . The cat’s body fell back and jerked and jimmied and jerked some more, and the big daddy hog stood gobbling it on down. Ruby didn’t say anything. She kept feeding the hogs and the pigs and then we went and sat on the front porch and watched the hummingbirds hum around. It felt peaceful.

So let us begin again then with the first chapter.

I started to stay with Ruby and my Uncle Nathan when I was 14 years old.

It was around this time that Ruby ruined my birthday when she got breast cancer. I was in the kitchen when Ruby told me. She just looked at me and started shouting, “Oh lordie.”

Then she started going on about how the doctor at Beckley said she had breast cancer and was going to die if she didn’t have her breast removed.

My Uncle Stanley came to see us that evening, and I told him Grandma had cancer and was dying.

He just whispered “shit” beneath his breath and called the doctor up and it turned out she didn’t have breast cancer at all but a benign growth that could possibly be cancerous.

The doctor said it could be treated with a cream.

She wanted everybody to think she had breast cancer though.

She started bothering the doctor so much over the next couple of months that he finally agreed to take her breast off as a preventative measure. She told him there was a history of it in our family. She was lying.

My Uncle Stanley started chewing her ass.

Ruby said: “Well all I know is I don’t want to end up dying from it.”

And Stanley said: “Ah hell, Mother, you don’t have cancer from what I’ve heard. You just have a growth that at this moment is benign.”

“Well he said he could take it off when I asked him. He said it’s a preventative measure.”

My Uncle Stanley said “shit” again. “Of course he said he could take it off. He’s a damn surgeon. That’s what he does. Surgeons are the worst people on earth. If you tell him to cut something off of your body, then he can sure as hell arrange it for you.”

The day after the surgery was over we waited outside the room in the ICU.

The nurse brought out this jug of brown liquid they’d drained off of her, and then the nurse said we could go inside. So we all went in and gathered around Ruby’s bed. She smiled and grinned with all of these IVs pouring out of her arm.

She pulled down her hospital gown and showed us how it looked all bandaged and stitched up and sunken. “It’s not easy being a sick, old woman,” she said.

My Uncle Stanley shook his head some more and whispered “shit” beneath his breath.

Then I looked at my grandma and she looked so lopsided to me. She looked so cut up and gone.

But then she pointed over to the old woman who was in the bed beside her. It was an old woman who wasn’t saying anything but just staring up at the ceiling.

Ruby started telling us all about her. “That poor woman just cries and cries all night.” Then Ruby said loud enough for the woman to hear it: “She doesn’t know it yet, but before they brought her in I heard the nurses talking. They said the poor thing is full of tumors, and the family hasn’t told her yet. They said she only has a couple more weeks to live.”

My Aunt Mary said, “Shhhh,” trying to tell Ruby to lower her voice. Then the old woman who just moments before looked dead, opened her eyes wide with a look on her face like: “What the fuck? What did you say? I’m dying?”

Of course, it shouldn’t have surprised us when we came back to visiting hours later on that evening and Ruby was trying to sell a quilt. She was still bandaged up and sitting in the bed talking on the telephone to this woman on the 4th floor. “Now if you want this quilt you better call your daughter to bring you the money. Now I know you can’t walk but you better find a way to get me the money. I’m in bed two.”

But then some nurse came in and got all over her.

“Now Mrs. McClanahan, you get off that phone and quit trying to sell your quilts. You’ve just had a breast taken off and you need to rest.”

Then the nurse took the phone from her and put it down.

“We don’t allow people to come in here and solicit patients and we don’t expect you to solicit your fellow patients to buy your quilts.”

So the nurse left the room and Ruby started showing us the cards people had sent her.

She showed us a card from Mae and a card from Geneva that said, “Get Well Soon.” There was a card from Leslie and Bernice and some flowers from Stirley and Brenda.

“I don’t think anybody in here’s got more pretty cards than I do,” she said. “I know when Mae stopped by this morning she said she’d never seen so many cards and get well wishes. There was a woman from senior citizens who saw them. Said she’d seen more, but I know she’s just jealous. She had a heart attack last year and didn’t hardly get any.”

Then she picked one up and held it in her hands. Since it just said “Ruby” on it she took a pencil from her nightstand and marked it out, because she could use this one over again for someone’s birthday. She gave it to me and said happy birthday. I had just turned 14.