Day 37
by Matt Lavin


I am going to begin writing about my mother. Now is the moment of pause before pen hits paper. The implement is approaching the sheet, like Zeno’s paradox continually halving the distance to the destination but never reaching it. I am paralyzed by an impossible task, and afraid that, in my own attempt to make peace with her death, I will fail and lose her once again. Can a memory be unwound like string, rendered so poorly that it turns on its progenitor and devours?

My blue 1988 Chevrolet Cavalier wagon, sticker price $800, kicks up puddle mud in the driveway of the Twelve Tribes Community’s Cottage Street house in Rutland, VT. This is a car that, in the process of burning out its heater coil only a few weeks ago, spurted antifreeze onto my feet for twenty minutes. This is a house that, with a fresh red paint job and new drywall and new floors, has gone from borderline-condemned to reasonably inhabitable in less than six months. And this is one of those religious communities, full of long-haired Hebrew wannabe so-called cult members, with a former carnival barker-slash-author-slash-superman-leader named Yoneg, a.k.a Eugene Spriggs; a community of like-minded TV-hating, Internet-fearing, burned out hippies, reassured by others who believe the end is near, bolstered by a man named Yahshua whom others call Jesus, but not a man in fact—no—a god who was born of flesh, killed by humanity, yet strong enough somehow to rise and ascend and forgive. This is where my family lives. Four sisters and my mother, after my parents’ divorce, came to be members of this community, while my brother, my dad, and I continued to live “in the world,” fending for ourselves, ensnared by temptation, incarcerated by sin.

I am visiting her on day 37 of a forty-day starvation marathon, a quasi-suicidal holistic cancer treatment that consists of taking into her body only water and vitamins—no bread or blintzes or flan or eggs—to kill the tumors in her chest by feeding them not one ounce of protein. She said once, by way of refusing chemotherapy, “I don’t think I want to do that,” and would say no more.
 
Creaking stairs and door are traitors to a covert entrance. I am sixteen years old, alternating between drama club and cancer, and chemistry class and cancer, and learning to drive and cancer. The fast has left her with a fever; her breathing is labored and slow. I am staring at brown-gray hair, emaciated cheeks, and a look like squinting, and I am wishing for the hurt to end. I do not know what she is thinking. I do not know if she will ever wake up. I do not know that she will fight this thing for four more years. “Please, God,” I say, “I’ll take her pain. I will take it, I will take it if you save her.”

Nothing happens. I am pitching deals at faceless apparitions. A dark blue bedspread rises and falls, and I am out the door as quiet as coming.

Matt Lavin is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Iowa. His work has been published in Boston Literary Magazine and Paradigm.

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