Gender Jumper

We had to get up early and get Kiddo to school early to make up some hours. I was still dozing when I heard a metallic crash; my partner was pulling the blinds open when the drawstring apparatus stripped out of the wall and dropped one end to the ground. She felt ill, and still had a terrible cough that had appeared suddenly the night before.

I got Kiddo to school, noting the yellowjackets nesting near the walkway. Yesterday we had seen them on the ground as well and hoped they were carpenter bees (they were not).

I came home hoping for another hour of sleep, but spent it answering emails instead.

I was leaving the house when my mom texted, "Front door's unlocked." I nearly texted, "Oh, is that today?" because I have had to confirm I had the date set aside for this commitment multiple times over the past two weeks. I know you hear about a lot of overzealous mothers doing something like that, but those moms are the opposite of my mom. The reason we don't really speak is somewhere between she never initiates and she never has anything important to say.

Five cars greeted me in her driveway, two completely unfamiliar to me. I entered to find her watching TV and fiddling with a tablet; I complemented her on her Zillennial sensibilities, but she doesn't understand what I'm saying.

On the drive, I avoided playing music she'd like and instead left my CD on pause. I told her it was Blind Melon, a 90s band where the lead singer channeled Janice Joplin if she'd lived long enough to see punk and grunge. I didn't mention the genderqueerness of this analogy, but I did inform her that he had killed himself shortly after their big hit, which I sang and she did not recognize.

Her phone rang as we were nearing the hospital. She said one sheet told her to be there at 1pm, another 12:30, and it was 12:20 as we turned the last corner. After she sent the unknown number to voicemail, my phone rang and I did the same. Then her phone rang again, from the same number, and she answered it. Someone from the hospital who wanted to confirm she was on her way.

Up to a half-dozen people were working the front entrance at any given time, but half or fewer were wearing their masks correctly. Mom swapped out her cloth mask (which kept slipping) for a disposable one from the info desk. We had to be let into a secure door and shown through the labyrinth.

She finished her prep quickly and pleasantly (she is strangely effusive with strangers), even told one of the staffers my correct name, then grew impatient as 2pm, the time of her procedure, came and went. My niece wanted updates before she had even been taken away.

A transport person led us toward outpatient surgery and let me wander the halls as he led her into surgery. I found my way to the designated waiting area, noted some eccentricities of the architectural layers added on to the building over the past 30 years, then back to my car.

I was carrying her clothes in one bag and her keys, wallet, and phone in another. I took $60 from her wallet for lunch, gas, and whatever else I wanted. (Three years ago, when I drove her for a dental procedure, I had charged $100 on her debit card, but that was partially in revenge for having to forge my own signature.)

I went to a Chipotle so new it didn't have social distancing decals on the ground. I rang up two drinks and lots of chips, but took it out of the $60.

I ate lunch in my car with the air on high and sunshades in my windshield. I finished the Blind Melon CD and put in This Right Here is Buck 65. I'm not sure whether a white rapper would be better or worse to torture her with, but I imagined her asking who it was and just handing her the cover: This Right Here is Buck 65. Buck 65 has a way with character development, but he's a better producer than rapper; way too many of his characters have to comment on their giant penises. I tried to remember who it was I saw him open for. It was the 9:30 club in D.C., circa 2004 or 2005. Probably Moby? I just remember my girlfriend at the time commenting that Buck 65 was like Eminem's nerdy older brother. That same asshole dismissed the whole of hip hop a few years after recording the album because he belatedly discovered classical music and decided hip hop was trash by comparison. Maybe if he'd dropped fewer lyrics about centaur anatomy, IDK.

When I finally made my way back to surgery waiting, they had no update for me, so I returned to the front lobby to read my Womanist Reader. Another hour passed, I finished the chapter, and I grew stiff. Someone had to let me back into the labyrinth every time, but the lobby was open enough I didn't feel threatened by occasional passersby, no matter how bad their masking was. In the waiting area, a nice lady told me that Mom was out and doing well, and that I had just missed the doctor. In an hour, she would come over to tell me she was leaving, therefore the desk would be unstaffed.

I only saw two or three other people in the waiting area, but it had a weird half wall that disrupted air flow and I was glad I didn't try to wait there any sooner. A bearded person with red t-shirt and cargo shorts walked around the little vestibule with the desk, occasionally talking to people. An older fellow in scrubs came by and asked who I was waiting on, then said, "Okay!" and walked away without explanation. I shut off the TV. The phone at the desk rang, the person in cargos answered it, and soon they were beckoning me over. By the time I arrived, I could hear the voice of the nurse coming to meet me from the other side of a locked door. She beckoned me to come back, and in the time I needed to grab my things, she had swapped places with another blonde lady in scrubs, but slightly different ones, and the second staffer walked me through the familiar halls back to Mom's pre-op room.

I set down my stuff and she soon greeted me, bubbly. Someone walked her through some final details and got her a couple of beverages, and then we were waiting again. She told me she was a risk-taker, because the device she is having installed is relatively new, and I broke into uncontrollable laughter. The nurse asked about it when she returned. Her badge was yellow, her photo far from recent. Mom found out she'd been working there for 30 years, and a nurse for 47, and she'd be retiring in just a few months. I honestly didn't realize the hospital had been owned by its current conglomerate for as long as that badge had taken to age.

I was sent to get the car, and waited (somewhat anxiously, thanks to other cars blocking the rest of the loading zone instead of pulling ahead or behind me) while grackles hunted and pecked around the corporate plantlife. Two birds hung around the automatic doors, trying to get them to open. Birds are smart motherfuckers, and grackles are highly underrated.

We made a few stops on the way home: Mooyah for dinner, Sonic for tea, and Walgreens for prescriptions. Once she settled in, I ate my share of our sweet potato fries and tried to convince my brother or his on-again-off-again girlfriend to take our extra shake. My brother is on administrative leave pending a drug test, but says he doesn't have enough information about the process. He spoke slowly, dejected and probably intoxicated.

It was no time for a deep conversation about how addiction was going to kill them all, or that I wasn't going to show up for Mom like I had our adopted grandfather. I have that much to give, just not to her.