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for tatiana de la tierra
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I’m watching the nurse clean Wounded Eagle Woman’s arm. The gash, which extends from her armpit down to the bend of her elbow, is a fleshy red scream silenced by a train track of sloppy stitches.
Even wounded, Eagle Woman is strong. Lab results claim she’s dying, but something beyond science pulsates inside her, propels her away from the hospital bed into the clean white hallways, where she paces impatiently. Death is a bore, a comemierda, and she’s not interested.
As always, she’s refused the hideous hospital gown. She’s sporting sneakers, jeans and a blue checkered shirt. That pale hospital gown with the open ass-flap, she says, is how they bring you down. Fuck that! That ain’t me. When she says it, she’s placing a pink plastic rosary around her head like a crown. Some anonymous Catholics dropped it off in her room and although she’s a pagan, she doesn’t shun it. It makes good play jewelry.
She clips a fake yellow flower onto her curly disheveled hair. Así. As if she’s getting ready for a party. This is how Eagle Woman transcends IV’s and blood transfusions, dialysis and kidney failure. With color. With flower hairclips. With plastic rosaries. With a borrowed iPod that blasts Juanes throughout the night, drowning out the bleeps and breaths of hospital machinery. Anoche, she whispers, while the hospital slept, I danced enloquecida all night in my bed. Bouncing, pouncing, thrashing. It’s because of songs like “La camisa negra,” “Gotas de agua dulce,” and “A dios le pido,” and not the low platelet count, that Wounded Eagle Woman is exhausted today. Totally trashed, actually. And kinda dirty too, because aside from all the sweat that poured out of her during her one-woman, all-night, mosh pit session, they’ve denied her a shower.
That might have thrown her over the edge—the water restriction—her having been a mermaid in a past life and all, but instead she’s washed her hair with essential oils and used a damp washcloth to transverse the territories of her body.
The doctors keep dropping by in smocks, carrying clipboards, asking questions, telling her she needs to rest instead of roam. They point out the gravity of all her wounds, the visible and invisible. Meanwhile, she’s wondering if the scented oil flirtation she rubbed on her neck and wrists earlier still smells. She winks. She bats her eyelashes. She flips her hair. She’s taken in by the screams of women in the adjacent birthing center. They’re like howling wolves, she says, sparks lighting up in her eyes.
And I knew her long before she was
a Wounded Eagle Woman
We met at a dusty border
where cactus and Spanglish ruled
Where the land was flat
and the cockroaches flew
We were long lost sisters who shared
histories of migration
bricks of welfare cheese
cocaine and onion fields
hickies on our necks
water earth fire and words
We wrote our hearts out
beneath a blazing sun
ate the flesh of fish until only skeletons remained
We sat in the giant huecos
of red desert rocks
survived sandstorms
traveled deep into the belly of the earth
where bats slept and
stalactites and stalagmites encircled us
a magical rocky kingdom
We ventured into copper canyons
where natural springs sprung
She perched on a rock like an eagle
me diving into water like a fish
We did New York
San Diego
Las Cruces
El Paso
Juárez
Creel
Los Angeles
Santa Barbara
Buffalo
Miami
The Keys
We fled to Mexico
to Canada
Got water-windswept beneath Niagara
where colossal rocks became whales
We were Maidens in the Mist
Mermaids once more…
And now we’re here. Rosa, the nurse, is standing in front of us, removing the bloody bandage from Wounded Eagle Woman’s swollen arm. Can I keep that bandage, Wounded Eagle Woman asks. It’s more of a statement than a question. It’s got my blood. My blood, my bandage, she adds. Rosa hands it over without any qualms.
Today the pain has penetrated past the flesh, into the bone. Today Wounded Eagle Woman says, Yes! ¡Sí! ¡Sí, Rosa! ¡Dame! ¡Dame! And her IV is infiltrated. Dilaudid runs through her veins. When I ask her what it’s like, she lets out three drunken words, happiness head rush.
She closes her eyes, sighs. Euphoria spreads through her face and I think she’s gonna be totally gone soon, but within seconds she’s up and about. Let’s write a poem! Poetry is suddenly of the utmost urgency. I grab her laptop, sit back on her bed, watch her spread out her arms, red ruana opened wide like wings, a silver Chilean eagle woman hanging on her neck, wounds exposed. She poses. Take a picture, she demands. I do.
A little later, she’s cleaning. There is so much to do: straighten the cluttered bed stand; gather her dirty laundry; organize her stash of hospital goodies—graham cookies, Jell-O’s, cartons of milk and juice. You look pretty weak, she says to me as she fluffs the pillows around me. I sink further into the bed. She digs into one of her drawers and hands me a Superfood pill. Here. Take this.
When another smock with a clipboard enters, he zooms in on me half-buried in the bed, asks me how I’m feeling today. Wounded Eagle Woman and I cackle like crazy witches. He looks from her to me. From me to her. Are you the patient? He asks confused. I shake my head
and point to Wounded Eagle Woman. She smiles flirtatiously as he spews a dose of medical jargon and then, like the rest of his people, suddenly disappears.
We know he’ll be back. There’s more lab work to be done. More medication to be taken. More paperwork to be filled out. More jargon to be deciphered. More blood. More needles. More bruises. More howling women giving birth. More Juanes in the middle of the night.
But for now, Wounded Eagle Woman insists on dessert. Lemon meringue pie smuggled into her room. When I hand it over, she stares at it as if I’ve brought her the prettiest of jewels. Oh my god, it’s beautiful, she gasps. She’s been on hospital food for two weeks now and this bright yellow, Jell-O-like pie with puffy egg whites beaten to perfection is a dream. We joke about how it could kill her—the refined sugar, the processed white flour, the non-organic eggs, but we both know that right now lust is stronger than reason, and this could easily be a forbidden kiss, a forbidden word, a forbidden fruit…
She delves in, reveling in the danger. Wow, she moans as her tongue rims the meringue-filled plastic spoon, her cheeks flushed in ecstasy. It’s fluffy and light as air, she says, just like eating clouds.