The cold clamped down, the heat turned off, or turned on
and the car doors open as I scrambled back and forth to wet rags,
rinse them of vomit, and my mother dug a fresh outfit for him
from a packed suitcase. I think what it was that month—why, I decided,
he wouldn’t eat and vomited so violently—was that the trach
was too long and scraped the back of his throat. I remember realizing
it had happened again as my mother turned the key and we backed out
of the rental’s driveway, after the dreaded packing-up and feigning
goodbye to a three-day vacation in Williamsburg, through which I struggled
as I struggled through everything that year, trying to be happy and not,
trying to buoy myself with gratitude: for my baby’s life, for my children
who I’d die for. The sound of him emptying and then the stripping bare,
the bagging of vomit rags and clothes. The changing, bundling, cloaking,
the cleaning under the trach ties, twisting my body into the back seat
to recreate the warmth, satiety he lost. I remember the calm of finally leaving,
still arrested by the freeze and frenzy, how my son (limp, not even crying)
stared out the window, let me change him.
