At the Bedside of the Batterer

At the Bedside of the Batterer  

And now I would make of her something

Better than she could make of herself—though the wolf

Is only remembered in her prime, and not as she must

Have been years later, after all that would pass had passed.

                                               

                                                                Brigit Pegeen Kelly

                                                                The Wolf

It’s not that I don’t forgive her—I do—I even take it

past the bedrail she’d be confined to, and the straps

she pulled at when the coma medication began

to wear off and the nurse came in right on time

humming some song I used to know the words to.  There

you go, I want her to say while she pushed the liquid

into the line.  Get your sleep, you’ve certainly earned

it.  Really I wanted her to stay, past her thirty

second bed check, but she had other patients

up the wazoo I bet.  I could hear some of them call

over the noise of the nurses station beeps, I could

hear them swear and curse and carry on

with their own miserable lives.  They’re bruised,

every single one of them, though that day none

more than my mother.  And she slept and kept a Jesus

council around her neck and I wondered who

put it there, a Catholic friend I bet and when it got quiet

again I imagined the clack of beads against the metal

rail, first the undone prayers and then, sifting through

them all, the done ones, hanging limp as old

lady’s arm fat.  Ok, you have to smile at that.  Look

at all those machines that breathe for her, that pump

her heart, that take away all the shit

she’s making—indifferent in this rented patch of some-

times sun and sometimes moon.  She’d got

a window seat.   Down below the fly-size people drive

away or arrive.  They get in or out of their cars.  Some

have children.  Strollers.  In groups or one by one.  They

are like small tacks on a bulletin board of strategy:

different colors that mean allies or enemies.

Hours after she arrived I watch the cop drive off, the one

who came to get her statement.  He checked

boxes on his pad of forms.  He was tired and in-

different.  Or maybe he’s neither of those things.  Maybe

he’s seen too many women strung out and loose-noosed

by bed-cuffs—maybe he looks away because this is

someone’s sister someone’s wife someone’s daughter

my mother.  Maybe I look for these same reasons.  Because

who can she hurt now?  Tell me, visitor for an hour

or two, (because I have the rest of my life) who

can hurt her, and who can she hurt now?