Her mother languished in the adjoining room between sheets now soft. The doctor had said that it could be any day now, but Sarah didn’t believe it. And so she got the shaman, and the shaman said what she wanted to hear: it was a simple obstruction, something her mother was having trouble passing. She watched him push his thin hands into her mother’s thick abdomen, through the folds of flesh abandoned years ago. “Fire” he whispered looking into the dark room as if in a trance, “air.” Elements working against the water that should be flowing with ease throughout her mother’s tired body.

Sarah led the shaman out of the room and pressed a bill into his hand before he stepped out into the night to find his way home. He would stop by in the morning, he said. The warm compresses should alleviate some of the pain, and if she broke into a sweat, this would be a good sign of tincture working. Sarah should not fret.

Weary, Sarah melted into the plush armchair at the foot of her mother’s bed and clicked the standing lamp on, the light just dim enough that she could see the shape of the bed without waking her mother. She settled her head against the back of the chair and went through the events of the last week. Scenes of the family, her brothers and sisters who had come to visit but scurried back to their offices and sprawling homes on Sunday afternoon, preparing for their busy work weeks and leaving Sarah to take care of the matriarch. It was Johnny who came with the most love, petting his mother’s hair as if she were a cat. He paid for the fancy doctor who brought news of unfathomable complications, bacterial infections seeping from one organ to another requiring replenished white-capped bottles of colorful pills to be administered according to a schedule that coincided with the grandfather clock in the entryway. And so she couldn’t tell Johnny of the shaman’s visit, the cloudy water she had given her mother, lifting her head to encourage her to take small sips of the bitter liquid. These thoughts, with their vivid, recently lived images, lulled Sarah to sleep, a small sliver of saliva escaping from the left corner of her loose mouth. Into her slumbering dream sauntered the sounds of the room around her, the dog turning on his mat, a car driving by on the wet pavement, and then, the muffled sound of a lengthy, robust fart escaping from under the heavy quilt whose contour she had been so carefully monitoring.

by Sharon Bissell