A sad old man tells a story from his childhood

Boom Shikha
Jul 10, 2017 · 6 min read
Photo by Epicurrence on Unsplash

The nurse was putting a blanket around my bony legs. She seemed to be a nice person, but I told her over and over again, I don’t like people touching me.

She doesn’t listen.

“Why don’t you like people touching you, Karaki-san?” She asked.

I wanted to tell her to stop being so impertinent and mind her own business. But she is after all my tenth nurse, and I really would like to keep her for a little bit longer than 2 months. So I answered her as curtly as I could to stop any further flow of conversation.

But that’s what I like and hate about this nurse, Nurse Joey as she calls herself. She is one of those transgendered folks. I don’t understand it much. But she is a woman who turned into a man. I still get confused sometimes with the genders, so I call her Nurse Joey and that’s all.

What I like about her is that she’s persistent and she doesn’t care. What I hate about her is that she’s persistent and she doesn’t care.

“I have trust issues.” I replied to her question. I had warned her once before when she first came on board that I am a very private man and I don’t like being asked a hundred questions. But she never got the hint. Or she got the hint and she didn’t care. Which made me like her even more.

“When did these trust issues start, Karaki-san?”

I glared at her. I pretended I hadn’t heard the question, and snored a bit to make her go away. But a few minutes later, when I peeked out of one eye, she was still sitting there, looking at me, waiting for an answer.

I huffed in annoyance. “Why can’t you damn nurses keep your curiosity to yourself? Why do you have to ask so many damn questions? All the time questioning me and driving me insane.”

I had noticed that some nurses would get upset and walk away if I got angry and started raging at them. But for some reason Nurse Joey didn’t give a rat’s ass. She would just sit there, pretending like everything was fine, until I calmed down and gave her what she wanted.

She was a spunky one, I had to give her that.

Finally, I opened up eyes. My pretending to sleep wasn’t working.

“From when I was seven years old.” Nurse Joey looked towards the garden and waited patiently for me to continue. “I don’t remember the exact details now. It has been more than six decades. But my brother Kariu, he was always a prankster that one. Until the day he died, ten years ago, he was playing pranks on his grandkids, and on me. For some reason, he decided that he was going to make me hate papayas. I loved papayas, but I had never actually seen them being cut open with all of those black seeds.” I looked up to see if Nurse Joey was still listening. Her eyes were closed but she was still listening, because as soon as I stopped talking, she looked up at me again.

I guess, I wasn’t boring her.

I continued on. “Whenever I ate them, our nanny had already cleaned it up and cut them up for us to munch on. So I was 7, and Kariu was 10. We were playing in the kitchen next to the cook, which we did, when nanny was busy with the baby, and our parents were out of town. It was the hottest part of the house with the oven always burning, and it smelled delicious. Also, the cook was rather fat, and lovely. She gave us cookies to eat, and of course, papayas. That day, the papayas came in full and ripe, and the cook was excited to share them with us. Kariu saw that as a chance to play his dirty prank on me. He took me aside, and told me to be careful with the full papayas. I asked him why.”

The memory of that day came on strong as I was no longer sitting in the garden of my retirement home, but on the cold brick floor of that kitchen, with the cold air on my back from the drafty room, and the warm hair on my face from the oven. I could still smell what it smelled like. Stew. Warm, delicious, hearty pork stew. My mouth watered at the thought of it. I couldn’t eat that stuff anymore, ever since the stomach cancer ravaged my insides. No more solid food. Only IV fluids for me for life.

Kariu said quietly to me, so the cook wouldn’t be able to hear, “Karaki, you know papayas are filled with a hundred bugs, don’t you? Nanny and the cook always clean them out for us, but they are there inside right now. If you don’t believe me, go check it out. Look the cook is cutting up the papaya right now. Let’s go see.” He grabbed me by the hand, and pulled me towards the cook with her long carving knife and the pile of papayas.

As it would happen, my life was cursed in a way. The papaya I chose to observe the cook cut was in fact writhing with worms. It was rotten on the inside, but the cook didn’t know that, and neither did I.

As soon as the cook cut into the papaya, hundreds of worms came sliding out.

Maggots.

Feeding on the sugary goodness of the papaya. The cook screamed, and dropped the papaya right on me, so that I had hundreds of worms crawling on me.

The feeling of all of those disgusting creatures on me still gives me nightmares. I never forgot that day, and I never ate another papaya ever again. Not only that, I never trusted anyone ever again. It wasn’t the full story, but it would have to do for now.

I finished up the story and looked up at Nurse Joey. I expected some epithet about how the past is past, and we need to face our fears and such bullshit. I was ready to retaliate with statements like, “You don’t know what it’s like to have hundreds of worms crawling on your 7-year-old body, so stop talking to me as if you do,” and more to that effect.

But as always, Nurse Joey surprised me.

She looked towards the garden as she spoke. The hair on the nape of her neck was swaying and swirling in the breeze. I watched it as she started telling a story of her own.

“I always knew that I wanted to be a man. Even when I was 7, I was sure. But I decided to hold off on it, so I wouldn’t petrify my parents. I didn’t start living like a man until I was 21. But when I met up with old friends, or even my parents, I always told them to address me as ‘she’ or ‘her’. As I did for you. It was so that I would never forget where I came from. I would never forget what I was, and what I am now. The distinction is important. I think most people forget that what they were in the past, affects them distinctly in the present. We can’t let of the past as easily as the books tell us to. I can never let go of the feeling of being a woman, neither can I let go of the feeling of being a man. I know both. Just like you know both as well — you know how it is to trust, and then after the papaya worm incident, you knew and now know how not to trust. They are both inside of you.”

She paused then, and adjusted the blanket around my feet, which had been blown away by a particularly strong breeze. Her hands were soft, and caring around my feet.

Gentle.

She went on. “But the problem with you is that even though you have both aspects of yourself in you, you are choosing only to focus on one part of yourself. The part that distrusts everything and everyone. The part that trusts everyone is in you as well, but you ignore it, and pretend it doesn’t exist. If we want to be healthy humans, we need to exhibit both sides of ourselves in everything we do, either alternatively, or at once.”

She didn’t wait for a reply. She didn’t wait for me to retort. She didn’t wait for me to get angry.

She just walked away.

The breeze kept on blowing all around me.


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Boom Shikha

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I am a writer, who writes because she needs to write, like she needs to breathe. For more writing, visit https://themillionairehippie.com/.

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