Senses
by Vincenza DeLuise Davis

With my eyes closed, I can still tell when the sun is about to peek out over the hill. In the dim grey light before the sun struggles to warm the cold rooms, I wake. Moving across the floor, I open the windows, more out of habit than necessity. Empty rooms are not easily warmed, even by the blaze of the January sun.

The floor is another part of my feet. The roads I often travel within the house carry me without the help of my mind or my eyes. My hands move over the bed, the doors, the windows, arranging them in the same patterns they have been for years. I feel the warmth on my face before I see it as the door pulls open. Just as the edge of the sky teases the darkness with a faint gold glow, I cross the yard to fill the bucket with water. As I return she wakes.

Not because she is well rested.

Within the house it is still night. In the darkness I put the kettle on the stove and bring my granddaughter water to ease her throat. She sips it slowly as I watch the light grow over her face. Is it the dim grey light that makes her look so distant? Everything I see in this house seems to have been painted over with a layer of dirty dishwater. Is this only what old age has done to my eyes? If so what a cruel trick God has played on me-to have decades of memories full of brilliant colours only to doubt they all existed because my eyes only see this leftover grey now. If it was always dark I could see thins as they used to be, and still be sure of how everything was. After all these years, I see better with my eyes closed.

The first few months after I was married, I felt I was aware of every inch of my skin all the time. My fingertips knew every inch of my husband's skin. Our hands would spend hours mapping pleasure onto the canvas of each other's skin. By the time I was pregnant with out first child, my thighs had learned to tremble at his daily arrival in the yard, before I even caught sight of him. My body was well practiced in curving to fit into his arms. As our bodies grew expert at knowing each other and producing children, we spent nights imagining the great number of children and grandchildren we would have to take care of us in our old age. Those nights we would fall asleep with smiles, curled in each other's arms.

We learned over the years how to make adjustments for my often pregnant belly, and then for our aging bodies. As our children grew, his skin grew to be an extension of my own skin. When our bones grew tired, my hands still knew how to rest on his chest and my body still curved to sleep next to him. In all the years we were married, I woke up every morning warmed by his skin against mine.

Since he has been laid to rest, our bed has grown cold and that cold has become a layer underneath my skin. Each day his cold layer becomes thicker under my skin, so that I can no longer feel the subtle joy of my own children's hands on my arms. My bones feel the weight of what I carry, but my skin which was once so expert in textures and sensations has lost the ability to be awoken by the nuances of touch.

Their voices sounded so far away, only my heart could feel they were close. The harmony was familiar, but the melodies floated over the somberly decorated ground as if from miles up the hill and I could not make out the words. I could only hear the liquid sounds of women straining to push their voices through their tears. The hills surrounding the singers had taken on the shape of an amphitheater, understanding their role in the acoustic necessities of the heart. Earth is continuously malleable and these hills were no exception, doing their best to serve as a proper stage for he endless stream of liquid melodies that visited the field below them.

Below their shadows, the ground was offering a harmony to the songs of the air above it. This song I could hear in my feet as it traveled up to my heart. The earth's song was one that resounded up my ankles, through my loins and up until my lungs shuddered and my ears finally heard the words. The ground was singing my song, the song of a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.

My feet felt the strength of the earth, well fed and hearty. This strength was echoed in her song, but the melody betrayed her sorrow at the cavities being dug below her hills night and day. The tears and melodies poured over the brown earth were soaking her spirit and my ears could only hear her sighs. Silently, I apologized to her for my presence there so often in my last years, and tried to limit the salty water I poured at my feet. I could not comfort myself with the knowledge that soon I would have only one reason left to return and then I would stay to feed the earth for all time.

The herbs stung my tongue and their brew burned my throat as they slid down into my stomach. I waited for it to cool before pouring small servings of the remedy into three cups. As I stood before the stove, I felt the warmth of the medicine spread from my stomach through my blood to my arms and down into my toes. Reassured, I brought the three cups into the bedroom where my granddaughter laid with her two children on the bed. After shifting herself up to a sitting position, I handed her one cup, and waited until she had swallowed the last of it to help her pour the tea into the mouth of the baby daughter on her lap. Once they both had drunk, I helped her son, my only great-grandson, to hold the cup and drink the warm herbs. He smiled as he handed the cup to me, then laid his small body down next to the warmth of his mother, who was already asleep.

Would the healing power of the herbs be strong enough to drive away the sickness that had wrapped itself around my family? If only my son Mpho had been alive to assure me of the powers of his own traditional medicine. He was one of the wisest traditional doctors in Botswana , having learned from his father and grandfather. Once his own son was old enough, Mpho had begun teaching him to recognize the herbs growing wild on the edge of our town. As they began practicing the brewing of hers for common sicknesses, Mpho fell ill, and his son could not learn which remedies would heal his father's ailments in time to save him. Having only the knowledge to see and name plants, but not to use their powers, Mpho's son grew sick with grief and soon followed his father to the grave. Now my granddaughter was deprived of both her father's and her brother's wisdom. As I brought the cups back into the kitchen, my lips tasted of salt.

Emptiness has a smell. An indefinable smell, or maybe it is only the lack of small that distinguishes it. No, there is more to it than that-the smells of things that once were present but have long ago moved on. There is a collage of smells that has grown more layered over my many years in this house. First it was filled with the strong, earthy scents of love and passion when we were first married. Soon after came the smells of babies-the fresh smell of baby skin, their soiled clothes, mild soaps and clean cloths to swaddle them in. My children brought the smells of their play in from the yard, from the trees they climbed and the streams they waded in. My husband brought the smells of his medicinal herbs home with him. For many years this house was bursting with all of these smells, and I was happy to fall asleep with them in my nose.

The changes in the smells took place so slowly my nose could not alert me to the changes to come. Pleased by the reappearance of familiar baby smells with my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I did not notice the smells of sickness that accompanied them. When all of my children were ill in their beds at the same time, I could no longer doubt that our home had been enveloped by the smell of sickness. Death's cold smell followed close on the heels of that illness, until it swallowed up everyone except my granddaughter. Now my days are filled with the smell of her last breaths, and my own smell of weariness. These are what blend into the smells of emptiness that flow through my nose, into my lungs, and lastly to my heart.

Vincenza Deluise Davis graduated from Pitzer in May 2003 with a degree in Urban studies. She wrote this story after meeting a grandmother in an HIV hospice in Botswana, who had lost most of her family to HIV/AIDS.