The Paperweight

When her children put her in a nursing home, Haruko went on a hunger strike. She soon realized, however, that no one cared if she starved to death—not the nurses who dumped her untouched plastic food tray in the trash; not her family who never visited—so she started to eat again. The nurses told her she was lucky to be there. They had a long waiting list. Some people signed up when they were still in high school. Haruko's family must have pulled some strings to get her in. But Haruko didn't feel lucky. Her wheelchair's rusted, squeaky wheel veered off without warning and smashed her into the wall. The nurses left her in the same dirty diaper for hours. When they finally changed her, they waved their hands in front of their noses and made sour faces. When the other old folks introduced themselves to her, Haruko pretended she was having one of her bad days. She didn't want to meet new people. The old people weren't any good; why would the new be different?
One afternoon, Miyo, a nurse who looked too young to be a nurse, was pushing Haruko in her wheelchair through the nursing home hallway.
“You have dandruff,” Haruko informed her. It was true. Miyo had flakes in her long, straight hair and on the shoulders of her black sweater.
“That's sawdust,” Miyo laughed and shook her head like a wet dog, causing flakes to snow down on Haruko.
Haruko wiped up a fingertip of the flakes from her lap and tasted them. It was indeed the bitter taste of sawdust.
Miyo was taking her down a dark, unfamiliar hallway.
“Where are we gong?” Haruko demanded.
“I have something that will cheer you up,” Miyo said.
Good, Haruko thought. Euthanasia. It was about time they put her out of her misery. “Thank you,” she said.
A roar that sounded like chainsaws came from behind the door at the end of the hallway. Haruko had hoped they would give her a powerful drug and let her leave this world peacefully, but it seemed her end would come from a more traditional method. Her stomach curled up in fear. She swallowed back the taste of bile, gritted her teeth, and clasped her hands together to stop them from shaking. Her grandfather had disemboweled himself with a sword; she could do this.
Haruko's knees pushed into the door and it swung open. Sawdust mites fluttered through the sharp rays of sunlight. The other old folks were all there, their eyes covered with plastic goggles. They were making things out of wood. Some operated lathes or circular saws or drill presses. Some painted planks of wood. One old man chewed a piece of sandpaper. Or more accurately, he gummed it, since he had no teeth.
Miyo wheeled Haruko around, giving her a tour of the wood shop, and extolled the virtues of woodworking. It was an excellent way to keep the mind sharp and slow the progression of dementia. Also, creating something increased feelings of self worth. Plus Haruko would have something nice to give her grandchildren when they came to visit.
“They don't come to visit,” Haruko said.
“They will if they know grandma has a wind chime for them,” Miyo said.
Aside from wind chimes, the old folks were making many things: cabinets, end tables, bird feeders, bookshelves.
“What do you want to make first?” Miyo asked.
“A coffin,” Haruko said.
“That's a big project,” Miyo said. “Let's start with something smaller.”
Haruko's first project was a paperweight. She didn't need a paperweight, since she had no papers to weigh down—it was a long time since she was asked to sign anything. But making a paperweight was simple. A good first project. Miyo gave Haruko a piece of scrap wood, about the size of a bar of soap. Haruko rubbed the wood with progressively finer grades of sandpaper, from course as gravel to delicate as a cat's tongue. After a week of sanding, half an hour every day, the paperweight was smooth as a stone on the beach, washed by millennium of tides. Haruko rubbed it with a black velvet-like cloth, a sand blanket, to remove sawdust. Then she brushed on a thin coat of glaze, a sticky amber liquid with dizzying fumes, to waterproof the paperweight. Miyo handed her a pair of wooden chopsticks and instructed her to lay the paperweight on them to dry overnight, so that it didn't stick to the table. Haruko smiled and nodded and then, when Miyo wasn't looking, set the paperweight directly on top of the wood table to dry. Chopsticks were for eating, not for drying paperweights.
The next day when Haruko took her spot in the wood shop, the paperweight was stuck tight to the table. She gripped the paperweight and pulled as hard as she could, but it stayed stuck, like it was part of the table. She glanced around. Miyo and the other nurses were chatting with each other or helping other old folks. Good. Haruko wanted to handle this by herself. Making the paperweight was about the only thing she could still do independently.
On the table was a screwdriver that no one seemed to be using. It had a black plastic handle, a tapered silver length flecked with rust, and a flat head. She picked it up and began to scrape away the dried amber glaze that pooled around the base of the paperweight, sticking it to the table.
Too slow. It was like tunneling out of prison with a teaspoon.
She set the flat head of the screwdriver at the crack where the paperweight met the table. She pressed hard, trying to get the head of the screwdriver in a crack so she could pry up the paperweight. It didn't work. For better leverage, she grasped the paperweight with her left hand, while pushing as hard as she could with the screwdriver in her right hand. Sweat beaded on her forehead, then trickled down, stinging her eyes. She blinked it away. Her wrist and forearm muscles strained. But she kept pushing as hard as she could.
Suddenly the resistance ceased. The screwdriver ripped the paperweight off the table and the flat head stabbed into Haruko's left palm. She dropped the screwdriver and grabbed her wounded hand. The wooden paperweight clattered on the floor. So did the screwdriver. Haruko didn't feel any pain. Maybe it was only a scratch. No, probably not. Blood cascaded down her wrist. She forced herself to peel back her wrinkled fingers and look. Blood oozed from gaping flesh and something white peeked from behind the gore. Bone.
Her left ring finger felt numb. She tapped it with her right hand. Half of her left ring finger had no feeling—the side next to the middle finger.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Miyo was at her side. She grabbed Haruko's wrist and stared at the would, her jaw dropping.
“What have you done?”
“I can't feel my finger.”
Haruko explained to Miyo what had happened.
“Why didn't you use the chopsticks I gave you?” Miyo asked.
“Chopsticks are for food,” Haruko said.
Miyo wheeled Haruko out of the wood shop and down the hallway. “Elevate it,” she said. “You have to elevate your hand to stop the bleeding.”
Haruko lifted her heavy arm up above her. Blood rolled down her forearm, dripped off her elbow, and onto her face. A drop landed in her mouth. She grimaced, but didn't spit it out.
They entered the nurses' station where the old folks were weighed and had their blood pressure checked each morning. Miyo searched through a cabinet.
“I can't feel my finger,” Haruko said again.
Miyo said nothing about Haruko's finger. She just poured rubbing alcohol over the wound. It stung and Haruko winced.
Then Miyo filled a syringe with clear liquid from a vial. “Don't worry,” she said. “I've seen doctors do this plenty of times.” She poked the needle into the wound and injected the liquid.
“I can't feel my finger,” Haruko said yet again.
“That's because I'm giving you a local anesthetic,” Miyo said. “Don't worry. The feeling will come back as soon it wears off.”
“I couldn't feel my finger before the anesthetic”
Miyo threaded a black thread into a needle. Then she began to sew the wound shut. The pain was excruciating. Haruko screamed and pulled her hand away.
“I can feel that,” she said. “You did the anesthetic wrong.”
Miyo smiled and sighed. “You're contradicting yourself. A moment ago you said you couldn't feel anything.” She grasped Haruko's wrist tightly and jabbed the threaded needle into the flesh of her palm. Haruko whimpered silently.
When the stitching was finished, Miyo wrapped gauze around the sealed wound.
Haruko supposed she would never feel with her ring finger again; the nerve was severed. But, like a blind person who's other senses become sharper, Haruko was acutely aware of the other nerves in her body. She wiggled her other fingers, feeling the nerves tingle with pleasure. She wiggled her toes. She danced her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She rolled her eyes in their sockets. She stretched her thighs and raised her shoulders. She was still alive, and her eyes teared up at this happy knowledge.
Miyo placed on a piece of tape to hold the gauze in place. “All done,” she said.
“Wonderful,” Haruko said. She smiled and her facial muscles tingled with pleasure, like limbs stretching after a long sleep. “Now I can put a second coat of glaze on my paperweight.”
Miyo raised her thin eyebrows. “You want to go back in there?” she asked. “Right away? After what just happened?”
Haruko nodded and grinned. “I can't leave a paperweight half finished,” she said.