The Caregiver Who Poisoned My Mother's Recovery

My distant aunt, the one who prayed and kept a strict devout diet and claimed she saved all living things by setting them free, poured my mother's imported targeted medication straight into the river. Two thousand dollars a box.

She said Western medicine was killing-sin brewed from the lives of living things, and only by tossing it into the river to feed the fish and set them free could she buy my mother a few more days of her ruined life.

1

The moment I got home, I smelled it — the thin, watery reek of plain boiled cabbage.

Aunt Loretta Lambert sat cross-legged on the couch, working a string of plastic prayer beads worn smooth and shiny between her fingers, muttering under her breath.

On the dining table sat two bowls of plain boiled cabbage, not even a speck of oil on the surface, and beside them, a half-eaten dry roll.

I frowned. "Aunt Loretta, where's my mom?"

She wore her usual look of pious sorrow and answered in that slow, gentle voice. "Your mother's lying down in the bedroom."

"She's just finished clearing away her karma. She can't move around. She needs to rest quietly."

My frown deepened.

My mother had just had her entire stomach removed in surgery last week for gastric cancer. She'd been home three days. The doctor had said it over and over — small frequent meals, high-quality protein. When had any of that turned into "clearing away karma"?

I went straight to the bedroom. My mother was propped against the headboard, her face pale. When she saw me come in, she said weakly, "Gloria Henson, you're home from work."

"Mom, how are you feeling? Did you drink the protein powder I bought you?" I reached out and touched her forehead. No fever, at least.

Before my mother could answer, Aunt Loretta lifted the door curtain and followed me in.

Her face full of compassion, she said, "That industrial protein powder is ground from dead cows and dead sheep, carrying killing-sin all through it. Drink that down, and the cancer cells will race through her blood and grow even faster."

I said coldly, "Aunt Loretta, that's medical protein powder prescribed by a senior specialist at a top hospital. It's made specifically to give post-surgery patients their nutrition."

She curled her lip in contempt. "You young people, you swallow everything Western medicine tells you. Western medicine only treats the symptom, never the root."

"Why do people get sick? It's the karma called down from past lives and this one."

"Clear the karma, and the sickness heals on its own."

"Look at the old devotees up on the mountain. A lifetime of vegetables and prayer, and every one of them lives to eighty, ninety, free of sickness and disaster."

My chest ached with anger.

I turned and glanced at the nightstand. The protein powder canister I'd only opened yesterday was gone.

I spun around and rushed into the kitchen, pulled open the fridge. It was empty.

The sea cucumber I'd asked someone to bring back from the coast, the fresh sea bass I'd bought that morning, the sliced beef tenderloin, along with the two boxes of blood-building nutritional protein bars — every last thing was gone.

My whole face darkened. "Where's the meat and the supplements from the fridge?"

Aunt Loretta answered as if it were nothing. "I threw it all in the trash bin downstairs."

"Those things kill living creatures. Keeping them in the house brings bad luck and disturbs your mother's peace."

"I made your mother cabbage soup. Cleans out the gut, flushes the toxins. Far better than that meat and fish you bought."

I lost it. "What gives you the right to throw out our things?!"

"That cost over a thousand dollars. That was the lifesaving food to build my mom's body back up after surgery!"

Her eyes went red in an instant, her whole face wounded. "I know I came from the countryside. No education. Nobody listens when I speak."

"But your aunt only wants what's good for your mother. Truly."

"What's money next to a life? If your mother eats that meat and fish and her karma gets worse and she's taken from us, no amount of money will buy her back!"

Right then, my father came home.

He heard us arguing the second he stepped through the door and hurried over to smooth things down. "What's going on here? Home from work and already fighting? You're not afraid of startling your mother?"

I reported it, furious. "Dad, Aunt Loretta threw out all the supplements and meat in the fridge!"

"Mom just had two-thirds of her stomach cut out. She has to get protein. Loretta's been feeding her plain boiled cabbage every single day. Isn't that just hurting her?"

Before my father could even start talking me down, the tears were sliding down Aunt Loretta's face.

She choked out through her grievance, "Toby Henson, it's my fault. I stuck my nose where it didn't belong."

"I'll pack my things and go back to the countryside right now, so I stop being a nuisance here and holding up my sister's recovery."

My father rushed to stop her. "Now, now, Loretta, talk like that and you're treating us like strangers!"

Then he turned to me, frowning. "Gloria, is that any way to talk?"

"Your aunt came all this way to look after your mother, won't take a cent in wages, up before dawn and busy till dark every day, and this is the attitude you give her?"

I raised my voice. "This is her taking care of Mom — throwing out the medicine that could save her life?"

My father waved a hand, speaking in the tone of someone who'd seen it all. "Eating vegetables, keeping things light and simple, that's good for you too. Easy on the stomach."

"Your aunt's eaten vegetarian for decades. She's tougher than any of us."

"The old folks always said eating vegetarian builds up good virtue. How can that be wrong?"

"All right, all right, they're thrown out, they're thrown out. I'll just go buy more tomorrow."

"That's enough out of both of you. Let your mother get her rest."

Aunt Loretta kept her head down, wiping her tears, as though she'd suffered some enormous wrong.

She was my mother's distant cousin, from a remote mountain hollow back home. Word was she'd prayed and kept her devout diet since she was small, had barely any schooling, and had lived a hard, bare life.

For my mother's surgery, my father had gone out of his way to have relatives track her down, saying she was kind and careful, ten times more reliable than a caregiver you paid for from an agency.

Fine. Forget it.

Her ideas were just old-fashioned. Her heart was in the right place.

Worst case, I'd cook my mother a nourishing meal myself after work every day and watch her eat it down, bite by bite.

I drew a deep breath, turned, and went back to the bedroom to pour my mother some warm water, letting the argument drop.

But I could never have imagined it — later she would nearly cost my mother her life.