By Luis Ramos
Lenguas
I once heard that most people don’t take care of themselves like they do a loved one. I don’t know if it’s true, but I’m one of those people, in my 30s, long overdue for a pap smear that I keep putting off because I hate doctors—or rather, nerve-wrackingly afraid of someone scraping the insides of my vagina; but I’m the type of person that won’t go to the doctor until I’m on my last limb. I get it from Grandma; she’s worse, curses doctors for being morons and claims that all the doctors here, meaning in the US, are useless compared to the ones in Mexico. So here I am, taking care of Grandma, helping her take care of another.
We wait anxiously. Grandma tries to comfort Lenguas who pants convulsively. It’s her fault, really. I keep telling her to relax because if she doesn’t, then Lenguas doesn’t. Our visit to the vet clinic has been an eventful day for Lenguas, for me even, and so we both add to this bubble of distress that Lenguas seeps like a sponge.
“Le dices del cansancio—”
“Yes, I know.”
“Y que no quiere comer—”
“I got it.”
I’m tired of Grandma repeating everything she wants me to translate to the doctor.
“Pobrecito Lenguitas, ¿qué tienes, quieres que te quite el bozal?”
“Abuela! Leave it, we’re supposed to leave it on.”
That’s her third attempt at fiddling with the muzzle, wants to take it off, even though she knows perfectly well the doctor won’t see him without it. Can’t really call it a muzzle, it’s more of a cage, but necessary for Lenguas not to reel any objects into his mouth. His tongues are powerful, with minds of their own, like three elephant trunks always dancing in the air. Not like they would ever cause any real damage, they just purple the skin. The doctors are more worried about the spiraling teeth inside his cavernous mouth. I keep saying he, but honestly we don’t know what Lenguas is. We’ve been told about their unique physiology, but in Grandma’s eyes Lenguas has always looked like a he.
The waiting kills me. Another reason I don’t go to doctors, maybe even the main reason. So I stand, walk around the room and glance at Dr. Gillian’s certificates and photos of him holding dogs, cats, and reptiles. But it’s hard to ignore the big one in the center, most likely taken in Malaysia. However, the creature he’s holding is unlike Lenguas, one I’m not familiar with, probably one of the ones that didn’t survive.
“¿Ay, por qué se tardan tanto, mija? ¿Y por qué tienen el aire tan alto? ¿Y si voy por mi sueter?”
Grandma complains about the temperature, wants to grab her sweater from the car. I offer mine instead, because I don’t want Lenguas to start shrieking, especially with all the dogs out there in the lobby who go ballistic with his presence. Just getting him through the front door was a whole situation, a situation I’m already dreading since we’ll have to go through it once more when we leave. Then there is separation anxiety which is on a whole nother level with Lenguas. At least Lenguas was nice to the nurses. He likes women. Hates most men. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have many men in his life. It’s just me, mom, and grandma now.
“¡Lenguas, cálmate!” Grandma tries to calm him down when Dr. Gillian walks in.
I apologize again and again as I hold on to his muzzle and pull back his bulky girth.
“Not to worry,” the doctor says, who kneels and attempts to inch closer to greet Lenguas. Bad idea. Lenguas freaks out, his tongues scale up the wall as if trying to reach the faint shadows in the ceiling for safety, “He’s a nervous one isn’t he. How can I help Lenguas today?”
I begin listing all of his symptoms, but it’s hard because grandma keeps interrupting with more details that she suddenly remembers. I’m annoyed, agitated, hungry because we’ve been here for so long already. I sigh and have to place a hand on grandma’s shoulder for her to not say anything else. The doctor, quiet and stoic, takes a moment to assess. I’m embarrassed now because I know he notices my frustration.
“How are his stress levels?” He finally says, ready at the pen.
“Nothing out of the ordinary I think.”
“Are you keeping up with X1 nutrient intake?”
“Yes.”
“What about his enclosure, his diet? Are you able to follow all of the protocols for keeping a Lumbra?”
“Yes, doctor,” I say, moodier than I wanted it to come out because I know what he’s insinuating. It’s a lot of trouble to take care of a Lumbra, expensive. And I’m sure he’s used to seeing a different type of person when it comes to Lumbra clients, probably Beverly Hills types, not someone like me or grandma who live on the Carrillo strip and had to drive an hour just to get here. Pride gets the better of me and I list the day-to-day details for the doctor, making sure I mention how much went into making Grandma’s home Lumbra proof.
The doctor thinks for a moment and a smile forms behind the mask, “Hola Grandma, mucho gusto.” He says, in his most perfect Spanish, a line he’s practiced well. But it works, and grandma blushes, returning the greeting with a smile she covers with her hand because of her missing tooth.
“Lenguas is Grandma’s companion?” he turns to me.
“Yes,” he scribbles on his notepad.
“If you don’t mind me asking, how long have you had him and how did you come to own a Lumbra?”
“I assure you it was completely legal if that’s what you’re referring to . . .” I reel it back, “About two years. Happened by accident. But we always say that Lenguas found Grandma. When her husband died, Lenguas appeared to us. Then they became inseparable, and by the time the bureau found out—“
“You couldn’t give him back,” he finishes. “I see.”
“They know we have him and they come check up on him every so often but overall they leave us alone. They probably think it’s more troublesome, or maybe even harmful, to separate them two.”
He takes another moment while he finishes his final thought on the notepad.
“How is Grandma’s physical and emotional health now?”
“Grandma? She’s . . . good.”
“Only good?”
I had to pause for a moment, because we hadn’t talked about Grandpa’s death in a while. For that matter, I don’t think we ever talked about it. It happened, and life continued. If it saddened her, I couldn’t tell. She’s a strong woman.
Grandma looks at me confused when I turn to her. I wouldn’t, in a million years, ask Grandma that sort of personal thing. We don’t talk about feelings in our family. But I feel it in my gut that it’s important for Lenguas’s health. So I ask, in Spanish, and Lenguas’s incessant panting is what I hear before Grandma protests.
“¿Y para qué pregunta todo eso, mija? Eso es personal, es mi vida, y no tiene nada que ver con Lenguas—”
“Abuela, es importante para su salud…”
“¿Ay entonces a quién está examinando a mí o al Lenguas. Te dije mija que estos doctores—”
“Is . . . everything okay?” the doctor asks.
“She is asking if this is necessary?”
Grandma looks at the doctor with a tense brow and a mouth with more wrinkles than I’ve ever seen on her. The doctor smiles and I can tell it’s a warm smile by his own wrinkles around his eyes.
“Mi disculpa, mi” the doctor thinks for a second,” how do you say, concern?”
“Preocupación,” I say.
“Mi preocupación es sólo por Lenguas.”
“Bueno, entonces preocúpese de Lenguas, mi vida no tiene nada que ver con todo esto.”
“Okay, okay,” throws his hands up in defeat, “no más hablar de abuela.”
“Y que así se quede doctor.”
After that the questions stop. No more talk about Grandma. The doctor continues with his examination, which was short lived since Lenguas’s tongues come out ferociously and lunge toward the doctor. But he goes through the motions, and prescribes an X1 plant booster, that could maybe amend his fatigue. I know that won’t help, and the doctor knows that I know it’s to merely treat a symptom. But before leaving the clinic, he hands me a poorly printed pamphlet, still warm from the printer and he says, “Miss Cabrera, I want you to read this carefully. My apologies for the printing, it’s still in the works. But it may provide a little more guidance in understanding Lenguas.”
Once we’re in the truck and Lenguas is secured I skim through the pamphlet. But my focus isn’t there, especially since Grandma keeps asking me what it says. But my eye catches a circled phrase: “Hyper Somatic Mimicry.”
“¿Qué es eso?” Grandma asks when she notices the red ink, but I tell her I’d read it and tell her about it later.
So I do my own research on Hyper Somatic Mimicry, because I have trouble understanding all the scientific mumbo jumbo from the pamphlet. The examples are what help me understand; there was a Lumbra that gradually lost its eyesight when a blind man became its companion; an incredible fluctuation of protein and glucose levels in a Lumbra that had a diabetic companion; and even a Lumbra who severed its own tongue when paired with an amputee.
I don’t want to believe that Grandma is sick, that she hasn’t told us she’s sick. For how long? How bad? I want to ask her but I know what she’s like and she’ll deny it anyway. If she’s been suffering, she hasn’t shown it. Just like Great Grandma Maria, who died suddenly, apparently fighting a heart condition she never told anyone about. Grandma always says her mother never tired, and had more energy than anyone in her family until her final moments. Grandma is the same way, not needing help, not wanting help, shy, even ashamed to ask her kids for anything. I know her well. If something was terribly wrong with her, I know that her first thought would be not to be a burden to her children.
But I ask, every so often, subtlety slipping in a question in idle conversation about her health, “¿Cómo estás? How long has it been since you’ve seen your physician?”
“Ah, ese idiota.”
“Abuela, they’re not idiots, es un buen doctor.”
She put up a wall after that, and no talk ever came, until I got mom involved, and told her all about Lenguas and the mimicry stuff. Mom is built differently, she’ll make a scene, where I am polite and respectful, she is mean and accusatory, that is until the arguing devolves into crying and pleading. As per usual, I receive the blunt end of both Mom’s and Grandma’s frustrations. One day it got so heated that I started crying and I made my own plea, “We just want what is best for you. I don’t want to lose you.”
And yet, even with my own supposed powerful moment, I don’t think it was any one person who convinced Grandma to finally see her physician. Lenguas got worse, more exhaustion, less eating, and then a strange secretion oozed from out his cavernous mouth. Grandma could tell he was in agony caused by some phantom pain.
We’re all alike, the Cabreras. Won’t go see the doctor until we’re on our last leg. But when it comes to a loved one, we’ll move the world to make them better.
Grandma had breast cancer, stage 1, with an invasive tumor. She had a tough year, the countless appointments, the mastectomy, the chemo. Convincing her to do chemo took a lot out of Mom and me, and after we argued up a storm, she finally agreed. It saddens me to think how ashamed she felt being a fragile old lady. I did my best to take care of her through those two turbulent years after the chemo. She was so skinny in the end, she died an old lady, not like Great Grandma Maria, who power-walked everywhere until her final days. I don’t like to think of what if situations, but I can’t help it. What if we had done something different. Two years has to be enough.
And Lenguas . . . he died too, a few seconds after Grandma went in a hospital bed. He mimicked her every breath until it was no more. But mimicry isn’t perfect, not even for a Lumbra. Death isn’t really death. A few minutes later he woke up, calm, sad, different and pensive, not all there. I took him home with me when I inherited Grandma’s house, and on occasion, I would come home from work to find him sitting on Grandma’s old couch, with the tv on, tuned to a random Spanish channel. Sometimes I would find the kitchen a mess, like he was trying to cook dinner; the vacuum in the middle of the carpet, unplugged and all of the photos of Grandpa knocked from the walls. She was there still, like a zombie trying to mimic life. I couldn’t live like that, not in that house, with a real ghost of Grandma. So I called the bureau and gave him back. Seeing Grandma’s life fade away wasn’t as hard as letting go of Lenguas.
Luis F. Ramos earned his degree in English Literature from San Francisco State University and his master’s in Book Publishing from Portland State University. He currently works in the publishing industry as a book specialist, assisting authors with designing and marketing their books. He has always been a student of literature, pop culture, and science fiction. In his early years, he developed a passion for futuristic tales after discovering the works of Arthur C. Clarke. This passion is reflected in his short stories, which often incorporate science fiction and speculative elements, many of which also highlight his Mexican heritage. Growing up in Oxnard, CA, he was raised by his immigrant mother, who spent her entire life picking strawberries. In many ways, through his writing, Luis tries to honor those hard-working people whose contributions to society often go unrecognized.