It took an hour for her to die.
When she died, she made a rasping, rattling sound and then she shat herself. I could smell it.
It was all I could smell, as I sat there in the little apartment, six years old, hot as hell outside and stuffy inside. I opened the windows and watched the Hasids walk past. I felt like I should do something for the old lady, but I didn’t know what.
I formulated a plan. I would go outside and bring in some grown-up to take care of the old lady. I would do the grocery shopping and eat sandwiches until I was twelve, at which point I would be grown up and I would get a job fixing televisions.
I marched into my room and changed into my best clothes, the little Alice-blue dress I wore to dinner on Sundays, and I brushed my hair and put on my socks with the blue pom-poms at the ankles, and found my shoes in the hall closet. But it had been three years since I’d last worn the shoes, and I could barely fit three toes in them. The old lady’s shoes were so big I could fit both feet in either one.
I took off my socks—sometimes I’d seen kids going by barefoot outside, but never in just socks—and reached for the doorknob. I touched it.
I stopped.
I turned around again.
There was a stain forming under Auntie, piss and shit and death-juice, and as I looked at her, I had a firm sense that it wouldn’t be right to bring people up to her apartment with her like this. I’d seen dead people on TV. They were propped up on pillows, in clean hospital nighties, with rouged cheeks. I didn’t know how far I could get, but I thought I owed it to her to try.
I figured that it was better than going outside.