Mom doesn’t look at either of us. And then slowly her head turns and twists until she’s looking up at the ceiling and this noise like a screaming child comes from her mouth, and the next thing I do is say “Mumma?” wondering what the hell she’s doing. But then she goes straighter and straighter in the chair, like she’s wood, a two-by-four leaning against it, and I rush around the table and hold her. I say, “Mumma? Mumma? What’s wrong?” She doesn’t say anything, and her arms are tightening, curling up toward her throat. She’s convulsing. I yell to the staff, tell them to help. Meryl’s standing there, arms crossed, watching. She rolls her eyes—rolls her eyes! Fucking bitch.

The staff run over. One staff woman tells Meryl to go in the TV room. She does. Then the staff woman goes outside, tells the people under the gazebo to stay outside, that there is a problem. They all do. The staff woman with the wide hips and small head is on the other side of my mother, helping me hold her. Hold her in place.

The other staff woman is on the phone with 911.

“She’s having a seizure,” the small-headed woman says to the other on the phone.

My mother is shaking, frothing from the mouth, spitting. I watch the spit land on the small woman’s face. I think my mother is choking.

“How long?” the woman on the phone says.

“About a minute long,” the small-headed woman says. “She’s coming out now.”

My mother’s breathing is slowing, catching.

I’m holding on. My mother is loosening, struggling to sit up as if it were the first time she ever rose, ever used her muscles. I’m rubbing her back, and I’m thinking about the cigarettes and the voice mails. The voice mails about the cigarettes she always wants. Right then I tell myself I will always bring her cigarettes; right then I tell myself I’ll watch that movie with Adam Sandler.

“Tell them she’s out of her clonazepam,” the small-headed woman says. “That could be why. A lack of benzos. And she hasn’t slept in three days.”

I’m rubbing my mother’s back. But she has Valium, I think. She told me she has Valium. Different, but a benzo. Why doesn’t she tell 911 about the Valium?

My mother is sitting, and I am holding her, rubbing her back. She looks at me, tries to speak. But she can’t. She can’t find coherence. Her sentences are mumbled.

A puddle is under the chair.

“Who who who,” my mother is saying. It’s coming, what she wants to say. Piece by piece, she swashes onshore.

She’s looking at me. “Who who you?”

“I’m your son,” I say.

She’s scared, is unsure what I tell her.