The Flea
The Flea is an excerpt from my medical memoir, which is a work in progress. This is creative non fiction. It is based on real life events. All names have been changed to protect the identity of all individuals involved.
Chapter 1
North Yorkshire
May 2013
The flea that bit me. It was a freak incident. I had booked a four-night stay at a Benedictine Monastery in North Yorkshire. The aim of the break was to give myself time out to grieve and rest, after the death of my late mother. I had once found refuge at a Franciscan Friary in Southern Indiana, USA. It was during a long hot summer, back in 2002, when I spent three months, writing my first book. It was when I was living and working in San Francisco as a dance teacher. I had taken a writing course in the vibrant Mission district. I had become spellbound by the power of writing.
The Friary
I had the summer months off from teaching. I sublet my room in the Lower Haight, and travelled by Greyhound Bus across America to stay at an Artist’s Colony near Kentucky, Indiana. It was a beautiful place, surrounded by acres of woodland and wildlife sanctuaries. I wrote in a sunny room by day, and when the sweltering heat mellowed, I spent the evenings, painting the fencing in the garden, to earn my keep. The Artist’s Colony was a place where writers stayed to work on projects, and it was situated on the grounds of the Friary. I had wonderful memories of sleeping in a plush bed with fluffy pillows, taking long walks through rolling woodlands where deer grazed, and having great chats with the Brothers and Fathers who dined with us at meal times.
A Retreat
2013– Life had not been kind. I was living back in England, rehabilitating from an injury. My mother, who I had had a complex relationship with, had recently passed away. I dreamed of my time in Kentucky, but I could not afford a Trans-Atlantic flight, so I sought out a similar place of sanctuary in England. I found a monastery in North Yorkshire. They offered room and board on a sliding scale for people on a reduced income, to come and enjoy the beautiful grounds and attend services if they wished. The rooms looked airy and clean in the brochure. No-where could replicate staying at The Franciscan Friary, but I hoped that I would find some tranquillity there.
The Monastery
The Monastery was situated on the outskirts of an affluent village in Ryedale. It was surrounded by sloping hills, and The Vale of Gilling was in the distance. It was home to a community of sixty monks who sought God according to the Rule of Benedict. The air was gentle and the gardens were awash with magnificent bluebells in full bloom, that spring afternoon, when my taxi pulled in to the grounds. I headed down to the Abbey to check in. It was a golden looking stone church with a huge steeple. I was greeted by a well-spoken woman, who explained that the reception was closing.
She walked me up a windy track to the residence where guests stayed, a stone’s throw from the Abbey. We passed a brown Hare eating grass shoots, but he dashed away through the trees as soon as he saw us. She led me into my bedroom. It was spacious and light and looked out onto orchards of apple trees. I could hear the bells from the Abbey, calling the monks for evening prayer. The woman wished me a pleasant stay and handed me the keys. My body slumped. I opened a window. A waft of medicinal scented breeze blew in. It was quiet, no human noise within earshot, only the chatter of birdsong and the brief rustle of wind.
The Bed
The double bed in the centre of the room was enticing. It had a brass head board and a bronze-coloured bedspread on top. My eyes were weighed down with grey bags. My body was so stiff, that it felt like I was carrying pockets of lead in my arms. I lay on the bed. The bedspread felt rough on my bare legs. I threw it off, and rested on the pink blankets instead. They were woollen blankets, the kind my mother used to store in the airing cupboard, and brought out once a year, when it was icy cold.
I closed my eyes and listened to the early evening tweet of the blackbirds. My stomach was rumbling, but I had missed the evening meal, so I pulled out a Whisper Bar from my rucksack and chewed on it, trying to make each bite last as long as I could. I felt ready for bed, so I slipped on my pyjamas, and tucked myself in under the sheet and blankets. I nestled into the bed, ready for a good night’s sleep.
Itchy Sheets
The sheets were scratchy. My skin began to itch. It did not feel like I was getting into a newly changed bed. The pillowcase smelt musky. It did not have that starchy feel and fresh aroma that linen has when it is new out of the laundry. I scratched my arms with my fingernails, and the backs of my calves with my feet, but nothing could satiate the itch.
The reception was closed for the night. There was nobody I could report the itchy sheets to. I considered sleeping on the bare mattress or should I sleep al fresco on the balcony? The thought crossed my mind, but catching a cold was a worse scenario than sleeping in an itchy bed. I closed my eyes, hoping that it would not be long until I would fall asleep. Little did I know, that what was about to happen was to change the course of my life indefinitely, and to throw me into a cyclone of ill-health and tragedy.
My Mother
I slowed my breath, and tried to feel the numbed emotion bubbling beneath my skin. My grief for my dead mother felt like a block of ice wedged between my breasts. The images of her just before she died were haunting. The memories of her lying in her hospital bed, emaciated, wearing a blue NHS gown, still made me shudder.
She had a hard bump around her stomach. It reminded me of the stomachs that the starving Ethiopians had during the famine in the 1980’s. The smell of my mum was heart-breaking. She had always been spotlessly clean. Growing up, her morning routine dominated our morning structure – her Radox filled bath bang on 7.00am, while her transistor radio blasted out LBC. Once dressed, she always smelt of Vitamin E cream and D’Issey Miyake perfume. That last day when I saw my mum. She was ill and gaunt and a stench of faeces wafted from her bed. She explained, that it was her stoma, that had been leaking.
Her Last Words
Her hair had not been washed for days. I asked the nurses to wash her hair, but I never found out if they did. I did not see my mother again. She was as spiky and restless as she had always been, but when I bent down to kiss her soft cheek, her final words were words that I clutched onto, like a child who clasps her beloved teddy that has lost most of its stuffing due to age.
‘You still smell the same…’ she croaked.
‘Smell the same as what, Mum? I don’t wear Chanel perfume anymore?’
‘No silly!’ she laughed. ‘You still smell exactly the same as when you were born.’
The hatred between us faded as fast as her life was ending. I wanted to calm the tremble in her voice, the day she arrived at the Marie Curie Hospice. I couldn’t. ‘Why am I here?’ she asked me on the phone. She sounded like a frightened child. ‘I thought I was going home…’
I had not seen my mother for the seven years before she died. That visit in hospital was the first and last time that I saw her. Due to her alcoholism and abusive behaviour, I had severed ties with my mum when I turned thirty years old. We had communicated since the severance, by letter only. The difficult decision to walk away from my mother was an act of self preservation and protection, but I knew that my decision had broken her heart.
‘Sorry for what I have done,’ I said.
‘I understand why you did it,’ she replied with a raspy voice. ‘Time would have passed anyway.’
That was enough. Her words echoed some kind of acceptance.
The Bite
It was around 9.00pm. I was still awake. My eyes were following the movement of the shadows, which were dancing on the walls. My flesh was itching. I looked down. I noticed three bites on my arms, and one on my stomach. They looked like flea bites. They were pink and inflamed. I thought about happier times to distract my attention away from the itchy bedding and my bites. I recalled wonderful days living on the Northern Californian coast, watching surfers cruise the waves on Ocean beach.
Out of the blue, something flew from my pillow. I think it was a flea. It bit me in my left eye. I felt a bump clinch my lower eyelid. I ran my finger along my eyelid, to make sure that there was nothing in my eye, but whatever it was that had bitten me and flown away. The lump felt gnarly. It was painful to blink. I tried to diffuse my anger. I had paid to come for a retreat to rest, but I was lying in a dirty bed, being bitten by fleas. This was not the respite that I had hoped for.
The Next Morning
The early morning sun, cutting through the thick orange curtain, woke me up at around 6.00am. The quiet was golden and the taste of chocolate from the night before repeated in my mouth. I could feel the bump, pinching my eyelid. There were more bites on my arms and my legs. I got a flashback to when I went backpacking around India with my boyfriend, when I was nineteen years old. After three months exploring Himachal Pradesh together, he went trekking in Ladakh for four weeks, while I travelled down to Goa and Karnataka with a friend.
We had agreed to meet up four weeks later outside McDonalds in Connaught Place, Delhi. En-route to meet him in Delhi, I stayed overnight in a hostel in Bombay. I slept on a top bunk in a dormitory, and had made sure to sleep on top of my rolling mat. Woken to the sound of Chaiwallahs the next morning, I was covered from head to toe in red bites. I had been eaten alive by bed bugs in the night. Our first night back together in Delhi, my boyfriend and I stayed in a hotel in Paharganj, where he poured soothing trickles of Calamine lotion over my sore skin before making love to me. We travelled onwards to Rajasthan. I was plastered in that pink lotion for weeks, scratching my way around the colourful continent.
The Chambermaids
I studied my face in the mirror. My eyelid was red and sagging. My body felt sore. I questioned whether I should leave for home or stay, and see a doctor when I got home. A little while later, I heard muffled waves of female camaraderie and laughter coming through my wall. I put on some clothes and went out to see who it was. Next to my bedroom was a common room, the type you find in university halls of residences. It smelt of faded disinfectant and powdered chicken soup. Sitting around a table, drinking tea, were three chambermaids. They wore blue short-sleeved aertex shirts and matching hair nets. They looked up in unison when I walked in. A look of disapproval shot across their faces, like I had interrupted something important.
‘The sheets…’ I said. ‘They are not clean. Please can you change them immediately, I have been bitten.’
I held out my arms to show them the flea bites. Their heads turned to one another. ‘I’m sure that the sheets were changed,’ one of the ladies said, gazing up at me. Her voice was faint. ‘But we’ll change them for you this morning if you want.’
‘Do you always change the bedding when a guest leaves?’ I asked. They had gone back to dunking their Digestive biscuits in their tea. I felt my cheeks redden. I raised my voice. ‘Do you always change the bedding?’ I repeated.
‘Yes, of course we do,’ one of them, replied, looking at me momentarily, and then dipping her head back down.
‘Well, I think you missed my bed,’ I snapped, before going back into my bedroom and slamming the door shut behind me.
I heard no more laughter. Only the sound of scraping chairs, and then they scuttled.
Breakfast
I headed down to the Abbey for my breakfast. The sky was belting blue. Sheep grazed in the distant fields, and Bumblebees hovered around the flower beds. The lady who had greeted me the evening before, was typing at her desk when I walked into reception. She was wearing a red dress and her hair was pushed back with a diamante headband.
‘Is everything OK with your room?’ she asked politely.
‘The bed is not clean. I have been bitten by fleas.’ I pulled up my sleeve and showed her my bitten arm.
The lady gulped. She picked up the phone, and punched in the digits with her finger. Change the sheets immediately, I heard her say in a grave tone. After a fry up, toast, and a pot of tea, I returned to my room to find an army of cleaners, stripping the bed and cleaning the room, using dusters and spray liquids. My room smelt of citrus fruits. The sheets were stiff and smelt of lemons. I decided to spend the remaining three days at the monastery, but it was not a happy stay. My body was in pain. My flea-bitten flesh was inflamed and sore.
It is difficult to believe that a flea bite to my eyelid could unfold into a decade-long tragedy. But it did.
The flea that bit me. This is how my facial pain began.
A boy with swollen eye from insect bite.
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