Seven Stops Before Morning

This is an original story, written for this site. It is fiction, not a teaching or a traditional account. Every person in it is invented.

Rosalie Bautista worked nights at a long-term care home in the west end of Toronto: seven in the evening to seven in the morning, three nights on, then however many off the rota allowed. She had done it for six years, and mostly she liked it. At night the building was quiet enough that you could hear who needed you.

She was forty-one, a registered practical nurse from Batangas in the Philippines, with a son in grade eleven who slept while she worked and was at school while she slept. They left each other notes on the fridge.

Three in the morning

The new resident on the second floor came in September. Her chart said Yudon Tsering, ninety-one, born in eastern Tibet, many years in a refugee settlement in India, in Canada since her son brought her over. Heart failure. Some confusion at night.

On the admission form, under preferred name, her son had written Ama-la. Ama is the Tibetan word for mother, and -la is a small syllable added to a name or title to show respect. Under language he had written: Tibetan, and a little English, mostly please and no.

Around three each night the floor went still. The call bells stopped, the hum of the ice machine was the loudest thing in the hall, and Rosalie did her rounds with a penlight cupped in her hand.

Ama-la was always awake. Rosalie would find her sitting up, her small hands flat on the blanket, saying something under her breath, fast and level, the way a person counts change.

It was always the same short run of words, and for each part of it one finger tapped the blanket. Seven taps, a pause, a few quicker words, then back to the beginning.

One night in October the tapping stopped at the fourth. Ama-la frowned at her hand as though it had done something wrong. She started again from the top and stopped in the same place. Her breathing quickened. She looked up at Rosalie and said, very clearly, in English: "I lose it."

Ask her

The next evening Rosalie caught the son, Karma, in the car park as he was leaving. He told her it was the Seven-Line Prayer, a short prayer to Guru Rinpoche, the teacher Tibetans remember for helping Buddhism take root in their country in the eighth century. His mother had said it every day of his life.

"Lately she forgets where she is in it," he said. "Then she gets frightened. We don't know what to do for her at night."

Rosalie asked whether it would be all right if she learned it. He looked surprised, then pleased. "Ask her," he said. "She'll teach you. But she taught all of us, and she won't let you hurry."

The first line

That night at three Rosalie pulled the chair close and asked. Ama-la studied her for a long moment. Then she said the first line once, slowly, and pointed at Rosalie's mouth.

It begins Orgyen, the name of the land Guru Rinpoche came from, and places it to the north-west. Rosalie said it badly. Ama-la said it again. By the time a call bell rang down the hall, Rosalie had it, roughly, and Ama-la lay back and closed her eyes.

At seven Rosalie caught the bus outside the home. From that stop to the subway station there were seven stops. She had never counted them before.

At each one, when the doors folded open and the cold came in, she said the line under her breath. Seven stops, one line, seven times. Nobody noticed. On the early bus nobody notices anything.

Again first

Ama-la would not be hurried. When Rosalie asked for the second line the following night, she was told, "Again first." So she said the first again, and again the night after. It was a week before she was given the second, beginning Pema gesar, which places him in the heart of a lotus.

The third, beginning Yatsen, speaks of something marvellous he attained. It took nearly two weeks, because Ama-la had bad nights when she did not know Rosalie at all. On those nights they practised nothing. Rosalie checked her breathing, helped her to the bathroom, and sat with her until she slept.

The fourth line gives his name, Pema Jungne, born of a lotus. It was the line where Ama-la always lost her place. The night Rosalie said it back without a mistake, Ama-la tapped four times on the blanket and laughed. Rosalie had not heard her laugh before.

On the bus the lines came round with the route. With four lines and seven stops she said the first four, then began again, so that a different line fell on each stop every morning. She found she liked that. It felt like the bus itself, going round.

First snow

The fifth line came with the first snow, early in December. Ama-la could not settle, so Rosalie wheeled her to the window at the end of the corridor, where the snow was coming down slantwise through the light of the streetlamp.

The line begins Khor du and describes the company gathered around him, many dakinis, which in Tibetan tradition are female figures of wisdom. Ama-la said it watching the snow, and Rosalie said it after her, and for a while neither of them said anything else.

The sixth, beginning Khye kyi, is the wish of the one praying to follow after him. The seventh, beginning Jingyi, asks him to come and give his blessing. After it comes a short mantra, a string of sacred syllables, which Ama-la always said more slowly, as if setting something down.

By Christmas Rosalie had all seven. Seven lines, seven stops.

She did not know exactly what she thought about it. She had grown up in Batangas with her grandmother's rosary, and she still went to Mass at Christmas with her son. She did not feel she was choosing between anything. She was learning something a woman needed held for her at three in the morning, and she learned it the way she had once learned drug doses: by saying it until her mouth knew it.

Holding the lines

Now, when Ama-la stopped at the fourth tap and her breath began to quicken, Rosalie quietly said the next line, and Ama-la took it from her and went on.

Some nights that was enough, and she lay back down. Some nights it was not, and Rosalie called the doctor on call and stayed until the medicine worked. In the notes she wrote "resident restless 0300, settled with reassurance", which was true, and was not everything.

On her days off she woke at three in the afternoon to a low winter sun and found the lines already going in her head, like a song you wake up with. She let them go.

February

Ama-la died on a Tuesday afternoon in February, in her sleep, with Karma and his daughter beside her. Rosalie was asleep on the other side of the city and did not know until she came in at seven. The charge nurse told her at the desk, gently, before report.

The room had been cleaned. The bed was made up tight with a fresh blanket, the way they always are, ready for whoever comes next. On the windowsill Karma had left a khata, the white scarf Tibetans offer to greet someone, to thank them, and to say goodbye. Tucked into its folds was a card: Thank you for holding her lines.

She worked the night through. There were nineteen other people on the floor, and they needed what they always needed. At three the floor went quiet. Nobody was awake in Ama-la's room. Rosalie stood in the doorway for a minute, and then went to answer a bell.

Seven stops

At seven she stood at the stop in the falling snow with the khata folded inside her coat.

When the bus came she took her usual seat by the window. At the first stop, as the doors folded open, she said the first line. At the second stop, the second. She did not cry until about the fifth, and then not much. At the seventh, the station, she said the last line, the one that asks him to come, and got off with everyone else and went down the stairs.

She still says it, most mornings after a night shift. Not for anything in particular. The bus is as late as ever and the nights are as long. It is only that the ride home now has seven stops in it that mean something, and somewhere a small, firm voice that says, whenever she rushes, "Slowly."