Maybe words are holy

February 17, 2012. Sanitized dew forms puddles on palms, and I rub my hands together, to show her. Devi runs hers together questionably, circles of whiskered lines, and I take her fingers in mine. The boil on the bottom left corner of her mouth juts out as she objects, takes her hand away, and I do not comfort, only pull her trembling arm back, my gloved hand impersonal and moist. 
I hold her fingertip, wipe the tip dry, and punch the needle into the calloused skin. She cries, and the bright room locks her sounds so all turn, and I squeeze the tip harder, the drop of blood forming, swelling, reflecting windows and eyes widening and tearing, and I catch the moment, the blood, in my dark blue reader, and I unhook my hand, watch hers fall, waiting for the hourglass to stop spinning, waiting for her hatred to drain. 
She squeezes the blood farther, red crossing down her hand as it reaches sanitized pools and drips quicker, and Sister Maria shakes her shoulders, shames her, orders Devi to the cracked sink where Lady Macbeth wipes clean. 
I write the number in silver metallic, the date, the time, her 327. I raise my hand above my head. High, I say, and she is embarrassed, turns her head and looks at the tiled floor, her boil lowering, and I say, no more sugar. Sister translates. I say, ok, acha, done, and still she standwatt racing my gloved hands through the air. 
She watches, they all watch, as I prepare the next. Urge the tiny needle into a hole on the tip. Extract the needle. Place into a glove, to be discarded among spoiled cabbage and cookie wrappers tomorrow evening, the cows witness and the peacocks too but none other. Replace the reader. Spray Ranjeet Kaur. Repeat again. 
The courtyard reflects the halfhearted sun, catches warm breeze, reverberates screams too. Alyssa holds her torso and she thrashes, an animal past tipping. Terri binds her arm, I duck teeth and bites and kicks and cut, cut, the sound my goal. My nail clippers flashing, pieces of dirty fingernails falling or flying, up my sleeve, in her hair, but I am fastest, and so I click again, once more, my promise, one more. Rohima, her two yellow teeth pincers in an open mouth, bends her neck, about to sink into my tense arm, and I rip away.
She bites herself instead.
The toes are easier, knees bend at odd angles, and she screams, AMA, AMA, mother, mother, and I think of mothers, only briefly, a fleeting second of flashing comfort and anger, before I spin from her thrash at my stomach. 
I finish, and we stand, the yells unnoticed as I shakily pour fingernail clipping caught in dimpled newspaper into a rusty square garbage bin, the semicircles falling into a banana peel, an unripe orange, a crumbled cracker. 
I lift Tuja Ama from the tangerine metal bench, my hands cupped under her armpits, around her shoulders, her stomach, where she won't fall, but I feel her collapsing as we get closer. I call for help, I cannot support, but no one comes, and so I boost myself, haul her frail body to the wheelchair. I lift her up again, grasping at the thin grey pattern of her dress, bring it up farther, farther. I push the bedpan with the toe of my ruined shoe under the wheelchair, and back away, three feet, my yard of respectful distance. She pees into the metal through the hole in the chair, some streams missing, and gliding instead around the tiled floor, snaking in pale yellow towards me, spraying my ankles, and I make note for next time.
I haul her body up again, slide the dress down, her knees covered again, and I measure my steps to hers. 
My work is ugly, my shoes soiled and stained and my fears evaporated. I learn to cut hair, lice tripping down the purple sheet I drape over swollen necks and back, and bald spots less numerous. I bathe, and I comfort, I see naked woman, stomachs caving in folds ands hands crippled, breasts downturned and skin soapy and dripping, and I do not feel disgust. 
My last week is ahead, my goodbyes stuck in my throat, and I pour late hours into vapid reading and chatter, bowls of fruit and trips to markets and cafes and tense streets where bombing threats hang dangled.
I promise to teach blood pressure readings, promise to write emails and books and guides, promise to promises to promise to create fire, Prometheus my vision. I promise to change, promise to not ask for change, promise to Ama to return tomorrow, promise her even though she cannot understand, promise my love, and she cannot understand, but somehow, my promises ring, my fire abounds.