Core Strength

by Zary Fekete

She told me car rides helped.

Something to do with how her center of gravity shifted when the car rounded corners; her spine had to compensate.

“It’s good for me. Makes my abs work.” She smiled. “I wish someone could drive me more often.”
The words were plain…simple. The idea that something I do every day could be a coveted kind of exercise.

I looked at her in her chair and thought about all the other ways she had fought to stay upright.

*****

When I arrived at the nursing home that morning, the nurses were softly checking in on patients just after lunch. Her room was at the end of one of the halls, and she had a window that looked out onto a small patch of garden…graying now in the Minnesota November air. She was waiting for me, her mechanical chair halfway out of her room, like she was eager to leave but aware she was there to stay. Her small body was perched on the leather seat.

The last time I saw her was high school. Back then, I remember her vaguely, on the periphery…off to the side of group photos where her chair could fit without bumping up against people. The rest of us were oblivious to how difficult it was for her to simply exist among the rest of us who didn’t use wheelchairs. I’m sure I thought of her as a symbol rather than a person. She was “different” which to me meant she was somehow unreachable. I couldn’t imagine what it cost her to wheel through those hallways each morning to English class.

Now, twenty years later, she greeted me with measured brightness, her voice had that pinched, reedy tone of someone used to conserving air. But she was sharp and even a bit mischievous.

“You have some gray,” she said, laughing. “But then, I do too.”

*****

She’d been in the nursing home for the past two months. Before that she had lived in Minneapolis and was cared for by her sons. Recently she experienced some lung issues and needed a more full-time care.

“What about your husband?” I asked.

Her eyes stared at the ceiling. “He’s gone, I think. I mean, I haven’t seen him in years.”

She described her workout routines, speeding down the hallways as fast the chair would go and then slamming on the brake, forcing her muscles to tighten. “But I have to be careful,” she said. “If I stop too fast my neck can’t keep my head upright and it will tip back. Then fluid starts to gather here.” She gestured toward the back of her skull. “Not worth the trip to the hospital.”

Her neck fascinated me. It was slender and marvelously straight, like a flower stem. It carried her head precisely and she swiveled it with movements I usually associated with ballet dancers. She didn’t turn farther than she needed to, often using her eyes to gesture when the tendons couldn’t manage the feat. I held my breath when she turned.

Her arms were thin. She rested them neatly in her lap, her wrists compensating for limited movement. Her fingers were expressive and specific. She looked impossibly light, like a twig that might splinter of touched too directly. But I could see a curled strength in her…a kind of wiry power learned from years of necessity and repetition.

“I really need someone to help me online,” she said. “I used to have a blog where I put my poetry, but I can’t get into it anymore. I wish someone could post things for me…handle the little stuff.” She said it without self-pity.

I said something in agreement, though I felt the hollowness of it. The way she described her simple needs made me realize how often the smallest motions…typing, pointing, turning one’s head…had been invisible to me until now. Things that make a life possible.

*****

She was funny, dry and self-deprecating. But below it I heard the tired exhaustion of someone who has managed her own body like a delicate instrument for too long.

She told me how back in high school she once tried to wheel herself into the auditorium to see the fall musical. I remembered that night. I was in the middle of a row, wedged between two friends. We watched the cast sing “Hello, Dolly” and then we stood and applauded at the end. I realized those were all things she couldn’t do.

I thought of her in high school, her chair parked at the edge of the dance floor during the prom. The rest of us were loud and young, our bodies careless with freedom. She must have been receiving those same signals then too…the body calling her to move, to join. But the invitation had nowhere to go.

“How does it feel to be you?” I asked.

She paused. “Tired,” she said finally. “But it’s not what you’re thinking. People visit me and leave. Later they write me and say how much their being with me gave to them. They felt their lives were enriched by watching me.”

I nodded, feeling guilty. Part of me knew exactly what she meant. But there was another part.

The usual explanation people gave…that time with her made them grateful for their own abilities…didn’t ring true for me. Sitting beside her, I didn’t feel fortunate; I felt instructed. There was something unmistakably deliberate in the way she took in the world, as if her stillness had widened her field of vision rather than narrowed it. While the rest of us hurry past our own lives, mistaking motion for meaning, she seemed anchored in a kind of attention I rarely practice. She wasn’t teaching me to be thankful for what I had. She was showing me what I had been missing. Her limits hadn’t reduced her life; they had concentrated it, distilled it into something potent enough to spill over into the people who slowed down long enough to sit with her.

We sat in silence long enough for me to notice the sound of her breathing…a measured rhythm, steady and patient. Her whole body seemed to hum faintly with effort.

“Do you look forward to Heaven?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I’m happy here.”

*****

Outside, I sat in my car for a while before turning the key. I sat in the seat without effort; I moved, and the world shifted around me. I thought of her core muscles…how they worked in silence, holding her upright against the slow gravity of years.

Is it ok to write these things about her?

I should ask.

Maybe I’ll send this to her.

*****

I did.

She just wrote back. Said the only thing she’d add is that the world never let her follow her own speed.

She’s done with sitting.

She wants to go for a drive.

BIO: Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary and currently lives in Tokyo. He has a debut novella Words on the Page out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addiction out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete Bluesky:zaryfekete.bsky.social