by Todd Johnson
“I don’t think I’ve got time right now.”
“Well come on back anytime you want. I don’t ever close.”
“I couldn’t find my way here if I wanted to.”
Lorraine is talking, but her voice sounds like it’s in a tunnel. “Now you know I take you everywhere you need to go. You’re not gon get lost in here. No need to want to stay in your room all the time.”
“Where did you say we are?”
The waitress is walking to the kitchen. “It’s only a crossroads. There hasn’t been a town here for a long time, and I feel like I’ve been here forever.”
She picks up a tray and goes through swinging doors into what looks like a big silver kitchen.
“Are you coming back?”
“I’m listening to you, give me time. Now what’s all this?” Lorraine is close to my ear. She picks up shreds of torn paper from my lap.
“Lorraine, please pull those curtains. I’m going blind in that sun.” She doesn’t answer me. “Why are y’all moving things around?”
“Nobody’s moved one thing. Were you dreamin?” She throws the paper shreds in the trashcan by the bed. “You’ve had yourself a good old time in here with this paper. I’m gon bring you somethin to eat.”
“I already looked at the menu.”
“Did you?” Lorraine sounds surprised. “Well tell me what’s on it because all I saw was pork chops on those trays in the kitchen.” I can feel Lorraine’s hands around my shoulders, she is putting something like a blanket around me.
“She said she would take my order.”
“Honey, ain’t but one waitress and that’s me.”
“I was taking the headache with all that light.”
“You usually like sun in the afternoon.”
“I told her to close the curtains. She seemed nice but she kept right on with what she was doing.”
“I’ll be back with your tray. Do pork chops sound good to you?”
“That’s all right. And a Co-Cola. I want to stay awake, I’m groggy.”
“We’ll sit and have us a good talk when I get back. Sit up straight now, I’ll be back directly.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
LORRAINE
I been putting lilies in vases with some sprigs of green and then tying them up with pink, blue, and yellow ribbons, one of each color. They’re gon dye some eggs later on and we’ll spread em around on the tables. I told Ada Everett I didn’t think that was a good idea because people will be trying to crack and eat em and they might get sick, but she said we just have to watch everybody and make sure they don’t. She ain’t gon be watching, you can bet on it, so that means me and whoever else is in here at dinnertime. She also said she didn’t want the decorations to be too religious. I do understand what she means, everybody’s different, but then I think it’s Easter Day and with an Easter dinner, and I don’t see no way around that. Either you’re doin it or you’re not. The lilies are as far as we’ll go, everything else on the walls is about all kind of f lowers and spring bunnies, and little yellow chicks. That’s all right, it looks real pretty. Cheers me up and I ain’t even sad.
Miss Margaret don’t want to come down here and eat, Lord knows she already told me in what words she could, half asleep as she is. They changed some of her arthritis medication too and it’s not doing her any good, so it might have been the medicine talking. Ann came first thing in the morning, before church, and said she would have skipped that if it wasn’t Easter Sunday. She said she was sad she had to miss this dinner here, but she’d be back in the afternoon. Even if I can get Miss Margaret down here to the dining room, I’m probably gon have to feed her every bite she puts in her mouth. That’s all right. I know what she likes. She hasn’t had good luck holding a fork for a few weeks. Trembles all the time. Ann said the doctor says it’s natural, not a palsy disease or anything, just gettin old. Gettin old. She knows she’s old.
I finish up with the napkins and plates. Mean-tilda offered to help me but I told her not to mind, that I was about finished. If I wanted it to look like a bulldozer decorated the room I would have taken her up on her offer. She was trying to do something nice, and sometime I need to let her. Maybe she’ll help with the clean-up. I take me a short break, the one I’m allowed to have, and have a cold soda and a doughnut. I get both out of the machine in the break room. April asks me why I eat this mess for snacks when I could have fruit or yogurt right there in the kitchen. I tell her I eat it because I want it. A banana is not the same as a doughnut, and I’d rather eat a Krispy Kreme any day.
“I don’t drink and I don’t smoke,” I said, “so if some sugar is gon kill me, then go on and buy the casket. Make it a nice one. Metal, not wood, I don’t want nothin rotting with me inside it.”
April asked, “Have you been shopping for a funeral or something?”
“When I do, I’m gon take you with me,” I said. Truth is, I had looked at a brochure I found in the trashcan. About a month ago, there was a young man in here, real suntanned like he was livin at the beach. He got himself past reception saying he was on pastoral calls, then started makin rounds room to room, one by one. If the person inside was awake, in he went and opened up a satchel and showed color pictures of all kind of caskets, inside and out, and he had scraps of material taped to paper so you could touch em if you wanted to. He also said that the latest trend was to do away with a display room full of big caskets, and instead, line the walls of the funeral home with little cross sections. That way the customer could see the wood, the lining, hardware, and whatever else a person might want to look at in a casket without ever havin to open up a full-sized one. He said it was also better for the family because it wasn’t like they were looking at real caskets, so the whole experience might be a little bit more pleasant. He would take an order right there for anybody that could give a cash or check deposit, nonrefundable by the way. After a few stops at rooms where people weren’t alert enough to give him the time of day, he made it into Miss Margaret’s room and started by introducing himself and reading some scripture. She was all right with that, she liked a little Bible reading as long as it didn’t turn into hellfire and damnation talk. But he bit off more than he could chew cause when he tried to slip from scripture reading to showing funeral pictures, she told him to get the hell out right then and buzzed the nurse station. There couldn’t have been any better time for Mean-tilda to be on duty, and down the hall she come flying. Course he had done left Margaret’s room but she found him and said if he didn’t leave the premises, she would call the police and hold him ’til they got here. He didn’t move fast enough for her, so she slammed her medicine cart up against the wall and took a step towards him when I think he saw for the first time that he was outsized by a long shot. He turned tail and went straight out the emergency exit with her right behind him as fast as she could go. I had to go to the administration office to get a key to turn off the alarm.
Ada Everett’s announcement for holiday dinners is the only time anybody ever talks over the intercom unless they have a medical emergency. She is cheery like a bird, as always, in fact her voice sounds like a bird. “Good afternoon everyone, and happy, happy Easter. It’s a beautiful spring day, and I’d like to welcome everyone to the dining room for our annual Easter luncheon. See you there!” You got to give her credit, she sounds happy in her work.
I check on several of my patients who don’t need my help to make sure they’re dressed and ready to go to lunch. When I get to Miss Margaret’s room, she is in pajamas, sitting in an armchair with sunglasses on. I don’t have no idea whose sunglasses she’s got, maybe her daughter’s or somebody who came to see her and left them, in a hurry to get out and back to whatever they were doing. “I thought we decided you were gon put on some clothes,” I said.
“We didn’t decide a goddamn thing.”
“I know you’re not gon talk like that on Easter Day.”
“I’ll talk whatever I want whenever the hell I want to, Lorraine.”
I know when to back of
f. “All right then, Miss Margaret, I’m gon leave you be ’til you can talk to me like I’m talking to you.” I start for the door but she stops me.
“I can’t get up from here. I don’t feel like it, and I don’t have any clothes fitting to wear.”
“I told you I’d help you.”
“You can’t help me. You think you can help me? You can help me go to lunch with a bunch of people worse off than me. That sure sounds like a happy Easter, doesn’t it?”
“Would you eat something with me by ourselves?”
“In here? Mama and Daddy have already left, ages ago.” Her mind’s skipping some.
“I haven’t seen them, honey, but they’re all right wherever they are. I’m talkin about with me. In the dining room. I been puttin out flowers since breakfast and I made a table off to one side. Ain’t room but for two people.”
“I don’t want to see them, Lorraine.” Her voice breaks, weaker now. “They’ll look at me and think, ‘she can’t do anything.’”
“The only one looking at you is gon be me. I have to look at you whether I want to or not.” I try to pull a smile out of her.
“Don’t say what you can’t promise.”
“I promise. Now take off them sunglasses.” I reach for her hands, and she raises them as high as she can, not quite to shoulder level, but enough for me to take hold below her wrists and pull her to her feet so I can pull down her pajama pants and underwear. I sit her back down, it’s painful for her, then take off her top. Her bra looks brownish. I know she has clean bras. I know Ann does her laundry every few days and brings it down here herself, so this means somebody sorry didn’t put a clean one on her. I get her changed and then take a few different things out of the closet so she can pick. We’re gon be late but this is more important. I want her to know what she’s doin and know what she’s wearin and know that it’s Easter, and she’s not going to if I don’t let her be part of the little things that go along with it.
“I like the pink, Lorraine. But it might be too young-looking…” She was waiting for my opinion.
“I think it suits you real good.” We struggle to get her into the skirt and jacket top and she declares she’s gon wear a shoe with a heel. It don’t matter cause she can’t walk all the way down there anyway. I unfold the wheelchair in the corner. I reach for her hands and she looks up into my face. “Rise up,” I tell her.
“That sounds like Easter. Have you been to church?”
“No, I can’t go, but I know it’s Easter, don’t you?”
“We ought to have hats.”
“Wouldn’t that be a sight,” I say, “us prancin in there with Easter bonnets on?”
Our table is waiting like I left it. Everyone else is already eating, so we sit and one of the boys from the kitchen brings us plates. It’s ham with a pineapple slice on top, with some garden peas and mashed potatoes. Without asking, I unfold her napkin and put it in her lap, then set her plate in front of me. I cut up the meat into pieces a little child could swallow and raise the fork to her mouth.
“Thank you,” she whispers. She opens.
“Chew real good now,” I tell her, but she doesn’t answer me. I slide my plate to the side and push some mashed potatoes onto her fork. She raises her left arm, reaching for the lilies in the middle of the table. She might knock the whole thing over before we’re through, but I’m not gon study that. She wants to touch them, so I move the vase closer to her. “Happy Easter, Margaret. Is it good?” She’s still chewing, she has to swallow slow, and only a little at the time. Her sitting here is her thanking me. We’re gon take it bite by bite, however we can.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
MARGARET
Hey, Mrs. Clayton, glad to see you again.” The waitress smiles. She has more teeth than any normal person is supposed to have. Bright shining white teeth.
“Thank you, same to you. I declare I think I could eat everything in this restaurant, I’m so hungry.” I haven’t eaten one thing I like today except for some candy that Lorraine gave me because it was good and chewy, exactly the kind I’m not supposed to have because it gets all in my dentures. Everybody else brings me some sort of crème-filled old-people candy that tastes like coconut and cough syrup mixed up together inside a chocolate shell. I also have a strong dislike for those big orange sugar peanuts that seem to find their way into every room in this place. Why in the world they make them to look like peanuts I don’t know, because there’s nothing peanut about them, especially not the taste. “What’s on special today?”
“I’ve got some of the best country-style steak you’ve ever had, gravy too.”
“Is it hard to chew?”
“There’s not anything I serve that ain’t easy to eat if you want it.”
“All right, I’ll take that with just a little gravy poured over it and I want some snap beans too. Have you got sweet tea?”
“I’ll bring you some tea. But you’re not gon have supper ’til five. Just lay your head back and close your eyes.”
“She said she had country-style steak.”
“Who said?”
“The black-headed woman with the big teeth. She owns the place.”
“Who is she? Do you know her?”
“She’s running an all-night diner. I thought Bernice ought to have been there but I didn’t see her. This woman is nice, real nice.”
“Were you looking for Bernice?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s hard to know sometimes, isn’t it?”
“She told me to come back and I said I would.”
“That’s all right, then. Go on, close your eyes and I’m gon bring you something to drink.”
“Who are you?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
APRIL
I told her several times I would drive her to the hospital. Mama said she could drive herself, but something in her face tugged at me, sending a different message from that of her words. One of her patients is dying. To call Margaret Clayton one of her patients is an understatement because she is Mama’s friend, close friend, and they have had intimacy forced upon their relationship by nature and age, yet rather than turn away from it, have walked through it, Mama supporting her all the way, younger in years but somehow older in days. Mrs. Clayton has uterine cancer and refuses to have an operation or chemo, and she is in the hospital now because she has periods of profuse bleeding that are becoming more frequent. She will die, there is no other possible outcome, and she is fighting mad. Mama says her friend has held on as long as she could. She pictures her on a rope behind a ski boat, but the boat is going faster now, and she’s falling, and she will have to let go or be pulled under. She will turn loose soon whether or not she wants to, but for now she is still managing to stay on top of the water, shifting in and out of the wake, wherever she can keep her balance. I suppose that, in her frailty, her will is the only thing she has, and she feels anger toward anyone who cannot understand it or will not succumb to it, even over the simplest things. I could have let Mama go alone, but going with her, taking her in fact, was a way for me to say that I understood the weight of the moment, not because someone was dying, an inevitability to which I had been forced as a doctor to become accustomed, but rather, because my mother’s friend needs her now.
We arrived at the hospital just after dinnertime. She had suggested we stop on the way at Burger King because it was the only readily available option without taking time to go in somewhere and sit down. We did not talk as we exited the parking deck elevator, through the glass tunnel into a large reception area with rows of industrially upholstered chairs and sofas. I followed her, a few steps behind, and it struck me that she walked with the pace and tranquillity of a Buddhist monk, completely present in each step across the diamond-patterned carpet of pale green and coral. Her shoulders were held back, her neck was long, and her stride was seamless. She knew what she was there to do. Mama believed that everything you bring into a sick person’s room is what you leave behind, and she insis
ted that a person try to keep the chaos of the world and his own heart at bay in the presence of someone not well. In her experience, hurry and general anxiety were two unwelcome accompaniments for the more visible offerings of flowers, candy, and get-well cards. Mama stood at the reception desk with me now beside her. The young black man behind the desk did not look up. She waited, this was not unfamiliar territory to her, she would accept the fact that maybe the receptionist thought, “I am at my job, not here to serve you, and the world is not going to stop just because you’ve arrived, so you’ll have to wait and let me finish what I’m doing or pretending to do at the moment whether you like it or not.” Mama was nonplussed. I, on the other hand, did not share her patience. “Excuse me sir, we’re here for visitors’ passes.”
“I’ll be with you in a minute.” He spoke in a vaguely Caribbean accent. He was crossing off names on one paper and adding them to another.
“We don’t want to miss visiting hours. My friend is very sick,” Mama added, with cultivated calm. He didn’t answer. Mama placed her hand lightly on my arm as if to say, “Don’t get angry.” She had always seen, even nurtured, the fighter in me and was well aware of the signs of when it began to rear its head. I made no apologies for it. It’s one of the things that got me through med school as a single mother with a baby, it’s one of the things that steels me against every unspoken judgment of the caliber of the professional qualifications of a black woman doctor in the South.
I was pissed. “I am a doctor,” I added, then immediately wished I hadn’t. I was ashamed that I had tried to pull rank when the two women standing at that desk ought to have been able to expect common courtesy, whoever they were.
“Do you have a staff pass?” the man asked through rapidly blinking eyes.
“No. Look, I’m sorry, my mother and I would simply like to visit a patient as soon as possible.”
“Name of the patient?” he asked in a strangely disconcerting new voice as though we had not had any previous interaction.