by Lorraine Ray
“Anna has gone a little like her mother,” said Gumm from her position on her chrome chair at the chrome kitchen table. “If you remember her. I think you saw Anna’s mother several times over the years at my place. She went a little mad at the end.”
“Oh? You mean senile?” said Mother. Her cooking distracted her: opening up the oven and forking and turning the roast a bit, fat snapping and popping at her and the spoonbread there beneath, browning slowly. “Yes, I knew that. We talked about it plenty. Anna was quite concerned. I remember the Pancho Villa story.”
“That’s right. Anna’s mother always expected Pancho Villa to invade Arizona like he had New Mexico. She thought he was riding up from Nogales and preparing to slaughter us in our beds. It went on for thirty years and you couldn’t convince her of anything different,” Gumm said this to me, in case I hadn’t remembered Anna and her mother, “Used to get down the suitcases and start packing them to flee north. Anna had to take the suitcases away completely because the mother kept on packing them every day round about two o’clock in the afternoon during the start of the Tea Time Movie. That was when she got the urge. You remember that, I’m sure. When she was alive?” Gumm explained this while eating our crackers and cheese that mother had made me fan out on a small plate and leave on the table before my grandmother arrived that Sunday.
“Oh, that’s right. Anna told us about that several times over the years. I especially remember her one time when she appeared at the door in a bathrobe. The mother, I mean. What was her name?”
“Hannah.”
“Hannah, that’s it. A very old name. We went over to deliver that mail of theirs that came to your place when you were away. When you were up in Canada that one year. Calgary, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, I took the bus with Bernice from church. Or was it Olga from the Lodge?”
“I believe it was Bernice, Leola.”
“Well, anyway, Anna’s mother appeared in her bathrobe at the door? That was an everyday occurrence along with taking the suitcases out of her closet and packing them before Villa showed up. Well, it seems that Anna has gone that way herself, if you can imagine such a crazy thing from a lady who used to be a principal of a school. They had to call the police to the school district office to remove her from the lobby two weeks ago.”
“No kidding?”
“Not at all. There she sat like nobody’s business in a chair in the lobby and refused to go home without her pension check. She sat there asking over and over again for her pension check to be brought for her. Demanding it. They explained it wasn’t ready yet; it wouldn’t come out for weeks and weeks, but she sat there as obstinate as could be and wouldn’t go home without her check. And the craziest thing was that she had her slip on the top of her dress, like an old fashioned duster, and she wore a newspaper tied to her head with twine.”
“We did see her like that last month, Leola.”
“Oh yes, you did see her. Well, I think she thinks she’s living those times, old times, again, poorer times. The police brought her home in a patrol car because she wouldn’t tell the police where she lived so the school district had to find the address in their files. When they searched inside her purse they discovered there wasn’t any identification in it at all! Just a little booklet about cancer. That was very odd, my goodness. Now what could she have done with those cards of hers? Her cousin said she had them the day before. We have a real mystery on our hands. I can’t think where her identification is.”
“Have you searched the house?”
“Sure, her cousin and I looked all over the house in every drawer and shelf through the whole house. Anna herself doesn’t know what she did with her cards; she can’t remember what cards are!”
“I’ll be. Of all the things!”
“Yes, poor thing. She hardly knows what we’re talking about. She asked us what cards we meant. We said your I.D. cards, Anna. Things like voter registration and that kind of thing? She said she never had any of those. Of all the crazy things. Why, she did know what I.D. cards were; she used to manage her ration cards wonderfully during the war. The poor little thing and to think she used to be considered a very intelligent woman.”
“She’s very well-known in education circles.”
“I know it; that’s what makes it so pathetic, poor thing. Of course, she did have those cards because I saw them the week before, and her cousin saw them the day before, though heaven only knows what she must have done with them. Buried them in the backyard? Your guess is as good as mine. Well, someone has to take care of her now and there isn’t anyone else. I can go down if she can’t be stopped any other way. We’re all playing a game with her that’s what it feels like. I’ve done sillier things, I suppose. I got her in the car last week and I said to her, “Why Anna you’ve no business to bother those people who have important jobs to do like that.” After I said that she cried a little bit and I felt bad for saying that to her, poor thing. I didn’t mean to pick on her, but somebody should try to make her stop pestering the school district. They do have jobs to do! She hasn’t got the sense God gave a goose anymore. There’s no other way to put it. And to think of the position she held. Well, now what are we going to do with her? I don’t know.”
“It’ll all come out in the wash.” This was Mother’s favorite ridiculous platitude, but she always said “worsh” instead of “wash.”
“Sure. It’s up to her cousin. What do you suppose she did with all her cards? It’s too peculiar for words. I told them at the Lodge and they sure did laugh a bit to think of what she might of done. And her saying she didn’t know what cards we meant. I saw the patrol car go by and park in front of Anna’s house and I was out of the house like a shot. Of course I thought she had fallen or something, had a stroke or a heart attack and I feared crossing the street, to think of what I might find out, and I never imagined that she would come out of the patrol car like that, just a teeny little thing in the squad car. Wearing a slip on top of her dress and her with a lot of handsome policemen. She would have died to think of it, if she could still think. Goodness, what a waste of police resources. I talked to the police on the sly and they wanted me to give my number to the school district so lo and behold they called me again the next day and I’ll be darned if Anna hadn’t pulled the whole stunt right over again. Well, they called me instead of the police. The school district secretary let me know that Anna was there and asked me to come down and get her so the police wouldn’t have to. I could coax her into Lu Lu Belle for a ride back to her home. Oh golly. I just about spent myself trying to convince her that the check wasn’t there and that she needed to come home.”
“My goodness. You’ve had a tough couple of weeks.” I could see that my mother was impressed with her mother-in-law’s constancy, her sense of duty to someone who was ostensibly her better who was in trouble now. She reassessed her mother-in-law and found her to be more interesting and clearly Christian than she had thought. The fact that she agreed to take on Anna’s troubles impressed my mother who was all about accepting life’s burdens happily. She could see that Gumm put her religion into action and didn’t just talk about doing things for others but actually did them without being asked directly. It was a ridiculous pairing in a way, the undereducated lady who had two children and a divorce but still couldn’t spell correctly correctly, and the old maid school principal who was going mad, but somehow fate had thrown them together.
“They’re calling about poor Anna now almost every day. I don’t know what we’re going to do about it. I have finally got her cousin on it, though, and she’s trying to think of a solution for us. I sure hate to see Anna committed; that seems a pity, poor thing. Her cousin hasn’t got a spare room for her, and she doesn’t know of anyone who could be a caretaker. She and her husband may just have to move in with her for the time being. What are we going to do? And she’s determined to go down to the district office every day now. Now they know they can call me whenever she shows up. Imagine, she was an educated lady. Why she was one of t
he earliest teachers of the Yaqui Indian. And they really appreciated her.”
“She’s very well known in educational fields, Leola.”
“Yes, I’m not surprised. She might be called notorious now.”
“Do you remember when she came for Thanksgiving? She told us about snow and how the Yaqui children didn’t believe in it.” Mother questioned me, directly, urgently, what did she have in mind? Making me acknowledge that I remembered these things for a reason? Wondering if I could remember Anna Henry?
“I don’t know,” I said, obstinately refusing to remember Anna, refusing to acknowledge that I might need to steal her away and put her here for you to see, part of the bread and circus act that you want, the lies and truth mixed for your consumption. How could this crazy woman be considered a treasure of the desert? Why should I be excited to remember her and use her madness for a display?
“Why, don’t you remember seeing her last month? She had that newspaper tied to her head with twine. And she told us she worked with the people on General Hospital? On TV?” Gumm said this in genuine surprise to think that I didn’t know that I had seen Miss Anna Henry.
“Oh, I remember that lady,” I said vaguely, not wanting to disappoint anyone. But I didn’t remember her at all, until later, until I needed her desperately. I had to acknowledge that my grandmother was probably nicer to Anna Henry than I will ever be with my earnest remembrance of her and her idiosyncrasies. At least my grandmother helped her out in her time of need, whereas I have only determined that she is someone I can use.