by Faith Harkey
“Hush!” Desiree whispered.
“What?”
She flared her nostrils and pointed at my hip.
I looked down to see the paper stick poking out my pocket.
“Aw, crap.”
Worser still, Peggy the shopkeep was standing right there and saw the whole thing!
I walked up to the woman and offered her the gum pop. Head hanging low, I said, “I’m terrible sorry, ma’am.”
Peggy took my face in her hands. “You keep it, sugar. I know your life ain’t been all grits and cheese.”
It took all my manners not to grit my teeth as I thanked her.
“C’mon, Desiree,” I said, tugging my friend’s arm. “Let’s go! I reckon I need to go reflect on what I done.”
* * *
—
Outside, the sky was threatening rain.
“I am running out of patience for the Poor, Pathetic Hush Sympathy Squad!” I ranted once we were out of earshot of the store.
“They mean well,” Desiree said.
“Course they mean well!” I exclaimed. “But which is worse? Pity or scorn? I ain’t so sure! Do you know what one lady said to me yesterday? She told me she was praying for my ma to go to prison! What’s a body to make of that?”
“Was it Missus Sweeney?”
“Yeah! How’d you know?”
“She prays for Martin to go to prison, too,” Desiree told me. “Says it’ll straighten him out.”
I laughed. “All right. Well. At least I ain’t alone, then.”
A car door slammed. “Belle? Desiree? Is that you, girls?”
We looked up. Everly Binset, one of our yoga students, was headed our way.
“I’m so glad I ran into you two!” She looked a frazzle. Her pinned-up hair had come undone on one side, and a smear of jelly marred the SUMMER FUN scrubs she was wearing.
“Into us two?” I asked as she caught her breath. “Why?”
Now that she stood in front of us, I could see that she was wilted as a sun-beaten flower.
“You know I run the old folks’ home—”
I hadn’t known, but Desiree nodded.
“Well, the Pitney kids’ choir was driving over today to entertain my seniors, but their bus broke down and they can’t make it. To make things worse, two of my nurses are out sick, so we don’t have anyone else to lead activity hour, either. So I’m wondering if you two, out of the goodness of your hearts, might…?”
It took me a second to catch on. “You want us to sing to your old people?”
She gave us a tight smile. “Sing. Tell jokes. Whatever you could do. I’d really appreciate it.”
“I guess we could teach them yoga,” Desiree ventured. “But they probably can’t get down on the floor, can they?”
I considered that. “They’re too fragile, I bet. But you know what old people do like?” In my mind’s eye, I saw the poster in Crispy’s room, how he’d hung it so proudly. “Art to hang on their walls, things that will cheer them up. Everly, do you have any old magazines we could cut up?”
“Oh, yes. Tons of them,” she replied.
I poked Desiree’s shoulder. “I think we ought to teach them to make treasure maps.”
Her mouth formed a glad O. “That’s perfect!” Turning to Everly, Desiree said, “We’d need glue and scissors, too.”
“We’ve got safety scissors and glue sticks aplenty,” the woman told us.
“All right!” Helping folks make treasure maps was better than hiding from neighbor pity any day. “See you there?”
“Yes! Give me thirty minutes to run an errand and dig out the supplies!” She was off and running again. Over her shoulder, she called, “I’ve got prescriptions to pick up!”
* * *
—
By the time we got to the seniors’ home, Everly had the magazines and scissors ready for us. The elders gathered in the recreation hall, seated in chairs—some of them even belted in. They had a flurry of pain imps among them, so I was glad we’d come.
Before I could start plucking imps, though, I had to put them to work on their maps. I stood up at the front of the room, gave everyone a friendly grin, and began to explain.
“Now, a treasure map is where you pick out things you want to bring into your life.”
Desiree chimed in, too. “Things you dream of, or maybe something you’d like to become. Just look at the magazines and see what inspires you.”
“Then you cut out the pictures, glue them on, and later you can look back to see if your treasures came to you.” I gave a nod to let them know I was done.
A long stretch of quiet followed. Nobody picked up a magazine or a scissors.
“Were we talking too soft?” I asked Desiree.
She shrugged.
Standing on my tiptoes, I hollered, “A TREASURE MAP IS WHERE YOU PICK OUT THINGS—”
“We heard you fine, sugar,” one lady told me. “We just don’t have much in the way of big plans.”
“If you got a picture where Nurse Binset isn’t poking me with a needle, I’ll cut that out!” said another.
A few folks chuckled.
I gave the rest home a hard look, taking in the long hall of doors, the drone of the television in the corner. Truth to tell, it didn’t seem the sort of place where things liked to change.
At the same time, I couldn’t believe these folks just wanted to sit around, all quiet and still, until the hospice bus came for them.
“Well, maybe it isn’t so much about what you want for the future, as…” I trailed off. Something was tickling the tip of my brain, but how could I get to it?
Looking at all those wrinkled faces, I found myself thinking of Crispy. “Look here. My friend Crispy, he’s gonna die. But instead of getting all cross-legged about it, he looks forward to the people he’ll see on the other side. And he thinks of ways to spread kindness before he goes.
“You folks, you’ve got lots more time than he does,” I told them. “If I were you, I’d spend it like Crispy does. Looking for little pieces of goodness you can do. Help you could bring. Maybe you could cut out pictures of that.”
“If you haven’t noticed,” a man called from his wheelchair, “my helping days are over. I’m the one who needs the help now.”
The man’s friend nodded, but other folks had troubled looks, as if that notion didn’t set well with them.
“She is right about one thing,” said a woman with an armful of knitting. “We’re not exactly serving our fellow man, are we?”
“I wasn’t finding fault—” I tried to say.
But she went on, “Look at me. I eat three square meals a day. I’ve got a roof over my head. And I’ve got hands that can knit. Meanwhile, I guarantee somebody in this county will need a warm scarf or a sweater, come winter.” She patted the chubby lady next to her. “Someone could surely use one of your shawls, Wanda. Nobody crochets like you do.”
“I’ve got six of them just sitting in my closet,” Wanda agreed. “It does seem like a waste.”
“I remember, my husband and I had some lean years,” one of the seniors mused. “No money to fix the heater. Cold as all get-out. A neighbor brought us some heavy coats, a couple extra blankets. It meant so much to us.”
“I wonder if we could get all our sewing together,” Wanda said, “box it up—”
“Start a clothes drive, even.” The knitting lady sat up straighter. “Get everybody to turn their knitting needles to the greater good. I bet my niece would make us a bunch of baby booties.”
Wanda tapped a finger on the table in front of her. “We could cut up these magazines to make posters. Put them up along Main Street.” She waved her arms, forming an imaginary poster on a wall. “ ‘Knit for Your Neighbors! Crochet for the Kids!’ ”
“I can just s
ee it now!” exclaimed the man in the wheelchair. “You two hobbling along Main Street, posting notices. You can’t even take a shower without help!”
“You don’t know nothing about me and my shower,” Wanda shot back.
Desiree and I, who had been all but forgotten, shared a look. These seniors had started a good ball rolling. All we had to do was give it a nudge.
I told the elders, “We’ll hang your posters.”
“And once the fancywork gets collected,” Desiree said, “I know my parents would drive it to Hope House.”
Hope House was a place where needy people got sacks of food or clothes and such. Nina used to make me go there and pretend I wasn’t her daughter so we could beat the one-bag-per-family rule.
“Mabel would help, too, I bet,” I added.
Now other folks piped up. One fellow thought the Sass Settee would print an ad for free. Plus, he offered a bunch of home-knit socks he wasn’t wearing anymore.
“I’m a full-time slippers man, these days,” he explained.
The knitting lady wrapped it all together and set a bow on top: “The first annual Sass Retirement Home ‘Knit for Your Neighbors’ clothing drive.”
“Wouldn’t that be a peach?” one of the elders marveled.
“Come on now, people,” Wanda hollered. “If you don’t knit, you can still make posters.”
Now the old folks tore into those magazines like you wouldn’t believe. Scissors raced across the page! Paper scraps went a-flying!
Desiree tacked up a paper listing the things that would need to go on every poster: the address of the nursing home, the dates and times when people could drop off donations.
Meanwhile, I headed for a lady who was wincing from the effort of working her scissors. Strangely, there wasn’t a single pain imp on her hands.
“Hurts?” I asked her.
“No,” she replied. “Just stiff. It’s good for me to move them.”
I couldn’t help admiring her persistence.
Next, I made my way over to a little old man, one of the belted-in ones. He hadn’t raised his scissors, nor had he taken a magazine. I wasn’t surprised. He was so covered in pain imps, I could hardly see the person underneath.
Real careful, I helped him open a copy of Georgia Style. It was a good chance to brush imps off his sides, too. Then I pretended to drop the scissors so I could get the imps off the man’s feet. They were especially bad there. A few minutes later, his whole body seemed to soften, and he began letting out one sigh after another. His relief was so wholehearted, it was almost painful to hear.
By the end of the hour, I’d stopped at everyone’s table and sneak-plucked all the imps I could find. I even had to take a cup from the nurses’ station to hold them. From the bulk of the class, I’d gathered maybe twenty. From the belted-in man, all by himself, I had another forty of them, easy.
Nobody made a treasure map, but everyone seemed lively and glad. Those seniors gave Desiree and me twenty posters to hang! Everly fed us cookies and punch and told us we were welcome to come back anytime—especially later that week if Amy the Calisthenic Lady couldn’t make it in.
* * *
—
Desiree took her cookies and sat at a tableful of ladies who were talking about the RNN.
“They have some new shows next season that’ll really surprise you!” I heard her say.
Me, I sat beside my little man—called Nate—whose face had gone soft and smiling with the lack of imps. I thought he might fall asleep soon. It was easy to imagine life was a real uphill battle living with all of those imps stuck to you. Cut forty of them buggers loose, and I might be ready for a nap, too.
As I was munching a cookie, Nate whispered something I couldn’t hear.
“What’s that, sir?” I leaned in to listen.
“I say, my granny used to do what you done.”
“Your granny helped folks make art?”
He gave a faint shake of the head. “Naw. Pain lifting. Like you done.”
It took me a second to understand what he was telling me. I’d been so sure I was alone.
“You—you mean I’m not the only one?” I stammered.
Though Mabel had talked about Sass shines, I surely hadn’t expected this. A kindly elder who’d come before me, a lady not so different from gentle Nate, here? I was a little sad I’d never get to meet her.
Speaking softly into Nate’s ear, I asked, “I don’t reckon you recall any of her good wisdom?”
He was quiet for so long I thought he’d drifted off. But his lips started moving again and he told me, “She did say she felt pain was a teacher, and we should heed it.”
I gave that a think. “I don’t rightly know what that means, Mister Nate.”
“You’re a good girl,” was all he said.
Then he did fall asleep, for real. But he was still grinning ever so slightly, and I felt mighty fine just sitting there, watching him rest.
* * *
—
The peacefulness on Nate’s face stuck with me all day, and for much of that time I was so pleased to have helped him. But as the hours passed, something else snuck up on me. An unease, I guess you’d call it. Nina kept popping up in my mind.
That had been my own ma I’d seen staggering drunk through Sass Foods, her heart all blown out with pain imps! Not to mention the other dozen or so hanging off the rest of her. What’s a girl—what’s a daughter—to do with that?
It made it hard to concentrate on my gardening. I ended up planting a whole packet of parsley seeds in the radish tray. Later, at dinnertime, I had trouble keeping up with Mabel’s talk about some funny thing or other that happened at the Women’s Club meeting. And when we turned on a movie, I know there were places I was supposed to laugh, but the jokes just zoomed right by me.
Finally, around nine, I gave up and went to bed.
I dreamed I was back in that old folks’ home, and there was Nate after I’d plucked the pain imps off of him, looking so content, just about to say I was a good girl. All at once, though, he began to turn inside out, like he was being sucked inside himself, slipping, roiling, until—there Nina appeared in his place, strapped to the chair.
“I’m dying,” she moaned, though it wasn’t her normal voice, but rather the sound she’d make if she was underwater, fixin’ to drown. “I’m dying of pain!” Blood-red imps spilled from her mouth.
Two more nights went by, the same dream over and over, but with more imps each time. Mouthful after mouthful they poured out, until the world turned red in a deluge of pain. Nearly every hour it woke me up, leaving me shaky, heart a-pounding.
On the fourth night of it, two-thirty a.m., I sat bolt upright in bed.
“I know!” I whisper-shouted at my old jar of pain imps and another, bigger one beside it.
No, I wasn’t supposed to visit Nina. And, no, it surely wasn’t safe to go anywhere Baron Ramey might be. But my mother was dying of her suffering and here I was, the very thief of pain, doing nothing!
How could I let that stand?
Mabel said the sheriff’s office had promised to drive by every half hour or so, and they were as good as their word. I huddled in a patch of garden shadow, waiting for the car to make its rounds—then I got gone.
I made my way from one clump of dark to the next, sneaking past houses and across pastures. A cow lowed as I passed by; I reckoned she was nervous for her baby.
The walk seemed longer than I remembered. ’Bagoville was pitch-black, but my eyebulbs had rejiggered themselves for nighttime seeing. Creeping as quietly as I could, I wended my way past the junk, then circled around our RV to be sure there wasn’t any sign of Baron Ramey or some other guest. Nina was alone.
I picked the door lock and slipped inside my house.
The smell of it hit me first. Yeah, the place was stank fr
om unwashed clothes and mildew and a black-water leak. But the curious thing was, underneath all of that nastiness, there was the scent of something else—of me and Nina combined. It was home.
A hurtful, twisting sensation gripped me in my center.
As I passed by the dingy mirror on the outside of the half-closet, I saw myself fairly lit up with pain imps. When I looked down at myself, though, they were gone, just like before.
Ain’t nothing I can do about that, I figured.
Nina was sound asleep on the bed in the back of the motor home, just a deadweight, not snoring or thrashing around at all. The imps had her good, though, and I wondered if they soured her dreams.
There being no time like the present, I climbed up on the bed and started plucking pain imps off of my mother. I’d worn my first daddy’s jacket on purpose, knowing it would be faster just to shove imps in my pockets rather than fiddle with a jar.
It took me less than a minute to get them all.
Nina hadn’t so much as stirred. I couldn’t even tell if having those imps off of her gave her any real relief. In a way, though, it didn’t matter. I’d done what I could. And no matter what Mabel had said, I did believe I was responsible for Nina in this one way. Wasn’t I the only person, after all, who could pluck those imps? Surely she couldn’t have done it for herself.
* * *
—
I took care to lock the door behind me and was glad to see the outside darkness was still unbroken. Sneaking back was easy enough, and I even stopped to pat the cow calf on my way back through the pasture.
Back on Mabel’s road, I glanced one way, then the other to be sure no lawman’s car was coming. There wasn’t, so I let myself in at the gate.
Every light in the house was on! The sheriff’s cruiser sat in the garden, doors flung open, radio squawking. There was Ham’s truck and Jimmy’s truck, both parked crazy-wise as if they’d pulled in at a rush.
The front door flew open. Mabel rushed out.
“Jim, I refuse to just sit here while—” She turned and saw me.