I dusted off the sheet music and sang a line near the end of the song softly to myself. And if you come to see, that you could be with me…. It was a good song, and now it lay forgotten on the floor of a closet.
I went over to my desk and pulled out a fresh piece of paper. Dear Elvis, I wrote. This was his last chance.
Late one afternoon, Suralee and I were under the porch drinking Cokes into which we’d thrown handfuls of peanuts and raisins. I was going to make chili and corn bread for dinner, and Suralee was going to stay and help me cook. Dell was over visiting my mother again. She’d been outside sunbathing when he came, and he’d helped bring her in. It was so easy with him—he simply disconnected her from her vent hose and carried her, and I trundled along behind with the equipment. Times like this I wished for a full-time male caretaker, someone capable of both effortlessly lifting my mother and fixing things. Someone whose presence made for a nonspecific but very comforting sense of safety.
I made iced tea for my mother and Dell; he would help her drink it, and Suralee and I had been given an hour free. We’d told my mother we were going to Suralee’s house, but then decided it might be more interesting to eavesdrop. I’d told Suralee about times I’d listened in on Dell and my mother before, about the frankness of their talks. Now we sat quietly, heads cocked in the direction of their conversation.
It wasn’t easy to hear—the sound of the fan in the open window interfered. But we did hear Dell say, “Diana and Suralee are gone, right?”
Suralee put her hand on my arm and squeezed. “What?” I whispered. “What is it?”
“Shhhhh! Listen!”
“…over at Suralee’s,” my mother was saying. “You can call and tell them to come back if you need to go.”
“I don’t want to go,” Dell said. “That’s not what I was thinking. That’s the last thing I was thinking. I was wondering if…How long are they going to be gone?”
“Long enough,” my mother said. A long pause and then, “You can take me out of this. I’m okay for at least an hour.” I heard the abrupt silence that always followed her respirator being turned off, the sound of Dell’s steps, and then no noise at all but for the fan.
Suralee looked over at me, triumphant. I shrugged, a sudden coldness inside. “Let’s go in the backyard,” she whispered, and I shook my head no. “Come on!” she said, and I ignored her.
She crawled out from under the porch, and I unwillingly followed her around to the side of the house, to a spot in the bushes beneath my mother’s bedroom window.
Once I’d seen a neighbor girl riding her bike down the street past my house. I waved at her and thought, As soon as she waves back, she’s going to fall down. And she did. I started to go over and help her, but she hopped back onto her bike, embarrassed, and rode off quickly, apparently no worse for wear.
These things happened to me sometimes; I could predict random events with eerie accuracy. I believed I had a bit of my mother’s psychic ability. But now I wished I didn’t, for I knew what we’d see when we looked in the window. And I was right. There in my mother’s bed were she and Dell, doing something like what I’d seen Peacie do with LaRue. Not quite the same scene, of course. Dell had taken my mother’s shell off, and she was frog-breathing, her eyes squeezed tight with the effort. Her top was pushed up, her pants pulled down. I saw the whiteness of Dell’s ass as he moved slowly in and out of her. I saw his hand over her breast, fondling it, pinching the nipple. His pants were pulled down, but his shirt was still on, his boots, too. At the side of my brain, I worried about his boots getting the sheets dirty; I’d changed them just that morning.
“Oh, my God,” Suralee whispered, her hand clamped over her mouth.
“Let’s go,” I said, and pulled on her arm. But she would not look away. Finally, I watched, too. Sick. I watched, too.
What a mix of emotions I felt! The burn of shame, of course. But then I began to feel an odd sort of pride, too. Dell and my mother. Dell and my mother.
When they were finished, Dell fumbled to get the shell back in place. It was all I could do not to go and help him. But he got it right, finally, and when my mother could speak again, she said, “Can you put me into my wheelchair? We’d better go back to the living room. Oh, and straighten the bedcovers!”
Suralee slid to the ground and I sat beside her. We heard the sound of Dell’s and my mother’s voices moving away from us, and then they were out of earshot, waiting for us to come back. Suralee would not look at me, and I could think of nothing to say. Finally I mumbled, “Sorry,” and immediately regretted it.
“That’s okay,” Suralee said. “I’m sorry for you.” She shuddered.
What about her mother? I thought.
“That was so creepy,” Suralee said.
“What about your mother?” There. I’d said it.
Suralee laughed. “What do you mean?”
“What about your mother? She does it with men all the time!” She’s trashy, too, I wanted to say, but didn’t.
Suralee spoke with disdainful pity. “My mother is normal.”
“Go home,” I said, standing up and dusting off my hands.
She stared at me.
“Go home,” I said again.
“You’re just embarrassed,” Suralee said.
I started walking away, and she said after me, “You’re just embarrassed! Don’t take it out on me! Your mother’s crazy, and you know it. For one thing, nobody would give away prize money like that! If she even really won it.”
I turned around and said in a low voice not quite my own, “Shut your filthy mouth and get out of my yard. You aren’t my friend anymore.” I watched her walk quickly away, wishing we’d gone to her house, wishing so hard we’d not stayed here. It seemed there was a leak in my life. Everything was draining out.
I snuck around front, waited fifteen minutes, then pushed the front door open. “Hey, Diana!” Dell said.
“Hey, Dell.” I waved at them, then started for the kitchen. “I’ll make dinner now.”
“Where’s Suralee?” my mother asked, and I said she’d had to stay home.
“That’s too bad,” my mother said, and I said yeah, it was.
I opened the icebox and took out a package of hamburger. I could smell them, Dell and my mother. I could smell them in the air. I grabbed an onion and started chopping it exactly the way she’d taught me.
A few mornings later, I’d almost finished with my mother’s bath when the doorbell rang. We looked at each other. “Cover me with the sheet, and go see who it is,” she said. I could tell by her excitement that she thought it was Dell, as did I. I was sure of it. I’d heard my mother on the phone with Brenda, talking about Dell, saying, “Well, we didn’t set any definite date. But I’m sure he’ll be back soon.” She listened, then started giggling. “No!” she said. “I did not! Yet.” She laughed again.
But it was not Dell, it was Susan Hogart, our social worker. “Oh!” I said. “Are you…?”
“I didn’t call,” she said. “But I need to talk to your mother, Diana.” She wouldn’t quite look at me.
“She’s…I’m almost done washing her.”
“May I come in?”
I stepped aside so that she could come in the door.
“Where’s Peacie?” She asked the question like she already knew the answer.
“Um…she went to get some groceries.”
“Where is Peacie?” Susan asked again, and again I said she’d gone out to get groceries.
“Diana,” Susan began.
“I’m in here!” my mother called.
“You might want to take a walk,” Susan told me quietly, but I stood still.
She touched my arm gently. “Come back in about half an hour. I want to talk to you then. But right now I need some privacy with your mother.”
I went outside and sat on the porch steps. I wasn’t going to budge. After a few minutes I saw a familiar car come down the street, then pull up in front of the house. It was LaRue and Peacie
. I thought for one moment that I might die, truly, something in my chest expanded so alarmingly I thought it had burst. But then I rose and ran toward them as they climbed out of the car.
LaRue had a patch over one eye, and he moved slowly, walking with a limp. But his hat was in place, jauntily angled as ever, and his smile was glorious. He put his arms around me and held me close, and Peacie put her hands on her hips. “Subdue yourself ’fore you knock him over,” she said. “He ain’t no movie star.” Translation? We are so glad to see you. We are here.
At some point, Suralee had told her mother about Dell and my mother, and about my doing nearly all the caretaking. And this morning Noreen had called the Department of Social Services. And Susan had been, in her words, “called on the carpet.” After Peacie and LaRue arrived, Susan went into the living room with them while I silently finished bathing and dressing my mother. Now all of us were sitting in there, LaRue and I on the sofa, Peacie and Susan in the armchairs, my mother, naturally, in her wheelchair.
For a long time, I’d thought it was an advantage that she always had her chair right with her. It came to me now that I no longer thought that, and I wondered when I’d stopped. Things changed all the time without your noticing. Only the other night I’d looked at my legs in the bathtub and they were no longer the legs I knew. They were longer, and my knees had become square and horsey and without scabs. You couldn’t keep up with life. It was like fabric running through a sewing machine, everything slipping through your fingers and moving away from you. It was so sad and marvelous, like the whole other galaxies my mother told me about when we looked at the stars, those places we could never know and over which we had no control. Last time we’d talked about that, I’d told her thinking of such things made me feel scared. “Why?” she’d asked, and I’d said because it was all too big and it made me feel small and worthless. “Ah,” she’d said. “Well then, this is the part where we hold hands.” I’d put my hand in her lap and wrapped her fingers around my own. “Better?” she’d asked, not taking her eyes from the sky. “Yes,” I’d said, relieved and laughing, and she’d said quietly, “That’s what people are for each other.”
Here on planet Earth, though, Susan was talking in her new no-nonsense voice. “We’re going to have to come up with some sort of solution. All of this deceit has to stop right now, Paige. You’ve got to tell me the truth about everything.”
“Look,” my mother said. “I’m sorry your job was put at risk, but surely you can understand that the cost of twenty-four-hour caretaking is—”
“You are given the same amount of money as others who need such services,” Susan said.
“And you think they’re not cheating?” my mother asked.
“They cheating!” Peacie said. “I can guarantee you that! I seen it plenty of places!”
“Where?” Susan asked, and Peacie grunted and looked away.
“Where did you see that, Peacie? I would really like to know.”
Silence, and then LaRue said, “Her memory ain’t all it used to be. But I know she know what she talking about.”
Susan leaned back in her chair and sighed. Her hair was dirty; greasy bangs hung in her face, and her skirt was wrinkled. I supposed she’d been rushed out of her house by the news this morning. “I wonder if y’all understand that I’m on your side,” she said. “Do you know that? I’m trying to help you. Now, what other people do doesn’t matter for what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about is how we can get you covered in the way you need to be.”
“If I pay more for caretaking, I won’t have enough left for groceries or anything else,” my mother said.
“Then may I ask why you gave away a significant sum of money?”
Peacie chewed at her lips and looked down at the floor. LaRue, holding his hat between his knees, began to turn it around and around. My mother started to speak, then fell silent. My hatred for Suralee ratcheted up a notch. So she had told her mother this, too.
Finally, LaRue spoke. “Miz Hogart? Miz Dunn just loan us that money. We gon’ pay it back, too, just as soon’s we can.”
“The money was mine, to do with as I pleased,” my mother said.
“Do you have any left?” Susan asked.
“I have some left.”
“Because you’re going to have to pay taxes on it, you know.”
“I know that,” my mother said, but I believed she’d forgotten.
“You need someone here all the time, Paige. And that someone can’t be your daughter. Surely you see that it isn’t fair to ask her!”
“It isn’t fair, you say,” my mother said.
“No, it isn’t! She’s a child! She shouldn’t be put in the position of having to take care of you. It’s too much!”
“I can do it,” I said in a small voice. “I’ve been doing it for a long time.”
Peacie looked quickly over at me, and I realized I’d made things even worse.
“For how long?” Susan asked, and I hesitated, then said for a couple of weeks. Then I crossed my arms and stared at my feet.
“All right,” my mother said. “I would like to say something. May I say something?”
“Please,” Susan said.
“Diana has been taking care of me at night since she was ten.”
Susan leaned back against the sofa as though someone had just let all the air out of her. “Oh, Paige,” she said. “Oh, my God.” She was shaking her head slowly, like she was at the scene of a terrible accident.
“I don’t mind,” I said. “I—”
“Diana,” my mother said. She turned to Susan. “I am well aware of the fact that I have to have someone with me all the time. Believe me. And I have thought a lot about whether or not it’s right to ask my daughter to help me. I’ve wondered whether such a bright and beautiful girl ought to have her life circumscribed in this way.”
Bright and beautiful! I felt my hands draw into fists.
“I know she suffers for what she does for me,” my mother continued. “I know she suffers from the very fact of my existence.” Here my mother looked over at me and I looked back at her, shook my head no. “I know you do, Diana,” she said softly, and I looked away.
“But you talk about fair, Susan. Was it fair what happened to me? Of course not. But here I am. And let me put this the simplest way I can: If being paralyzed is my fate, helping to take care of me is my daughter’s. I am deeply grateful for her help. I am deeply appreciative of it. But I don’t waste my time or effort feeling guilty or thinking about how unfair it is. If I did that—”
“Paige,” Susan said. “Nobody is suggesting that you should feel guilty about accepting care that you are absolutely entitled to. You have the need and the right to be cared for twenty-four hours a day. But not by your daughter!”
“We…are a family,” my mother said. “She is my family.”
“She is a child!” Susan said. “And I cannot allow her to function in this capacity. Even if I could accept it personally—which, by the way, I cannot—I could not allow it by law. Now, I’m going to give you a week to find someone to be here at night. Peacie, are you back now? Are you able to cover the daytime hours as usual?”
“Yes, ma’am, I sho’ ’nuff am.”
“And Mrs. Gruder is here in the evenings?”
A silence—nobody wanted to cooperate with the interrogation. And then my mother said, “Yes, Mrs. Gruder can be here from five until ten.”
“Could you come back and spend the night, just until we find someone else?” Susan asked Peacie.
Peacie spoke quietly. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll find my own nighttime caretaker,” my mother said.
Susan stood. “You may find your own if you prefer. But believe me, I’ll be checking up on you more frequently. And if I find you’re using your daughter in the way you have been—or behaving in any other inappropriate ways—I’ll have her removed.”
“Over my dead body,” my mother said, her voice low and threatening.
“We’re all trapped!” my mother said. “We’re all trapped in a body with limitations, even the most able-bodied among us! And we’re all guided by minds with limitations of their own. You want to know my philosophy? It’s this: Our job, regardless of our bodily circumstances, is to rise above what holds us down, and to help others do the same!”
“Amen to that,” LaRue said. “Amen to that!”
“I’ll come by again soon,” Susan said.
We all listened to the sound of her walking down the steps, to the sound of her car starting up and driving away.
Then Peacie spoke quietly. “I can’t stay, Paige.”
“I know that,” my mother said. “I know you came to say good-bye.”
I was astounded. How could this be, that Peacie was leaving? And how did my mother know that? Peacie came over to kneel beside my mother’s wheelchair, then leaned over to kiss her cheek.
“You be careful, driving,” my mother said.
Peacie straightened and wiped at her nose. “We will.” Her voice was small and uncertain as a child’s.
“Let me know how you’re doing from time to time.”
“We will.”
LaRue got up and came to Peacie’s side, took her arm. Peacie pulled away from him. “Just hold on!” she said. And then, in a more measured tone, “Hold on.” She stood there, her eyebrows wrinkled. Then she said, “’Fore I go, I’m gon’ make you big batch of biscuits, put them in the freezer.”
My mother smiled. “That would be nice.”
Peacie took off her hat, put down her purse, and signaled for LaRue to follow her into the kitchen. “I want you sift that flour fine as silk,” she told him.
“Come here, Diana,” my mother said. I went to stand beside her chair. “Bend down,” she said, and when I did, she pressed her forehead against mine and sighed. “I’m going to solve this problem,” she said. “But if I can’t do it fast enough, you may need to go and spend some time with your father.”
We Are All Welcome Here Page 15