Miss Janie’s Girls

by Brown, Carolyn

  “Why didn’t she keep them?” Teresa asked between bites.

  “I did some research on that, too, and back then she wasn’t given a choice. Because she was a minor, her parents got to decide what happened. Her parents sent her to a home for unwed mothers in Dallas. She gave birth, and then they sent her here to live with her great-aunt Ruthie. From what little she’s told me through the years, she and Aunt Ruthie got along well, but down deep I don’t think Miss Janie ever got over giving those babies away. She begged me to find them for her, and I did. Unfortunately, they were both killed in a car wreck when they were twenty-five. She took the news hard, and then she started telling me to bring y’all home to her. Somehow she transferred all the feelings she had for those two little dark-haired daughters over to you and Kayla.”

  Teresa finished off her breakfast. “She thought I was a nurse when I helped her into bed.”

  “When she wakes up after her nap, she’s usually a little better,” Noah told her. “When she gets stimulated, she gets really angry at me. She’ll do the same with you. Don’t take it personally. It’s the disease. I’ve got a list of what to not mention when she’s not herself. We try not to say ‘remember,’ but instead ask her to tell us about when she was a certain age. So just don’t disagree with her, but try to steer her into another conversation.”

  Teresa bit her tongue to keep from snapping at him. She didn’t need a crash course on how to deal with dementia. “I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job. I worked with patients like her in the nursing home,” Teresa said. “I know how to handle them.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “And while we’re at it, we should get my duties defined a little better than you did when you hired me,” she said. “Am I to do cleaning or cooking?”

  “We have a housekeeper who comes in every other week. I’ve been doing the cooking, but if you want to do that, I won’t fight with you. However, your main job is to help me with Miss Janie. She’s so wobbly, I’m afraid that she’ll fall in the shower, and she’d be mortified if I saw her naked,” he answered.

  “So would you,” she told him.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” His eyes narrowed into slits.

  “Think about it.” She took her plate to the sink, rinsed it, and put it in the dishwasher. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee.

  “I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “Think how you’d feel if you had to give Miss Janie a bath. You’d be worse than mortified, and things would be awkward between y’all,” she told him. “I’m going up to my room to unpack. I can carry my own boxes. I don’t need your help.”

  “All right then, do it on your own, but you don’t have to be afraid I’ll kiss you again,” he smarted off.

  “If you did, you’d be pushing up daisies. I’m not that same little backwoods girls with no confidence. Oh, and unless I’m really busy, I’ll do the cooking. If what you make is like this coffee, it won’t be worth eating,” she said.

  “I made the breakfast you just ate,” he reminded her.

  Yes, you did, and if you’d been dying, Luis wouldn’t have made a meal, she thought, but Noah didn’t need to know that.

  “I can do better,” she threw over her shoulder as she left the room.

  Chapter Two

  Teresa carried two of the boxes up the stairs, set them in the hallway, and went back for the last of her things. When she had left to go to college eleven years ago, she’d thought she was ready to set the world on fire. She was going to prove that a foster kid could do great things, and then she had met and married Luis Mendoza. He had promised to love, honor, and be true to her right there in front of the judge at the courthouse the week before Christmas—and she’d believed him. That was the first of many mistakes she’d made where Luis was concerned.

  She was shocked when she opened the door to her old bedroom and saw that it hadn’t been touched since the day she left. The doll Miss Janie had given her their first Christmas together stared up at her from the miniature cradle that sat next to the rocking chair in the corner. She’d been too old to play with dolls when she got it, but now she kind of understood why Miss Janie had given it to her. With their darker skin, she and Kayla must’ve reminded her even back then of the two little baby girls she’d given away, and she’d never been able to give her own daughters a doll.

  Teresa sank down in the rocking chair and took in the room bit by bit. Pink rose wallpaper, lace curtains, pink bedspread, and crocheted doilies under the silver comb and brush set on the oak dresser. It was like stepping through a fog into a different time. Tears rolled down her cheeks when she remembered how vibrant Miss Janie had been the day she’d shown Teresa the room for the first time. Now that sweet, kind lady was gone and only a shell remained. The first time she’d seen the room, awe and disbelief had washed over her—this was her very own bedroom. She had waited until Miss Janie had left her alone in the room that day before crying then, too. She wiped her eyes on the tail of her T-shirt and pushed up out of the rocking chair. She couldn’t sit there blubbering all day. She had work to do, especially since she’d made those smart-ass remarks about cooking.

  Miss Janie must’ve either cleaned the bedroom once a week or had someone do it for her, because she didn’t even see a speck of dust on the closet shelf when she put one of her boxes up there. Then she unzipped her suitcase and unpacked it. She hung up her jeans and shirts and set a pair of boots and one of sandals on the floor. She remembered Miss Janie inspecting her room on Saturday back when she was in middle school. More tears flowed, and this time she sank down onto the floor and admitted to herself that the reason she hadn’t come back to Birthright was that she didn’t want Miss Janie to know that she’d failed. She had stopped going to classes and had gotten married before the first semester had even ended.

  “So much for staying in school and getting my nursing degree like Miss Janie wanted me to,” she muttered.

  The sound of uncontrollable weeping floated up the stairs, and she stepped out into the hallway. Noah’s deep tones in a muffled conversation and Miss Janie’s sobbing sent her down the stairs in a hurry.

  She met Noah in the downstairs hallway. “This time I don’t know what to do with her. Can you go in there, please? Maybe seeing you will calm her down. Right now she’s sixteen, and today she arrived here to live with Aunt Ruthie. I swear she feels like she gave birth a couple of days ago and can hardly move. I’m going to call the doctor.”

  Teresa left him standing in the hallway, rushed into the bedroom, sat down on the edge of the bed, and took Miss Janie’s hand in hers.

  “What’s the matter, darlin’? What can I do to help?” she asked.

  “I want to hold my babies again. I don’t want to give them away. Aunt Ruthie told me that she offered to help me raise them, but my parents won’t hear of it. I’ve shamed them, and they won’t let me keep my babies,” she said between bouts of sobbing. “Help me, please.”

  Teresa remembered a patient in the nursing home who’d had dementia and had evidently lost a child when she was a young woman. Someone had finally had the foresight to give her a baby doll, and she had taken care of it like it was real until she’d died a few weeks later.

  “If you won’t tell the head nurse on me, I will bring the babies,” Teresa whispered.

  “For real?” Miss Janie’s eyes lit up. “You can do that?”

  “Yes, I can, but you have to promise me that you won’t cry like that anymore. You break my heart when you do,” Teresa answered. “All you have to do is tell them to get me when you want to see the babies. I’ll sneak them out of the nursery and bring them right to you.”

  Noah met her at the doorway and whispered, “Are you bat-crap crazy, woman? The only way we’re going to get two babies is to steal them from the hospital in Sulphur Springs, and I’m not going to jail for kidnapping.”

  “I’m not crazy, and I know what I’m doin’.” Teresa brushed past him.
/>   “I doubt that,” Noah called after her. “If there are babies upstairs, I’ll eat my socks.”

  “You better take your shoes off and get out the mustard. I hear socks are a bit hard to get down without some mustard and a little pepper,” she shot back at him.

  Hoping that Kayla hadn’t taken everything out of her room when she left, she went there first. Other than the fact that the walls in Kayla’s room were pale green and Teresa’s were light yellow, the rooms were exactly alike—her baby doll still slept in its little cradle. Teresa picked it up, made sure the blanket was wrapped neatly around it, and then retrieved the one from her room. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she cradled one in the crook of each of her arms and headed toward Miss Janie’s room.

  Noah met her in the hallway again and held up a finger. “The doctor says the pain in her pelvic bones is probably what is causing that feeling that she had after giving birth. What are you doing with those dolls?”

  “These are not dolls today. They are real babies, and don’t you say anything to contradict that. My heart breaks when she sobs for the babies that she can’t have, so we’re making substitutions,” Teresa answered. “Can she have more medicine for the pain?”

  Noah shook his head. “She’s on the maximum dose that she can have without going to the hospital. She made me promise not to let her die anywhere but right here. The doctor says that she’ll probably spend more and more time in bed from now on. She’s going to know those are not living, breathing babies.”

  “Watch and learn,” Teresa told him.

  Miss Janie’s eyes widened, and a smile covered her face as she held out her arms for the dolls. “Put a pillow in my lap so they can lie side by side.”

  Noah did what she asked, and Teresa gently laid each doll down. “They’re beautiful babies. Do you think their eyes will stay brown or turn blue like yours?”

  “They’ll stay brown like their daddy’s eyes. Thank you for bringing them to me. You done good, gettin’ them past the head nurse.” Miss Janie reached out to touch each of their little faces. “They’re sleeping. How long do I get to keep them?”

  “As long as you want,” Noah said from the doorway.

  “I don’t want to give them away,” she said.

  “Then you don’t have to,” Teresa told her. “We’ll arrange it so that you can have them right here with you. We’ll even help you with them until you can get on your feet. You had a lot of stitches, and they take a long time to heal.”

  “This is wonderful.” Miss Janie couldn’t take her eyes off the two dolls. “You”—she pointed at the one on her left—“you are Mary Jane. And you”—she moved her bony finger to the other one—“you are Madeline Ruth, and I will call you Maddy.” She began to hum a lullaby and sway back and forth. “You can go now. I’m good as long as I don’t have to give them back.”

  “We’ll need to put them in the nursery at night so you can rest, but we’ll take good care of them when they’re away from you,” Teresa told her.

  Miss Janie’s chin quivered. “But I can keep them until bedtime, right?”

  “Of course,” Teresa said past the grapefruit-size lump in her throat. “Or until it’s feeding time. We’ll take care of that in the nursery, too, and if you get tired and want to rest, you let us know.”

  Miss Janie started to hum again and waved Teresa and Noah away.

  “That was genius,” Noah whispered. “Where’d those dolls come from anyway?”

  “Miss Janie gave me one for Christmas the first year I was here, and then the next Christmas she gave one like it to Kayla. We were too old to play with them, but I’m damn sure glad she gave them to us,” Teresa told him. “Someone in the nursing home did this for a dementia patient. I’m glad it worked for Miss Janie.”

  “Well, I sure hope it continues to work. Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, and I’m so glad you’ve dealt with this kind of thing before now. The doctor said that, between the cancer pain and the Alzheimer’s, she might get hung up in whatever age she had the most trauma or happiness—either one. She could think she’s sixteen until the day she passes away,” Noah told her. “Or she might still go back and forth. We should be prepared for either or both on an hourly basis, but if she stays in bed more and more, we’ll have to get a bed with rails.”

  “I’ve dealt with folks like her in the nursing home,” Teresa said. “If she breaks a hip or an arm, she’d be in even worse pain. I’m going back upstairs to unpack the rest of my things, and I’ll get something going for lunch. Is there anything Miss Janie isn’t supposed to eat?”

  “She doesn’t have much of an appetite, so I let her have whatever she wants. Sometimes she eats chocolate doughnuts three times a day,” Noah answered. “You’re taking all this better than I thought you would.”

  “Do you mean with Miss Janie or with you?” She raised a dark eyebrow.

  “Both,” he answered.

  “Miss Janie needs me, and I owe her more than I can ever repay. And you, well, we’re both adults and not lovestruck teenagers.” She shrugged. “We’ve grown up and we’re not even the same people we were back then. So you let her have whatever she wants to eat? Do you offer her wholesome food first?”

  “Eat what I want . . .” Noah grinned.

  “And die when I’m supposed to,” Teresa finished the sentence for him. “I remember hearing her and Sam’s wife say that lots of times. At this point, she should get whatever she wants.” Teresa had no desire to stand in the hallway and make small talk with Noah. She was there to do a job, pay back her debt to Miss Janie for taking her in, and save enough money to live on until she could go back to her old job and have enough saved up that she could rent a better apartment and not have to work double shifts to survive.

  If it’s all that simple, then why am I so damned emotional? she asked herself as she wiped away another tear making a streak down her cheek as she headed back to her room.

  When she got there, she sat down on the floor and opened the last two of the three boxes. The third one held her keepsakes from the past eleven years, and it was already on the closet shelf. When she left to go to college, she’d emptied four dresser drawers. Now she only needed one, for her underwear and nightshirts, which had been packed in the second box. The last box held a coat, a hoodie, and a couple of pairs of sweatpants that wouldn’t fit into her suitcase. Other than two pairs of jeans, a couple of secondhand-store dresses, and a few T-shirts already hanging in her closet, that was it. She’d lived in scrubs for the most part since she started working at the nursing home right after she and Luis married.

  Her unpacking done, she kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the bed. The ceiling became a screen for memories that played out in slow motion. There was one of her mother coming out of the only bedroom in the trailer and stumbling into the kitchen. She flipped the cap off a bottle of beer onto the floor and told Teresa to get up off her lazy ass and pick it up. The next vision was of the police and the Social Services lady who took her from the house. Her mother stood in the door with a bottle of whiskey in one hand, and she didn’t even wave with the other one. She learned later that one of her teachers had seen bruises on her and called the police.

  Teresa remembered keeping her eyes straight ahead and not even looking back at the ratty trailer. Living in the group home the lady was telling her about as they rode into town couldn’t be any worse than living there, where her mother couldn’t even make a decent taco or tamale without burning the meat.

  Another vision made its way to the ceiling. This time it was Noah at fourteen. He’d come to visit Miss Janie that summer, along with his parents, and he’d kissed her. They were sitting on the porch swing when it happened, and he’d told her that she was pretty. She’d never forgotten that kiss and the way it made her feel—all gushy inside and flushed on the outside. Maybe that was just a typical first kiss, but she’d never captured that kind of excitement or feeling again, not even with Luis.

  In the same sense, she�
�d never felt as dirty as when he told her afterward that she shouldn’t tell anyone about the kisses. When she’d asked him why, he’d said, “You know why.” But she hadn’t known—not until he had explained it to her when he came to the nursing home. She had jumped to conclusions and look where it got her. Her mother hadn’t given a damn about her. To have one that would think it disrespectful to kiss a girl on the porch was still a little foreign to Teresa.

  Chapter Three

  Teresa had finished putting a pot of black beans in a slow cooker to go with the enchiladas she planned to make for supper when she heard voices outside on the porch. Even though the thermometer said it was already past ninety degrees, Miss Janie had insisted on sitting on the porch swing that afternoon.

  Teresa strained her ears until they hurt, then finally went to see who Miss Janie was talking to. She found eighty-year-old Sam, Miss Janie’s neighbor, sitting on the porch step and fanning himself with his sweaty old cowboy hat.

  “Well, hello, Mr. Sam. How are you doin’ today?” she asked. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Well, hello to you, too, Teresa. I’d love a beer,” he said, “but if you ain’t got one, tea would be fine. And, honey, it’s just Sam, not Mr. Sam. That makes me feel like I’m older than I am. Us old guys don’t have no business out in the afternoon heat. As the crow flies, it’s less than a quarter of a mile from my place to here, but that’s across two barbed-wire fences and a pasture. Driving means maybe half a mile all total. My old bones don’t jump barbed-wire fences, and with hunnerd-degree temperatures, I damn sure wasn’t walking anywhere.” Sam was a short fellow who lived in bibbed overalls and boots, and Teresa could vouch that his hat was at least fifteen years old.

  “We’ve got beer. Can or bottle?” Teresa asked.

  “Ain’t nothing like a bottle.” Sam grinned.

  “Miss Janie, can I bring you something?” she added.

  “Cookies and milk, and bring enough for Sam,” Miss Janie answered.