Sassafras, Part 25

Joan



It took an hour to get to The Home. It wasn’t until I was halfway there that I realized I had left Jenny’s memory chips with Sneider. Oh, well. I didn’t have her camera, so what good were they? When I got to The Home, I parked in the almost-empty parking lot and trudged into a dingy waiting room. The aide working the desk called the head nurse, an older, overweight woman with short gray hair and thick glasses named Mrs. Britterman.

"Good afternoon, Miss Weaver," she said. "What can I do for you?"

"Good afternoon. I need to see my mother," I said. "I'm afraid I have bad news for her. My sister died a couple of days ago."

"Not Jenny?" she asked.

"Yes, did you know her?"

"Oh, yes. She used to come see her mother about once a month. She's such a sweet girl. Was she ill long?"

"No, it was a hit and run accident Monday night."

"Oh, dear. That's such a shame," Mrs. Britterman said. "We all loved her here."

Oh, I'm sure you did, I thought. Everybody loved Jenny. Saint Jenny. "Could you tell me which room is my mom's?" I asked her.

"Sure, dear. I'll take you there myself, but I don't think your mother will understand anything. She hasn't been the same since the last stroke."

"She had another stroke?" I asked.

"Why, yes, she had two since she moved in here. The last one was three months ago. Didn't you know?"

"No, Jenny never told me." I tried to think of when was the last time I talked to Jenny. It hadn't been three months had it? No, it had just been a few weeks ago. She just never told me.

"I guess she just didn't want to worry you," Mrs. Britterman said. "She was so proud of you, off in the big city. She used to tell us all about you. Here we are."

She opened a door. "I'll leave you two alone," she said. "Stop at the desk before you leave and let us know where to send flowers."

I walked inside. I don’t know what she meant about leaving us alone. There were two other women in the room with my mom. The young woman was gone. I wondered what had happened to her. There was an old black woman, with hardly any hair, and a white woman with so much make-up on she looked like a clown. They both watched as I walked in.

Mom was lying in bed, looking out the window. She looked bad. She was thin, and her hair was dirty. The right side of her face was slack and her right eye was closed. She turned and faced me when I sat down next to her. “Hi, Mom,” I said, but she looked right past me. “It’s me, Joan. I miss you, Mom.” I didn’t know how to tell her Jenny was dead. I guess there isn’t a good way to break something like that. “Mom, I have some bad news for you.” She nodded a couple of times, and then waved at me. The clown lady kept staring at me, paying more attention to what I was saying than Mom did.

“Mom, Jenny was in an accident Monday night. Jenny died, Mom. She’s not going to be coming to visit you anymore.” I could have been reading the phone book to her, for all the impression it seemed to make on her. “Mom, do you understand what I’m saying? Jenny’s dead.” I could hear the little black lady start quoting scriptures to herself. I wished they would both leave us alone. It was hard enough telling Mom about Jenny without having them watching. “I just thought you should know. The funeral is Sunday. I wish you could come. I think Jenny would have wanted you there.”

I could tell Mom didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. She was just staring at the window. I couldn’t even tell if she knew who I was. What was I doing there? What was Mom doing there? I remembered the last time I saw her before her stroke. I came back to Sassafras for my 10 year high school reunion. It was just three months before her stroke. She was a cashier at a big grocery store in Bond. She went out with the other cashiers all the time, going to bars and casinos, acting more like she was my age than I did. I stayed at her house the whole weekend I was in town, and only saw her three times because she was always working or out doing something with her friends. I couldn’t believe it when Jenny called and said Mom was in the hospital. And now she was just lying in bed, staring out the window. I barely got out of her room before I started crying. As the door closed I heard one of the other women say goodbye, but I couldn’t tell which one it was.

I was almost at the front door when I heard Mrs. Britterman call my name. “Miss Weaver! Miss Weaver!” I wiped my eyes before I turned around. “I’m glad I caught you before you left. There are some papers I need you to sign. Now that Jenny’s gone, you’re Mrs. Weaver’s legal guardian. We need to change our paperwork, and have you sign some forms.”

I remembered when Mom went in The Home, Jenny was named legal guardian, and I was put down as alternative in case anything happened to Jenny. I hadn’t thought about it since then. Mrs. Britterman led me to her office and we sat down. She had a very tidy office, nothing on her desk but a calendar, a picture of a man I assumed was her husband, and an African violet. She pulled a folder out of a cabinet next to her desk and opened it up, then took some papers out of a drawer in her desk. “These are the papers I need you to fill out,” she said as she passed them to me. “Just simple questions. We need to know where to send your mother’s bills, how to contact you if anything happens to her. While you’re here you might as well pay this bill for the hairdresser from two weeks ago. We like our guests to look their best, you know.”

I just looked at her, shocked that she could say such a thing. My mother had looked anything but her best. I looked at the bill. $45 for a haircut. There was no way I was paying that, I thought, but then realized it didn’t really matter anyway. Mom wasn’t staying in this shit hole. I was going to get her transferred to a home somewhere in New York, where I could visit her and keep an eye on everything. Just like Jenny, I thought. I filled out all the paperwork and wrote a check for the hairdresser. I wanted to put a few choice words in the memo section of the check, but decided not to. It wouldn’t do any good, and wouldn’t really make me feel any better. Mrs. Britterman had the secretary make copies of everything for me, and then I was finally able to leave. I looked at the papers after I got in Jenny’s car. Maybe now I would finally be able to get into Jenny’s box at the bank, but that would have to wait until tomorrow because the bank would be closed by the time I got back to Sassafras.