# 2. I read something I loved today

“Mother Piousina laughed in a way that only somewhat offended me. ‘Is that everything?’ she asked. 

I told her that I’d used the Lord’s name in vain several times over the summer. Most of the instances had  occurred during the mayor’s Great Air-Conditioning Ration. One of our ‘off days’ had coincided with the hottest day in August. Between the 110-degree temperature and the heat generated by Nana’s many machines, the apartment had been a pretty close approximation of Hell. 

‘Anything else?’ 

‘One more thing. My grandmother is very sick and even though I love her’ —this was really hard for me to say — ‘sometimes I wish she would just die already.’

‘You don’t want to see her suffer. God understands that you don’t mean it, my child.’”

— from all these things I’ve done by Gabrielle Zevin

A Designated Pocket

When I got home from work, his car was in the driveway and I thought it was odd because he was supposed to have a gig tonight. The windows were dark. I knew he wasn’t home. He had gotten a ride with a friend. This and that. But still.

I sat in the car strangely wanting to hurry hurry, stuff my keys in my purse, yank my phone from the charger, and barge in knowing that possibly no one would be there but possibly someone might be there. What if I went in and found him laying on the bed, just laying there? What if I went in and he was at his computer, checking email and drinking a beer? What if I went in and he was on the floor?

What if I barged in maniacally only to find darkness and a hungry cat?

I took my keys from the ignition. I unzipped the designated pocket on my purse and placed them inside. I pulled my earbuds from my ears, took the time to wrap them around the ipod. I put them in their own designated pocket, zipped up, grabbed my water bottle, opened the door, grabbed my purse and stepped outside without feeling like falling. I walked to the house, one step, that step, another step, the plants needed watering.

I did try to open the door without unlocking it first. It didn’t budge. He’s not home, I know he’s not home. I take my key, turn it, open the door. Dark windows, dark house. A step. A cat crying.

It’s hot in the house so I know he’s not here. I go to his office and the chair is pushed in. The bedroom with the bed made, clean and tight. One blind open, the others drawn. In the kitchen, it’s as if he were just here — but it’s so dirty it’s as if everyone were just here, maybe we had a party I forgot about. I peek to the back deck and check the chairs, look for a hint of cigar smoke. I sniff and sniff nothing. The keys to the shop are on their key ring so I know he’s not out there. I consider checking but if I checked I’d have to consider myself insane. I mean, who does this? Who sneaks through their house looking for a boyfriend who’s surely gone to work? Who clearly got a ride from a friend? Whose drums, sunglasses, wallet, keys, duffel bag are all missing?

So I go to the bathroom to change clothes, wash hands, do whatever it is you have to do once you’ve come home from a day, a day like that, you know them but I refuse to call it a “one of those days” day.

And there it finally is. An unnaturally clean sink. The soap and my makeup glass moved to the windowsill.

He shaved before leaving. These are the clues.

I put my hands in the dry sink and just stand there. I don’t know why.

He is at work, as was I all day.

The First Memory

This is in response to a prompt I promised my teen writers group I’d write. Here’s the prompt (and where I got the prompt):

 Recall a photograph from your life and describe it in a way that suggests (but doesn’t specifically name) why it matters. (Remember the creative writer’s adage, “Show, don’t tell.”) Describe what happened either just before or just after the photo was taken.

I am staring at balloons. This is where the memory starts. Everything is hazy and bright at the same time and I feel that maybe I should be scared, but mostly it’s just… those balloons. Where did they come from? Or really, what are those things? Why can they fly? Am I flying? I check the floor to make sure.

There is a box underneath me. I’m sitting on a big, white box and my feet are dangling in these little shoes with velcro straps. Those frilly socks and a little dress that is white on top and blue on the bottom. My mouth is hanging open. Maybe I didn’t know it then, but I can feel it now. I can almost catch flies.

Something loud, a clap maybe, and I turn to it. There, far off in the room I am just now noticing, is more white, floods of curtains, light, and my mother in a dark green sweater. Oversized. Some jeans. Her hair long and slightly teased with bangs that are curled and lifted and held with hairspray. Something that someone might find funny now — but to me, right now, right in this moment, the one of both the writing and the memory, it is only something that makes me warm.

I can see her. She is leaning her right shoulder against a white wall, arms crossed, and behind her are shadows. She catches my gaze and smiles instantly, immediately, like she always does, even now. Like seeing me look at her is all she ever wanted wants will want. There is someone else in the room with us hiding in my right field of vision, but I either don’t remember looking toward this person or I simply blocked out every image but my mother. She is there leaning against the wall in that big green sweater, smiling like a loony, and everything else is vague.

I shift my focus back to the balloons, the floating colors, wondering where they came from and how they work. I’m sure at the time all I really wanted was to touch them but they were floating just out of my reach, held by strings. Another noise, possibly this:

“Hey baby girl, look here!”

I am putting words in my mother’s mouth, but they are words that have always come from her mouth. I turn again and this time the other entity moves and –

Flash!

Light blocks out everything and scares me and I cry and there across the room I’m sure my mother laughed. I’m sure there were some words back and forth between her and the other entity, and after that, I’m sure she came to me and picked me up and held me until I stopped crying. But I don’t remember any of it. The memory ends just as abruptly as it starts – with the first flash.

Important Things to Learn:

Frequently reminisce on your childhood.
When you are upset or angry, think about your childhood.
When you are embarrassed at something you’ve done, think about your childhood.
Forgive.
For the love of god, forgive.

Good people are frequently parasites in disguise.
You are most likely a good parasite sucking up approval.
Consider why exactly you feel compelled to do good things.
Forgive again.

Ask a passive-aggressive person what you have done wrong.
Apologize and say you’ll make it better.
Read stories that make you uncomfortable.
Apply for jobs you don’t think you want.
Apply for jobs you don’t think you can get.

Forget the idea that you are good. That is a false notion.
Forget the idea that you are bad. That is a false notion.

You have walls. You don’t think you do, but you have them.
You’ve been building them for years.
You know how you stop dancing in your car when you’re at a stoplight with other cars?
You know how your resume makes you nervous?
You know how you’re stubborn?
Those are walls.
You must be tired of fighting.
Lay down your guns.

We went to New Orleans.

That was our vacation. Yes, we did all that stuff you’re supposed to do: beignets and chicory coffee at Cafe DuMonde, bread pudding souffle and brandy milk punches, getting too drunk on Bourbon street, jazz clubs with the trumpet right in your face, tipping your street musicians accordingly and clapping and dancing while you’re at it. We went to Treme and got gawked at for being the white kids that didn’t belong. We smoked cigars and tried to decipher clips of Spanish spoken too fast from men with tobacco leaves in their teeth. We ate po boys.

We ate way too much gumbo. We had it here, we had it there, we had it everywhere. And it all tasted like dark coffeed flour and butter and warm. The turtle soup was nice as well, though I’m still not quite sure about having eaten some turtles. I can’t help but imagine my college roomate’s pet baby turtles. (She had three of them and they were her children.)

This one time I was lost and I asked a cop handing out parking tickets to point me in the right direction. She turned slowly and stared at me with a look that said I’m not here and god it was so weird. I thought, maybe she’s drunk. Maybe she’s a homeless person who murdered a cop and took her uniform and her walkie-talkie and her gadgets and her parking ticket pad and now she’s just walking around playing the part cause it just seemed like a good idea. That’s what her look told me. Or maybe that’s just how she was.

I asked, “Is there a convenience store somewhere around here?”

She turned vaguely and nodded vaguely. Her eyes glazed and didn’t really make contact with anything.

I took my cue, said thanks, and walked on.

Two steps later, a cabbie ran a light at an intersection and he gave her the thumbs up and she said, “I see you! I see you!” and she stared and then walked on. She checked the meter on a car, stared at it and kept going. I waited, and out of curiousity, checked it myself. Expired.

I mean, what the fuck’s up with that?

There was one night that it got cold and Pat and I, in our infinite people-in-their-twenties wisdom,  were woefully underprepared. He, being kindhearted and such, lent me his pullover sweater and just decided to go in a long-sleeved buttoned shirt since he figured he’d warm up anyway. I mean, the sweater was really a nice gesture and I can’t handle any type of cold, but when I checked myself in the mirror and saw the damage the humidity had done to my hair and how ill-fitting the sweater looked, I couldn’t help but see something all too recognizable on the street.

We wanted to go to Bourbon street without buying drinks from the bars, so we had bought a bottle of liquor and some mixers and I agreed to carry it in my backpack that just so perfectly fit the look. You know the look I’m talking about. Don’t play.

So we go down to the French Quarter (cause first we were determined to get some dessert from Brennan’s) and we wait outside for our table in a cubby in the buildings that I found. Pat pulls the liquor from my backpack and mixes us a drink while we wait (god, can you believe you can just do that on the street?)  and we sip our drinks in the shadows and wait. People (tourists) walk past us and ever so slightly their paths bend away from us. They speed up to pass us. At one point, I’m leaning against the building, sipping my drink, and a woman walks past me clearly watching me from the corner of her eye. She clutches her purse closer to her as she passes us. She tries to be discreet but come now.

And you know, yes, it made me feel a little good. I don’t know why. I don’t enjoy making people nervous. But I enjoyed something about it, some measure of it. Maybe the control part. The advantage. Who knows.

I snorted which made me realize that I’d probably had too much already, and then our table was ready and we went inside and had our banana’s Foster.

This story has no point other than that before the trip, my head was all storming. I mean, just full of shitstorming. You wouldn’t believe the kinda shit that was roaring along all the time, just loud and obtrusive and all over everything. It was like I couldn’t concentrate on anything  and then I go there and and smell around for the water damage (not a hard smell to miss) and count the number of abandoned, gutted buildings and the number buildings for sale and the number of buildings being renovated (an average of two of each per street) and it’s just __________________________________.

I come back here and everything’s so small. I come back here and people don’t say hello for no reason on the street.

On the way home while we were stuck in the airport, the airline announced that our plane had been delayed two hours and then later announced that it had in fact been delayed three hours because the original plane needed to be swapped out for another plane. And this one guy gets up, all huffy. Red shirt tucked in, navy vest, thin glasses with silver and white rims, a crew cut that just so perfectly shows off the rolls of fat cascading down his neck. Red face. A wedding ring on his finger. You know this guy. Let’s face it, you’ve seen this guy in church.

He jumps up and yells, “Liars! You’re lying to us! You told me that plane was in the air and now you say it’s being swapped out? Liars! It’s gonna be cancelled, we all know it’s gonna be cancelled.”

No seriously, this actually happened. I’m surprised the air martials or whatever didn’t pop out of the woodwork. He was just shouting at the staff in general as if it meant something. The staff just looked at him and said they were sorry but they were just telling us what they had themselves been told. The guy repeated the part about the lying. The staff repeated the part about the being sorry. Just like at the DMV. Just like in the “I get this shit every day” way.

But then the funnier thing about it, and yes this really happened too, was that I’m watching this red-faced guy in a reflection in the window and the next thing I know is he’s got people huddled around him in a circle. And they’re all talking together, clearly all ticked off about the delay, and they’re venting about the idiocy and everything, and huddling like they’re planning a mother fucking mutiny. No lies. That’s really what happened. Except eventually they all sit down and we get on the plane (I end up sitting elbow to elbow with red-faced guy whose knee, every time he falls asleep, relaxes and bears down on mine)  and all we all get home and go to bed. Cause I mean… yeah.

So far since being home everything has been both quieter and louder. My head is quieter and my mouth is louder when I speak to people. I speak more often, more genuinely. I don’t know why, it just kinda happened. After effects, I guess. People are easier to talk to now, even the ones who don’t necessarily want to be talked to. It’s a little easier to talk to the teens at the library.

We listen to more music, and no matter what I do, I can’t seem to keep from clapping my hands.

Uncomfortable, Awkward, and Impatient

I’m driving home from work and it’s Friday and for the first time in a long time I’m going home at 6:00 instead of to my next job. I have the entire weekend off and we’re going to New Orleans next week, our first vacation alone together in four years. The Beatles are playing. That one song I love (I love them all) that gets stuck in the back of memory. Nobody ever love me like she do me. Don’t let me down. That one.

I am driving and smiling and feeling weightless for once I don’t care what’s happening elsewhere. The windows are down and I’m driving into a sunset.

I drive back into my town that the sun is dripping down on and the businesses idle past. Laundromat. The university. Sandwich shop. Blockbuster. Greek restaurant.

And there I see it, in a fast food pizza parking lot. I glance. The building rolls past but I’ve already seen enough. An old woman with a walker hobbles to the front door with some kind of daughter’s arms locked into hers and they walk together slow, god so slow.

The woman is wearing an all brown sweatsuit, track suit, a sickening kind of brown, the kind of brown you know only comes from Goodwill and a nursing home dresser drawer. Moth balls. On her feet are fat black orthopedic shoes and the pants don’t come down far enough and her white socks and even a bit of skin show above the laces. She leans on her walker. One step, two steps. The daughter grips her, I’m sure saying something small talk like, “Almost there” and “Whew! How tiring” and “What a pretty day, huh? Don’t you think it’s a pretty day?”

Somewhere nearby is a boy, preteen, probably waiting at the door, probably thoroughly uncomfortable, awkward, and a little impatient.

It only takes a second. And for some reason, I just start crying. God, yes, I know I’m a crybaby. Sue me. I cry over everything these days.

But my god, even with the beautiful weather and the knowledge that I’ve got seven days worth of drunken fun and boyfriend and exploration and wearing whatever the fuck I want ahead of me, all I can think is:

Mygrandmotherisdying Mygrandmotherisdying Mygrandmotherisdying

I cry until I reach my house and run inside where everything is mercifully silent and empty. Don’t let me down, nobody love me like she do me.

I think about what I’ve been writing lately. I run it through my head, do the math. Half the posts here have mentioned my grandmother, two of the pieces currently on my desktop involve her. Several of my bios from things published last year tell people I’m obsessed with grandmothers and aging.

Those boxes of photos my mother gifted me last summer.

Okay, I am grieving. I get that. I am grieving for someone who hasn’t left yet, but okay yes, maybe she has. I have a perfectly healthy mother, but I’m watching a mother die. I think of her often but I don’t call.

I see her when I’m in town. We pick her up from the home and she hobbles to the car in clothes that yes, I do recognize, but hang from a body I don’t. My mother, her daughter in law, links their arms and they make their way to whatever destination at which we have chosen to eat. Dairy Queen. A fast food fried chicken joint. And my father and I, we stand at the door waiting, uncomfortable, awkward, and impatient.

My mother used to dress me while I slept in my bed at 4am. She was studying to be a nurse and she worked the morning shift (6am to 2pm) and went to school at night. My father was a truck driver and always out the door by 3am back from 4pm to ???. Usually 4pm though. Let’s not be dramatic.

My mother had this knack of dressing me completely before I even woke up. I’d just rattle awake and presto, I’m fully dressed, shoes tied and pants buttoned and all. We would be out the door after that, no stopping.

Five minutes down the road, she’d take me to my grandmother’s house. Funny I should say “grandmother’s” house, first always and ever. My grandmother was never awake when I got there. It was my grandfather who would always be sitting in the chair with the lamp on and the TV humming in the background with the 5am news queued up and c’mon girl, les see what the weatherman say today.

She’d walk me to the door and I’d run ahead and run in without knocking and he would always be in that rocking chair and he would giggle (who knows why) and I’d run to him and Mom would… I don’t remember really, I was preoccupied at the time. I’m sure there was some talk about when Dad would be back to pick me up. Maybe some small talk about the weather. Maybe something about my brother. I can’t remember. That part isn’t important. In fact, I think when I was old enough my mom didn’t even walk me inside. I would hop out the car and be at the door before she could even unbuckle her seatbelt.

My grandfather and I would sit — either me on my grandmother’s big lush pink lazyboy or on his knee. When I was still small enough, he would bounce me on his knee, god he would, can you believe people actually do that? He would grab my knee fast and yell “Horse eatin’ corn!” and I would squeal from the surprise. One of those weird tickling things, kind of like my brother did, except he would punch my thigh and call it a frog and it hurt. Papa would bug his eyes out and spit his dentures out at me fast and suck them back in before I knew what had really happened. I tried to do it with my own teeth but he never could get across to me that my teeth weren’t supposed to do that. I’d pull on them and they still wouldn’t come out.

This was all before 6am. At 6am, my grandmother would wake up and make breakfast and by 6:30, we’d be at the table and sayin’ prayers and eating our food. (Scrambled eggs and toast on Mondays and Wednesdays, biscuits and honey or gravy on Tuesday and Thursdays and Friday? Pancakes.) After breakfast, she’d wash the dishes and he’d dry them. They would always do that part together.

But don’t let that little sweet detail fool you. It’s come to my attention that they may have actually hated each other.

I take that back. It’s come to my attention that my grandmother may have hated him.

I don’t know why yet. I mean, I do. But I think she may have developed a habit.

All day it was outside outside oustide and Seseme Street and I Love Lucy and Andy Griffith and more outside outside ouside and snakes and the dogs and the garden and the pool in the summer occasional fishing and sometimes trips to the bottom to check on the cows (which I didn’t really enjoy as this interrupted my own outside outside outside time.)

And at 4pm, most times, my dad would pick me up and take me to town to pick up his check and a pack of beer and some M&Ms for me and then we’d go home and Mom would get there eventually and we’d eat dinner at the table with my brother and mom would wrestle me back out my clothes and argue with me about the importance of baths and brushing teeth and hair and why I should sleep in my bed instead of the couch (I went through a sleeping on the couch phase, I still don’t know why.) And we’d all go to sleep by 11 and wake up at 4 and do it all over again.

And now, I am in my own school after work phase, though I am luckily without someone to dress at 4am. I get up at 8, sometimes shower, usually don’t (yeah I’m gross, I get it) and I check my emails and brew my coffee and consult my to-do list and write a new one and take a deep breath and go to JOB 1 and spend all day in noise and things to do and shit to put myself out there on and then I go to JOB 2 at the end of the day and try not to fall asleep and scream at people and brainstorm for FREELANCE GIG 1 and then somewhere in there I manage to write some papers and write some writing and read two books a week, one of which should really be a juvenile or YA book you know, if you were really doing the best job you could.

I hit a wall and I take a nap and when I wake, I hop up staring at my feet wondering why the fuck they don’t have shoes on them yet and then I remember where I am now.

Where I am is a new era and yet, it’s really not that new, no, not really at all. It’s the same damn story with different characters. At least I thought they were different? Maybe I got that detail wrong. Even still I am walking to that house in the dark with the lamp shining through the window and the TV buzzing in the background.

Something Really Great

There is a little girl and a father that come to every one of my evening story times. When I open the door, they are there with their little paper Hobby Lobby tickets. She does a dance only a three year-old could do, the one where the arms flail around and the legs jump at different times and everything just moves and she is so happy. Her eyes are like raindrops. No really, I realize how odd that sounds. They really are. They’re wide and glassy and huge and every time she looks at me with them I can feel rain pouring down my cheeks.

She bounces into the room and runs to the front, directly in the middle, directly behind the blue line that I have taped to the floor to keep the boundaries. She sits right there on the edge and her father traipses in behind her and sits down next to her.

“Hello,” he always tells me and nods, not quite meeting my eyes but not because he has forgotten me.

They sit and the children filter in but she stays where she is. She waits patiently while I explain about how everyone must stay behind the blue line and everyone must turn their cell phones off and everyone must take fussy children outside and everyone must stop being afraid of being silly and just be silly with their children until I finally turn the music on.

She loves this part. We do this every week. We dance to “Shake the Sillies Out” by Raffi. You shake the sillies out, then clap the crazies out, then jump the jiggles out, then yawn the sleepies out, and then you shake the sillies out all over again. She knows all the movements.

Which isn’t special because, by now, everyone knows the movements. What is special, what is really great, is that the second she jumps out to dance, her father pulls out his smart phone and videotapes her. Every single time. Doing the same dance. They’ve been coming for at least two seasons and he’s taped her dancing every time. That means that he has 40 or 50 different files of this little girl doing the exact same dance in the exact same way every single time.

I wonder if he saves them and I imagine he does. I imagine folders upon folders of “__ Shakes Her Sillies Out,” “___ Trying New Foods,” “___ Finds A Bug,” “___ Laughing,” “___ Crying.” And so on and so forth.

At the end of the program, I sing a lullaby with my triangle and as soon as the song is over, the children mob my legs trying to get to the instrument to ring it. Everyone gets a turn. She waits until they all leave.

Then she runs to me, throws herself over my shoulders, her eyes like raindrops washing away just everything, and hugs me. I ask if she would like to play the triangle. She nods, every time. I hold it out, give her the tiny baton, and she taps the triangle lightly, just enough to make the perfect sound. Her father tells me “Thank you.” Her father tells me “I hope you feel better” if I sound like I have a cold. Her father tells me “Have a nice vacation” if I mention being gone the next week.

Then he takes her hand. They walk each other out and shut the door behind them.

The Frightening Place

The locker room. 12 years old and I was already failing Algebra and we had P.E. and I had to go into the locker room. The eighth graders were always already in there, regardless of who opened the door first.

I push on the door. It slides open easily, squeaks just gracelessly as it hits a snag on the gym floor. I tiptoe in. A full room, though there are no people. I put my clothes on the bench. The shower curtain rustles in a whisper and I ignore it. I already tried that.

It rustles again. I tiptoe to it (why tiptoeing? why is that necessary?) and peek behind the curtain. Empty. There is nothing waiting in there for me. I back away and unbutton my jeans. Kick my shoes off, peel everything off, fast, faster. They are coming, I know it. I pull my shorts on and pull my shirt over my head. The door swishes open, almost silently, only if you hadn’t become accustomed to it.

I am there. In shorts and a cloth bra that has no excuse and she is leading the pack, talking about her mother, about how stupid she is, mimicking her and gesturing like her, although I don’t think she is aware of how stunning the impression truly is. Her eyes focus on me and I want to pull my shirt over my head but not while she’s watching. I begin to turn.

Here is where I try to remember whatever it is she would have said at this point. Anything. But nothing comes up. There are several things she’s said to me before, several ways to make me feel exposed, inadequate, insignificant, behind somehow, left out always. But no specific sentence is coming to mind. Fill in your own blank and imagine she says it.

And once she’s said it, her ammunition discharged and she is reloading, perhaps for me or someone else, I pull my shirt over my head and grab my shoes. That was it. That was all. That was the thing that happened yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Always one line or two, enough to blind me, so I can’t watch when she turns it around on someone else. Like the girl whose parents had recently divorced. Whose father was caught sleeping with the school secretary.

Her own parents are not happy, everyone knows it. Her mother treats her as a possession. Her mother is controlling. Her mother makes sure her hair is highlighted and that she is sticking with her diet. Her mother has created an exact replica and the realization is just beginning to dawn. She stinks of desperation, though at 12 I could hardly recognize the smell.

I run through the locker door in my socks, take my place in line and sit down to pull my shoes on. I stare at the clock. Forty minutes until the end of the period. An hour and a half until the end of the day. Two more days left in the week, thirteen more weeks left in the school year, six more years of school, then college, and then what.

I’ll wait patiently, I think. I’ll sit here. I’ll endure this. I’ll get through it. And then I’ll go somewhere different. Be someone different. Things will be easier. And she will be gone. She will be gone by the time I go to high school.

I’ll wait patiently. I’ll wait patiently. I’ll wait patiently. I’m waiting patiently.

Last night I found a picture of my grandmother

She was wearing a sundress and a little sun hat and she sat on a rickety wooden porch with weeds and cow pies all around it and she wore little saddle shoes with little frilly socks coming out the top. She held a baby in place next to her, made him stand, and I knew it was my uncle, the one born disabled, the first one of my grandmother’s (at least of those that lived.)

She was holding him there, him struggling to stand, and she was smiling at him, not paying attention to the camera. Her face looked just like mine if I were holding a struggling baby. The fingers matched, the chin, the smile, the forehead even. One thing did not match and that was that underneath the frill of her shirt sleeve, coming out of that pretty sundress was a muscled bicep, an incredible one. She had better arms than the majority of the men here.

It was ropy and bulgy and it traveled down to her hand that was huge and didn’t make any sense with the rest of her tiny body. My grandmother never grew over five feet two inches. Her legs looked like toothpicks poking out of her saddle shoes. But those arms. Fuck, those arms.

I imagined feed stacks and calves and hay bales and fertilizer and tractors and dough and rolling pins and fixing shit and all that stuff we never think about anymore.

Routinely, I find myself bored and restless. So I get up and cook something. But it’s not enough. I go one further and cook something from scratch. But it’s still not enough.

You see, I get hung up at the grocery store. (This is what everyone says.) Something about all those aisles and choices and boxes and signs, and even the whole produce comes in different bins and barrels and boxes and they all look so clean you don’t even have to rummage through the pile to find a good tomato.

Last time I saw my grandmother, she was sitting in her rocker in the nursing home, just a little sack of bones with socked feet that didn’t even touch the ground. Her hands gripped the railing of her chair and her oxygen tank sat next to her like a good dog, humming and breathing and keeping rhythm. She just sat there and didn’t look at me. She reached up and wiped her nose with a Kleenex and then stuffed it in her lap with the others. She shook her head and repeated, “It’s pitiful, just pitiful. A person gets so they cain’t go anymore.”

The oxygen tank gulped a breath and I nodded.