Juicy

by Pepper Pace

  “Shhh, Mommy. I’m going to take care of everything.”

  When the ambulance arrived, Juicy grabbed her mother’s purse because she knew that the insurance cards were there, then she remembered to lock up the house and hurried after them.

  Miss Barbara Jean started screaming as soon as she saw her friend on the gurney and she ran along after it, as if it was a casket at a funeral. Juicy saw Momma staring at her with her good eye but she made no attempt to speak to her friend.

  The sobbing woman rode in the ambulance with them and Juicy was very close to screaming for her to shut the hell up! But she focused on holding her mother’s hand and talking to her in a soothing voice. She made sure that the ambulance took them to the hospital of her mother’s request and when she softly whispered this to Jassmina, she was rewarded with a half smile.

  Miss Barbara Jean proved to be helpful in answering the questions to get her mother admitted while Juicy stood by her side through each portion of her examination. After many tests and after many hours, a doctor informed her that she had suffered a very bad stroke. The damage was extensive effecting her heart as well as several other major organs. However despite the damage and paralysis she remained coherent.

  The doctor seemed surprised but Juicy wasn’t. Not even a stroke could set her Momma back too far. Still, seeing her like this affected her. She had never felt more alone in her life. Juicy cried in the bathroom so that her mother wouldn’t know, even though all she did was to sleep and she couldn’t see her while she did that. Still, she didn’t want her mother to hear her in her sleep. The next morning when her Momma woke up, she looked around confused.

  Juicy took time to explain all that had happened. She had a drowsy, confused expression. Her face was drawn down on one side, including her eye and someone had mercifully covered it with a bandage. She also had no use of any muscles on the left side of her body and she kept looking at her useless arm as if she didn’t understand it. Juicy combed and brushed her hair and put it into two braids while her mother’s eye closed in pleasure.

  That first day she slept more then she was awake and Juicy was able to run home and get showered and to find some phone numbers so that she could call her Momma’s friends. Miss Barbara Jean had already taken care of that, though. Everybody in the neighborhood knew every detail of her mother’s diagnosis! Miss Barbara Jean was a big gossip but at least she didn’t have to go into details about it herself.

  After a few days Jassmina was even better, yet her speech was still slow and she still got confused at times. Juicy talked to her in the hopes that she’d talk back. Then one day while she was watching her daughter, Jassmina began pulling at the oxygen mask.

  Juicy tried to still her hand. “You need that Momma.” But Jassmina was trying to talk so Juicy held it inches from her mouth so that she could still breathe in the oxygen while she struggled to speak.

  “N-n…” She took a deep breath. “Nur-se.”

  “You want your nurse?” Juicy moved to the bed controls, where there was a call button for the nurse’s station. Jassmina gave her a tired, yet determined look.

  “No! N-nurse!”

  Juicy stared at her mother in confusion. She would probably be confused for months to come…maybe even forever. It would be easy for her to dismiss her request, but she really seemed to want this nurse. It took her half the day before Juicy understood what her mother really wanted and that was after the poor woman had exhausted herself and fallen back to sleep.

  She wanted the nurse that had been responsible for her firing.

  Juicy had returned home to shower, and eat—hospital food was way too expensive…and nasty. When she returned, Momma was awake and she gave Juicy a determined look and began the process for asking for that nurse again.

  “Momma,” she sighed. “I know what you want. You want that nurse that they fired you over.” Jassmina nodded.

  “Momma, why?”

  “N-nurse!”

  “She probably doesn’t even work here anymore. That was years ago.” She continued gently.

  “W-wa…w-want her!”

  She was working herself up again.

  “Okay, Momma,” anything to calm her down. But she didn’t know how she was supposed to do this; find a nurse that her mother couldn’t even tell her the name of. And besides, what was she planning to do if she found her? She had an image of her mother rolling out of the bed and stabbing the nurse with a plastic utensil.

  Juicy had struck up a conversation with several of the cleaning people over the last few days, but they were all too young to remember her mother. Hell, that was over ten years ago and most of the people that she had met on the house cleaning crew was not much older than herself. She decided to do some asking around and she found an older guy that had worked back when her mother had.

  His name was Joe; and when Juicy asked if he remembered Jassmina Robinson, his eyes lit up.

  “Oh, that sista looked just like Pam Greer! Of course I remember her.”

  Juicy told him that she was her mother and Joe gave her a quick look, almost as if saying, ‘how did you come from that?’ Juicy resisted the urge to scowl and she explained that her mother was now a patient.

  Joe was honestly sorry to hear that and asked permission to stop by to pay her a visit.

  “I think Momma would like that,” she lied. A lot of people had come to visit her Momma; mostly men, because Momma just seemed to have more true male friends then female ones. However she hadn’t seemed to be particularly happy to see any of them. Maybe she just didn’t want people to see her when she wasn’t at her best. Momma had always been particular about her looks. She dressed as hip as her daughter and was known for being the sharpest lady on the block.

  “Mr. Joe, can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure, come on, let’s go to the cafeteria and I’ll buy you a something to eat. I’ll give you some meal passes.” She gave him a grateful smile. She wasn’t exactly rolling in the dough since she hadn’t been able to do hair.

  “I don’t want the bossman looking at me for standing around shooting the breeze.” His eyes darted about and he seemed to be searching for people hiding in wait to secretly write him up.

  Juicy waited until they were in the elevator before she asked the question. “Do you remember how my mother got fired?”

  “Oh yeah. That was some bad business there. That was foul, how they offered her up like that.”

  “Momma told me the story; about how that nurse had been the one stealing drugs but my mother got fired for it.”

  “Yeah. That’s exactly how it happened. We all knew that she was an addict. If you know what to look for, it ain’t easy to hide.”

  Juicy nodded. The projects was full of addicts. The doors opened and they strolled at a leisurely pace towards the cafeteria.

  “You know,” Mr. Joe spoke thoughtfully. “Sometimes things do come up missing; couple rolls of toilet paper, a blanket or a couple cartons of o.j., and that would be us doing that. I ain’t going to lie about that. I’m sure your Momma got a few of them white hospital blankets at your house.” He gave her a serious look. Juicy nodded. Those were the best blankets in the house, too.

  “So yeah, we knew that gal was a druggy but we didn’t think she was stupid enough to steal drugs from the hospital. But then it was coming up missing way too much. She was just careless about it; taking too much.

  “Anyway, they called your Momma into the office and said that they’d found evidence that she’d been stealing. They found one of those cardboard wrappers in your Momma’s locker, which was dumb. No one would leave evidence just sitting in their locker. So it was bad enough to be set up, but worse to be set up by your own best friend.”

  The two of them were in line, reaching for things to place on Mr. Joe’s tray and her hand stopped in mid-grab.

  “My Momma’s best friend?”

  “Yeah. That druggie gal and your Momma was tighter then a pair of pantyhose on a fat girl’s legs! Actually, she got y
our Momma that job before you were even born. They used to hang out, go to lunch, have barbecues on the weekend.”

  Mr. Joe slid the tray to the cashier and took a few precious moments to shoot the breeze with the woman before handing over some of his meal tickets.

  “You remember Jassmina Robinson?” He asked the older woman. “This is her daughter.”

  Juicy wanted to scream for him to complete the story but she politely acknowledged the woman’s questions about her Momma and luckily there were people after them wanting to pay for their food so they were able to move on to a table.

  “So my mother was best friends with the nurse?” She prompted.

  “Oh yeah. Your momma was always trying to get her help, too. That trifling woman started getting too much suspicion on her, so I guess she did what she had to in order to get it off her; she put it on your mother.”

  “Oh…” Juicy shook her head.

  “So, yeah, she got escorted out by the police. You know, she could have told on that nurse, but she didn’t. We all offered to back her but she said she wouldn’t have to because her friend would come through for her. Your Momma had been very naive.”

  “But why would that lady set up her own friend? She could have set someone else up.” Mr. Joe was shaking his head.

  “Nah, we keep our stuff locked up. She only had access to your Momma’s locker. Anything not in a locker would be considered a common area and no one person could be responsible for it. If she was going to pin the drugs on someone she had to make it look like a specific person had been responsible or she would have been under the same suspicion as anyone else.”

  Juicy had lost her appetite but took a bite of her burger since Mr. Joe had used his tickets to buy it. “What ever happened to the nurse?” She asked after she fought to get the hunk of food down her dry throat.

  Mr. Joe told her the story and Juicy contemplated his words silently. “Mr. Joe. Will you tell the story to my mother? I think—this is the reason that she wanted to come here.”

  “Sure I will. I always liked your mother. She was good people.” Juicy gave him a grim look. She had been good people, until a friend had screwed her over.

  After lunch, Joe had to go back onto his floor and show his face, but he promised to visit right after. Juicy returned to her mother’s room and placed her hand over mother’s unmoving one. Jassmina opened her eye and gave her daughter a crooked smile. This was the only time that she ever gave a real smile; when Juicy was present.

  “Ma, I found a friend of yours that used to work here when you did. Do you remember a guy name Joe?” Her mother didn’t respond but somehow Juicy could look in her eye and see that she did. Maybe her mother thought she was talking. Regardless, Juicy understood her unspoken response.

  “Well, he remembered that white devil. He says he will come by and tell you about her. Maybe you two can shoot the breeze about the good ol’ days…” Her mother got a distant look in her eyes. Maybe they weren’t such good days after-all.

  Joe arrived shortly after and he had flowers; big ones. He winked at Momma. “Hi beautiful. Remember me?” Momma smiled, but it wasn’t the real one. Juicy took the flowers and held them close enough for her Momma to smell if she wanted—she didn’t. She placed them on the sill where the other flowers were. Joe pulled up a chair and chatted with her, and Juicy could tell that she wanted him to shut up with his chatter and to get to the point.

  “Mr. Joe…I think my Mom is about ready for a nap. But before she goes to sleep, can you tell her about that white devil, please?”

  “Oh, yeah. Well that gal got fired about two years after you did. After you left, she got real bad. Nobody had her back the way you did and her work got sloppy as hell.” Mr. Joe looked up into the air thoughtfully. “Well, it wasn’t all her fault that her work got sloppy. We got her ass whenever we could. She was trying to transfer out when she got hipped to what we were doing. But she got fired before that ever happened. Whether it was for drugs or sloppy work, no one knows for sure, but she was out.”

  Jassmina’s face relaxed. She looked very peaceful.

  “Well after she was fired, we heard that she got blackballed; couldn’t work at a hospital even if she wanted to work for free. Several years later she was working as a manager at a fast food restaurant. That’s the last I heard of her. But I can tell you this, Beautiful. What that woman did to you, she has paid for tenfold. She looked like a woman beat down by life even when she worked here.”

  Jassmina closed her eyes and Juicy placed her hand on Mr. Joe’s shoulder. He looked up and nodded, promising to look in on her later. When Mr. Joe was gone Juicy sat in the chair and placed her hand on her mother’s. Tears had trailed down each side of Jassmina’s face.

  Jassmina Robinson died several days later after suffering from a massive heart attack. Juicy went to school the very next day because her mother had struggled for nearly five minutes to form the last words that she’d ever spoken to Juicy; which was to finish school.

  CHAPTER 12

  It had been one week since Troy had walked out. Four days since she'd bothered to listen to any of his messages. Seven days of being in a fucked-up depressed state. And she wasn’t even sure how long it had been since she’d last contacted her shop.

  He had lied when he said he’d call her the next day. He hadn’t. By then she had been ready to talk to him. She was lonely, afraid and she missed him even though she was pissed as hell at him for being in Connecticut. But he didn’t call. She got calls from doctors asking questions about him, she had even gotten a call from some old lady that said she was his mother. She had sounded as flaky as him and Juicy had only listened to her recorded message without ever speaking to her. After all, what could she say when asked how was she doing when all she would want to tell her is that her son was a deadbeat, asshole? Days later, when he started leaving messages for her again, Juicy had lost interest and had allowed his messages to pile up in the voicemail system unheard. What was the point of listening to messages from a man that was there and not here?

  She did little more then take her prenatal vitamins, take her two aspirins a day, and sleep. It was bed rest, but not because the doctor wanted her in bed, but because she could not do much more then sleep. Though she understood that it wasn't her pre-eclampsia that caused her to fall into bed for hours on end, it was depression. Her worries about why she should not accept money from a mentally ill person had all come to fruition...because they will flake out on you…because they will do to you what they did to Momma; stab you in your back…

  When she wasn’t sleeping, Juicy lay in bed and reflected on things that she had tried hard not to think about. Mostly she thought about her mother and her disappointing existence. It made her sad to think that a person’s happiness could be determined by the thoughtlessness of one person. Yet, she understood, on a new level, just how easy it was to begin to hate someone that had betrayed you—and not just hate them, but everyone like them. But she was not going to turn her child into a replica of herself. Even though she was currently filled with hurt and betrayal she vowed that her child would not grow up hearing a list of her disappointments. She wasn’t sure if it was Troy’s intent to return and to be a part of her child’s life, but at the moment she was wasn’t even sure if she wanted him to return. She did know that she certainly had no intentions of ever opening herself up to him again.

  Juicy created a new routine, which now consisted of eat, sleep, and doctor’s visit. Soon it was time to go back to the doctor. He had stopped acting scared of her and she had stopped acting mad at him and they now got along fairly well. He smiled at her with pleasure after reading her vitals. "Blood pressure is better. We'll do an ultrasound today. Then you can see your baby."

  That should have made her happy. Instead Juicy felt tears in the back of her eyes. Why wasn’t someone here with her? Because everyone that mattered to her was dead or had just chosen to walk away. She took a deep breath and the doctor gave her a soft look. She was nodding. "Okay. Le
t's do this."