A Place Called Wiregrass

by Michael Morris

  “Sorry,” I mumbled and moved over a bit. When I turned back to face the loving couple, the woman had her painted faced scrunched up and her red lips puckered. Watching her pinch Gerald’s cheeks made me want to throw up right there beside the container of melted cheddar cheese.

  “The pudding’s especially good today. Won’t you try some?” Miss Claudia asked. Whip cream nestled in the corner of her mouth.

  I forgot to tell Miss Claudia to wipe her mouth off. My energy was spent convincing myself that Gerald was better off with the decorated woman. A woman his daughter would accept. A woman Marcie could shop and play little dress-up games with. A woman Marcie would require her brother to like. They would all be a happy little family and live happily ever after. I watched Gerald pay at the cash register for his romantic luncheon. After he placed a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, Gerald let the woman put her hand around his waist.

  Soon the white napkin I balled up and tossed into my salad plate soaked up the excess honey-mustard dressing.

  “That little girl from United Way sent me the sweetest letter,” Miss Claudia said.

  She was reclining on the sofa recovering from her weekly blood transfusion when I handed her the envelope. While I sorted the mail and threw out junk pieces, she read parts of the letter aloud.

  “We fought a good fight,” she said, holding the letter up in front of her face. “She says they’ll continue to seek funding for the rescue home. Umm.”

  Miss Claudia put the letter down and shook her head. “I declare, I reckon I’ll have to wait until I see the Lord Almighty to find out why that home never came to pass.”

  I poured her another glass of iced tea. “Like you tell me, you’re just gonna have to dismiss it from your mind. Besides, the way I figure it, if we had all the answers, then what would we need God for.”

  She opened her mouth and tilted her head to the side. “Well, anyway, I probably never would’ve thrown a fit and run off to my old stomping ground if the house would’ve come through.”

  “See there. And that trip done you good,” I said, hoping the scab from old hurts in Apalachicola really had fallen away.

  “Yoo-hoo,” Patricia said the minute she entered the kitchen door. We heard her voice before she appeared.

  “I’m back from holiday,” Patricia said in a fake English accent. Her voice drifted towards us as she walked through the kitchen.

  A big straw hat wrapped in a floral scarf balanced on her teased hair. All in one swoop, she put the photo album on the coffee table and placed a kiss on Miss Claudia’s cheek. She kissed three fingers and waved in my direction.

  When Patricia opened page one of her photo diary, I slipped out the kitchen door. I knew she wouldn’t inquire about how we managed without her until her snapshot tour of the Mediterranean was completed.

  Cher’s weekly visits with Andra were cut to every two weeks. Cher sat in the lobby with the blaring television and worked on the journal Andra wanted her to keep. Walking down the hallway to Andra’s office, I vowed that I would not look for the book and read it. I’d had my fill of telling and hearing secrets. Besides, after actually seeing Gerald with another woman, I wasn’t sure I could’ve taken the hurt I figured rested in the pages of Cher’s journal.

  No matter how many times I walked the long, stale hallway to Andra’s office, my hands would grow clammy. The steel desk and the report I received on Cher’s progress and my ability to parent always put me in mind of going into a principal’s office.

  I hadn’t closed the office door when Andra put her arms around me and patted my back.

  “Hon, I’m proud of you for coming clean with the kid.” Andra showed me her perfect white teeth the same way I imagined she smiled at her little boy when he brought home a drawing with a gold star.

  And a gold star couldn’t have made me any happier. Andra said Cher was coming to a breakthrough. My eyes widened, and I sat on the edge of the brown seat while Andra explained Cher’s progress.

  Andra pointed out that Cher was discovering she could love her parents for giving her life, but they would probably never be the people she wanted them to be. Most people would’ve thought by Andra’s toothy grin she’d found the cure for cancer. I could only think that, after all this time and money, Cher had finally discovered the very knowledge I tried to impart to her from the start.

  “Now, I want to see her once a month. When school begins I’ll reevaluate the situation.” Andra sorted through a stack of blue folders.

  “We’ll see you next month,” I said and opened the door.

  “Oh, hon.”

  I turned to find Andra looking at me with her index finger held up and her blue eyes bugged. “I almost forgot,” she said. “Cher told me she admires you. The way you’ve always stood by her. Just thought you’d want to know you’re a hero.”

  “That’s me, ol’ Wonder Woman,” I said and tried to chuckle.

  Andra’s toothy grin disappeared down into the sea of files on her desk.

  Outside in the white walled hallway I folded my arms and held my breath, wanting to hold hostage the warmth that tingled down my spine. I repeated Andra’s nasal-sounding words in my mind, trying to capture them the way I did Miss Claudia’s Bible verses. Just like with the Good Book, I knew the words would be pulled out when days looked black and the distance too far.

  Twenty-five

  The first installment of Bozo’s child support went to Gerald. I still owed him for Cher’s hospital bill. Anytime the thought crossed my mind that Gerald had been good to me, the image of the woman at the cafe floated across my mind and I’d go right back to claiming he was like all the rest.

  I was pulling the tinfoil off the Jiffy Pop popcorn when the phone rang. “Girls, y’all hush up,” I said to Laurel and Cher. The pair had stretched out in front of the TV on the pallet I created out of blankets.

  “How come you didn’t let me know you was back?” Gerald asked.

  “Oh, hey. Well, I been busy. You know taking care of old women and stuff like that,” I said, hoping he’d connect his conversation with Marcie. The conversation when he said I was too busy for him to fool with.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes at his lack of recall. I moved behind the kitchen pantry, hoping Cher couldn’t hear me. The screaming from the scary movie on TV made his words hard to catch.

  “I got your check in the mail. Now, no need to be in an all-fire hurry to pay me.”

  The sooner I’m done with you the better. “Well I wanted to go ahead and get it to you. It’ll just have to be month to month.”

  “Listen, I ain’t dunning you.” His sigh was long on the other end of the phone. “Um, how’s Cher getting along?”

  “Doing real good. Listen, uh, she’s got a friend over here. I was just fixing them popcorn so…”

  “Okay, yeah. I’ll let you go then. But, now, I won’t see you at church tomorrow.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. Fearing I’d have to see Gerald all shoulder to shoulder in church with his new Hot Mama, I had planned to skip. “Oh?”

  “Marcie and Chase are moving to Montgomery. Lots happened since you been gone. Chase done got promoted to shift manager at the Firestone plant up there.”

  Too bad Marcie didn’t get to spend more time shopping with your new Sweet Thing. “Well, this popcorn’s a-burning.”

  I peeled the tinfoil off the bag of popcorn and felt the steam sting my face. It’s for the best, I kept reminding myself. He needs the woman with gold necklaces and fancy perfumes, not the caretaker of the young and old.

  While Cher showered the next morning, I put my regular weekend call in to Miss Claudia. “You ’bout ready to go to church with us?” I asked and took a sip of coffee.

  “No, y’all go on without me.” Her words were muffled, and her voice deeper than normal.

  I sat up on the edge of the slick vinyl dinette chair. “What’s the matter?”

  “Not a thing. I just got a little temperature is all.
Tell your sweet little pastor I played hooky.” She tried to laugh, but the sound turned into a cough fit.

  “I want Richard to make you some hot tea. Have him put plenty of honey in it for that cough.”

  “Yes, Dr. Erma Lee.”

  “You know that’s right,” I said.

  My attempt to be light-hearted grew into a heavy burden. By Monday, when I took Miss Claudia in for her blood transfusion, the cough was more frequent and the fever lingered.

  “I don’t like the sound of her lungs,” her oncologist said in the waiting room. “I want a chest X-ray.”

  Waiting in the doctor’s office lobby, I watched the small purple-striped fish swim in the aquarium without a care in the world. We’re having chicken-fried steak for dinner, I kept telling myself. Miss Claudia loved it better than anything else I cooked. If I could just get back there and tell her my menu plans, she’d pull out of this. But the pictures I’d seen on Cher’s Internet of leukemia cells congregating in the bloodstream kept flashing through my mind.

  “For precautions, I’m admitting her,” the oncologist said and rubbed his chin. “We’ll get her on IV antibiotics and knock out this pneumonia.”

  When I finally saw Miss Claudia, she was already next door at the hospital, perched up on a gurney. My rubber-soled work shoes squeaked louder the faster I walked on the tiled floor. Each step made her face look grayer. The lipstick, which was bright red hours before, was worn to a faded smudge.

  “Sweetheart, do you know where you are?” a big-butted nurse with orangey-red hair shaved over the ears kept asking Miss Claudia. Her words grew louder each step I made.

  “You’re in a hospital, sweetheart,” the nurse yelled. Her words were robotic, and each vowel very exact.

  By the time I reached the end of the gurney, I was jogging. The nurse leaned over Miss Claudia. Her patronizing questions made me want to land my black shoe square in the crack of her wide tail. “She ain’t deaf, sweetheart,” I said.

  The nurse curled her upper lip, slung the steel pad on the gurney hook, and walked to the registration desk.

  Beads of sweat decorated Miss Claudia’s upper lip, and her hair was matted. Her fingers kept a steady crease at the edges of the white sheet. The appearance was every bit the elderly patient the nurse assumed she was.

  But the Miss Claudia I know is nothing but typical, I kept assuring myself. “Don’t you worry about a thing. The doctor’s putting you in the hospital for precautions. You just rest now.”

  The days Miss Claudia spent in the hospital were an emotional roller coaster. Each time I pressed the number eight on the elevator panel, I held my breath. The box lifted me upward, and I prepared myself for another turn in her condition. One day Miss Claudia’s fever was down and the doctors seemed pleased, and by afternoon the fever would spike again.

  When I got off the elevator with a tuna sandwich for Patricia, I spotted her at the end of the hall talking with the tall, young, pointy-eared doctor.

  I quietly placed the bag down on the vinyl bench in front of the big windows. At times like these, I wanted to be invisible. As much as I worship the air Miss Claudia breathes, she is still Patricia’s blood mother, I reminded myself.

  “I want some answers. You do know my husband is Doctor Tom Murray, the oral surgeon. So you’re not dealing with your typical laypeople here.”

  The young doctor put his hands in the white pockets of his lab coat. “Yes, ma’am,” he said and sighed. “And we’re doing all we can. Her white blood cell count is through the roof. And while I’m waiting for the tests…”

  Patricia closed her eyes and showed the doctor the big white teeth. “I’m so sick and tired of you and your tests. Now just tell me what you think.”

  “Like I was saying. The normal cells are depleted in her bone marrow. The leukemia cells are just taking over. It’s part of the phase known as the…”

  “Blasts,” I said, staring at the doctor’s silver necklace.

  The doctor and Patricia turned to look at me. I could feel my neck getting hot.

  The young man looked back at Patricia. “It’s called the blast phase because the leukemia cells are taking over.”

  Patricia shook her head and complained about his lack of experience and how she would transport Miss Claudia to the University of Alabama for better care.

  Her clipped words echoed down the hall. I stared out the window at the peaceful pond below. The people reminded me of toy dolls, running and walking around the asphalt trail. Thanks to the departure of an afternoon thunderstorm, they were carelessly enjoying a break from the August humidity. I wanted to beat on the window and make them stop. To make Patricia shut up. To make them all understand that the enemy I kept praying would lose its way was taking over. The blasts first scouted on Cher’s Internet had made their way over the fortress and into the promised land.

  I stood outside Miss Claudia’s door, watching Richard. He was at the end of the hall, sitting with his legs crossed on the padded bench, the exact spot where Patricia told him to wait. Patricia decided that if Richard was in the room when the news was given, Miss Claudia would be so concerned about Richard’s nerves, she’d miss the details.

  So while the oncologist told Miss Claudia about the enemy’s advancement, Richard and me held positions in the hallway. I leaned against the brown door and pictured the scenes I heard inside the room. The doctor’s words were technical and without emotion. He described the journey the blast cells were taking, depositing their tumor bombs along Miss Claudia’s bones.

  “I see,” Miss Claudia said in a voice deepened with congestion.

  “Mama, they can put those high-powered antibiotics in you and make you better. Then we can worry about this other mess,” Patricia said.

  The silence in the room made me bite my thumbnail. I fought off the angry thoughts. If she would’ve only tried treatment.

  “No,” I barely heard Miss Claudia say. “I understand.”

  “Now, Mama. Use your noggin. Just a few more days and you might get rid of this pneumonia.”

  “And I might not. But one thing’s for sure. I won’t stay here being poked and prodded all the time,” Miss Claudia said. “I expect it’s time for me to go on home.”

  The beady eyes were on me tighter than a radar gun. Miss Trellis was standing at the cluster of trailer-park mailboxes, staring at me with her hands on the wide yellow housedress. When I put the last grocery bag filled with our clothes into the car, I finally lifted my hand and waved. Miss Trellis shook her head and wobbled back into the white block office.

  “Where in tarnation are you running off to now?” she asked when I stopped to pay my rent.

  “We’re just taking a little vacation.” I refused to let her know that we were staying at Miss Claudia’s. Refused to let her get into the final details of Miss Claudia’s business.

  “Now, don’t you go blaming me if somebody comes in here and breaks in your place. They libel to with the lights off.”

  The small TV on top of her counter was tuned to a shopping show. The announcer kept repeating there were only fifty more Scarlet O’Hara dolls left for sale. I handed her my check and smiled.

  “I’m sure it’ll be just fine.” I visualized her negative comments bouncing off the shield of armor I mentally put on before entering her kingdom.

  “The last time you ran out for an entire month.” She leaned over the brown-paneled counter and pointed her fat finger at me. “Next time you best leave a light on. I’m telling you I don’t want no trouble with break-ins.”

  I continued to smile and put my wallet back into my pocketbook.

  “And by the way, I ain’t talked to you since that old house of Claudia’s got flushed down the toilet. They’s lots of us glad that place never got off the ground. The only people I heard tell of who wanted it were the nig…”

  She stopped speaking when I walked behind the counter. Boxes stamped with QVC and Family Shopping Network logos were stacked around the wooden stool she sat on. Her mouth
gaped open, and I wondered if she expected me to slap her the way my flesh wanted to.

  I placed my hands on the sides of her shoulders and forced a big grin. “I love you, you know that?”

  Before I walked out the door, I smiled as big as my mouth would stretch. Her own mouth pulled to the side like she had suffered a stroke from my forced kindness. Love might be free, I thought, but sometimes there was a price for delivering it.

  Twenty-six

  Cher and Patricia settled into the upstairs bedrooms and, since Miss Claudia was in a hospital bed, I stayed in her bedroom. It was only fitting. A good companion ought to stay with her assignment.

  “Now, remember we’re not blood kin. Just don’t get in the way,” I warned Cher. She nodded and pulled underwear out of the grocery bag.

  Patricia was more help than I thought she would be. She helped cook and even made up her own bed. Richard only appeared for his meals. Each morning whenever I filled his plate with scrambled eggs and asked if he wanted to look in on his mother, he’d say, “I’ll see her in a minute.”

  To some degree, I understood Richard’s reluctance. Frailty did not become Miss Claudia. The chalk white face and the flat hair propped against pillows would make anyone think she was wearing a costume. Her hazel eyes, once sparkling with plans and compliments, rested in her skull like two marbles dulled from too many games in the sand.

  “Inside that dresser drawer yonder,” Miss Claudia mumbled and barely lifted her hand in the direction of the armoire, “you’ll find what you need when this is over.”

  I ignored her and continued to tuck the sides of the blanket into the hospital bed. I hated that bed. The cold steel siding was an eyesore in her fancy bedroom.

  “You hear me now?”

  All I could do was nod.

  Hospice sent over a sweet young nurse that was Miss Claudia’s kind of people. “We want her as comfortable as possible. This should all be done on her terms,” the nurse with the light brown skin told me. She also said it was our job to ensure Miss Claudia’s stay at home was not complicated. There were no prying plugs and wires. And I told the nurse that a catheter wasn’t needed.