Lost Daughters (14 page)

A
FTER MAUREEN HAD MOISTENED A PAPER TOWEL AND WIPED OFF HER
shoe, she looked at herself in the restroom mirror. “I don't know if I can handle this job,” she admitted to herself out loud. “Lord Jesus, please show me the way,” she prayed.

One of the many things that Maureen gave Mama Ruby credit for was instilling a strong Christian ethic in her. Despite Mama Ruby's violent nature and laundry list of crimes, she had been a very religious woman. At least by Mama Ruby's standards.
“You be good to the Lord, and the Lord will be good to you,”
Mama Ruby used to say
.

If Maureen ever needed spiritual assistance, it was now. She entered a stall and got on her knees and prayed in a low voice. “Lord Jesus, only You can keep me from goin' crazy up in this place. I know you got somethin' good in store for me, so there must be a reason I'm here. . . .”

After a ten-minute coffee break in the employee break room with Mrs. Larsen, Maureen met more of her patients. By then, though, she was ready to leave the place running, jump back into her car, and make a beeline back to the lobster factory. Based on what she had seen and experienced so far, she was convinced this was not a job she could handle after all. As a matter of fact, she had already decided to use the pay phone in the break room and call Mr. Faulk to see how soon she could return to the lobster factory.

Catty worked different hours than Maureen, so she couldn't talk to her until later in the afternoon. In a way Maureen was glad. She knew that if she told her what she was planning to do, Catty would go out of her way to talk her out of it. But Maureen didn't care one way or the other how her leaving would make Catty look now. This position seemed more like a punishment than a job.

The last straw for Maureen was when one of the most combative patients, a former professional wrestler who was still quite strong, grabbed Maureen by her hair and pulled it so hard she fell into bed with him. She screamed and struggled to untangle herself from his grip. As soon as she was free, she ran from his room in tears. She sprinted to her locker and grabbed her purse and would have kept running until she reached her car if Mrs. Larsen had not intercepted her in the lobby.

“My dear! You look like you've seen a ghost!” Mrs. Larsen hollered. She ran up to Maureen with her arms outstretched. “Please tell me what's the matter.”

“I'm sorry, but I can't do this job,” Maureen whimpered, shaking and pointing back down the hallway she had just run down. “If I stay here, I'm goin' to get hurt.” Maureen was almost hyperventilating as she rubbed her arm and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “The man in the room across from the supply room, he just attacked me. I can't do this. I am sorry, but I can . . . not . . . do . . . this . . . job.” Maureen swallowed hard and rubbed her scalp. The man had pulled her hair so hard, she was surprised that he had not yanked out a clump.

“I didn't think so,” Mrs. Larsen said wearily, her face a mask of disappointment and despair. “You can leave now if you want to. I'll make sure Bobby Jean cuts you a check for the whole day.”

“I am so sorry, Mrs. Larsen. This . . . this is not what I expected,” Maureen stammered. “I had no idea it would be this hard, and I haven't even met the last of my patients. Because of the ones I have met, I can tell that this job is not for me.”

Maureen agreed to finish the day, but she spent as much time hiding out in the ladies' room as she could. Around 3:00 p.m. she walked past the receptionist desk. She was on her way to the pay phone to call her old supervisor at the lobster factory and beg him to let her return.

The pretty young Asian woman at the desk waved to Maureen. “Excuse me, your name's Maureen, right?” she asked with a slight Chinese accent that contained the hint of a Southern drawl.

Maureen nodded and walked over to the desk. She had used a rubber band to hold her ponytail in place before she left her apartment that morning. The rubber band had popped off during the melee with the ex-wrestler, so Maureen's hair was now hanging around her shoulders and face like limp vines. After all she had endured so far today, she felt like she'd been wrestling with a bear.

“By the way, I'm Peggy Wong. I moved down here from Cleveland last year to be with my fiancé, and he took off a week after I got here. I couldn't go back home and this was the only job I could get,” the receptionist revealed with a smile, but Maureen could tell that it was forced. “I hope your first day is going well. This place is so depressing and stressful,” Peggy added, slowly shaking her head.

“I figured that much out real quick,” Maureen said with a shudder, brushing hair off her sweaty face.

“The two girls that started last Monday went to lunch at noon and never came back. I'm surprised you're still here.”

“I'm surprised I'm still here too,” Maureen said flatly. “I don't think I'm goin' to stay either,” she admitted. “I told Mrs. Larsen that a little while ago.”

“That's too bad. I used to do your job and I felt the same way until I learned the ropes. It's not so bad once you get used to it.”

“Well, I don't think I can get used to what goes on around here.” Maureen heard a commotion behind her. She turned to see two orderlies dressed in white wheeling a gurney toward the front door. Whoever was on that gurney was not coming back, because they had covered his or her face with a sheet.

“That's poor Mr. Blake.” Peggy sniffed, shaking her head. “I knew he was on his way to meet his maker. Just yesterday he started hallucinating, seeing and talking to his dead wife. She was a patient here until last month when she died. Poor thing.”

Maureen and Peggy watched through the glass doors as the orderlies loaded Mr. Blake into the back of one of the hearses.

“Oh well,” Peggy said with a heavy sigh and a weak shrug. “We all gotta go sometime.” She sighed again. “Could you do me a favor and deliver a message to Mrs. Freeman? She's the nice little lady in the last room on the left down the hall. She didn't answer her phone, so it rolled over to my line.”

“Yeah, I guess. I didn't get to meet her or any of the people down there yet,” Maureen said, reaching for the pink telephone message slip.

Maureen looked at her watch and was happy to see that she had less than an hour to go. As she walked down the hall, dragging her feet like there was a gurney waiting for her to be loaded onto, she glanced at the telephone message in her hand and gasped at what it said:

Maureen stopped in her tracks. She blinked hard a few times and shook her head.

She had always been superstitious. After all, Mama Ruby had been the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter and had bragged about her “special powers” from time to time. What those alleged special powers entailed was still a mystery to Maureen. She had never witnessed Mama Ruby perform anything that she considered divine, but she recalled the time that one of Mama Ruby's friends had read Mama Ruby's fortune with a deck of cards and told her that one of Maureen's twins wasn't going to be around for long. Not long after that day, during a picture-taking session with a cheap camera, Maureen noticed a thumb-size shadow in every picture that contained her twins. The shadow had only covered Loraine's image. When she fell into the Blue Lake near Mama Ruby's house and drowned, Maureen was not surprised. After that, each new incident made her even more superstitious.

And now:
A message to M from . . . Jesus
?

“Uh, does Mrs. Freeman's first name begin with an
M
?” Maureen asked Peggy.

“Uh-uh. Her first name is Leona. I just put
M
for ‘mother' instead of writing it out. The message is from her son.”

“Oh.” The telephone message in Maureen's hand intrigued her. Even though it was for Mrs. Freeman in room 108, she had a feeling that this message was also for her.

And it was.

T
HE DOOR TO
M
RS.
F
REEMAN'S ROOM WAS AJAR, BUT
M
AUREEN
knocked and entered before the old woman had time to respond. She was pleased to see that Mrs. Freeman was black. Other than a hostile, ninety-six-year-old man named Mr. Sands who used to manage a restaurant, and Mrs. Darby, a retired high school principal, Mrs. Freeman was the only other black patient on the premises that Maureen had seen so far.

She walked with caution toward Mrs. Freeman's bed. This old woman didn't look like a threat, but Maureen didn't want to take any chances. She left the door open and stood a safe distance away from the bed.

It was easy to see that Mrs. Freeman had once been a very attractive woman. She had bronze-colored skin, slightly slanted eyes, and very high cheekbones. Her long hair, which was parted down the middle and in two braids, was completely white. “You look like my niece,” she remarked, sitting up with a smile on her face. “Except you're prettier.”

“Thank you. I'm sure your niece is a nice person.” Maureen moved a little closer to the side of the bed.

“She was, but she passed a long time ago,” Mrs. Freeman stated, her voice cracking. “My son is all I got left in the world. You the new aide?”

“Yes and no, ma'am,” Maureen replied, breathing deeply.

The old woman sat up straighter, squinting and looking Maureen over from head to toe. Then she looked Maureen in the face and asked in an angry voice that had an ominous rattle to it, “What do you mean by that? Yes, you're the new aide who is going to help take care of me or no, you're not. I've been after them to get a colored gal in here so I can get my hair braided properly.”

“Yes, I'm the new aide, but no, I won't be helpin' take care of you. I'm not comin' back after today,” Maureen clarified, handing the telephone message to Mrs. Freeman.

The old woman snatched the piece of paper out of Maureen's hand so hard the corner of it remained between Maureen's fingers. Mrs. Freeman snorted and shook her head as she looked at the message. “Hmm.” A sudden smile appeared on her heavily lined face. “It's from my son. Bless his heart. He says he's coming to see me soon. I hope it's to take me back home! I done told him over and over that I want to die in my own bed!”

“Oh. If you don't mind me sayin' so, seein' who your message was from gave me a chill when I first saw it. Then I realized that Jesus is a pretty common name in Florida, especially in families with a Latin background. I went to school with a boy from Honduras who was also named Jesus, but it was pronounced
Hay-soos
.”

Mrs. Freeman nodded. “My son don't like for folks to call him Jesus, even when they pronounced it
Hay-soos
. That's what some people call him anyway. I guess it makes them feel good to talk to a person with the same name as the Lord. Especially the folks in this place. I call him Jay. I wish you could meet him.”

“I wish I could, too, but like I said, I don't think I'm goin' to come back after today.”

Maureen enjoyed listening to Mrs. Freeman brag about her son and his job installing cable television. The old woman also talked extensively about her plants, her original recipes, her favorite TV shows, and the poodle that she had once owned. Maureen knew that she was spending more time with this patient than she should have, but since she had decided to leave at the end of the day, she couldn't get fired, so she had nothing to lose.

It was one of the most enjoyable afternoons that Maureen had experienced in a long time. The elderly woman was very charming and easy to talk to. Maureen sincerely regretted that she would not be around to get to know her better. After talking with Mrs. Freeman for a few minutes more, it didn't take long for Maureen to change her mind about leaving. She told Mrs. Larsen that she had decided to stay, but only until she could find someone to replace her.

Just before 3:00 p.m., after helping one of the other aides lift the lower portion of a large paralyzed man in his bed to change his diaper, Maureen prepared to go home—and it was not soon enough for her. It had been a long and difficult day. However, even after everything she had endured earlier, she was glad that she had remained around long enough to meet Mrs. Freeman.

Peggy was on the telephone when Maureen walked by the front desk on her way to the parking lot, but she abruptly ended her call and waved to Maureen. “I heard you decided to stay until they find somebody to replace you. I'm glad. I hope the rest of your days here are more pleasant than today was.”

“I hope so too,” Maureen said in a tired voice as she exited the building. She was glad to see that both of the hearses had left the parking lot. When she reached her car, she glanced to her side and caught a glimpse of a tall, nicely built black man getting out of a green Thunderbird. He had just parked a couple of rows over from her. He wore a uniform, so Maureen assumed he was some kind of maintenance or utility worker.

The man was walking with his head down, dragging his feet like he was on his way to the gallows. Just as Maureen was about to open her car door, he looked up. He smiled and gave her a nod. She smiled back. Maureen didn't know why, but there was something about the man that made her feel warm all over. She suddenly felt more relaxed.

After she had entered her car and started the motor, she turned and looked toward the nursing home entrance. The man had stopped walking. He stood in front of the building entrance with his hand on the door, looking in Maureen's direction. He smiled at her again and this time he saluted her. She did the same thing and then she quickly drove off.

Maureen was a careful driver. She had never even come close to having an accident, but today she drove like she was in a daze. She ran two red lights and one stop sign. She was lucky she didn't cause an accident or run into a cop. She couldn't stop thinking about the man in the parking lot.

He stayed on Maureen's mind until she got home.

She was glad that the apartment was empty. It had been a stressful day and she needed to unwind. Loretta had left a note taped to the microwave oven that she had gone to Mona's house so they could work on a science project. Maureen assumed Mel was still on the assignment he had told her about the night before.

 

“How was your first day on the new job?” Mel asked Maureen when he got home around 7:00 p.m. He dropped a tripod and some other equipment onto the living room floor.

Maureen was glad that Mel had asked about her day, but from the indifferent look on his face, she knew he was just trying to be nice.

“It was very interestin',” she told him. As tired as she was, she was still able to leap up off the couch and give him a big hug. “But I was glad when my shift ended.”

“That bad, huh?” Mel chuckled as he tickled Maureen's chin. Then he hugged her and gave her a long passionate kiss. “As soon as we both get rested, I'll make you feel better.” He pinched her left breast and kissed her again.

“I saw two hearses in the parkin' lot when I got there this mornin',” Maureen reported with a shiver. “One of the patients had died. They didn't take him away until the afternoon. If I had known there was a dead body lyin' around all that time, I don't know what I would have done.”

“Is that why you have such a glazed look on your face?”

“Huh? Oh . . . yeah,” Maureen stammered, shaking her head to get the image of the nicely built man in the parking lot off her mind. “Any more of that wine you brought home last week?”

After she had drunk a glass of wine, Maureen felt more relaxed. Twenty minutes after Mel had come home, Loretta returned from Mona's house. She slunk into the living room and flopped down onto the couch close to Mel. Maureen occupied one of the two easy chairs facing the couch.

“Hi, Mama. Hi, Mel. Y'all wouldn't believe the prom dress that Mona had the nerve to buy. Whew! She looked like a sack of potatoes in that thing! I told her that I was takin' her to the mall this weekend so we can find somethin' more appropriate for her bell-shaped body.” Loretta paused and gave Maureen an amused look. “You look tired, Mama. How was the first day on your new job?”

“It was okay, I guess. It's a job,” Maureen said with a casual shrug, determined to divert Loretta's and Mel's attention so she wouldn't have to reveal too many details. “I hope y'all don't mind fried chicken for dinner again.”

Mel and Loretta grunted at the same time.

“Why do you have teeth prints on your arm?” Loretta asked, staring with wide eyes at one of the wounds Maureen had sustained. “Have you got a boyfriend at that new place already?” Loretta snickered. “Mel, you'd better keep your eyes on Mama! She might run off with one of those old geezers down at that nursin' home.”

Maureen gave Loretta a dismissive wave. “You stop that, Lo'retta. Mel knows he has nothin' to worry about. Every single male patient in that place is at least old enough to be my grandfather.”

Mel didn't even bother to look at Maureen. Instead he looked at Loretta and shook his head, but Loretta continued to tease Maureen.

“Nuh-uh! I've passed by that place on my way to the mall. I saw a couple of male workers in white scrubs goin' up in there, and they didn't look like grandfathers to me,” Loretta pointed out.

“Like I said, Mel has nothin' to worry about,” Maureen said again, her voice faltering.
At least not yet
, she thought as she recalled again how the man in the parking lot had stared and smiled at her.

Maureen had already decided not to tell Mel and Loretta, Catty, or anybody else just how bad her first day as a nurse's aide had actually been. She had also decided not to tell them that she probably wasn't going to work at the nursing home for too long.

The next day when she went back to work, though, she learned from the receptionist that the nicely built man that she had seen in the parking lot the day before was Mrs. Freeman's son, Jay, or
Hay-soos
(she refused to think of him as Jesus).

“I know you saw Mrs. Freeman's son as you were leaving yesterday. If you had waited one minute longer to leave, you could have seen him up real close,” Peggy said with a dreamy look on her face.

“I got a glimpse of him just before I left the parkin' lot,” Maureen told Peggy.

“Do you think he's sexy?”

“Huh? Oh! I couldn't tell,” Maureen fumbled.

“Well, he is.” Peggy pretended to swoon, batting her eyelashes in a way that embarrassed Maureen. “He could park his shoes under my bed and hang his bathrobe next to mine any old time.”

“I . . . I barely noticed him,” Maureen lied.

“It's just as well. He won't give me, or any of the other women here, the time of day. He's one of the most aloof men I've ever come across. All this time he's been coming here, he has never even smiled at me.” Peggy frowned and added, “He must be gay.”

“Maybe he is,” Maureen replied.
But he smiled at
me, she said to herself.

She wasn't so sure about leaving the job at all now.