The Home: My Escape
Literally Literary and The Writing Cooperative prompt.
I’m drunk. Drunk enough that things are foggy and I have to focus extra hard to remember where to put my clothes when I take them off in exchange for pajamas. Drunk enough that despite the effort required in remembering to do all of these everyday things, something in my alcohol soaked brain remembers the safe in the guest bedroom. My fingers still remember the code, sliding over the keys quickly. My hands reach in without looking and grab the folder, and I find my way to the guest bed by way of the kitchen, where the leftover pizza from last night is waiting to soak up the alcohol sloshing around in my stomach.
I sit on the bed, legs crossed, folder in my lap. Greasy finger stains rim the edges, almost like a picture frame, although I likely don’t remember the last time I opened the folder, and won’t remember this in the morning. Something about being drunk makes this an acceptable way to use my time, where in the real world, the sober world, this isn’t a part of my life anyone will share.
The folder opens, by my own hand, although it seems as though someone else is doing it. The first document is a picture. It is of a child. Tubes protrude from seemingly every part of the body, medically made ports of entry created for places that do not naturally exist. There are a hundred photos like this in the folder, and as I eat my pizza, I thumb through them. She is bloated, but I don’t remember her otherwise. It’s wrong to say this is a child; the more accurate description is baby, and she looks so big it’s hard to imagine her having come out of a human body just days before. It’s the fluids.
I sigh. The alcohol is starting to wear off, and the emotions are starting to surface in the back of my brain, signaling to me that it is time to put away the file, and lock it behind the generic picture of a snowy Vermont landscape I keep in the bedroom to remind people of how beautiful life can be. I stuff the last bite of pizza crust into my mouth and walk over to the safe, placing the file inside it, leaving my own pizza crust finger prints on the file with the others: another set of prints I won’t remember leaving, and will see the next time it comes out. I shut the safe door and run through the procedures my body seems to have down automatically: hit the lock button, close the picture. Cross over to the bed, sweep the crumbs into my hands, and pass through the kitchen to dump them in the wastebasket. Walk to the bed, crawl under the covers, set alarm, close eyes. Tomorrow, I will remember nothing.
Except, I do. Remember, that is. I wake up, hungover and kind of sad. The hangover is not new. Remembering, that is new. I throw back the last of my coffee, pin my bangs back, straighten my dress, and head out the door for work, hoping it will take my mind off things. It usually does.
Work is downstairs; an assisted living care center for people who are forgetting more and more about their lives each day. I don’t really work there, but rather provide company for the people who live there in exchange for a place to live upstairs. Since my family runs the place, I’m tolerated, although I like to think most of the staff and patrons enjoy my company.
I’m perfect for the job, honestly. Getting old is scary; getting old and going through the process of grasping at your memories is probably even scarier. Waking up one day and realizing you lost a bit of knowledge you actually wanted, like how to make toast, or who your children are, or that you even had children…that’s sad.
That’s where I come in. I’m not sure how it started; I probably wandered in one day to talk to my parents or staff member about something, and sat down to wait because they were busy. I probably started nodding and saying, “Uh huh,” to whatever person was talking to me at the time. And at some point in my visits to the nursing home, I realized I could help them. Instead of saying, “Uh huh,” I asked them to tell me about the war. I asked them to tell me what was happening in their lives right then. We talked about whatever their current reality was. I’m not sure if it helps; I certainly wasn’t bringing them back to reality. I’m not sure that’s ever anyone’s goal with dementia patients though.
The beauty of this is no one ever asks me about myself. The staff is scared; people are always afraid of big emotions, they don’t want to be the one to break you, so they don’t ask questions. And the residents, they aren’t even sure who I am on a day to day basis, so they don’t ask anything about me, for fear of getting it wrong or simply because they don’t care. I live a life of blissful ignorance, picking up the role of whatever person I’m assigned by the residents, or whatever person I assign myself, if I’m feeling creative. The person who lost their daughter- that person doesn’t exist here. That life fades to the edges of my existence, reemerging occasionally to remind me what I’ve been through, usually when someone makes an offhand comment.
That’s how it happened yesterday, before the drinks, before the safe. I sat down at a chess board with a grizzled old man, usually wearing a permanent frown. He sets up the chess pieces and and barks at me that I start. We start the game, and after a few seconds he says, “Tell me about your dead kid.”
The man is full on Alzheimer’s. He has no idea where he is or what year it is. He doesn’t mean my dead kid. He means someone’s dead kid. For some reason, this came up when he was talking to me. I started to protest, that I didn’t have a dead kid, and then the words just started flooding out. The birth, the hospital, the surprise of a heart problem. The days at the hospital in the big city, the final day where we had to let her go. Her name. I didn’t even know it was all there. It had been so long since I had told the story, it felt like my usual fiction, with the exception of the pit of despair growing ever larger inside my body I grew closer to the end. When I was finished, he said “checkmate” and told me to get off the chair, he had other people to beat. I went upstairs, barely holding it together, and drank.
I’ve been leaning against the wall, staring at nothing, and one of the workers is standing in front of me, waving her hand and smiling. “Hey. You ok? You’re off in space.”
“I am,” I say, smiling. “Anyone need any special attention today?”
“That man over there,” she said, pointing to a man I’ve never seen before. “He’s new. Early stages, still remembers what he doesn’t remember, you know? He might love to tell his story to someone.”
I walk over and sit down across from his game table. The children’s game, “Guess Who” is on the table, which seems like a really cruel game to have at a dementia care home. I start setting it up. He looks at me, says nothing, but lets me keep going. When the game is ready, I tell him he can start first. He doesn’t move. So I start telling him my story. Not my story, but today’s story of who I am. He doesn’t know. He won’t ask me to tell him about my dead daughter. He’s probably barely listening.
Retreating into the fantasy I’m spinning for this man, for myself, I sit back into the chair and accept a cup of tea from one of the people who work there. She smiles at me, puts her hand on my head, and walks away. As I continue my fiction, my real story floats to the edge of reality, to the edges of my brain. I can feel myself take on this new personality I’m spinning for this man, this new life I’m telling just for him. If it doesn’t fit right, tomorrow I can change it, because he doesn’t know any better. Even if he’s not sure my story is the same day to day, he’s losing his mind, so he won’t be sure what reality is, and what he’s forgetting. And with any luck, soon, I won’t either.
© Ashley Jamele 2019
