Family Will Do Laundry

This bed is uncomfortable.

I need to use the bathroom. I’m getting up.

What in the devil is that noise?

A blaring alarm is going off.

The door slams open.

“Mr. Jones, you can’t get up, sir. Lay back down,” she says—so loud.

“I’m not deaf.”

“I need you to lay back down, sir. You can’t be getting up, Mr. Jones.” She grabs my sheets and covers me again. “Don’t want you to end up on the floor.”

“But I need to use the bathroom,” I say through clenched teeth.

“I know, sir, but you can’t get up. You have to do it in your brief.”

What is she talking about?

“You gon’ have to wait for day shift, too. I finished my rounds already. We change shift in an hour.”

She must see I don’t understand. She pulls the sheets down, lifts up my gown, and points at the diaper I’m wearing. “Your brief—you use the bathroom in your brief—your diaper.”

I don’t understand. She turns the light out and leaves the room.

It’s too late. I’m going. I try to stop it, but it keeps coming out. The warm liquid stings. I’m afraid it’s going to run down my leg.

“She is lazy, that one. They need to get rid of her,” I hear a man’s voice.

“Who’s that?”

“Go back to sleep, Jones. Ain’t nobody gon’ change you before we’re through with breakfast,” he says. All I see is his arm sticking out of the covers. I can’t see his face because there is a curtain. I must be in a hospital. “Nine thirty before they change you—wanna bet?”

I must have fallen asleep. The door opens and the light turns on.

“Mr. Sims, wake up!” she shouts. “Breakfast!”

She draws the blinds open, and sunlight floods the room. Dust particles ignite, floating in a hypnotic dance.

She is dragging things around, carrying on a conversation with herself that I can’t understand.

“I didn’t get no coffee?” he asks.

“No coffee. Doctor said you can’t have any. You’ll choke.”

“I ain’t gonna choke.”

“That’s what I was told,” she tells him.

She leaves the room, talking to herself, and another one wearing the same color scrubs comes in. She raises the back of my bed and puts the rolling table in front of me. She lifts the plastic burgundy top covering my plate and puts it at the foot of my bed. The egg yolk on the rim of it runs down to my covers, but she doesn’t seem concerned about it. She opens a pack of salt and sprinkles it all over my food. She takes the little butter pack and dumps it in one clump into the grits; she doesn’t stir it around.

She is gone.

I try to pull myself up on the bed to get to my food better. I feel wet on my groin. I reach down to figure out what’s going on. I’m wearing a diaper.

She called him Sims.

“Hey, Sims, you can have my coffee. I don’t drink that mess.”

I’m trying to move the table so I can get up. I’m stuck.

“You alright, Jones. Don’t get up now. They’ll come blazing through that door.”

“Well, you come get it then.”

He starts laughing. I don’t know what’s so funny.

“You tickle me, man. I ain’t got no legs.”

Shit.

I apologize profusely. He genuinely doesn’t care. He acts like we are friends.

We talk as we eat. He coughs in between bites and words, repeatedly—like he is choking.

“How long have I been here?” I ask him.

“Too long!” he says. “I’m tired of smelling you,” he chuckles.

He is bantering, but I really want to know.

The one that brought Sims his breakfast is here now. She is pulling things out of a closet that has my name on it and says FAMILY WILL DO LAUNDRY. She is still talking to herself.

She lowers the head of my bed and raises the whole thing. I’m gonna reach the ceiling if she keeps going. She pulls my covers down and lifts my gown. She reaches down to open my diaper. I try to stop her by putting my hand on it, but she moves it out of the way. I’m soaking wet. My gown is wet too.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it,” I say.

She keeps talking. I can’t understand what she is saying.

“Ma’am?”

She is cleaning my groin with a cold, wet rag. I’m embarrassed.

“I can’t understand what you are saying,” I say, raising my voice.

“Wait a minute, baby, I’ll have to call you back. I’m with a resident,” she says. “Mr. Jones, I’mma need you to roll to your side for me.”

She pulls the sheet under me. I stop myself from rolling onto my stomach by holding on to the rail of the bed.

That cold rag is now on my buttocks. It hurts as she wipes, but I don’t say anything.

She puts on powder and a dry diaper, and she helps me get a T-shirt on. She sprays air freshener and takes the trash out. She leaves without saying anything anymore.

I don’t feel clean, but I’m dry.

I’m exhausted.

I wake up. I was dreaming I was in Valencia, having paella in the street. People were eating, drinking, and laughing. Light-colored clothes, summer hats, and Spanish guitar. Cold beer going warm in the sun.

The door opens. I know her.

“Hey, Mr. Jones, good morning!” She has such a sweet voice.

“Hey,” I hesitate. “Good to see you.”

“What’s my name?” she smiles and gives me a playful look.

“Rachel,” I say. “My favorite nurse.”

“That’s right! How you been feeling, Mr. Jones? No more falls?”

She tells me she was gone for two weeks on vacation, to the panhandle. She is very tanned. She gives me my medicines and checks on my legs and arms as we talk. I feel her touch through latex gloves, and it sends shivers down my spine. She is so gentle.

She tells me that my grandson is coming today. I don’t remember him. I smile a lot and nod yes as she speaks.

She says she’ll be back to check on me later, and she leaves.

I can’t stop thinking about her. I feel shame. I could be her grandfather.

Lunch was good, beef stroganoff. I’m wide awake.

Sims has his television on. I can only see half the screen, but I can hear it. I ask the girl getting my lunch tray if she can draw the curtain open so that I can watch it too.

There he is. I can see Sims now.

“Hey, bud, long time no see!” I tell him.

“I thought I was not going to see your ugly face today,” he says.

“You ain’t that lucky,” I tell him. “You need to shave, old man.”

“I know, they haven’t shaved me in a week.”

“You going to dialysis today?” I ask. He goes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Today is Wednesday.

“Yes, sir-re. They’re running late.”

“They are always running late in this place,” I say.

We watch TV in silence for a while until someone knocks on the door.

“Come in!” I say.

My son walks in.

“Hey, Papa!”

“Come here, my boy!”

He bends down to give me a hug. I wrap my arms around him and kiss his cheek. He has a mustache now.

“What you been up to, boy?” I smile.

He pulls a chair and sits next to my bed. “Not much, this and that.”

He starts talking, and he shows me photos of his new truck. It’s ugly. It looks like a refrigerator. He says he paid almost a hundred thousand for it, that it runs on a battery. He is not making any sense.

“It can drive itself too,” he says. “Brought me here. I never even touched the steering wheel.”

“Do you believe that crap, Sims?” I ask.

“I do. Scary if you ask me.”

We sit in silence for a while. He runs his finger over the little screen, and it shows him different things. Occasionally he shows me too.

“Hey! Is it this Sunday that we are going to New York?” I ask. I can’t believe I had forgotten.

“No, Papa, not this Sunday.”

I feel sure it is this Sunday. “But it’s your mother’s gallery thing, the one with…”

“Armando.”

“That one! Armando,” I say. “Couldn’t think of his name.”

He turns to meet Sims’s gaze, who is smiling, complicitly.

“What?” I ask. I’m smiling. I want to be part of it too.

“Nothing, Papa, it’s not this Sunday.” He stands up and puts the chair back in place. “I gotta run, but I love you. I’ll bring your clothes Sunday.”

He leaves so fast. I don’t think he heard me tell him that I love him. What was funny? Why did he leave?

I’m staring at the ceiling. I drag the covers over my head so that I can’t be seen anymore. I want to disappear.

“Jones…”

“Not right now,” I say.

I don’t want him to see me cry.

Rachel gave me something to calm me down. She is holding my hand. She is not wearing gloves. I can feel her soft skin. I want to run my fingers on it, but I don’t. She is looking at me kindly.

She starts cleaning around the room, picking up trash and tidying what the other girls left messed up.

“So, how was your grandson?” she asks. “I see he got him a Cybertruck.”

“A fridge on wheels, I would say. Said he paid almost a hundred thousand. I told him he was wrong, he is paying, with I, N, G.”

She laughs.

“You’re right, though, you’re paying till you’re not.”

“That was my son, though, not my grandson,” I correct her.

She walks to the wall on my right, and she points at a photo. “Bobby is your son, he lives in California. That was Mason, your grandson.” She points at his photograph.

“Oh Lord, I don’t know what I was thinking. Yes! His wife wanted that ugly Chihuahua, with the long hair.”

“And she got it too,” she says. “Alright, Mr. Jones. I gotta get out of this place. Seven AM will be here before we know it.”

I look at the clock; it is seven thirty. It’s dark.

“Can you leave the light on? Please.”

She looks over to Sims.

“It’s a’right,” he says.

I wave goodbye. She is gone.

I’ve been staring at this wall for two hours.

Mason played baseball; I got him his first bat. My son, Bobby, he works for a computer thing, that’s why he is in California. He hates it. He told me someone opened a tofu barbecue place. He said that when he comes to see me, we are going to go to Dickie’s for lunch in the deep country. He was so sad when he killed his first deer; we never hunted again—broke my heart.

I feel my lip quiver. Maria, my sweetheart, my love. We married in Valencia.

Someone comes into the room again. I cover myself up to my head again. I hear her changing my water, talking to herself. She turns the light off.

I try to adjust my eyes to see Maria again. It’s too dark; I can no longer see her photograph, but I can see her, in my mind. She is smiling, those big brown eyes. That ugly sculpture she made of me—I told her my nose wasn’t that big. She said that’s why she married me; no one else could love me with that nose.

Cancer. She is gone. It’s been ten years. A tear rolls down to my neck; another one follows.

I must have fallen asleep. This bed is uncomfortable.

I need to use the bathroom. I’m getting up.

What in the devil is that noise?

A blaring alarm is going off.

“Nurse, nurse!” a man is screaming.

I’m on the floor.

I’m going; I feel the warmth running down my leg.

The door slams open.

“Mr. Jones, I told you to stay in your bed!”

˜ the end