1
Marie ran the warm washcloth down her mother’s rigid arm. The tremors were worse today, she noted as she washed the soap from her mother’s skin. The washcloth moved down to the tips of the woman’s fingers, and Marie noted for the millionth time that her mother still had slim, shapely fingers.
She dipped the cloth in the pink, plastic basin that had come from… somewhere. The hospital on her mother’s last visit, that was where they got it, she remembered now. She brushed black, silky strands of her hair from her naturally tan face with the back of her hand and looked away from her mother. It was too hot to work like this, but she couldn’t afford anyone else to help her.
A tear slid down her face, but she swiped it away angrily. Self-pity wasn’t something she’d often allowed herself to wallow in, but sometimes it was hard not to. Her mother had lost all ability to care for herself, and it was now down to Marie to do it for her.
“Mar-…” came her mother’s garbled voice. Sometimes the woman could barely speak, and at others, her voice was clearer. Marie brushed short, white hair from her mother’s face. A face that had once been on movie posters, with shiny dark-brown hair and sassy eyes was now little more than a shell of what used to be. All that French and Spanish heritage had melted with time, into the face of a woman old before her time.
“I know, Mom, I’m trying to hurry.” Marie moved to the other side of her mother’s hospital bed, made sure the blue plastic pads with an absorbent center protected the sheets, and began to wash her mother’s other side. Then she’d work on the middle, her back, and finally, her legs and feet.
It was a process she’d learned from the home health agency that paid her wages. As her mother’s own Personal Care Assistant, she was paid to do the tasks Ruby wouldn’t have allowed someone else to do. It allowed Marie to have an income, take care of her mother, and kept them both fed. A state agency paid for it all, some program or another that Marie had signed her mother up for a long time ago. That was back when she first had to use a wheelchair and could get out of bed.
Back when Marie had been on her way to Louisiana State University with dreams in her head and hope in her heart. Now, she was her mother’s slave, the same as always. At least now she didn’t have to be verbally abused too. Her mother could barely speak, even when she was lucid, and that kept her sharp tongue in check.
Marie felt terrible for the thought and winced as she promised she’d do penance later. For now, she had to wash her mother’s torso, then the rest. She always tried to think of something else as she went through the task she’d been trained to do. She’d think of the beach she wanted to go to, or the restaurants not far away. She’d think about what she’d ordered from the menu, and what she would do once she had her toes in the sand.
Marie left the small room with blacked-out windows. They’d done that to protect her mother’s eyes. She’d claimed the light hurt, but Marie had often wondered if it was to keep the world at bay. If she couldn’t see out, nobody could see in. It had always been that way. All of her life, Ruby hid them both from the world, from outsiders as she’d called them.
Once she was done with her mother’s torso, the young woman walked into the bathroom just opposite the bedroom her mother had claimed and rinsed out the tub. As she filled it with warm, clean water, Marie hummed to herself, a song she’d heard on the radio. Cajun music was her favorite, and she often left the radio playing, even when she went to sleep.
“Unwan…,” Ruby groaned as Marie came in.
Marie sighed, but let it go. “Unwanted bitch”, that’s what her mother was trying to say. Even now, when Marie did all she could to keep her clean, free from bedsores, and in clean clothes, her mother was cruel.
She always had been though.
Marie had always known that she wasn’t wanted. She could remember her mother saying it when she was two years old, then three, then every year after. Even when Marie was 18 and ready to leave her mother, at long last, her mother had said it. She’d spit it that day, but she’d added a new twist.
Ungrateful.
Marie was ungrateful for the long, miserable life her mother gave her. That’s how she’d announced the news that she was sick, she’d called Marie an ungrateful, unwanted bitch that wouldn’t even stick around to take care of her sick mother. Marie had only wanted to escape the torment, but she’d cracked and stayed.
Her mother’s Parkinson’s had progressed enough that the doctors had finally stopped blaming the car accident that had killed Marie’s father and nearly took her mother’s life. They’d done round after round of tests and finally concluded that the tremors, the loss of balance, and the rigidity in her mother’s left arm was from Parkinson’s disease. It was at an advanced stage by then, and Marie was as doomed as her mother.
Doomed to always be there for her.
Marie felt guilt over her quiet anger, her resentment of her mother. She knew she should have been a better daughter, that she should try harder for her mother, but some days, like today, the resentment got the better of her. It was hot, sticky hot, and flies were buzzing around already. The mosquitos would come later, breaking through the mosquito nets to leave her with itchy welts.
She wanted out of this place, to be somewhere where she could afford air conditioning, where someone else took care of her mother. Where she wasn’t a slave to a woman that had hated her for her very existence.
“You were supposed to be aborted, that’s what your father wanted. But we had the accident, and here you are, all mouth and selfish.” She could remember her mother saying that to her when she was five and needed new shoes because she’d outgrown the old ones.
Marie had learned to just make do with what she had until her mother noticed her clothes didn’t fit, or the school called her to threaten they’d report her if she didn’t take better care of her little girl. Those days had been the worst because Marie would come home to a raging, hateful mother that pulled at her arms until it left bruises as she dragged her daughter out to the car, into a store, and threw her down to try on clothes or shoes. Or bras.
She shuddered as she remembered the first time her mother took her to shop for bras. There’d been hisses about how her daughter wouldn’t turn out to be a little slut and no she couldn’t have the soft, lacy bras that were comfortable; she’d wear this plain cotton contraption that was so tight it left lines around her ribcage.
Her mother wasn’t the sweet and loving angel so many other kids around her had. Not at all.
Marie scrubbed at her mother’s back, checked her skin while she dried it for signs that she might be getting bedsores, and moisturized the skin. She picked up another washcloth, a clean one, and then she tackled her mother’s privates, a job she hated to do. It felt like she was doing something wrong. She knew it needed to be done, that her mother had to be clean everywhere, but damn if it didn’t feel like an invasion.
She hummed another song as she slid the cloth down around the necessary parts, her brain frozen, no thoughts entered at all, as she pulled the cloth out, rinsed it, then rinsed the soap away. More clean water. She’d have to do the laundry today, get it hung out on a line, and then brought back in. When she got back from the grocery store, she’d take it all down and fold it up.