Somebody

An old lady moves into a nursing home and changes the perspective and future of one lady in particular.

"Ms. Lola? Wouldn't you like to unpack that suitcase?" a young heavy-set black woman asked.

Ms. Lola looked into her shaky arthritis-crippled hands with watery blue eyes. "My daughter's comin' back to get me," she whispered, almost inaudibly. She looked up into the woman's chestnut-colored eyes. "She promised."

"Well, until then," the woman suggested, "why don't we take a little nap?" She rounded the twin-sized hospital bed and tugged at the muted yellow cotton blanket with one hand and grasped the suitcase handle with the other.

Pointing a crooked finger at the woman's name tag, Ms. Lola spat hoarsely. "Get your dirty stinkin' hands off my suitcase, Barb!" Wrenching the handle from Barb's grasp she clutched it to her slight chest. "And 'we' will not be taking a nap! Whatta you think, you're gonna crawl in the damn bed with me?"

Letting out a long sigh, Barb continued to smooth the coarse blanket. Another belligerent newcomer to Meadow Pines Nursing Home. They were always feisty when they first arrived. They always thought their families were coming back for them. Time quickly changed things. They became more docile thanks to medication, routine and sheer boredom. Sure made her job a lot easier.

"So, what do you have packed up in that suitcase that's so all fired important?" Barb feigned interest.

Ms. Lola hugged the scratched navy blue suitcase tighter. "Nothing you would know or care about," she scowled, "but my entire life is in this here case."

"Try me," Barb challenged. "I have a life too, ya know."

"Oh, really? Treating your elders with disrespect as you wipe their chins, noses and asses is a life? Everyone in this place is a human being. We have all raised families, worked hard all our lives, maybe gone to school, accomplished things you never will! We, well, I, was a somebody. Now I just feel like a damned ol' fool." Ms. Lola fiddled nervously with a tendril of gray hair that had escaped from the bun high atop her head.

At first, Barb was shocked and angry. Disgust crawled up her neck and flushed her face. How dare this old woman tell her she had no life? How dare she tell her how to do her job? Frowning deeply, Ms. Lola's words stung her. She did see these people as just a job. A way to feed her children since their Daddy had run off. She never thought of them as having had lives before they came to Meadow Pines. How had they ended up here? What were their stories?

Sitting gently on the foot of the bed next to Ms. Lola, Barb studied her new charge warily. "I'm sorry," she said truthfully. "Tell me, tell me about your life, please."

Glaring at Barb, Ms. Lola loosened her grip on the suitcase. "This is all I have left after eighty-four years of livin'." She sniffed loudly and placed her fingers beneath the latch, opening the past.

She removed a well-worn, tattered Bible and handed it to Barb. "Written inside that front cover is a lot of my family history," she explained. "Birth dates, baptismal dates, dates of death and the like. My husband Bob, God rest his soul, gave me that as a wedding gift."

Pulling out a rusty silver frame, she looked into the gray eyes of a handsome young man in an Army uniform. "Bob was kilt in a factory accident 'bout three years after he come back from overseas. We had three young 'uns. Daniel, Jim and Sally. Jim got 'imself kilt by a rattler out back in the barn when he was only four years old." Ms. Lola stared off at the faded, flowered wallpaper for several moments. "I had to go off to work as a cleanin' lady for the auto plant to keep the kids fed and all. It was tough, by Jesus, only havin' a sixth grade education and all but I guess you don't need no education to clean." She stopped and took a ragged breath. "Now my family don't care beans about me. I knowed it 'cause they dropped me off here." Lola looked at more pictures as she extracted them, one by one, from the depths of her case.

"Oh, it's not so bad here," Barb lied. Really, it was but at least the place was clean.

"We both know different now, don't we?" Lola asked, a small smile playing across her chapped lips. "And I've only been here a few hours. How long you worked here?"

Barb explained that she had worked at Meadow Pines Nursing Home for almost four years. She had had to get a job when her live-in boyfriend Rick had taken off one day. He had simply vanished. "I didn't want my children on food stamps or welfare. It was time to make something of myself; my family. We're not rich by any means but my boy and girl have clothes on their backs, food in their tummies and a roof over their heads."

Ms. Lola patted her caregiver's fleshy hand. "As long as you can say that, you are rich. Thank you for the chat, Barb. I believe I'll take that nap now."


The next morning, Barb called Ms. Lola's daughter to give her the bad news.

"No, throw it out. Keep it. Do whatever you want. I don't want any of that cantankerous old woman's things."

A solitary tear crawled down Barb's cheek as she cradled the phone. Looking up, she noticed Mr. Harner struggling past the reception desk, dragging his walker awkwardly. Pocketing the well-worn, tattered family Bible, she rushed to his side. "Mr. Harner," she said loudly, "Let's sit and have a chat."

Author's Note

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