Taking Care
Anne Colwell
She looks out the sliding glass door of the double wide, but she doesn’t see the scraggly shrubs, the fast-food wrappers under them, even the back of the other trailer with the piece of siding missing. She sees Rayla, the reflection of Rayla, sitting on the blue rocking horse that Donny found at the yard sale. Rayla watching cartoons, wearing the pink Cinderella jammies, her red feet cold, her toes wrapped around the wooden pegs, her thin blonde ponytail bouncing with the rocking of the horse.
Donny didn’t work this morning like he said; instead he’s somewhere out in the bay, fishing, and when he stops by -- if he stops by like he promised -- she’s hoping he’ll have caught something. Then he’ll be in a good enough mood that she can ask him for the money.
She should go get Rayla socks, she thinks, but she doesn’t move. Rayla’s baby doll, yellow hair matted, lies on the ground by the empty flower bed. Beyond the window, the wind lifts the brown and yellow leaves and blows them around the grass and into the corners of the tiny wooden porch. A siren goes by out on the highway, ambulance or fire, and fades in the distance.
Donny’s her father, but she always called him Donny, even when she was Rayla’s age. No one called him anything else ever. Except maybe son-of-a-bitch, he’d say. Then he’d laugh.
And he’d give her the money. She knew it, knew he had it ever since her grandfather died. And he’d be nice as hell about it and say, “Just pay me back whenever you can.” But then if she got her nails done, or bought a case of beer, or got another tattoo, he’d change his tune. He’d start in on her, making snide comments, rolling his eyes, until she paid it all back.
But she could never keep ahead. A dentist bill, a blown radiator, and she’d have to borrow it again. Like now.
She looked down at the latest tattoo on the top of her right foot, a surfboard with a snake curled around it. She’d never been a surfer, but it reminded her of how much she’d loved the beach growing up, and all those afternoons she and Donny spent together when he’d come home from work out of the blue and off they’d go, her digging in the sand and him surf casting.
That was when Donny and her mom had still been married, when the world seemed like a place that didn’t change, before all the outlets went in, before all the developments. Her mom told her later that she’d been a “whoopsie” and that it put a strain on the marriage. Rayla’d been a whoopsie, too, but Ray didn’t stick around long enough to know the baby as anything but a cry and a bottle. She’d named her Rayla so he’d see that the baby was his and that he should take care of them. Even though he’d left, she’d gotten used to the name. She liked it. “My Rayla of Sunshine,” or “Raylalalala.”
The name had been a passing thought, “a whim,” Donny would have called it. That’s what he called her tattoos. But like the tattoos, it stuck. “Women and their whims.” It was an expression of Donny’s and one of the things that had driven him crazy about her mom, drove him crazy about her. “You never think it through,” he’d say. “Nothing. Neither of you. Livin’ hand to mouth, minute to minute.” Not that he was any better. He’d promise something, but then if the wind changed, or the waves, you just never knew. She hoped he’d show. She hoped he’d give her the loan.
She’d thought about asking her mom for the money, just enough to cover the rent on the trailer, but she figured her mom likely didn’t have it either, working part time since her back went out, cleaning houses when she could, and when she couldn’t, collecting disability. How could you plan when life was like that? Babies getting sick and backs going out and cars dying, and then the rent is still due and you still have to get to work.
She had a new job in housekeeping at the hospital and sometimes it was nights and sometimes weekends and it was hard as hell to get a sitter and expensive. Lately, her mom had been watching Rayla for her when she worked which helped so much. She couldn’t lose this job. She wouldn’t. She’d tried lots of things, worked at the dry cleaners, waitressed, temp work as a secretary. But she couldn’t make anything stick. She liked working at the hospital though. She liked the name “essential personnel,” liked that she felt part of something bigger and important. Even if was just cleaning up the waiting room, wiping down the chairs and arranging the magazines so that they looked inviting, it helped someone feel better somehow.
So she had to talk to Donny.
She pulled her robe around her and retied it at her waist. She felt the tightness against her belly and sucked it in. She had the thought again that she should lose some weight. She slid her hand in the terry cloth pocket. Two beer caps and a few Cheerios she’d picked up off the floor after they spilled out of Rayla’s bowl.
She moved the bottlecaps over each other and searched around to find the words to use with Donny, some words she’d never said to him before that might make the whole thing different. Might make him see that this new job gave her a real chance, that she’d be able now to get ahead. Even if something happened.
And how could you stop it from happening? Sometimes she’d wake up at night afraid of dying. Who would take care of Rayla?
Like the night before, she’d been mopping up the waiting room in the ER. They’d called her down because a drunk guy puked all over – the waiting room, one of the bays, the hallway. The smell gagged her as she sprinkled the baking soda. It was bad. There were only two other patients in the ER, and they’d moved all the way across the room, as far as they could get. The lights of the cars leaving the parking lot slid over the big windows. She’d learned in her orientation that the hospital had started out as a house in town. Two doctors, brothers, had brought sick people to their house to watch them. They’d built the big new building right next to that first house. The house was still there; you could see it from some of the upstairs windows. Sometimes, even when she was doing a nasty job like cleaning a drunk’s puke, she’d remember the house and think that she was part of a bigger story.
After she’d cleaned up, she’d gone back to the nursing station. A man had come in an hour or two before – almost drowned maybe or had a heart attack – she couldn’t figure it out from the bits she’d heard. For awhile, as she emptied trash and dusted signs, everyone ran in and out of the curtained slot the man was in, tossing instructions over her head. It was “all hands on deck,” that’s what Donny would have said.
When she heard the doctor say, “The widow is on her way,” she knew the man had died and she suddenly felt her throat tighten up and her eyes itch like she might cry. Then the nurse came and told her that she’d missed a big patch of puke back out in the waiting room. That’s what she was doing when the widow walked in.
The double doors in front of the Information Desk hissed open. She heard the click of heels on the linoleum and looked up. The little boy beside her, who must have been her grandson, held her hand. He had a bag of Goldfish crackers and a truck. In the hand that wasn’t holding his, the woman held his juice box.
The crackers, the truck. She stared at the blue truck in the boy’s hand and her breath caught in her throat, and her heart cut itself in half.
This woman had gotten the phone call, the worst phone call of her life – she pictured the woman still holding the phone, standing in some fancy living room with crystal and paintings, looking up from the screen out some window at the dying light. In the next moment, then, knowing everything, every awful thing she would have to face, the woman took the time to find the blue truck, went to the kitchen and found a juice box and snacks. She imagined the woman looking down at the boy – who didn’t understand, who couldn’t understand, but who would know something bad had happened – and in this worst of all moments the woman thought only of what would make it better for him. A juice box. A truck.
Still holding the mop, she stared across the floor toward the woman. The woman stood by the welcome desk, eyes scanning the waiting room without seeing her or anyone. The little boy said something and the woman looked down at him, brushed his bangs with her hand.
She wanted more than anything to know this woman, to be her friend.
It made no sense. She knew it made no sense. But she understood that the woman knew what it meant to take care, to plan, to forget for one second whatever it was you felt or wanted and to think instead about someone else. She thought then that taking care was something she had never really done, had never seen. Her parents had done their best, given her what they could. But she knew suddenly – like a light coming on – she knew that what this woman had done for the boy was love, and she believed that this woman might teach her, change her. She didn’t know how to care for anyone yet, not herself, not even Rayla, though that was the closest she’d come. But she knew she could learn, that real care was possible.
The nurse came out and took the woman’s arm. She’d stood still staring after them, holding the mop, swaying on her feet. She wanted to follow them back but understood that she couldn’t, that it was wrong. She didn’t know this person at all. The woman had just lost her husband.
But the picture of the woman, the idea of taking care, she couldn’t shake it.
Now she turned the word “care” over and over in her mind, thumbing it as she thumbed the bottle caps in her robe pocket. She said it out loud to taste it, and Rayla turned her head from the television.
Beyond the window of the trailer, Donny’s car pulled into the drive. She looked through the shadows moving across the windshield to see if he was smiling.
Then she went to the rocking horse and bent down and scooped Rayla onto her hip. “Let’s get you some socks,” she said.
Anne Colwell
She looks out the sliding glass door of the double wide, but she doesn’t see the scraggly shrubs, the fast-food wrappers under them, even the back of the other trailer with the piece of siding missing. She sees Rayla, the reflection of Rayla, sitting on the blue rocking horse that Donny found at the yard sale. Rayla watching cartoons, wearing the pink Cinderella jammies, her red feet cold, her toes wrapped around the wooden pegs, her thin blonde ponytail bouncing with the rocking of the horse.
Donny didn’t work this morning like he said; instead he’s somewhere out in the bay, fishing, and when he stops by -- if he stops by like he promised -- she’s hoping he’ll have caught something. Then he’ll be in a good enough mood that she can ask him for the money.
She should go get Rayla socks, she thinks, but she doesn’t move. Rayla’s baby doll, yellow hair matted, lies on the ground by the empty flower bed. Beyond the window, the wind lifts the brown and yellow leaves and blows them around the grass and into the corners of the tiny wooden porch. A siren goes by out on the highway, ambulance or fire, and fades in the distance.
Donny’s her father, but she always called him Donny, even when she was Rayla’s age. No one called him anything else ever. Except maybe son-of-a-bitch, he’d say. Then he’d laugh.
And he’d give her the money. She knew it, knew he had it ever since her grandfather died. And he’d be nice as hell about it and say, “Just pay me back whenever you can.” But then if she got her nails done, or bought a case of beer, or got another tattoo, he’d change his tune. He’d start in on her, making snide comments, rolling his eyes, until she paid it all back.
But she could never keep ahead. A dentist bill, a blown radiator, and she’d have to borrow it again. Like now.
She looked down at the latest tattoo on the top of her right foot, a surfboard with a snake curled around it. She’d never been a surfer, but it reminded her of how much she’d loved the beach growing up, and all those afternoons she and Donny spent together when he’d come home from work out of the blue and off they’d go, her digging in the sand and him surf casting.
That was when Donny and her mom had still been married, when the world seemed like a place that didn’t change, before all the outlets went in, before all the developments. Her mom told her later that she’d been a “whoopsie” and that it put a strain on the marriage. Rayla’d been a whoopsie, too, but Ray didn’t stick around long enough to know the baby as anything but a cry and a bottle. She’d named her Rayla so he’d see that the baby was his and that he should take care of them. Even though he’d left, she’d gotten used to the name. She liked it. “My Rayla of Sunshine,” or “Raylalalala.”
The name had been a passing thought, “a whim,” Donny would have called it. That’s what he called her tattoos. But like the tattoos, it stuck. “Women and their whims.” It was an expression of Donny’s and one of the things that had driven him crazy about her mom, drove him crazy about her. “You never think it through,” he’d say. “Nothing. Neither of you. Livin’ hand to mouth, minute to minute.” Not that he was any better. He’d promise something, but then if the wind changed, or the waves, you just never knew. She hoped he’d show. She hoped he’d give her the loan.
She’d thought about asking her mom for the money, just enough to cover the rent on the trailer, but she figured her mom likely didn’t have it either, working part time since her back went out, cleaning houses when she could, and when she couldn’t, collecting disability. How could you plan when life was like that? Babies getting sick and backs going out and cars dying, and then the rent is still due and you still have to get to work.
She had a new job in housekeeping at the hospital and sometimes it was nights and sometimes weekends and it was hard as hell to get a sitter and expensive. Lately, her mom had been watching Rayla for her when she worked which helped so much. She couldn’t lose this job. She wouldn’t. She’d tried lots of things, worked at the dry cleaners, waitressed, temp work as a secretary. But she couldn’t make anything stick. She liked working at the hospital though. She liked the name “essential personnel,” liked that she felt part of something bigger and important. Even if was just cleaning up the waiting room, wiping down the chairs and arranging the magazines so that they looked inviting, it helped someone feel better somehow.
So she had to talk to Donny.
She pulled her robe around her and retied it at her waist. She felt the tightness against her belly and sucked it in. She had the thought again that she should lose some weight. She slid her hand in the terry cloth pocket. Two beer caps and a few Cheerios she’d picked up off the floor after they spilled out of Rayla’s bowl.
She moved the bottlecaps over each other and searched around to find the words to use with Donny, some words she’d never said to him before that might make the whole thing different. Might make him see that this new job gave her a real chance, that she’d be able now to get ahead. Even if something happened.
And how could you stop it from happening? Sometimes she’d wake up at night afraid of dying. Who would take care of Rayla?
Like the night before, she’d been mopping up the waiting room in the ER. They’d called her down because a drunk guy puked all over – the waiting room, one of the bays, the hallway. The smell gagged her as she sprinkled the baking soda. It was bad. There were only two other patients in the ER, and they’d moved all the way across the room, as far as they could get. The lights of the cars leaving the parking lot slid over the big windows. She’d learned in her orientation that the hospital had started out as a house in town. Two doctors, brothers, had brought sick people to their house to watch them. They’d built the big new building right next to that first house. The house was still there; you could see it from some of the upstairs windows. Sometimes, even when she was doing a nasty job like cleaning a drunk’s puke, she’d remember the house and think that she was part of a bigger story.
After she’d cleaned up, she’d gone back to the nursing station. A man had come in an hour or two before – almost drowned maybe or had a heart attack – she couldn’t figure it out from the bits she’d heard. For awhile, as she emptied trash and dusted signs, everyone ran in and out of the curtained slot the man was in, tossing instructions over her head. It was “all hands on deck,” that’s what Donny would have said.
When she heard the doctor say, “The widow is on her way,” she knew the man had died and she suddenly felt her throat tighten up and her eyes itch like she might cry. Then the nurse came and told her that she’d missed a big patch of puke back out in the waiting room. That’s what she was doing when the widow walked in.
The double doors in front of the Information Desk hissed open. She heard the click of heels on the linoleum and looked up. The little boy beside her, who must have been her grandson, held her hand. He had a bag of Goldfish crackers and a truck. In the hand that wasn’t holding his, the woman held his juice box.
The crackers, the truck. She stared at the blue truck in the boy’s hand and her breath caught in her throat, and her heart cut itself in half.
This woman had gotten the phone call, the worst phone call of her life – she pictured the woman still holding the phone, standing in some fancy living room with crystal and paintings, looking up from the screen out some window at the dying light. In the next moment, then, knowing everything, every awful thing she would have to face, the woman took the time to find the blue truck, went to the kitchen and found a juice box and snacks. She imagined the woman looking down at the boy – who didn’t understand, who couldn’t understand, but who would know something bad had happened – and in this worst of all moments the woman thought only of what would make it better for him. A juice box. A truck.
Still holding the mop, she stared across the floor toward the woman. The woman stood by the welcome desk, eyes scanning the waiting room without seeing her or anyone. The little boy said something and the woman looked down at him, brushed his bangs with her hand.
She wanted more than anything to know this woman, to be her friend.
It made no sense. She knew it made no sense. But she understood that the woman knew what it meant to take care, to plan, to forget for one second whatever it was you felt or wanted and to think instead about someone else. She thought then that taking care was something she had never really done, had never seen. Her parents had done their best, given her what they could. But she knew suddenly – like a light coming on – she knew that what this woman had done for the boy was love, and she believed that this woman might teach her, change her. She didn’t know how to care for anyone yet, not herself, not even Rayla, though that was the closest she’d come. But she knew she could learn, that real care was possible.
The nurse came out and took the woman’s arm. She’d stood still staring after them, holding the mop, swaying on her feet. She wanted to follow them back but understood that she couldn’t, that it was wrong. She didn’t know this person at all. The woman had just lost her husband.
But the picture of the woman, the idea of taking care, she couldn’t shake it.
Now she turned the word “care” over and over in her mind, thumbing it as she thumbed the bottle caps in her robe pocket. She said it out loud to taste it, and Rayla turned her head from the television.
Beyond the window of the trailer, Donny’s car pulled into the drive. She looked through the shadows moving across the windshield to see if he was smiling.
Then she went to the rocking horse and bent down and scooped Rayla onto her hip. “Let’s get you some socks,” she said.
