My Mother, Rachel

She sits there.  One of five in a row along a white wall.  In a rectangular room, each wall has its own row.  Some sit in white plastic chairs that look too frail to support them.  Others are in wheelchairs – standard models, hired, since they might not be needed for long. 

They wear tracksuits or housedresses.  “Nothing with zips or buttons, you understand.  It has to be easy to dress and undress them,” Sarah explained when we brought my mother into the Home.  “You know, for the toilets.  They often have to be changed during the day.”  They’re dressed in stretch materials that don’t crease.  Nothing expensive, we learned fast.  Soiled clothes are stuck chic-chuc into the washing machine and from there tumbled into the dryer, folded and dished out.  We had to stop caring about our mother’s clothes. 

At home, her wardrobe is packed with Ruth Reed dresses, silky florals with tailored jackets, fully lined.  A stout woman, my mother dressed every morning as though she was going to town: stockings, a well-fitted corset, long bra that pulled in and smoothed her bulges and pressed them into a sleek silhouette, expensive garments, perfectly cleaned and pressed.  Until she came into the Home, I never saw her wear pants.  Her hair was tinted dark brown with just a hint of copper, set with rollers and pincurls, and styled with waves as was the fashion.  Then sprayed with lacquer, so that it stayed in perfect and immovable shape.  Mid-week, she’d return to the hairdresser for a quick comb-out.

 Now her hair is silver.  Not a brown strand is to be seen.  It has been cut short, like that of a man.  I never knew how soft and silky her hair was.  Every six weeks, a woman zaps through the Home, giving all the residents the same haircut.  My mother’s face is round, and her hair falls in wisps around her face.  Her brown eyes are tiny beads set deep in her head.  Her nose is a crooked stump from a break she sustained some years ago, and is somewhat florid.  Her mouth is still full and wide, but she seldom smiles.  I remember how she used to laugh with her sisters.  All it would take was a look and a moment of mental telepathy to set them giggling so hard that one would have to run to the toilet.  Like my sister Leora and I do, to this day.  Mother would shake her head with pleasure, wanting to laugh with us and a little hurt at having been left out of the joke, and say, “you two gigglers.  Just now, one of you will cry!”

The woman who sits next to Mother used to be a kindergarten teacher.  She’s slight and old and wears a ponytail, which looks odd against the wrinkled parchment of her face.  She smiles and sings.  Day and night; day in day out, she sings with her children.  She calls them out by name; pats their heads, “Ora, Yaelly, Devorahlah, Rivkalah, Michael, Aharon …”  shushing them when they talk and cajoling them when their attention wavers. “Come, come, Rivkalah – sing with me… donna, donna, donna, do-o-nah”.  She doesn’t notice that no one visits her.

On the other side sits Dr. Rubin.  He’s so very old and wrinkled.  A wizened little man who walks haltingly, hanging onto a steel cage.  I know he was a doctor because Sarah has hung a sign from the cage.  “Dr. Rubin,” it says.  A small thing, when you think of it, but it assures Dr. Rubin a little extra respect.  The caregivers defer to him, “Would you like some tea, Dr. Rubin?” “Shall we go to the toilet, Dr. Rubin?”  But Dr. Rubin isn’t there anymore, and this shell doesn’t care what name he’s called.  My mother is just Rachel.

Sarah has a treat for her charges: a store-bought cake with little chips of chocolate inside.  She cuts a slice and bounces from resident to resident, smiling gaily.  She breaks off bite-sized pieces and pushes them into their mouths.  “Chocolate cake, Rachel,” she sings when she comes to my mother.  “Open a big mouth, yummy, yummy.”  Sarah is impressed with her own generosity and plays to her audience for approval. She has had her hair dyed blonde and has lost weight.  Though she’s long past forty, she wears high-heeled sandals, skin-hugging tights, and a black stretch jumper that barely contains her fleshy pink bosom.  She prances around with the cake as though she’s a dancer in a nudie bar.  I look around me at her audience and see the circle of demented people shadowed by their middle-aged sons and daughters who’ve stopped in on their way home from work.  

Tired, burned out, guilt-ridden, and grieving, we gape at Sarah.  When she pushes the small piece of cake into my mother’s mouth, I want to cry.