She would miss her mother because even though Jassmina was a hard woman, Juicy knew that it was because of the hatred in her heart due to her past. There was a saying that Mom is the closet word to god, and Juicy definitely felt that way about her mother. She would never do anything to intentionally cause her mother grief.
And that’s why the last time they’d talked about her dropping out, Jassmina had caused her to back down once again. She had said, ‘Babygirl, if you graduate; get your degree, you will be so happy that you did. But if you don’t, you will regret it for the rest of your life; because I did. If I’d had a diploma, then maybe I would be something more than a waitress in someone else’s soul food restaurant!’
She understood, but if she didn’t drop out, she wouldn’t graduate until the age of twenty-one and by that time they would have to put her out anyway! That was just not going to happen. Her mind was on how god-awful school had been today, and she had no intentions of going back.
She was having a one-sided conversation in her mind in which she argued her case as she dug in her purse for the key. But even before she had put it into the lock, she smelled the acrid, sharp odor of something burning. She jammed it into the lock quickly, almost breaking it off, and then she dashed to the kitchen where the oven was on and black smoke was billowing from it. Coughing she turned it off and cut on the exhaust fan. She opened the oven to see a black aluminum foil bundle. Evidently her mother had been trying to reheat leftovers.
Coughing, Juicy opened the small kitchen window, fanning the air as the black smoke began its slow ascent towards the open air.
“Momma?” She must have run off somewhere and forgotten to turn off the oven, but damn, how did you forget to eat? Juicy walked to the back of the small apartment where one end of the short hallway led to Momma’s bedroom and the other end led to the small bathroom.
Jassmina’s crumpled body lay half in and half out of the bathroom; feet in the hall and head and torso on the linoleum floor of the bathroom. Juicy barreled down the short hall screaming something, while her heart slammed into her ribcage.
She fell to her knees and lifted her mother’s head, placing it on her lap. Her mother looked up at her and there was the froth of spit pooling from the side of her mouth and one eye seemed to stare straight ahead, while the other looked up at her in fear. Juicy didn’t understand how her mother could be looking in two totally different directions and then slowly she realized that half of her mother’s pretty face had slipped…
“Ok, Ma, I’m going to call an ambulance.” She paused waiting for her mother to guide her, instruct her, direct her; something! But Momma just stared at her with that horrified look on her face, her right hand clutched and clawed near her breast in an awkward way. Juicy slowly and gently lowered her mother’s head back to the floor and strangely she had a brief thought that she was so happy she’d scrubbed around the toilet extra good. She hated for her Momma’s head to be so close to the toilet but was thankful that she had cleaned it extra good.
Then she went crashing to the living room where the one telephone was located, a keening desperate sound rising from her chest without her knowing that it was happening. She held the phone staring at the key pads and tried to remember the number to 9-1-1.
She bit her lip and stared at the phone. She decided to call the operator for the number and then she remembered and instead called emergency. No cordless phone, meant that she had to stand there answering stupid question while her mother was laying with her head next to the toilet, staring off into space with one brown eye, and looking terrified with the other.
Finally they were sending out an ambulance and Juicy hurried back to her mother. Again she placed her head into her lap. “It’s going to be alright, Ma, I promise.” She stroked her hair and rocked her gently. “Ambulance is coming and they going to take care of you.” Damn! She thought angrily. Her Momma had lain here for hours…Damn! If she hadn’t been at school…
Jassmina moved her mouth with great effort. Juicy gripped her clawed hand. “Momma, don’t try to talk-”
“JU-” Juicy leaned her head closer. “Hos-” The woman’s throat worked for a moment and she tried again. “Hos-pi-tal.”
“Yes, Mommy, they going to take you to the hospital.”
Her mother nodded slowly. “…wh-where…whi-whi-WHITE…de-de-”
“White devils?”
Jassmina nodded again. “…fi-fired…me.”
“Ok Mommy, I’ll tell them not to take you to that hos-”
Jassmina squeezed her hand. “W-wa-nt…to g-GO!”
Juicy gave her a surprised look. “You want to go to the hospital where they fired you?” Her mother was nodding her head. Juicy stroked her forehead, lovingly.
“Shhh, Mommy. I’m going to take care of everything.”
When the ambulance arrived, Juicy grabbed her mother’s purse because she knew that the insurance cards were there, then she remembered to lock up the house and hurried after them.
Miss Barbara Jean started screaming as soon as she saw her friend on the gurney and she ran along after it, as if it was a casket at a funeral. Juicy saw Momma staring at her with her good eye but she made no attempt to speak to her friend.
The sobbing woman rode in the ambulance with them and Juicy was very close to screaming for her to shut the hell up! But she focused on holding her mother’s hand and talking to her in a soothing voice. She made sure that the ambulance took them to the hospital of her mother’s request and when she softly whispered this to Jassmina, she was rewarded with a half smile.
Miss Barbara Jean proved to be helpful in answering the questions to get her mother admitted while Juicy stood by her side through each portion of her examination. After many tests and after many hours, a doctor informed her that she had suffered a very bad stroke. The damage was extensive effecting her heart as well as several other major organs. However despite the damage and paralysis she remained coherent.
The doctor seemed surprised but Juicy wasn’t. Not even a stroke could set her Momma back too far. Still, seeing her like this affected her. She had never felt more alone in her life. Juicy cried in the bathroom so that her mother wouldn’t know, even though all she did was to sleep and she couldn’t see her while she did that. Still, she didn’t want her mother to hear her in her sleep. The next morning when her Momma woke up, she looked around confused.
Juicy took time to explain all that had happened. She had a drowsy, confused expression. Her face was drawn down on one side, including her eye and someone had mercifully covered it with a bandage. She also had no use of any muscles on the left side of her body and she kept looking at her useless arm as if she didn’t understand it. Juicy combed and brushed her hair and put it into two braids while her mother’s eye closed in pleasure.
That first day she slept more then she was awake and Juicy was able to run home and get showered and to find some phone numbers so that she could call her Momma’s friends. Miss Barbara Jean had already taken care of that, though. Everybody in the neighborhood knew every detail of her mother’s diagnosis! Miss Barbara Jean was a big gossip but at least she didn’t have to go into details about it herself.
After a few days Jassmina was even better, yet her speech was still slow and she still got confused at times. Juicy talked to her in the hopes that she’d talk back. Then one day while she was watching her daughter, Jassmina began pulling at the oxygen mask.
Juicy tried to still her hand. “You need that Momma.” But Jassmina was trying to talk so Juicy held it inches from her mouth so that she could still breathe in the oxygen while she struggled to speak.
“N-n…” She took a deep breath. “Nur-se.”
“You want your nurse?” Juicy moved to the bed controls, where there was a call button for the nurse’s station. Jassmina gave her a tired, yet determined look.
“No! N-nurse!”
Juicy stared at her mother in confusion. She would probably be confused for months to come…maybe even forever. It would be easy for her to dismiss her request, but she really seemed to want this nurse. It took her half the day before Juicy understood what her mother really wanted and that was after the poor woman had exhausted herself and fallen back to sleep.
She wanted the nurse that had been responsible for her firing.
Juicy had returned home to shower, and eat—hospital food was way too expensive…and nasty. When she returned, Momma was awake and she gave Juicy a determined look and began the process for asking for that nurse again.
“Momma,” she sighed. “I know what you want. You want that nurse that they fired you over.” Jassmina nodded.
“Momma, why?”
“N-nurse!”
“She probably doesn’t even work here anymore. That was years ago.” She continued gently.
“W-wa…w-want her!”
She was working herself up again.
“Okay, Momma,” anything to calm her down. But she didn’t know how she was supposed to do this; find a nurse that her mother couldn’t even tell her the name of. And besides, what was she planning to do if she found her? She had an image of her mother rolling out of the bed and stabbing the nurse with a plastic utensil.
Juicy had struck up a conversation with several of the cleaning people over the last few days, but they were all too young to remember her mother. Hell, that was over ten years ago and most of the people that she had met on the house cleaning crew was not much older than herself. She decided to do some asking around and she found an older guy that had worked back when her mother had.
His name was Joe; and when Juicy asked if he remembered Jassmina Robinson, his eyes lit up.
“Oh, that sista looked just like Pam Greer! Of course I remember her.”
Juicy told him that she was her mother and Joe gave her a quick look, almost as if saying, ‘how did you come from that?’ Juicy resisted the urge to scowl and she explained that her mother was now a patient.
Joe was honestly sorry to hear that and asked permission to stop by to pay her a visit.
“I think Momma would like that,” she lied. A lot of people had come to visit her Momma; mostly men, because Momma just seemed to have more true male friends then female ones. However she hadn’t seemed to be particularly happy to see any of them. Maybe she just didn’t want people to see her when she wasn’t at her best. Momma had always been particular about her looks. She dressed as hip as her daughter and was known for being the sharpest lady on the block.
“Mr. Joe, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, come on, let’s go to the cafeteria and I’ll buy you a something to eat. I’ll give you some meal passes.” She gave him a grateful smile. She wasn’t exactly rolling in the dough since she hadn’t been able to do hair.
“I don’t want the bossman looking at me for standing around shooting the breeze.” His eyes darted about and he seemed to be searching for people hiding in wait to secretly write him up.
Juicy waited until they were in the elevator before she asked the question. “Do you remember how my mother got fired?”
“Oh yeah. That was some bad business there. That was foul, how they offered her up like that.”
“Momma told me the story; about how that nurse had been the one stealing drugs but my mother got fired for it.”
“Yeah. That’s exactly how it happened. We all knew that she was an addict. If you know what to look for, it ain’t easy to hide.”
Juicy nodded. The projects was full of addicts. The doors opened and they strolled at a leisurely pace towards the cafeteria.
“You know,” Mr. Joe spoke thoughtfully. “Sometimes things do come up missing; couple rolls of toilet paper, a blanket or a couple cartons of o.j., and that would be us doing that. I ain’t going to lie about that. I’m sure your Momma got a few of them white hospital blankets at your house.” He gave her a serious look. Juicy nodded. Those were the best blankets in the house, too.
“So yeah, we knew that gal was a druggy but we didn’t think she was stupid enough to steal drugs from the hospital. But then it was coming up missing way too much. She was just careless about it; taking too much.
“Anyway, they called your Momma into the office and said that they’d found evidence that she’d been stealing. They found one of those cardboard wrappers in your Momma’s locker, which was dumb. No one would leave evidence just sitting in their locker. So it was bad enough to be set up, but worse to be set up by your own best friend.”
The two of them were in line, reaching for things to place on Mr. Joe’s tray and her hand stopped in mid-grab.
“My Momma’s
best
friend?”
“Yeah. That druggie gal and your Momma was tighter then a pair of pantyhose on a fat girl’s legs! Actually, she got your Momma that job before you were even born. They used to hang out, go to lunch, have barbecues on the weekend.”
Mr. Joe slid the tray to the cashier and took a few precious moments to shoot the breeze with the woman before handing over some of his meal tickets.
“You remember Jassmina Robinson?” He asked the older woman. “This is her daughter.”
Juicy wanted to scream for him to complete the story but she politely acknowledged the woman’s questions about her Momma and luckily there were people after them wanting to pay for their food so they were able to move on to a table.