Vi didn’t have kids or close relatives, which was why she had moved here twelve years ago, when at sixty-six she had developed health issues and needed close care. “Most of my friends and lovers were smart enough to croak before they reached the state of showering with strangers’ help, and not the hot kind of help,” she had said when asked. At seventy-eight, she loved shocking the newbies and some of the visitors. “After doing every drug and man—and twice a woman, too—I could put my hands on in the seventies and eighties, I don’t know how I got to be this old.” Their surprised grimaces were a source of endless glee for her.
“Vi, you know I have to ensure you don’t miss breakfast so you can take your meds,” I said. Like most here, she was on a variety of medications.
“You call these drugs?” she croaked from under her blanket.
“No, I don’t.” I pulled down the cover she had thrown over her head like a grumpy teen and brushed back the dyed blonde hair that concealed half her face. “Blondes have more fun, sweetie. You should consider it, too,” she used to say. While it was thinning, she had beautiful hair and was still a beautiful woman when she bothered to smile and remove the resting bitch frown she had on for most people.
“Maybe today, you’ll join Charlie for the six o’clock dinner or the girls for Scrabble or Canasta?” I knew better than to mention Bridge. She hated it.
“I’ll get dressed if you promise to shut up,” she said, but the sparkle in the brown eyes she finally bothered to open told me that she didn’t mean to shut me up.
“Did you talk to the Witch?” Vi asked as I helped her get dressed. That was her nickname for the facility manager.
“No. And she’s not a witch.”
“Well, I did. It’s not fair that she’s making you young women wear these horrible scrubs that hide any shred of beauty. We don’t want to see the aides looking like hospital staff. And hospital staff shouldn’t look like that, either, by the way. These are our last years. Give us beauty, normalcy, fashion. That’s what I told the Witch, by the way.”
I chuckled. “These clothes are comfortable. We spend a lot of hours in them, so they have to feel loose and comfy. Don’t you like that they at least let us wear any color we choose?”
“You know how many men who visit here you could have charmed with that smile of yours? But your body, come on … those uniform would look bad even on models,” Vi said, arranging her shirt.
“Are you calling me fat again, Vi?”
Vi herself was very thin. “I was lucky to be born like that and, trust me, in the seventies, it mattered. But now, I look like a corpse while the plump ones still look good,” she had said. It mattered in the nineties when I had grown up, too.
“I never called you fat! I said there’s a lot to love,” she admonished me now.
“You did, but I don’t mind.” I laughed.
All my life, I felt the tension between liking myself and my plump body and how others looked at me and whattheysaw when they looked at me. Growing up, boys and girls alike often told me things like, “You have a cute face, you could be pretty if only you lost some weight.” I tried, countless times; sometimes still did, though I’d always find myself at the same size—sixteen—that was probably my body’s offset. I didn’t know what my mom did right, but I liked my body, though it would have been easier with society if I were slimmer. I appreciated that Vi had been honest enough to use the word “fat,” which she totally had, even if she denied it now. I preferred it over curvy or plus size. I was that, too, but fat, to me, wasn’t an insult any more than thin was. They were just antonyms, facts, objective descriptions.
“You’re beautiful, January, and I hate that you have to wear these bland clothes. You’re never going to find a man with those. Not that I think you need one, but I think you want one, even if you say you don’t. It’s about time someone took care ofyou.”
I laughed and kissed her cheek. “You talk a lot for someone who didn’t want to get up. You’re lucky you’re so cute.”
“I’m not cute! That’s ageism, thinking that old people are cute. I’m going to report you,” she said, a cheeky smirk on her face.
If people who didn’t know us happened to overhear us, they’d think we were serious, but that was our banter, and she was the only one I had that kind of relationship with. It had started on her first day, which had been on my first week here, twelve years ago, when she had said, “Now, tell me your real name. Nobody would call their kid January Rain!” She had become my favorite right there and then. When I told her about my sisters’ names, she’d asked that I’d summon my mom, “So I could give her a piece of my mind.” Which she had when I had first invited her to spend Christmas with my family. She knew my kids, my sisters, and my mom. The latter wasn’t offended by my attachment to Vi because, despite our age difference, I didn’t think of Vi as a mother figure. Vi would have probably killed me if I thought of her as that. She was my friend.
I had a few friends my age, none too close, but our busy lives hardly left any time to get together. Now I had another reason to keep my distance. No one knew that, like Vi, this was my home now, too. But unlike her, I was forty years younger and had kids who needed a place to come home to.
After our morning routine, I helped Vi to the breakfast room. She could walk, but in the last year, her health had declined, and she had been hospitalized twice. Though she came back as lively and hell-bent on wreaking havoc as before, we assisted her more.
I joined the other aides with the breakfast routine before moving everyone to the common room where we helped with crossword puzzles, board games, and crafts.
I was collecting the ten o’clock snack plates when my phone vibrated in the pocket of my flowery scrubs that matched the flowery wallpaper. “You have a delivery.You need to sign on it,” Karla at the front desk texted.
Cutting down on every expense, I didn’t expect any packages. The cheap supermarket outside of town or the dollar store on Ocean Avenue were my go-to.
“Hey, Karla,” I said as I reached the entrance. The large window reflected tenants and their few visitors enjoying the early spring sun in the garden outside. A FedEx van was parked out front.
Karla gestured with her head toward the FedEx guy who was busy with his phone.
“Hi,” I said.
“Miss Raine? This is for you. Can you please sign here?” He handed me a small, logo cardboard box and his tablet.
I signed and looked at the package. “Thank you.”
