My Creative Submission "Dusk

“Did you need something Sweetie?”

I’m looking up at this nurse, who insists on calling me “Sweetie” even though I’m more than double her age and even though there’s nothing “sweet” about me. She’s in her mid forties and has her curly hair dyed baboon red. She smells like cigarettes, so I assume she smokes. She’s a large woman, the kind I like, but she wears too much makeup.

“Mr. Cleveland, honey, you okay? Did you hit the call button?”

She’s crouched down closer to me now, in my face. She’s definitely a smoker. I did press the call button, but I hesitate to answer her because even though I’m about to piss myself, I don’t want her to fumble around with my genitals and watch me go.

“I gotta make water,” I say flatly. “Okay!” She exclaims, as though we’re about to decorate a damn birthday cake or go for a car ride. She spins around and grabs a pair of plastic gloves from the box attached to the wall. “Let’s get you all set up, Mr. Cleveland!” She’s talking to herself mostly, and probably attempting to make it seem like she doesn’t mind lowering an old man’s pants and pulling his penis out for him so he can take a leak. She ducks into the bathroom to get the bedpan, which isn’t even a bedpan but a plastic container with a handle that she’ll stick my junk into so I can go. She’s by my bed now, raising the back part up which makes no sense to me because I really don’t want to watch this whole show. She mumbles a few more “okays” and “here we goes” as she lowers the covers and grabs my pants at the sides to lower them. She struggles only a bit to get them down and I watch her large arms jiggle as she works. I’m wearing a diaper, not because I’m incontinent but because the nursing home is understaffed, which to me is an unjustified indignity.

“Alright, you’re all set, Sweetie, now let ‘er rip!” I look down at my lap where my penis is now in a plastic cup, which she is holding. She’s looking at me and waits. I wish she’d look away but she doesn’t. “C’mon Mr. Cleveland, are you having trouble?” She asks.

Just then Ms. Yancey stumbles into the room because the stupid nurse forgot to close my door. Ms. Yancey’s wearing her pink nightgown which gapes open in the back, revealing her naked body which I figure I’ve seen about a hundred times since I’ve been here. “Oooooh trouble, you are in trouble, yes you are, she said trouble-TROUBLE!” Ms. Yancey had reverted back to her childhood a long time ago and taken on the persona of an annoying 6 year old girl. A younger nurse scrambles to my room to collect Ms. Yancey, and remarks that she only turned her back for a moment but Ms. Yancey is so quick.

There are now four people in my room, two of us with our privates on display, and all the while I’m supposed to be making a piss. Ms. Yancey and the young nurse leave and I’m still looking at the door to my room, which is still open, when I hear my nurse giggle. “Uh-oh Honey, looks like he’s on full retreat!” And sure enough when I look down, I see that my johnson’s turtled up on me. She jerks the cup away and starts pulling my pants back up telling me it’s okay and we’ll try again later. “Yep, that’s okay Mr. Cleveland, we’ll just give him some time and try again later.” I want to punch her or get an erection or something, anything to show her I’m a man. She leaves before any of that can happen.

I still have to pee. I press the call button again and hope I get a different nurse. Maybe the young one that was with Ms. Yancey. No one comes. I press the call button again. I wait. I wait for maybe five or six minutes before I press it a third time. For god’s sake I have really got to go now! Maybe two more minutes pass and it’s a critical situation. No one comes. I feel it about to happen and then it does: I piss myself. It’s an orgasmic feeling mixed with relief and disgust, the kind of feeling you have as a young boy when you first learn to masturbate. I’m sweating lightly and I can smell myself, and the piss, and since no one’s come to attend to me I assume I’ll be sitting in my own urine until the lunchtime rounds.

Hours pass and I sit in my bed, in my urine, and try to drown out the television which is blaring a children’s cartoon. Every morning an attendant comes in and turns my television on so I can watch the news and keep abreast of current events, which of course is foundational for someone in my position. The damned thing stays on until an attendant or a nurse finally answers the call button and turns it off for me. “Now Mr. Cleveland,” they’ll say, “I just can’t understand why you don’t like watching television! The other residents really enjoy it!” What was to enjoy? I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t enjoy anything. I’d lost the ability to “enjoy.”

I watch the clock until it turns noon, time for the lunch rounds. My room is second from the nurse’s station, so not much time passes before a nurse comes for me. It’s the same red head from this morning and a younger colored boy whom I don’t like. I tell them about my accident so Nurse Red changes my diaper. I get her to turn of the television, and the colored boy asks me why I don’t like to watch The Price is Right, since it’s coming on and he incorrectly assumes that because I want the tv off, it must be because I don’t like that show. I ignore him. Collectively, Nurse Red and the boy lift me out of the bed and into my wheelchair. Immediately, the bed alarm goes off, signaling that I’ve attempted to get out of bed, probably fallen, and someone should come and pick me up. Nurse Red shuts off the alarm and I watch her closely as she does it. She leaves, and the boy attempts to put my slippers on my feet, but I’ve already decided I don’t want his black ass touching me so I refuse to cooperate until he finally gives up. “Alright Mr. Cleveland, no shoes today.” He sighs and wheels me out of the room toward the dining hall. We pass another orderly, also colored, and the two orderlies have a brief exchange, most of which I don’t understand because it sounds like jive. I’m wheeled in to the dining hall with the rest of the zombies, and positioned at a table with Ms. Yancey and Mrs. Tucker, which means Mr. Tucker will be joining us shortly, which means after he’s finished eating he’ll remove his false teeth and hand them to Mrs. Tucker, who will then clean them with her napkin. Mr. and Mrs. Tucker no longer recognize one another as husband and wife, but Mr. Tucker’s habit of handing his teeth to his wife after dinner for cleaning was something he’d apparently done when they did know one another. Old habits die hard, I guess.

I look around the dining hall. The room is a graveyard of the undead. It is a trophy case of discarded, battered relics, shelved here by families that did not know what to do with a useless life form that could not yet be buried. It is purgatory. Table after table of expressionless faces, most with heads hung. Ms. Freeman sits at the table adjacent to mine, cradling a life-sized toy baby doll and singing to it. She strokes its head and rocks it back and forth. She is never without it. At Christmas the nurses bought presents for the baby; clothes, diapers, a crib. Ms. Freeman has convinced them that she believes it is her baby, and that it is real. I don’t believe her. I suspect she uses the doll to give her life purpose. It’s easier to be in here if there is something or someone that requires you in order to exist.

Mr. Tucker joins our table and the orderlies come around and place bibs on us. Mrs. Tucker doesn’t like her bib, so she jerks it off and throws it at Ms. Yancey, who barely notices. She then curses the orderly who tried to place the bib on her and mentions something about her mother. The orderlies then begin serving lunch. The colored boy sits mine in front of me and says that he loves egg salad sandwiches, so I assume that’s what I got. Ms. Yancey is upset and starts crying because she was hoping for grilled cheese and tomato soup but got a pb&j and a banana instead. After everyone is served, the orderlies tend to those of us who cannot feed ourselves. The Tuckers can still feed themselves, but it isn’t a pretty sight. My right hand is too unsteady and my left arm is paralyzed from a stroke, so I cannot lift food to my mouth. The colored boy pulls a chair up beside mine and breaks my sandwich up into small pieces he’s going to try to get me to eat. I’ve already decided I’m not going to eat lunch because I don’t want him touching my food. He lifts a forkful of egg salad to my mouth but I turn my head. “C’mon Mr. Cleveland, you have to eat some lunch. Aren’t you hungry?” I’m not hungry, because I’m never hungry, but even if I was I still wouldn’t let him feed me. Food doesn’t have flavor anymore. It just feels like texture in my mouth, tumbling around until it slides down my throat. I’ve mostly given up eating, which is an unfortunate predicament for me, since the only thing anyone around here wants you to do is eat. Three meals and two snacks a day, five times for someone to treat you like you’re not adult enough to know if you are or aren’t hungry. I eat enough to keep talks of a feeding tube at bay and no more.

Just as lunch is finishing up and Mrs. Tucker is cleaning Mr. Tucker’s false teeth, my two daughters, Rose and Claire, walk in. I recognize them both but admit to recognizing only one, the eldest, Rose. Rose was a terrible child and is a terrible adult. She doesn’t care about me and rarely comes to visit. The only reason she is here now is because Claire is in town. I have appointed Claire as the executer of my estate and she has handled my personal finances for the past 8 years as my health has been on the decline. Once I had the stroke, Claire wanted to move here to care for me, so I pretended to have forgotten who she was so she wouldn’t do it. Early on, I even had to feign fear of her, because simply not remembering her wasn’t enough to keep her away. It was easy enough to convince people I’d forgotten them. The stroke mangled my speech so the majority of what comes out of my mouth isn’t what I want to say, but just a string of sounds that don’t form words. I can speak clearly, but it takes great effort. The stroke also twisted my face into a distorted sort of permanent smile. Combine these characteristics with the general physical and mental effects of old age and people automatically assume you have dementia, are “out of it” or have just plain lost your mind.

Rose and Claire both greet and hug me. The same initial questions that everyone always asks, “how ya feelin’, how ya been?” are asked and I reply “good” to both, which is a lie because I am not good. Claire unfastens my bib and pushes me back to my room with Rose following close behind. God forbid that I should have a moment of clarity and give Claire anything else that Rose would want. Rose will get nothing directly from my estate. Claire can choose to give to her from what she inherits, but that will be Claire’s decision. Rose has cost me the few remaining years of my relationship with Claire and I do not forgive her for it. Had Rose been a good child, she, who is not married and does not have any children, would have cared for me in my time of need, thereby eliminating my need to be in this place, and the need to sever my relationship with Claire. I am not angry with Rose, but I do not love her.

Once in the room Rose and Claire pull up chairs across from me so they can stare at me and make small talk, pretending that I am not in a nursing home, I am not ill, and that there is not an elderly woman screaming at the top of her lungs in the room next to us. They mostly talk to themselves and I don’t really listen to what they say. Then Claire pulls up closer to me. “Daddy,” she says gently, “Mama was talking about you today. She said your name twice.” She looks at me half hoping I’ll remember her and half hoping I’ll go visit her mother, who is bed-ridden in the last room on the same hall as mine. I ignore her. I hadn’t seen her mother, Martha, since the Alzheimer’s had erased her memory of me. That was about two years before I moved into the nursing home. I grieved for her and buried her in my heart and mind. She was gone, and all that remained was an empty shell. It was true that she did say my name quite frequently; the nurses, orderlies and other visitors confirmed it. But she wasn’t really talking about me. She was merely voicing a last remaining memory, a single name, in hopes of not losing it, though she could not recall its significance. I could sometimes hear her shouting it, but the sound was distant, like a memory.

“He won’t see her, Claire, why do you bother him with her?” Rose says, as she relocates herself behind my chair and begins to stroke the top of my head as though I’m a puppy or a small child. She’s doing her best impersonation of someone who gives a damn but I’m not buying it for a minute. Claire looks dejected. “Daddy,” Rose coos, “why don’t we go out to the courtyard so you can have some fresh air?” I don’t want to go, but if I stay in my room I will most likely be visited by a physical therapist who will try to convince me to do some ridiculous calisthenics in case I ever walk again. I pity the therapist, because his job must seem so useless to him. His entire day is spent bending and moving the limbs of dead trees, as though perhaps bending them will awaken some dormant filament of life that will miraculously burst through and renew the entire vessel.

Rose wheels my chair out of my room and the three of us head to the north exit of the building, toward the courtyard. Exiting via the north exit requires that we pass by Martha’s room. I don’t look in, but as we pass I hear her say the name James. Claire begins to cry and Rose stops my chair. I continue to face the door to the north exit and mutter “Go.” Rose pushes me further toward the door, but Claire has fallen back and gone into her mother’s room. I am angry that Rose suggested we go outdoors, as now that this has happened my time with Claire will be even more brief.

“Here we are, Daddy, a nice spot in the sun!” Rose has inadvertently placed me directly facing the blinding sun, but she doesn’t pay attention because she’s lighting a cigarette. The truth for her suggestion to go outside now revealed. Rose puffs, and I sit. She’s sitting backwards on a picnic table with her legs crossed, leaning back on the table top. The shirt she is wearing would be much too revealing if her long, auburn hair didn’t cascade down past her breasts. She was built just like her mother, with legs a mile long. She was beautiful, there was no questioning that, but she had tethered herself to her beauty at a surprisingly early age. It was almost as if she was born knowing that she could use her beauty to manipulate and damage those around her. She could string a man along for months to years at a time, all the while draining his bank accounts and corrupting him morally and socially. She was just like her mother.

She exhales smoke and looks upward. “Oh Daddy, isn’t this just the most beautiful day?” She asks, but doesn’t look at me and therefore doesn’t expect or want a reply. I maintain my silence and keep my eyes closed against the sun. We are alone in the courtyard and I consider telling her how much she disgusts me, but she’s talking again about something I don’t care about. She finishes her cigarette and I ask her to take me back inside. She shrugs but obliges, and we head for the north entrance. Claire is still in her mother’s room and I make the mistake of glancing in. Martha is sitting upright in bed looking straight at me. I have not laid eyes on her in years. Despite her disease and her age, she remained insurmountably beautiful. Her shoulder length white hair is combed and set, and she’s wearing color on her lips and cheeks; probably Claire’s doing. Claire is sitting beside her bed, holding her hand. “JAMES!” Martha cries out, “Please come to me James!” Rose continues to push my chair but I tell her to stop. I am past Martha’s door, but I can still hear her calling my name. I debate whether to go to her, whether to allow her to look at me, touch me, and hope for forgiveness for whatever she cannot remember that brings her such guilt. Martha will die soon, and I know this is what she wants. She cannot remember our relationship, and she cannot remember me, but she remembers the feelings. She feels the guilt produced by years of abusing a husband who would’ve given his life for hers. She aches with the agony produced when she forgot me before she forgot her “other.”

I’m still thinking of what to do next and Rose starts pushing again, without so much as a nod from me. It’s disrespectful, but I allow it. “She’s crazy anyhow, Dad, you know that.” Rose says, and laughs uncomfortably. It’s an awkward attempt to bind up an awkward situation, but it is genuine. “Mom’s been gone a long, long time.” She says. I remain silent and she pushes my chair toward my room.

I hear Martha mutter my name once more, but her voice is so faint. Ms. Yancey is having a nap and the hall is quiet. The wheels on my chair squeak lightly as Rose pushes. Room after room we pass with shades pulled closed and lamps dimmed. Even the nurses and orderlies have fallen silent, so as not to wake the undead from their midday slumber. We reach my room and Rose positions me in the corner, near my bed. An orderly has already been in and pulled the dark shades to block out the afternoon sun. The room is a hazy, coffee color; like the final shade of dusk. Rose leaves the room, and I am alone.