Previously… (Chapter Four - Read) or (Chapter Four - Audio) or start from the beginning. Audio file is here (so you get that East Texas twang, because it is read by me).
CHAPTER FIVE
Dana signaled a turn off the two-lane blacktop, headed for a low-slung brown brick building, North Caddo Medical Center in Vivian, Louisiana, northeast of Uncertain and the opposite end of the vast lake. A large reflective-glass building—the hospital—loomed behind. “Why the hell aren’t we going to a doctor in Marshall?”
“They wouldn’t take my disability. The doctor here is real good, took me on specifically, in fact, as I guess I qualify for some kind of scholarship or whatnot. Besides…” Cherry pointed at a dedicatory sign on a small garden plot in front of the smaller building. In the center was a life-sized bronze statue of a woman in a long dress, eternally blown in the wind, with a bouquet of flowers and an up-turned face. Dana parked her rental in a spot right across from the sign. It read “The Katherine Winn Meditation Garden, a community gift courtesy of Winn Industries.”
“Too bad you pissed off the Winns all those years ago. If you thought they had money back then…”
Dana yanked the keys from the ignition almost as cleanly as she’d pulled the Winns from memory. “I don’t know why you think them having money means anything to me, one, and two, I don’t know why you think I don’t have any of my own. I’m taking care of your ass, aren’t I?”
“Girl, take it from someone who hopped from job to job back in the day.” Cherry fumbled her seatbelt open. “It ain’t a sign of stability. You might have some spending money for now, but real money sticks around and grows into something that makes more of itself. If you figured out the trick of that, then you sure as hell didn’t learn it from me.”
Cherry bossed Dana from the front seat on how to get the mobility scooter off the lift and to the passenger door— “Someone tried to make me feel like a dumbass for having the car mount, and just lookee there, came in handy, didn’t it?” —but they finally got Cherry inside for her appointment.
The receptionist gave a tight smile to Cherry but startled when she saw Dana. “And who is this?”
“My daughter, Dana. She came home to steal my fortune and put me out to pasture.”
The woman laughed. “Nice to meet you, Dana.”
Dana nodded. “Help me speed things up and there’s ten percent of some trashy novels and a busted sofa in it for you.”
Cherry pinched Dana’s leg.
“Ow!”
“Guess there’s still life in the old nag, yet. Chauntelle, my daughter will get my copay. Room one or two?”
Chauntelle, hiding a smile by biting the inside of her cheek, nodded her head to the right. “Two.”
“If you can behave yourself,” Cherry said to Dana as the door between the waiting room and back offices opened automatically, “you can join me.”
“Can’t wait.” Dana rubbed at her leg while Chauntelle charged her card. Chauntelle’s distraction gave Dana a chance to look the woman over through the glass barrier at reception. Lean, athletic build; her teal-colored scrubs fit her like a glove; her natural, tight curls twisted into an updo high on the crown of her head, curly bangs covered her forehead and framed her pretty, round face and showed off Chauntelle’s flawless dark skin and long, elegant neck. Dana couldn’t believe a woman as attractive as that lived and worked in Vivian damn Louisiana.
As Chauntelle passed back the receipt, she fixed Dana with a piercing look. “Cherry Folsom’s daughter, hmm? I didn’t know she had any family.”
A familiar pang twisted in the mental lockbox where Dana stored her wish for a caring, attentive mother, but quickly she sorted her features, sarcasm and put-uponness sliding over her face like a well-worn shirt. “You’ve known her for how many months, now?”
“Just over a year, she been coming in.”
“And you’re surprised she didn’t talk about anything but herself?”
Chauntelle laughed again, seemed shocked by it. “Whew. And I thought my mama was bad, asking me every day when I was going to hook one of these doctors for my husband…”
Dana took the receipt copy and grinned, “Well, when are you?”
She tipped Chauntelle a wink and headed to Room Two, clear as a bell with Cherry’s Rascal scooter parked outside the door. As she pushed the handle to enter, Chauntelle called out, “Maybe it’s not a husband I’m looking for, but a wife.”
“Okay, then. I see you,” Dana said, laughing.
“Shit, I hope to hell you can,” Cherry said as the door closed behind Dana. “We can’t both of us be falling apart at the same time.”
Dana helped Cherry, leaning on a cane, onto the paper-lined exam table. Almost immediately after Cherry settled, a nurse came in and whipped a stethoscope from behind her head, getting it situated straight away. She was an older woman, in her sixties, stout and sturdy, with dishwater blonde hair cut short and heavily styled. There was a definite no-nonsense air about her. Her name tag read Gwendolyn Cook, LPN.
“Let’s get your vitals.”
Cherry quietly endured the taciturn Nurse Cook checking her lungs, her temperature, her blood pressure, moving around and under Cherry’s voluminous housedress with practiced ease. Dana couldn’t think of the last time she’d seen Cherry go this long without something sarcastic or cutting to say.
“Dr. Hamm will be with you shortly,” the nurse said.
Once the door closed on its pneumatic hinge with a soft snick, “I hate this damn stuff,” Cherry said, shifting for comfort and setting off the crinkle of the protective paper liner. “Makes me feel like a pork chop at the butcher’s.”
The door opened and Cherry went still once more at the arrival of the doctor.
“Miss Folsom.”
A short, thick-chested man with a dull, bald head entered and opened a tablet. Deep laugh-lines were cut into his tanned face, his small eyes slightly rheumy and bloodshot and his nose upturned in an unattractive, piggish way. Dana guessed he must be close to her age, or early 40s at least. No ring, unusual for a man his age in this part of the country. He input a few things into the laptop without looking at the two of them and asked, “How’s my best girl today?”
Cherry giggled. She giggled.
“Oh, you.” With a heavy sigh, she batted her eyes at the man. “I guess I’m as good as can be expected, Doctor.”
“Which is to say,” he said, scrolling through the screen of his device, “half-way to Turdsville?”
Cherry giggled again.
Oh, Dana was never going to let her live this down. Dr. Hamm finally looked up from inputting data and gave a double take, then without impunity, raked her over elevator-eyes style, frowning as he took in Dana’s short hair and the edge of a tattoo beyond her shirt sleeve. “Well. And who is this?”
“Oh, that’s just my kid. Finally decided she had to show she gives a shit about me and came home.”
There was no giggle, no flirtatious tone to Cherry’s voice.
“Hi,” Dana said, nodding. “I’m the ungrateful kid, Dana.”
Dr. Hamm adjusted his stance, puffed his chest up a bit. “Dana... Folsom. Right. You don’t live around here anymore, is that correct?”
“She lives out in Hollyweird,” Cherry added, leaning forward on her exam table and shifting so the paper made noise. “She lives out there with all the sodomites.”
“Cherry…” Dana wiped a hand down her face. “I live where my job takes me.”
“California?” Dr. Hamm said. “Didn’t like L.A. too much, but San Diego—”
“Hello!” Cherry slid her legs around and waved her arms, making the paper under her body crinkle. “Dying old lady right here?”
“Stop that,” Dr. Hamm said with a hand on Cherry’s ankle. She went completely still and stared up at him with something close to adoration in her gaze. “Let’s hear about your day-to-day, Miss Ma’am. How’s the cough?”
“Still there.”
“Mm.” He noted something. “Having it more often?”
“About the same, which is to say all the damn day long.”
To Dana he asked, “She sleeping through the night?”
“She don’t know if I am or not.” Cherry reached out like she had intended to tug him closer to her. Dana rolled her eyes and leaned back on the spare chair to give them as much space as possible. “She’s not staying with me.”
Dr. Hamm glanced at Dana, then back to Cherry. “Kids can be thoughtless, right? You know what? When you and I finish today, I’m going to call my mother and tell her thank you.”
Cherry shot Dana the nastiest, most triumphant look.
“Now. If you keep losing sleep, I’m going to have to give you something. Your body needs rest.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“You be a good girl for me and eat a vegetable, one that hasn’t been deep fried, okay?”
Cherry tittered.
“Let’s get you to your scooter.” He gently helped her to her feet, holding her by the elbow and a hand at the small of her back as she shuffled to the door. The doctor shot Dana an exasperated look and nodded at the handle.
“No sense in her, I swear to Jesus,” Cherry sighed.
Dana had to brush past the doctor to pull the door open.
“Ms. Folsom,” the doctor asked.
“Yes?” both Cherry and Dana replied.
The doctor smiled. “You go on over to Chauntelle,” he said to Cherry, passing over her cane for the scooter’s basket, “and tell her all about your ungrateful daughter. I’m going to have a word with her.”
Cherry’s nostrils flared as she huffed and puffed. “You’re wasting your time.” At the doctor’s raised eyebrow, Cherry said, “She’s queer as a three-dollar bill, just look at her. You’re wasting your time.”
The doctor blinked. “I wanted to give her instructions for the oxygen tank and some signs to look out for, so she can take better care of you. Now you go on to Chauntelle. She’s got a prescription for you that’s going to help you sleep.”
Cherry chewed the inside of her cheek, clearly livid at the dismissal, and motored to the front. Dana knew that if the damn scooter had come equipped with an air horn, Cherry would have laid on it the whole way down the hall, shooting the bird with the other hand.
Dr. Hamm widened his stance and crossed his arms to hold the laptop securely. “Big task you’re taking on. You ever switched out an O2 tank?”
“Nope, but I just recently put in a new modem at my place, so about the same level of difficulty I suspect.”
Dr. Hamm snorted. “I’ll have Chauntelle give you a printout so you can take care of Cherry’s tank. Now. ’Bout that.” He sighed. “You don’t have long. She’s going to go fast when she does go.”
Dana nodded, an automatic reaction. It was still strange to think of the fact her mother was actively dying, even though she saw the evidence before her eyes. “And how long does she have?”
“Well, cancer meds are so good at faking recovery and false hope these days, it’s hard to say but weeks, maybe? But there are some things you can look for, ways to signal that it’s time to help ease her transition.”
“Give it to me.”
“Her blood pressure will be low, but her heartbeat thready.” He placed two fingers on his own neck’s pulse-point. “It’ll feel faint and rapid, like a bird. Her skin will be cool and clammy, but she’ll be sweaty. What I really want you to look for is her feet, her lower legs. She’ll have dark red spots bloom at the surface of her skin. That’s a sign of shut down; you maybe have a handful of days, then. She’s going to seem confused at times, disconnected from reality. Her anger might come out.”
“Might?”
“Well, more so.” He nodded at her. “Think you can handle it?”
“Yeah, I can handle Cherry. Wish she’d get out of that house, but she wants to die in it.”
“She’s probably going to get that wish, but her final transition would be pain-free, more civilized if she came here.”
“There’s nothing that woman does that is pain-free.” Dana breathed deep, the antiseptic smell of the waiting room filling her sinuses with a faint burn. “I’ll do my best, but I’m not making any promises. Thanks for the instructions, Doc.”
He grabbed her forearm as she turned on her heel. “When she goes, it’s going to get ugly. I won’t sugar-coat it. You bring her to the hospital if you see any of those signs I mentioned, you hear me? I don’t like the thought of her dying in that house.”
“Well, I’m glad someone’s been thinking of her. Thanks.”
Chauntelle said just loud enough for only Dana to hear as she left the back office to join Cherry in reception, “And definitely not that doctor.”
Before the heavy door could close, Dana stood in its path to block it and glanced down the hallway where Dr. Hamm and the older white nurse were conversing. He turned to stare at Dana, his red-tinged eyes zeroing in on her. She flashed to a moment, a memory on the lake as a kid, a party barge of rich boys and young men staring down at her in her busted-up canoe, eyeing her while catcalling. Remembered a boy, younger than the rest, with red, rheumy eyes.
“And not that nurse for damn sure.”
Dana jerked back to the over-bright reception room. Chauntelle coughed, pointedly. At Dana’s raised eyebrows, Chauntelle shivered, then fixed Dana with a significant look. “Ma’am, I have information about your insurance.”
“My… oh.”
Chauntelle shuffled papers on her desk, speaking clearly for anyone to hear, “Everything is in order with your insurance policy. Your mother has been added as a dependent.”
Dana was confused. She knew this already, had made the call to her insurance agent before picking up her rental. Chauntelle laid a piece of blank paper on the counter alongside a pen. “Sign here please.” Quietly, she added. “Watch yourself around the staff. They don’t like our kind.” She then mimed closing a lock at her mouth as her face smoothed into neutrality. “We’ll see Cherry back in one week.” She whisked the blank paper with a confused scrawl of Dana’s into a drawer.
“You done talking about me behind my back?” Cherry asked, cheeks flushed with her annoyance.
“Shows to go you,” Dana teased, grabbing the front door. “Wasn’t talking about you at all.”
Cherry kept her mouth shut the whole drive back, face turned to the window. Dana knew Cherry thought it was a punishment, but Dana welcomed the silence. Chauntelle’s warning wasn’t anything new. There wasn’t anything Dana could do about her appearance, but Chauntelle definitely passed for straight. Maybe she wasn’t out at work.
Cherry was clearly exhausted by the outing but refused to let Dana carry her up the front porch. Instead, Dana braced herself on the two good steps, expecting the makeshift ramp to collapse from the weight of the scooter, but it motored right on up. Redneck engineering won again. Once inside, Cherry gave up any pretense that she wasn’t worn out and permitted Dana to drape her arm over her shoulder and bear Cherry’s weight so Dana could get her to bed.
It was only midday, but Cherry slept for hours, barely moving from where Dana had her propped at an angle on the pillows. It was enough time for Dana to drive into Karnack and get the prescription filled, have a rushed lunch, and grab some cleaning supplies. She’d be damned if she was going to spend her days tending her mother in all that filth.
“Can we go to your house?” Addy asked, fanning her shirt from her chest. “Get out of the heat for a bit?”
Dana stopped in her tracks. Addy, who always had expensive clothes, lunches packed by her maid, who had a vacation home and a lake house in addition to wherever her family lived year-round… Addy would not see Dana’s house. Not ever.
She’d take one look at the peeling wallpaper, the broken step, the old furniture and nubby carpet, the weeds and gravel driveway and stop being Dana’s friend then and there. Dana’s stomach twisted in shame at the thought of Addy’s pristine sneaker stepping on the splinter-riddled front porch, the overhead light shorted out due to the mud dauber nest that took over the glass housing.
“I’m… I’m not allowed.”
“Oh. Hmm. Is there somewhere we can go inside? I have money on me. We can get some cokes.”
“We can take a little hike up to Shady Glade? That’s a restaurant.”
“Awesome. My treat.”
Dana pulled up to the house and made a mental note to see if she could find some local kid who would come mow the weeds. Cherry was still sleeping, so Dana pulled on some rubber gloves and began gathering up the trash. She was on her third bag when she heard her mom cry out, “Dana?”
“Out here. Got a snow shovel; doing some light housekeeping.”
“Har har dee har har. You think you’re so funny.”
Dana brought a fresh cup of water to Cherry, now sitting up thanks to her mechanical bed.
“You sleep okay?”
“No. Had bad dreams the whole time. Me chasing after some girl, her chasing me.”
“Is it your medication?”
“It’s the damn cancer, Dana.”
Dana threw her hands up in surrender. “You hungry? It’s dinnertime.”
“I could eat a little something. Maybe run over to Lavonda’s and get me a three piece.”
Dana checked that Cherry had the remote for the bed, the oxygen tank was accessible if needed, and said, “Which three?”
“Can’t stand sausage anymore. Hurts my teeth. Brisket, pork and if she has the fried chicken, some of that. Lord, that girl can put a scald on a chicken. Sauce on the side.”
“That ‘girl’ is the same age as you,” Dana replied, grabbing her keys. “How about a salad?”
Cherry looked bewildered. “She’ll put a corn cob in there. You can have it.”
“That doctor told you to get some vegetables. Something green.”
Cherry shooed her out of the room. “I’m already dying. A lettuce leaf ain’t slowing down this train, missy. Go on, I’m so hungry my stomach thinks my throat’s been slit.”
Dana snorted as she left.
She idled at the turn to Grace Baptist where Lavonda ran her barbeque joint out of a trailer parked on the old Black church’s side. Her blinker metronomed as a white sedan decided not to turn in ahead of her but sped off down the road, kicking up a fantail of dirt.
“Big mistake, bud. Lavonda’s is the best there is.”
She pulled her rental into the gravel parking lot, rolling until the front tires bumped the split and worn railroad tie. Two old Black women in folding chairs with umbrellas built in sat outside the trailer across from Lavonda’s passing a tin of tobacco between themselves. They stared at her as she climbed out.
“You lost?” one of them asked, adjusting the cane resting against her lawn chair.
“Miss Penny, that you?” Dana asked. Miss Penny was Lavonda’s older sister. “It’s me, Dana.”
“Dana Folsom?” the same woman asked, then boomed a laugh. “Child, I haven’t seen you in...” She shook her head. “Most of the time when folks’re lucky to get out of this place, they ain’t stupid enough to come back.”
“Oh, you know I tried, but I had to come back to take care of my mother.”
The other woman spat on the gravel.
“Well, better see if baby girl has any burnt ends left,” Miss Penny said. “Go on, now.”
Dana was shooed off. The diner Lavonda Moore ran out of the trailer wouldn’t have anything on her usual diet—green, leafy, boring, the opposite of her mother’s favorite fare—but given the mouthwatering aroma pouring out of the smokers lined up along the outside wall, Dana knew it would be delicious. Cherry wanted some barbecue, and since it was still light out, Lavonda may not have run out. The meat currently smoking would be for tomorrow’s trade. Dana snorted softly. It was crazy that she could still remember little details like that. Next to the screen door to get inside was an old Coca-Cola notice board, the yellowing plastic chipped here and there. The black plastic letters that clicked into place read:
Dinner menu
brisket
bodin
turk y l gs
half chickn
chikn
greens - mustrd
pork ½ rack
whole rack
beans
Lavonda had added a lean-to from what had been the trailer’s door and knocked out a wall to create a pass-through to the kitchen. In the open space were two small Formica-covered tables, rickety folding chairs crammed around them. A bell dinged when the screen door was opened, and Dana heard from deep inside the trailer, “Take a seat. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Dana sat at the table closest to the door. They were both covered by a red-checkered vinyl tablecloth, the kind that always felt a little sticky no matter how recently they’d been wiped down, a shaker of liquid with yellow-green peppers and a small relish pot of what Dana knew was the best chow-chow in town. She fussed with the serge-stitching along the edge of the cloth as she waited. Hanging on the wall above both tables was a framed picture of a young girl, smiling brightly, her box-braids swept back off a high forehead and held with a hot-pink satin ribbon low, near her right ear. Under the frame on a little bronze plaque read:
Divine Moore, 1972- 1986
We know she is in the arms of the Lord,
No matter where her body may rest.
Divine had been in Dana’s class. They’d grown up together, shared most classrooms and teachers, given the size of Uncertain and Karnack, smiled and joked in the hallways, but even with all of that, Dana wouldn’t have called them friends. Things back then were still pretty divided, Black folks keeping to their part of town near the highway or to the southwest by the unincorporated town of Latex, and the white folks by the water. Most interactions between the races were business-related or due to school integration, just how the white elders of the community preferred. Also, Cherry wouldn’t have allowed it.
Divine had blossomed sooner than Dana, around the time they were thirteen. That was the year before they started high school and Divine talked about running for class president. She only lived through the first month of summer after eighth grade. The rumor had been she’d gotten into someone’s car down in Karnack near the gas station—the town station, not the one that sold bait near the water—and no one ever saw her alive after that.
Dana stared at the image of that bright-eyed girl, nothing but promise ahead of her, and remembered seeing that smiling face on “Have you seen me?” signs plastered all over the school and neighboring towns for months. She shuddered.
“Dana Folsom, that you?”
A tall, thin woman with strong legs and a round face leaned into Dana’s space. “I almost didn’t recognize you. Child, you need to give me some sugar.”
Grinning, Dana let herself be pulled into Lavonda’s arms.
“You here for your mama? Can’t imagine why you’d be in Uncertain for anything else.”
“I am, but I’m glad to see you, too.”
“Let me guess,” Lavonda said. “Three piece and a side?”
“That’s what she said, but she won’t be able to eat but a few bites.”
Lavonda shook her head. “I haven’t seen her in a couple of months, maybe longer. She didn’t seem like she could get around much, but she come by here with Gabriela and that little one of hers. I think she just needed a change of scenery. Didn’t eat but a corner of some smoked chicken and a few bites of bread.”
“It’s not looking good. I’m still trying to catch up with everything.”
“I’ll put a half-rack under the warmer for you, then come sit for a bit so you can tell me all about what you’ve been up to all these years. I know it’s been hard for you to keep a job.”
“What...” Dana shook her head. No telling what her mother had said to folks. Lavonda reentered the room wiping her hands on a cloth she then tucked back into her waistband.
“Your mama said things have been real hard for you, but I have to say you look like you’re doing good to me.” Lavonda looked her up and down, smiling.
“Oh, you know you can’t trust a thing Cherry says. I just move from one firm to another. It’s pretty normal for my industry, actually. It’s a leg up each time.”
“Hmm, she do like to talk. Well, I’m glad for you.” She patted Dana’s hand. “I’m glad one of Divine’s friends made it out of here.”
“Well. Came back, though.”
“Yes, you did, and I bet the moment you hit 134 you was ready to turn around.”
Dana couldn’t help but laugh. “More like when I landed in Shreveport and the humidity hit. I’m glad you’re still running this place.”
“You know the police like the bark I get on my brisket too much to chase me off. You seen anyone else since you got here? Been out to the marina yet, see Ronnie?”
Dana shook her head. “Just my dad. Oh, how’s Eddie? He still in town?”
An uneasy cloud came over Lavonda’s face. Eddie was her nephew who’d lived with Lavonda and Divine after his mother Wanda, her younger sister, went missing in ‘83. “Oh, he’s doing real well, now. Full of himself, too. He come over this last Sunday for supper and can you believe he tried to tell me how to balance my books? Like I haven’t been in business for myself for forty damn years. Ain’t everything need to innovate.”
“If it ain’t broke… What’s he up to these days?”
Lavonda pursed her lips into a thin line. “Oh, he’s running shipping out of Bossier.” She paused. “That’s the Winn’s shipping company.”
Dana’s hand flexed on the vinyl cloth. She pressed it down to stop it from shaking. “Not a lot of options out here to make real money unless you work for the Winns. They own every damn thing or did. Guess they still do?”
Lavonda, face sour, nodded. “Mm hmm. I wish that boy would have done like you and went to school far away from here, ‘stead of just going to Longview. Could’ve met some new people, run in new circles, get himself into something decent.”
“Shipping is decent. And maybe he could take what he’s learned there and move to another company. If he’s heading up a huge multi-state operation like the Winns have, that would look great on a resume.”
Lavonda nodded absently, appearing lost in thought for a moment. “Yeah. You think? Maybe I’ll bring that up next Sunday he comes.”
“I know an AVP over at FedEx, maybe I could give her a heads up for his resume if he’s open to it? Job like that could take him anywhere in the world.”
“I sure would appreciate it. I don’t know why he of all people would want to work for that man, and been there near twenty-something years, too. Went from the mailroom to running things, though.” Pride evident in her voice, Lavonda nodded and pushed to standing. “Well, let me get your mama’s food on. Won’t take but a minute. You want some tea?”
“No, thank you.”
As Lavonda moved to the kitchen, Dana heard her voice bite out, “working for that nasty man,” and knew just who she meant. Jackson Winn. Addy’s father. A cold shiver ran down her back as she forced herself to picture anything but his face, his voice. She sat on her hands while she waited, wanting nothing more than to put Uncertain in her rearview mirror.
Continue reading: Chapter Six or Listen to Chapter Six
"give me some sugar" made me smile and feel homesick for my family in NC. My uncle used to say that every time we came for a visit. Also I am now hungry...
So good!! And listening to you read makes the story even more intriguing!