The Hallway They Left My Mother In

“I’m fine, Cheryl,” she said. “Go on and eat before it gets cold.”

I did not answer her the way I wanted to, which was to go back into that dining room and say something I would have regretted. Instead I got behind the wheelchair, set the brake off, and said, “We’re going to go eat together, you and me,” and I wheeled her out of that hallway myself.

I want to explain something before I go any further, because I know how this sounds, and there is a version of this story where Dana is simply a cruel woman and I am simply the hero and nobody has to think about it any harder than that. That is not what happened, and it would not be fair to her, or to the truth, to tell it that way.

My mother’s name is Arlene. She is eighty four. She had a stroke two Octobers ago that took most of the strength out of her right side and slowed her words down, though her mind is as sharp as it ever was, sharper than mine most days if we’re being honest. She still lives in her own house, two miles down the county road from Rick and Dana’s place, with an aide from the home health agency coming Tuesdays and Thursdays, four hours a visit, forty two dollars an hour, split between what her Social Security covers and what Rick and I put in on top of it. The rest of the week she manages on her own, mostly, with a lot of grit and a rolling walker and a refrigerator full of things I cut up for her on Sundays before I leave.

Sundays are family dinner, every week, no exceptions, a tradition that started back when our daddy was alive and never stopped after. Daddy used to say a family that quits sitting down together is a family that’s already started coming apart, it just hasn’t noticed yet, and after he passed we kept the tradition going partly out of love and partly, I think, out of fear of proving him right. We rotate houses, every fourth Sunday falling to whoever’s turn it is, and in between there’s church first, Mount Olive Baptist out on Highway W, then everybody caravans over together, trucks and minivans in a line down the gravel.

That particular Sunday it was Rick and Dana’s turn, out at their place on the old Pruitt road, the farmhouse Rick’s father in law left them with sixty acres and a cattle operation that has about doubled since, up to around ninety head of mixed Angus and Hereford crosses now. Fourteen people at that table counting the two babies in high chairs. Dana does the cooking for all fourteen almost every time it’s her turn, because Rick’s idea of helping in the kitchen is carrying things to the table, bless him, and that Sunday she was doing it with her husband out at the barn and her sister in law stuck on the side of the highway, which is a detail that matters more than it might seem.