FERN
She lay down in the first bed but it was too hard. She lay down in the second bed but it was too soft. Finally she lay in the third bed and it was just right. She drifted.
“GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEARS”
ONCE UPON A TIME
The mother worked the night shift, meaning we only heard her footsteps when dawn was about to crack. Sometimes she crept into our room and pulled the sweaty hair from our faces and kiss-kissed us. Sometimes she straightened the covers, the colonial bedspread, the tiger print throw from Dollar Haven. Slaap, kindje, slaap, daar buiten loopt een schaap. The night sky changed from a purple bruise to a rust-sweet surprise, and we often awoke singing along with her. Een schaap met witte voetjes, die drinkt zijn melk zo zoetjes. We rose, dressed without concern, ignored our bellies, opened the front door. Slaap, kindje, slaap. On a good day people would come up to us on the street and say, Lady, you got yourself some gorgeous kids! We loved that. Yogurt, eggs, fresh Wonder bread from CTown, a pair of Almond Joys—but only if we promised to always listen! I don’t want to tell you kids again! In another life, the mother had been a little Dutch girl—her father wore wooden shoes, just like in a fairy tale—and because she subsequently was disowned by him for falling in love with Zwarte Piet, we became her burden, her impossible dreams. To fight the impossible foe. Sleep, children, sleep. The three of us were colored three different shades of dark (think: coconut, fig, and raisin), but people on the street understood we belonged to one another: the mother’s nose was our nose, her crow’s feet ours, too. People would gush: Lady, can I steal one of these kids from you, the pair of them look so daggone cute!
We loved that.
When she came into our room after the night shift (or the double night shift or the double-double night shift), our hands rose to smooth her wrinkles, rub her forehead so that good memories could swim back in. Jones Beach on superb summer days, Rockaway Beach when the Long Island Rail Road was too expensive. We bought ice cream sandwiches for our mouths and smeared Coppertone lotion on our skin and counted the rays of sun that tickled us happy; we’d stay all day, and sometimes we’d be able to get back home on our own, but others we’d have to call someone—a man of some sort—to pick us up, seeing as how the money budgeted for the return trip was gone. What in the hell? Hopefully the man of some sort wouldn’t be mad. Cotton candy, a Solo cup full of boardwalk sangria, a kiss on an unshaved cheek—these could soothe him. Then: back through the front door, a whole lot of grumbling. Sometimes the mother adjusted the blinds on the window so that the moon could pour over us; sometimes she pushed our twin beds together as one and told us not to breathe. He might get mad, she said, and then: Well, why the hell should I care if he gets mad? I’m not his slave, and then: Sleep, children, sleep.
We were her little babies. The mother said we were her little babies. She shooed the cat named Lasagna off the foot of the bed and turned low the sailboat lamp, the one painted in rainbows and soft waves, making the room look like a planet. Sometimes we fell to sleep instantly. Sometimes we smiled in our nightmares, so strong and courageous we fancied ourselves. Sometimes a cool wind blew in after she left, and we knew in our bones we had to remain motionless, dream or no dream. He might get mad. To bear, with unbearable sorrow, to run, where the brave dare not go. Sleep, children, sleep.
What was that smell in the caverns of her neck? Was it Jean Naté or 4711 or White Shoulders? Was it the fragrance of Hostess blueberry pie, snatched from the ICU canteen? Or Band-Aids and rubber gloves slipped into her pocketbook from an unlocked ER cabinet? The mother’s bouquet could’ve come from a bottle of bright red pills that, when you touched them by accident, left your fingertips looking as yummy as red SweeTarts.
We inhaled; then watched the sun rise on the other side of the blinds once the moon was emptied out; garbage trucks grunting their way up and down Linden Boulevard and farther down, airplanes swiping across rooftops and hairdos and men’s voices, which shivered under the skin of everything. Sidewalks grew long; streets fattened. Were there actual farmers on Farmers Boulevard? Was the mother still with us? Kiss-kiss, kiss-kiss. Hush now, babies! I’m here. And he says he’s not mad. Mother’s made it all right!
HELPMEET
She was a licensed practical nurse (LPN) at Jamaica Hospital, a few bus rides away; after the original father disappeared, she worked full-time on a bunch of different floors, different units. It was a long dry spell, but she did love us because she had us. And then somewhere along the line she met the first boyfriend—a dude from Custodial/Laundry—and he was not at all mean. In fact, the first boyfriend told her she was the most lovable person he’d ever met, and that Bud and me were as sweet-faced as the rescue dogs they had up at the shelter in Rego Park.
The mother’s good ICU and ER and OR patients were always happy to see her, always smiled when she approached their beds, clear-eyed or not; they loved the way she took their blood pressure, soothed their fever foreheads, whipped away their soiled sheets with a tender hand. Don’t look, she’d tell them. Don’t look and it won’t hurt. Don’t look and it won’t be there. They learned not to complain, and it made the mother feel good.
That was key: the mother feeling good. We loved sunsets and moonsets but nothing more than the feeling of the mother feeling good. Nothing like it on earth.
When she was feeling less than good, however—when she was down, when her lovability was in question; like for example when the mother’s mean patients complained about her: the mother’s slatted eyes, how hungry and nauseous they were, the better to eat them with; when she neared their IV stands and a cold wind blew off her skin, an iodine haze clogged their nostrils—the patients got antsy. We’re afraid of that nurse, they said. She’s cold, really cold. And it was not only the patients. The LPNs gossiped about the cabinets she ransacked when she thought they weren’t looking. The registered nurses (RNs) mumbled about her fucked-up charts, unshined Easy Spirits, and stone-cold bad breath. The doctors complained about her dozing in corners and waking up an entirely different person, a veritable Nurse Anna/Mrs. Hyde—God knows we don’t need any more of them about!—because at these times the mother was feeling far from good; and it was at these times that she did her criminalizing: stealing pills from other, unsuspecting cabinets (CCU PHARM, PED ONC) and crawling into newly made beds and closing her eyes while the ward clerks tottered about, cursing her in the foulest Polish and Spanish and Creole. The mother went into every cabinet in Jamaica Hospital, praying that one of them would change her for the better. She walked past the cafeteria and the gift shop and the volunteer station, listening for the footsteps of happiness to echo down the corridors of her life. She named her pills after our favorite Genovese Drug Store candies but told us never to touch them, that they were only for grown-ups: SweeTarts, Milk Duds, Skittles. The World thinks it’s gonna get me down, she’d say. Bit-O-Honeys, Mary Janes. Well, the World’s got another thing coming, let me tell you. Mounds, M&M’s, Almond Joys. One time the mother came back after a long shift and instead of opening the blinds, threw a book against our bedroom wall: Test Success for RNs Third Edition. I know I’m an idiot, she sobbed. So why even try? Nobody likes me. The people in the hospital, they don’t want for me to touch them.
How can you say that? we asked. Here, have some SweeTarts. You aren’t an idiot. And we’ve been dying for you to touch us since forever.
I’m trying the best I can, the mother cried. Why do the patients in the beds get all the attention? Don’t I count, too?
Never you mind, we said, rising from our squashed bed and pulling open the blinds to see the purple morning bloom begin to oxidize. The mother shrugged off our hands. What the hell you talking about, kids? I’m nothing but a goddamn idiot! Don’t you want to be proud of your mother? Get this book out my face. Anyway, it would probably take me ten years to pass this RN test!
How could we never be proud? We love you just the way you are. Touch us as much as you’d like.
Tears abated. Bud and me made the mother a breakfast of powder eggs and Mrs. Butterworth, and afterward we rubbed her ankles with lanolin. Tears blazing. Didn’t the doctors know how much she knew? That book knowledge was only a small part of her power? Shit, goddamn, fuck. There’s no way I’ll pass, why even try? I’m as smart as all them put together!
We scrubbed the three-week dishes clean, brought the cat Lasagna into her lap. All the time ignoring the first boyfriend sitting asleep on the sofa in the hallway, head propped against the wall. We told the mother she was beautiful, picked up the test book, and opened it to the middle.
TEST QUESTION #38
A nurse is caring for a client in the mental health clinic. Which of the following responses by the nurse would be MOST appropriate?
Were you always like this?Focus on the fact that you have a happy, healthy family somewhere.Tell me what happened.Losing one’s mind is often the only alternative.TEST QUESTION #39
Define the following acronyms:
EKGRCAWTFLSDWe know you have it in you! Please hold Test Success for RNs Third Edition in your hands and look at it! Don’t you want to be a winner? We know you have it in you!
I’ll just fail.
We’re here to make sure you don’t. When we grow up, we want to be as smart as you. We want to win like you. Win at every test like you!
The mother’s face when finally holding the book and looking at the pages: priceless. The mother’s face smiling in our direction: priceless. The mother’s face as the hidden SweeTarts from her uniform pocket began slinking into her eyes, taking every wrinkle and crow’s foot with them: priceless. Let me try later, kids. I gotta sleep. Please keep it quiet out here. Don’t bother me. Malcolm, wake the hell up! This isn’t a hotel! Kids, don’t let me see or hear you for the next couple hours, you hear me? Don’t touch me, whatever you do. Now sleep.
Alone, we fed the cat Lasagna the rest of the eggs and sat at the living room window. We watched the birds hop from one branch to the other on needlepoint feet. What were the words of that lullaby again? Bud began to cry because he thought we’d forgotten them. Poor Bud. So quick to not believe.
Before heading into the mother’s bedroom, the first boyfriend glared at us, tossing Test Success for RNs Third Edition at the hallway wall. Don’t you know she hates it when fingers are pointed, he growled. We did; we knew everything. Still, we apologized, and then he slammed the door. Her feelings had nothing to do with the fact that she kept circling the wrong answer. Shut the hell up, first boyfriend, you don’t know gobbledygook! She’s more ours than yours, motherfucker! (Hush, Bud cried. He might can hear us, Fern!) Why don’t you come out, first boyfriend, and listen to the truth? It might make you turn and run with your goddamn tail in your legs! (He can’t hear our thoughts, Bud!) (But our thoughts might could accidentally come from our mouths, Fern!)
Crying like crazy. To soothe my brother, I started to tell the story about why the mother really acted the way she did.
(Oh, I hate this story, Bud said.)
Once upon a time, the mother was delivered into the World on wings. She had an okay father. She had, however, a mother who was no more than a fuzzy Polaroid. The World wasn’t paying attention when it doled out these two parents. Well. Time went on. I’m gonna be different than these two, the mother told herself. And then she turned around again and here was the World once more, giving her two funny-looking kids! Come on, World, what games you playing with me?
The mother—being a native Dutchwoman by way of Aruba and!Xhosa country (a real Nubian Queen, she said)—was just this side of pleasantly pink. As a child and then burgeoning young woman, she’d run the gamut of colors from pure white to paper-bag brown, and God knows there were people on the streets of her beloved Alkmaar who looked at her and thought her utterly lovely, despite any perceived dermatological disadvantages. One day an American GI at a small bar called the mother utterly lovely. He praised her long legs and fur on the back of her neck. He admired the pebbles of her teeth. The mother fell in love.
(I wish it could be another ending, but then it wouldn’t be us, Bud observed.)
So. She came to this country and lollygagged and had two precious babies and all the while studied for her LPN and won. First to Maimonides, then to Brooklyn Methodist, and finally to Jamaica Hospital—the mother learned the ropes in all the right places. She learned that hospital people favored white faces most of all, in second place Chinese, third place Puerto Rican. She learned that janitors would yak your ear off about the way Indian doctors talked, like it was pretend English. The Dominican cashier in the gift shop bragged that her family had come from Spain, the conquistadors, just look at the shape of her own noble face. The Trinidadian phlebotomists said Spain was nothing but a dumping ground compared to the West Indies. The mother listened and learned. Secrets being that every nurse dreamt of houses, though the Jamaican ones usually got no further than Laurelton or else redeployed toward Valley Stream. The Chinese nurses made a beeline to Huntington Station on Long Island. The Catholic nurses headed even farther out, to Babylon, where the breezes of the Great South Bay dampened their uniforms. Where was someone like her to go? The Black/white/Black LPN whose eyes had once been compared by the original father to stones in a river?
(I like that, Bud said. Stones in the river.) (Me, too, Bud. Amen.)
Now. She emerged from the bedroom and, leaning over the stove, used a scorched oven mitt to wipe her cheeks. Her mouth was traced in red.
You’re disrespectful, the mother said to me. I only want you to be the best at getting better, I said. Bud picked up the test book. He rubbed the mother’s back as she leaned on the stove, mistaking a ballpoint pen for a Virginia Slim. He and I had both scoured Test Success for RNs Third Edition. Big words, not enough pictures. Sort of like fairy tales. The mother wheeled around. Didn’t I say don’t touch? I’m only flesh and bones.
TEST QUESTION #51
You are caring for a patient in the ER. The patient has been drinking alcohol and is asking for medication. When you instruct the patient that they have to wait to be seen by a doctor, the patient becomes verbally abusive. You then obtain restraints and instruct the patient that if they do not calm down, you will chain their ass down. What can you be charged with?
Copyright © 2021 by Carolyn Ferrell
