JUST FOR A LITTLE BIT
By Carver Adams
“This may be a free clinic, doc, but how long has it been since your lab coat was washed?"
“Ex-cuse me?” I was used to that grimace of his.
I had offended him, the man who just told me my leukemia was beyond his help and that I was going to die very soon. He made it sound as if I might already be dead and neither of us knew. Maybe I wanted him to be human. He’d dismissed me like some plant he never watered, like “Oh well, this one’s outta here.” It pissed me off.
When he first examined me last year I knew I was on my way to the morgue. He twitched like a turkey vulture contemplating a dinner-to-be.
“Hmm. You don’t feel well, do you?”
Wishful thinking? He looked hungry, like he couldn’t wait for my breathing to stop. When he closed in on my face to examine my eyes, I smelled buzzardy breath. I had to cough at him before he would back off.
The blood tests revealed nothing I didn’t expect. I’m sure it infuriated him that I refused chemotherapy or transfusions.
“But ma’m, you will die if you don’t get treatment.”
“I plan to die anyway, doc. Don’t you?”
The grimace. I started to laugh out loud and he hifalutined it out of the examining room. I could hear him say “Crazy fool. This place reeks of insanity and old people.”
On my way out I eyeballed him behind the desk.
“Oh, doc. When do you want me to come back?” I knew he didn’t want me to, but I wanted to watch him pretend. His face puffed up as if I’d caught him thinking “Old fool; maybe she’ll die before her next appointment”.
“We’ll call you.”
“Doc, I’m homeless, remember? No phone?”
Red-faced, puffier, he growled "Three months. Three months from today."
I’m not being harsh. The guy showed me over the months what he thought of elderly and indigent. Didn’t he know when he talked badly about other poor old souls that I knew he'd say the same kinds of things about me? Didn’t he know that people without anything hadn’t always been that way?
I was what he would have called “somebody” once. Now I wear the same old raveldy grey-brown sneakers with the shoelace holes that have lost those little plastic round circle-things on one shoe, and twist-ties holding the tongue down on the other, and my hair looks like a wren’s nest and my teeth like Indian corn --what’s left of my teeth--and my clothes smell spoiled even though I bathe -- I do bathe. I am still somebody. The fact that I can find humor at all in what’s become of me makes me a little less of a nobody. I am somebody, doc. “I am somebody, doc.” I chanted it as I waddled down the street.
I did feel death was imminent. But I couldn’t die. Not until I’d made my mark. I turned back toward the clinic and squawked “I’m glad you told me, doc.” A couple of people strained to look, but they were slummers. Didn’t “live” around here. Bag ladies scared them anyway, even when we weren't bag ladies, just old survivors used to being ignored. What were they afraid they’d see? Poverty? Seeing it, did they have to patronize? What were they gonna do? Buy us party dresses? Take us out? Change our lives overnight?
~ - ~
“I got to find a pick-up truck.” I was still talking out loud.
There were a couple of pick-ups in the parking lot at Marcy’s Tavern. I went in through the back door. Marcy, used to my hanging around, sometimes gave me free food when I offered to help her with her toilet cleaning and such. But this time she wore this O on her mouth I hadn’t seen before.
“Jenny.” She looked like she was gonna cry. “You look awful. Come in and sit down. Can I get you some milk or something?”
“I thought this was a bar, Mar.”
She shook her head. “You are disgusting, woman. Sit there. I’ll make you something to eat.” When I stopped her mid-mission, she couldn’t believe I came in to find a man with a truck.
“A man? Jenny?”
“A driver.”
“You goin’ some place?”
“Just want a ride to the town square.”
“Have you lost your mind? They’re having a festival over there. You’ll be trampled in that crowd.”
“Just a ride, Mar. A ride in a pick-up truck.”
“Well. If you eat something first, I’ll find you a man with a pick-up truck who’ll be more than happy to drive you to the square.”
I consented to the trade. Then I wondered if I was gonna let the driver in on my plan. I decided not to. He might chicken out if I did.
Jake knew me from a while back. He was a big hard-bellied chunk of a man who owed me a favor from the time he fell out drunk on his ass and just about cut his arm off on a chain saw. I didn’t do anything for him. Just shut off the saw and hollered for somebody to get an ambulance. But every time he’s seen me since then, he’s held up that still-there bicep and roared just like now.
“Jennybelle. How’s my little savin’ grace?” He frowned, though. Not like his usual greeting. “You look dead, Jenny. You ain’t been eatin’?”
I thought of Hamlet's “not where he eats but where he is eaten” and thought not eaten yet. Only a matter of time.
“I’m just about dead, Jake. But not yet. I ain’t ready till I’m ready.” Then I thought of Yogi Berra’s old quote and wondered if all I was gonna do today was think other people’s thoughts (“it ain’t over till it’s over” and all that.)
“Marcy says you need a ride.”
“Just down to the square.”
“Sure. I’ll take you.”
“But I need you to walk away from the truck a little bit, Jake.”
“Walk away . . ?”
“Just for a little bit.”
“Jenny, I ain’t leaving you in that square with my pick-up and all those people.”
“You worried about the truck or about me?” I knew better. Jake was one of the few true friends I’d had in my life. Better than family. “Well at least go across the street, for me. Leave me in the truck.”
“Why? You gonna sell the truck?”
“Jake.”
“Maybe.”
“Jake.”
“Five minutes. That’s all I’ll give you.”
“Deal.”
Five minutes was all I needed. He resisted again when I wanted to ride in the bed of the truck. But when he saw I was all bundled up and wouldn’t catch cold he stopped nagging me. He drew up to the middle of the square, close as he could get in a vehicle, and looked at his watch after he killed the engine.
“Five minutes.”
I stuck my thumb up in the air in acknowledgement. Then five fingers. A deal was a deal.
When he was out of sight I stood up. Nobody much looked, except to glance. But when I started my shaky singin’ they did double-takes.
Not much of a stripper, but I knew the stripper’s tune:
“Dah tah Tah,
Ta Dah tah Tah,
DA t-Ta Tah, ta TA da Tah
Ta DAH -uh
DAH -uh
DAH -uh
DAH -uh . .”
Watching those people watch was just what I needed. I wiggled my butt, what there was of it. I let my holey coat sleaze off my shoulders just so, poking out each bony prominence in rhythm to my own accompaniment, and found myself grinning as it fell. The sweater I was wearing hung up on my flappy boobs so I took hold of each tit and let it upstage the sweater, swinging left, one tit out, right, the other, out, pulling up the appropriate piece of sweater as I moved and counterfeited the music.
Some of them began to clap, sing along. When I pulled the sweater over my head and my droopies just flopped out the applause exploded. I could see wives pulling their reluctant hubbies away, yet continuing to look back laughing, some expressionless as if stunned. I was about to slither out of my old men’s pants and longjohns when I heard the siren and at the same time Jake hollering “Jenny! What in . . what’re you doing? Get down from there.”
It was too late for anyone to stop me. My dwindling pubes exposed, I turned to show my butt. With all the weight loss I could feel skin flap against flap, feel the wiggle even in my loose crotch. I was beside myself laughing. By the time Jake got to me I was in tears from cracking up. “Show-time”, I tittered.
“Jen. What’s got into you?” He was starting to laugh too. The crowd was scattering some, heads shaking, smiles bold on, laughter all around.
“Oh Jake.” I was weak from the laughing. It got worse when I saw the approaching cops.
“Hoo hoo. Here come the fuzzies.”
“Thank you Jake.” I turned my butt to him and whacked it with a skimpy palm. “From the heart of my bottom.” Laughter was bubbling out of my pores.
The cops couldn’t decide whether to frown, smile or guffaw. “Well Miss Jenny, look at you. A regular showgirl.” One of them covered me with an official police blanket. Jake picked me up.
“Can I take her back to Marcy’s, officer?”
“Well, long as she doesn’t do any more barebottomin’ out here.” I could barely hear him when he said “Is she gonna be all right?”
I was grinning at Jake. I whispered “Tell him I am now, Jake. You tell him for me. I’m gonna be just fine.”
And after that nothing else bothered me at all.
END
Carver Adams is a determined old crone who lives in the woods of North Florida and can’t stop writing. A born die-hard, she keeps looking for what life’s supposed to mean, and will probably persist even after it’s over. (Soft and humble words from a gifted artist!--ed.)
