Virginia’s Room
Strapped for cash, I phoned my ex: “Listen, are there any job openings in the cerebral palsy home? I remember you mentioning a temp position that doesn’t require a cert.”
“Well, relief workers aren’t exactly temps. They work on call. Two of ‘em just quit, so if you act fast, you should be able to pick up a lot of hours. What happened with the wallpaper company?”
“That was a temp job. Do you have your supervisor’s phone number?”
She gave me the number of floor manager Lee Chen. “Lee’s a nice guy. He’s there most mornings.”
“Can I use your name?”
“Yeah, feel free. I’ve been there long enough for that.”
Next morning, I called Lee Chen. He said I could drop by any time before one. I dropped everything and took the train out to Dorchester, a long haul from Allston. The home was at the end of a dead- end street off Dot Avenue, a one-story ranch style house surrounded by greenery.
A young woman in long tribal braids answered the doorbell. “Who are you?”
“Hi, I’m looking for Lee Chen. I’ve got an interview with him.”
“Oh, okay. I’m Toby. Lee’s out in the back with Ed, I’ll take you there.”
“Thanks.”
We cut through the modern kitchen and homey dining room to the backyard, young Lee on a lawn chair, senior Ed in a wheelchair.
“Lee, this here’s your interview,” said Toby.
“Yes hello, James. This is Ed, one of our clients.”
Breathing heavily, Ed nodded at me, and I nodded back. A scream came from inside the house, a woman’s voice.
“That’s Virginia,” said Toby. “’Scuse me, folks.” She ran into the house.
“Sounds like she’s in awful pain,” I said.
“Virginia has spastic cerebral palsy,” said Lee. “All her muscles are permanently constricted.”
The screaming stopped, and Toby returned. “She’s okay now. She was screaming in her sleep, must’ve had a bad dream.”
“Thanks, Toby,” said Lee then turned to me. “Did you bring a resume?”
“Yeah, sure did.” I gave him the one-page resume, he read it fast.
“Your past jobs have all been in offices,” he said, almost accusingly. “Your last permanent job paid well. As a relief worker, you’d be making about half as much. Why do you want to work here?”
“Well, I’d like to try doing something meaningful for a change.”
“All well and good, but your job here would entail helping clients into the shower, or onto the toilet. One client, Jack, has a speech impediment, and two, Virginia and Tony, can’t even talk. You’d prepare their meals. You’d also have to work an overnight shift now and then. Do you think you can handle all that, for less pay?”
“Well, I think I can,” I said archly, Toby giggling. “Look, I want to give it a shot. If it works out, I might shoot for a Home Health Aide certificate.”
Lee smiled. “Okay, but just one more thing. Right now, I can guarantee you only thirty hours a week. Think you can get by on that?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Okay, we’ll give you a shot then. As soon as I get your schedule worked out, I’ll send it.”
Ed had fallen asleep, snoring peacefully, a newspaper falling from his hand.
* * *
There were three shifts. As my ex hated getting up early in the morning, she usually worked the second shift. She and Toby had been there about a year. She said relief workers came and went, quitting after only a month or two. Lee put me on the morning shift, not the worst scenario as the clients didn’t come out of their rooms till half-past nine. In the interim I’d go about household chores or read a book, reading allowed during slack periods.
I worked with either Toby or relief worker Jake, an older man who’d worked there before. When Ed had to urinate, Jake showed me how to use the urine bottle. Later he showed me how to move semi-paralyzed Tony from his wheelchair into the shower. Once you got him on his feet, he could stand firmly, but you had to pick up his stiff legs, one at a time, to get him into the tub. Since Tony was limited to washing himself from the waist up, Jake washed his lower half with a long scrub brush.
Shortly before lunch Jake took me into the dining room. Before a highchair at the table’s head stood a mobile, eating utensils hanging from strings tied to movable rods. “Now this here is where Jack sits,” said Jake, playfully spinning the contraption’s fork around. “He can’t use his hands right, so he eats off this thing. Usually, he eats okay like that. But if he messes up don’t help him unless he asks you, or he’ll blow his top.”
Client Howie, a tiny bone-thin man, required little assistance as he did not have CP. My ex said Lee had picked Howie up from Dot Avenue’s sidewalk, the homeless man having fainted from malnutrition.
For the most part Virginia was bedridden, her nutrition administered intravenously by her day nurse, the somber but friendly Louise. I first saw Virginia when Louise and Toby moved her from bed to wheelchair, Virginia screaming through the transition, quiet afterward. She was as skeletal as Howie, her skin chalky, russet hair tangled, front teeth crooked. Accompanied by Toby, Louise wheeled Virginia outdoors for some fresh air. A half-hour later they took the client back to her room. As it took longer to get her back into bed, the screaming went on longer, shooting through me like an icy wind.
That evening my ex phoned, and we talked shop.
“How old is Virginia?” I asked. “She looks about sixteen.”
“Try thirty-four, dude.”
“What? God, that is so strange.”
“Not really, not when you think about it. She’s been immobilized all her life.”
“Huh. Well, Tony has been too, but at least he doesn’t suffer severe pain. How old is he?”
“Tony’s fifty-two.”
“My God, he doesn’t look a day over thirty. But you never hear a peep out of him. I moved him into the shower the other day, and not a peep out of him.”
“Tony isn’t CP. He was fine till he was eleven. He got knocked down by an eighteen-wheeler. Nerve damage.”
I shuddered. “Poor guy, but he was amazingly cooperative. Virginia is more difficult. I’m afraid of working with her.”
“You mean because of all that yelling? Well, that’s the only thing you need to worry about. She writhes around a lot, she’s hard to handle, but she doesn’t get violent. Stop being such a wimp.”
* *. *
The following morning Lee handed me a handwritten grocery list and some cash. “Go to the Star Market on Dorchester Avenue, just past the train station. You should go soon, we’re low on lunch items.”
“Okay, I’m on it.”
“By the way, how are you holding up? Are you getting the hang of it?”
“Yeah, I’d say so.”
“Good. But you should get the clients away from the TV now and then.” He opened the broom closet, its shelves stacked with board games and playing cards. “Ed and Howie like to play cards, especially gin rummy. You know that game?”
“Well, it’s been a while, but I’m sure it’ll come back to me.”
“Cool. If Jack wants in, you’ll have to stop playing and hold his cards for him, standing behind him.” Lee smiled slyly. “And remember, absolutely no gambling.”
I chuckled at his joke. then headed out to Star Market, the grocery list faintly depressing: hot dogs, frozen tater tots, frozen pizza, spaghetti, TV dinners, peanut butter. Frozen orange juice.
After putting these items away, I played gin with Jack and Howie, Ed having fallen asleep. It turned out Jack could handle cards. After he won, Howie turned hostile, pointing his bony finger at me: “You’re helping Jack cheat! I see all those little signals you’re giving him.”
“You got us wrong, Howie,” I said, winking at Jack. “There are no signals, we use marked cards.”
Jack laughed. Howie headed to the TV room, his odd bouncy walk like that of a marionette.
“It’s just as well,” slurred Jack. “I need a shower.”
“Okay Jack.”
As Jack couldn’t stand, I moved the plastic highchair into the tub, along with the mobile, replacing its spoon and fork with a little soap bar and an open shampoo packet. Toddler-size Jack was much easier to move than six-footer Tony. While he showered, I sat on the toilet seat and read. When he was finished, I moved him to the toilet seat, and he dried himself with a terrycloth glove.
I pointed at his erection. “Hey Jack, what’s this about?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have any control over that.”
“Yeah, that’s what they all say.”
Jack laughed. I took him to his room for his daily nap, his walls covered with posters of wrestling stars.
* * *
Now November, the last of the leaves began to fall. I’d been working there for six weeks and was still behind in my bills. I couldn’t work a second part-time job as Lee sometimes put me on second shift.
I wasn’t assigned an overnight shift till November. As state law required two employees on the premises 24/7, you worked either an “overnight awake” or an “overnight asleep” shift. As I was scheduled for an overnight asleep, my ex gave me three bags of Sleepytime tea. “Toby always blasts the TV to stay up. You won’t get much sleep unless you drink plenty of Sleepytime.”
Lately, Toby had been working double shifts. I stayed up with her till midnight, the two of us talking over an old movie. We were getting along famously till her boyfriend, an amateur boxer, dropped by. I slept, or tried to sleep, on a fold-up cot in the dining room, the TV so loud the Sleepytime tea didn’t work. Still, I stayed put, not a peep out of me. When Toby turned the TV down, I overheard their conversation: “So, if this Lee dude gonna be quittin’ soon anyhow, why he so upset ‘bout you wantin’ his job?” “Damn if I know, Mike.”
A week later Lee announced his resignation via email, Toby his successor. Drunk with power, she set about running “a tighter ship.” Reading was still allowed during slack time, but “no more books, just magazines or newspapers.” She even outlawed my repartee with Jack: “No more joking around with the clients, you could say the wrong thing and hurt their feelings.”
A couple of days later the wallpaper company offered me a permanent job. Barely scraping by as a relief worker, fed up with Toby, I took the offer, giving Toby a week’s notice.
Time dragged that last week. Toby harassed Jake into quitting, replacing him with her sister Camille who did pretty much did nothing except make lunch.
For the last time I helped Jack into the shower.
“I heard you’re leaving,” he slurred. “I’m gonna miss you.”
“Same here, Jack.”
The last day warm and overcast, the forecast predicted a “70% chance of rain.” Dark clouds massing, Toby sent me outside to rake the leaves. I was almost finished when Louise wheeled Virginia over. “When you’re finished raking,” she said, “I’m gonna need your help moving Virgina back into bed.”
“But you usually have another woman help. Why not ask Camille?”
Frowning, Louise waved down her hand. “Oh, that one. She stepped out again. She won’t answer her phone. Now, c’mon and help, please, this ain’t as hard as you think, and we got to do this before it start raining.”
“Okay, okay.”
The walls in Virginia’s room were bare save a bronze crucifix by the window. “You take her feet, I’ll take her head,” said Louise. “Hold on tight and keep her feet together, no matter how much she move around or scream.” Though a bit taller than Jack, Virginia seemed just as light. But she writhed around like a giant snake, screaming as if our hands were on fire.
Finally, we got her into bed, a hospital bed with guardrails. Virgina lied still, Louise and I smiled at each other, and all was right with the world.
Louise sat down next to Virginia, took her pulse. “James, please go over to that window, and open the curtains.”
I opened the crimson curtains. There wasn’t much of a view, but you could see the sun breaking through, the dark clouds fleeing.