She Who Cares – part one

I have decided to upload a very short novella (novelette?) that I worked really hard on and is doing noone any good festering on my laptop. It’s the perfect read for this time of year and I hope you enjoy it. This is part one of six. Enjoy it or you will get bad luck for 5 years.

She Who Cares

Part One

The first thing you should know about me is that I care. I care about the people in my life and even people who pass me by. Last week I saw someone cycle directly into an oncoming bus. It was terrible. Their skull shattered against the bumper like a dropped meringue, blood pouring out like cherry confit. For the rest of the day I had an intense migraine.        

            The second thing you should know about me is that I am not so arrogant as to think I am infallible. I know full well that I am capable of bad choices and mistakes, thank you very much. But I sleep at night knowing I do the best with the information I have at the time, even if that goes against what I truly want. If you ask me, I think that counts for something.

            The third thing you should know about me is that I don’t believe everything in life exists on a binary scale, especially not people. There is no good and bad or right and wrong. Doing a bad thing doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person.

            The fourth thing you should know about me is I do a lot of bad things.

            But I do care.

—

Margaret lives down the high street which is typically teeming with life. There are bars, restaurants, convenience stores, greengrocers, butchers, bakeries, nail salons, tattoo parlours, vape shops, and an assortment of takeaways. On any given day you can find men walking by with briefcases and backpacks, busy mums pushing prams, children on scooters, teenagers on bicycles, dogs on leads, buses, cars, taxis, motorcycles. I even saw a rat once run right across my path. Corvid House sits out of sight behind impenetrable stone walls and a tall iron gate that stands like an upright hand denying entry. Despite its vast size and impressive exterior, it largely goes unnoticed by the general public. It’s like an end table that you didn’t buy and don’t use but you assume just came with the house. You would get rid of it, but why?

            Who is it hurting?

            I stop to the right of the looming gate outside Corvid House and tap in the passcode for entry before slipping through into almost another world. You can barely hear or see the busy street beyond the walls. Gone are signs of modern living and even the sound of traffic is replaced with curious bird song from the trees overhead. From this particular perspective looking inwards, it could easily be 1923 as it is 2023. This place has a surreal quality. The path leading to the lobby door is tastefully decorated with bedding flowers either side that border a neat lawn and makes me look untidy in comparison despite my starched uniform and smart shoes. These grounds are meticulously maintained, and such perfection gives off a slight uncanny vibe like it’s the set design backdrop of a Hollywood show. It’s as if not a single flower is permitted to wilt or show signs of decay, which is ironic considering every single resident here is dying. When the first petal drops, the flower is removed completely. They’re not fake. I’ve checked. Grasped at their roots, felt the dirt between my fingernails.

            With only a fifteen-minute window in which to carry out care for Margaret, this requires a tight routine with little room for error. Margaret sits in her chair by the window, looking inwards. It is exactly where I left her this morning and it’s unlikely that she has moved since. The boxy outdated television covered in the corner plays out some insipid game show marketed at the braindead who like to shout easy answers at the tv for some validation in their mundane little lives. But Margaret isn’t even listening.

“Afternoon, Margaret. How about some lunch?”

I watch her from the living room threshold and her face stays unchanged, watery-blue eyes looking at nothing, slack mouth agape like she’s in a trance. Sometimes when I find her like this, I wonder if she’s dead.

“Margaret? Can you hear me?”

I creep forwards, inching closer, not wanting to spook her. And suddenly Margaret jolts back to life, eyes bulging and a shock exhaling from her mouth. She flails like she’s drowning. Then she gasps, clutching her chest, calling out like a scared child in the dark. “Oh, oh, who is it?”

            “It’s me, Margaret. It’s Violet.”

            Margaret makes a laborious show of unfolding her spectacles and pushing them onto her nose. She looks up at me, searching her mind to discover if I am familiar, if I ring a bell at all.

            “Oh,” she declares with a sour tone, eyes narrowing. “It’s you.”

            Charming, I think. I am used to her frosty demeanour and don’t take it personally nor do I let it factor into my work performance. It’s my job to care, not to be cared for.

            “You scared me, you know,” she accuses. “I was far away…”

            I wonder where Margaret was. Perhaps back in the 1940’s in war time England, or on one of the many exotic holidays she has been on as seen in photographs dotted around the place. There’s a photograph of Margaret on a camel somewhere hot, looking old but not nearly as old as now. Her hair mousy brown and curled tastefully, her face mostly obscured by large glasses as was fashionable back then, but I can see she’s smiling with her real teeth. She has been old for longer than I have been alive.

            “Well spit it out then, what can I do for you?”

            Amused by her misplaced frustration, I smile, “I thought you’d like a bit of lunch.”

            “Well you thought wrong. I’m not hungry.”

            “Okay, well how about we nip to the toilet before I leave?”

            Margaret has a touch of dementia, which is to be expected at the ripe old age of ninety-eight. Sometimes dementia changes a person’s temperament, but I suspect she has always been rather abrasive and cantankerous. We don’t just one day become sweet little grandmas who spend our time knitting for premature babies and always have foil-wrapped toffees to hand out. If horrible people live long enough, they become horrible old people.

            Perhaps its essential to survival. Suffer no fools. Do what you must.

            She arises with difficulty and grips her walking frame, lumpy blue veins bulging under the crepe-thin skin on her arms like miniscule biceps hard at work. If she once had fat on her body, it has long gone just like her teeth and most of her hair. She reminds me of a dandelion clock mostly blown away by the wind of time. Like I could knock her down with just my breath. Hungry or not, I am contractually obliged to make Margaret lunch. She doesn’t know what’s good for her. I make a marmalade sandwich cut into four triangles and black coffee as usual and leave it next to her. As predicted, she mindlessly picks up the sandwich and sinks her dentures into the soft buttered bread, sucking with her hollow cheeks. It’s repulsive.

            “Time for me to go Margaret, goodbye.” But this goes unacknowledged, and so I leave her staring at the television which is showing middle aged dullards buy holiday homes abroad. I wonder if she knows she will probably never leave this building ever again.

—

My days are punctuated by visiting clients in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Sometimes I don’t see another soul. It’s no life, really. But what is the alternative? I can barely afford to live on a full-time wage so cutting back is out of the question. On my breaks I eat, run errands, and sleep. Sometimes sleep is all I can manage. Fatigue has become a real problem as of late so much that sometimes I worry it will set in so deep I will petrify. I have a chronic illness, you see. Untreatable, they say. Undiagnosed, as ever. If I don’t try to manage it as best I can, I’ll have to give up work. My clients would suffer. So would I.

            I do what I have to do.

            At the lobby door, a fog clouds my brain and I type the passcode incorrectly. It beeps a low tone of rejection that startles an owl which exits a nearby tree with a hoot, leaving branches rattling in its wake and causing a breeze that shivers down my spine. My mind and body are failing me with every passing minute. I wonder if this is how Margaret feels. I wonder how I will ever possibly make it to ninety-eight when I feel this way at thirty-three.

            I finally slip past the tall iron gate and prepare myself for the final hurdle, but the path seems to stretch out longer than it does in the day and walking it gives me a touch of vertigo like I’m on a stormy ship walking the plank with nowhere to go but down. It isn’t long before I’m making my way back down the high street towards Corvid House. The mothers and children are gone, replaced with more nefarious individuals. I try to walk quickly with my head down, but each step feels like wading through treacle and fatigue courses through my body, my bones aching and muscles burning.

            Sometimes us care workers are the only people our clients see apart from doctors or social visits on occasions such as their birthday, Christmas, and Mother’s Day. We often know them better than their own family and grow to like them as friends. Working six days a week, I am the person Margaret sees the most and despite her bad temperament I do like her. She is vulnerable and fully places her trust in my hands which is part of the job but a privilege and scares the hell out of me non-the-less. Sometimes my job feels like herding cattle towards the slaughterhouse. After all, no one makes it out of old age alive.

            Margaret is slumped in her usual chair in front of the television as ever, only this time her eyes are closed, and her head is resting on her shoulder in an uncomfortable-looking fashion. Her arms hang limp and still by her side. I inch closer, feeling for my phone in my pocket should I need to make a call, fearing the worst.

            But would it actually be so bad?

            I place my hand around Margarets wrist to check for a pulse when with a gasp from both of us, she jerks to life. Her cold bony hand feels for mine and she grips it. “Mother? Mother?”

            I have a thought.

            “It’s mother. Come on, time for bed.”

            “Mother? Is it really you?”

            It occurs to me that she has only ever known who I am because I always announce myself. This flower has lost more petals than I even realised. “Yes dear, do as mother says.”

            With the last dregs of my energy I sit Margaret on the toilet and wash her face with a hot flannel before helping her into a cotton nightgown with lace trim. Margaret was a very proud well-kept woman and likes cleanliness. She reminds me of a porcelain doll I was once given for Christmas that terrified me. She looks like a Victorian child apparition. I can make out her skeleton through her skin. I feel like a graverobber.

            Margaret’s bedroom has delicate floral wallpaper and a powder blue buttery-soft carpet. It smells like dust and decay and Chanel no5. Margaret is reasonably well-off and thoroughly middle class. That is evident from her vintage mahogany furniture still in mint-condition, over-stuffed jewellery boxes, and the black and white photograph of her grand wedding kept in a silver frame. She has lived a very full life up until now. Her children are pensioners themselves; her grandchildren are middle aged and have children of their own. I have barely lived at all. I may never have children, and probably shouldn’t. I care for people, but no one cares for me. If I need something, I have to do it myself.

            I help Margaret hop into bed and tuck her in under the dusky pink sheets. She looks up at me, eyes full of fear. It occurs to me that she is completely at my mercy, for better or worse, and it fills me with sadness.

            “Don’t leave me, Mother. I’m scared.”

            “You don’t have to be scared anymore. Go to sleep.”

END OF PART ONE

Thanks for reading!