Read Online The Adjustment League by Mike Barnes - Free Book Online Page A

wall. Bedclothes folded, box spring, mattress. Scarred and sticky wooden frame unscrewed and wrenched free—headboard, foot, metal side slats. Scrubbed-at rust and ochre stains splotching the mattress, both sides. Faint in places—caregivers and cleaners doing their best, plus the rubber sheets and incontinence pads shelved in the closet—but multiple and dark in the central combat zones, rising to the eyes like aerial views of an ancient battlefield, nightly skirmishes with Bladder and Bowel spilling ineradicably into the ground.
    A heavy black woman, Jade on her name tag, comes in with garbage bags. Puts them in places around the room. “Things too old, no good anymore, or broken maybe”—she leans close and says in a low voice, Maude nearby but still hard of hearing—“or things that are too dirty, who can wear them now? Just throw them quietly”—with a downward pushing of her big hands to show me. “It’s not disrespect. Is what she wants.”
    My head is woozy, soaked in sense. It’s late in the window to be sorting so much.
    Her garbage bags around, and a few items swept into them to get me started, Jade plants herself in front of me and speaks with deep feeling, with expansive hand gestures and without expectation of reply.
    â€œOh, oh, oh, I’m missing this gal. Lovely lady. Always such a big, bright smile. Never temper. Almost never. Oh, she can fool me. Fool me! The tricks she can play sometimes! She makes me think, Why are you here? I’m so tired, I should be here, you go home, Mama, and take care of my own kids. Nice voice, she has. Singalong, we always get her first. ‘Where’s Maude?’ Anyone will say that. Baking activity. Movie night. ‘Maude, c’mon girl, this is not your nap time. Sleep later. We need you!’ And she’ll be feisty too. Some lady she doesn’t like, make her fist up at her. I love her, this lady. How is her daughter?”
    It takes me a second to realize I’ve been asked a question, and I have to backtrack to find the four words. When I do, the lack of a first name, even if she simply doesn’t know it, seems strangely respectful. I raise my palms. How is Judy?
    Jade nods, tight-lipped. “Not easy for that girl, wake up like that. But I’m happy for Maude. Not to be alone when her time is come. When the Lord calls her home.”
    â€œShe wasn’t alone?”
    Jade rears back, wide-eyed. Speaks to the room at large. Half-deaf or not, Maude needs to hear this. “Sometimes she likes to, we call her landlady. Against the rules, but on weekends sometimes I allow. Sleep with Mama, why not? What harm? Good for Mama, good for daughter too.”
    Which explains how Judy beat me up here yesterday, though I hadn’t wondered, assuming GO started running early even on weekends. But another unasked question tugs at me now, distantly, I can’t place it or slow it down to look at it. It wings past in a blur. Last night’s sleep no worse than the others lately, a patchy four hours, but the accumulation of them beginning to take its toll. I ask instead about Maude’s recent health.
    â€œPretty good on her last review. August, I think. Summer sometime. Physical, not bad. Little heart problem, but with her pill and puffer, she’s okay. But her brain”—she puts her hands up beside her own head and mimes a falling motion, little waterfalls out both ears. “She has it many years, the Lord gives her a long trial.” Good-natured scowl at the ceiling. “But these old ones—they go when they have to. They know best.”
    She steps away from me, turns her back, and makes what seems a ceremonial facing of the window, the wall with the call string dangling, the short wall the headboard abutted.
    â€œOhhhh,” she says, a deep groan, and strides out the door.
    Silence. Deeper without Jade, as if she took something with her.
    For an absurd