Darling and I joked that Mama wasn’t about to let anyone else have the sickness spotlight and took bets on how long it would be before Mama checked herself in. (As Darling said, “I bet they’re getting her usual suite ready.”)

And, sure as a puppy will piddle on your favorite rug, the call came a few days later that Mama was being admitted with her usual litany of vague symptoms. It’s either a kidney infection, or a bladder malady, or a strangulated testicle. (If we knew which commercials she was watching before her admittance to the ER, we could probably narrow it down further.)

Despite complaints that the nurses were not “giving her her medication” (read: she wasn’t able to swallow her normal fistful of horse tranquilizers), she was chatty.

“I think I’ve figured out why I’m bi-polar.” (one of her many dubious diagnosis.)

“Oh?”

“When I was little, I got a “Hedda Get Bedda” doll for Christmas, and my brothers threw it on the roof.”

“And that made you bipolar?”

“Well, it had three or four faces you could turn around. One was happy. One was sad, and one had the measles I think.”

“So a three faced doll made you bipolar?”

“Well, children work with what they’re given. Don’t you think that’s possible?”

“You’d really better ask a psychiatrist about that.” A friend of mine and I once threw one of my sister’s Barbie’s in the road, and buried it’s smashed corpse after a car ran over it. I suppose if she’d lived, she might have become an undertaker from that experience.

Anyway, while I was trying to wrap my head around this theory, she was going on about how she was aghast that she had not  been named medical power of attorney for her mother. (Why she thinks she would be a good candidate to take care of someone else’s affairs when she can’t handle her own could probably serve as a doctoral thesis topic.) Anxious not to have that conversation for the dozenth time, I told her I was considering taking a new job.

“Will you be makin’ more money?”

I told her I thought the potential was there to make a good bit more.

“Oh good. You can get me outta West Virginia.”

“You can get yourself out of West Virginia.”

“What am I supposed to do? Hitchhike?”

“You know how to drive.”

Click.

She hung up. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say maybe her call was dropped. I’m nice like that.

Anyway, my son called and sang Happy Birthday to me. He wanted to know what I had planned today, and I told him I was gonna take me a nap. Im plumb wore out. He asked why Rusty didn’t plan nothing, and I told him, it’s same excuse as always, Rusty don’t plan anything but an evening with his best friend Jack Daniels. My therapist says I need to work on my self esteem so I can get me a no-drinkin’, dick workin’ husband. That’s his exact words. Then he asked me out on a date. My son said that’s a violation of ethics. These damn HIPPA laws.

I got a birthday card waiting on me at my moms house. I get my mail up there cause I don’t want Rusty knowin’ my business. I guess I’ll get somebody to take me up there and get it. I ain’t had a driver’s license in over six months now. Somebody musta stole mine. They want a copy of my birth certificate to replace it, and I ain’t made it up to the court house yet for that. Cain’t get nobody to help you nowdays. And now the tags on that car are expired, so it’s gonna take some time to get on the road again. But I’ll get there.

Seems like my son’s better half woulda sent me a dozen roses or something for my birthday. I told my boy that and he asked why on Earth they ought to send TWO gifts. I told him…”Cause I had ya!” I mean, duh.

Well I better go lay down. Somebody’s cuttin the grass out here at the trailer park, and my allergies is actin’ up.

I called my son and left a message and told him  he better send me some flowers, and reminded him of the address down here at Rusty’s place. I didn’t hear back from him, so I called again 15 minutes later. He said I already had some flowers comin’ for Mother’s day. And I said “well what’s that got to do with your sister’s birthday?”  While I had him on the phone I wanted to make sure he remembered MY birthday was coming soon too…and told him I wanted a gift certificate to get me some new brassieres. Smart mouthed little asshole said he wasn’t contributing to another piece of clothing coming in this house and that he might send us a gift certificate to go out and eat. All because my house is kinda cluttered! He knows I aint got much closet space, and I’d get it cleaned up but nowadays won’t nobody help a person!

I don’t know what’s wrong with that boy. They take a cruise every year and ain’t ONCE invited me to go. He told me how much it cost once and he knows I can’t afford that. I’m on a fixed income! Seems like they’d put it in the budget a little bit each month so I could take a vacation too…after all, I’m the one that had him! Nobody seems to understand I need a break from all this! I sure didn’t raise him that way. Sure didn’t.

Oh well. I guess I’m gonna go lay down. I still ain’t quite back on my feet from being at the hospital. You know if I’d waited another 15 minutes before I called that ambulance, I wouldn’t even be here to talk to you. They guaranteed me that!

80 or 90 years from now, when I finally go on to my great reward, I hope those I leave behind will cherish my memory in similar fashion. As they’ll no doubt be riddled with grief, or dementia, I figured I should help them out:

The Vinyl Villager, age 104, passed from this life while fulfilling one of the items on his “bucket list.” Witnesses report he was able to perform 8 perfect back flips before the chute failed to open.

Born in 1977, renovated in 2017, and rebuilt from the ground up in 2047, Mr. Villager will be sadly missed by his plastic surgeon, Dr. Ty Tass, his dermatologist Dr. Beau Tocks, and the National Auto Dealers Association. His passing will  be celebrated by almost everyone he ever worked with, the gal who does his laundry, and the service manager at the local Honda dealer.

Mr. Villager was preceded in death by his mother, who lost a battle with prostate cancer in 2034, his stepmother, who died of a broken heart when  none of her kids would give her a damned grandbaby, and his father, who finally fell asleep at the wheel and drove his stick shifted station wagon off the side of a mountain just days after his 100th birthday celebration. His sister died out of spite in 2008 just to leave  him stuck with their mother.

He is survived by his brothers, Zippy (who, at age 90, was the oldest person to be awarded a bachelors degree by State  University), and John (who still lives in their parents house and hopes Mr. Villager left him enough money to finally put in a stove that works.) He is also survived by his loving partner, who finds it very rude that Vinyl would go first, especially widowing someone at an age when landing a second “trophy” husband is damned near impossible.

There will be no viewing, in accordance with his wishes, as he hated that undertakers always make the dead look like they are sleeping, and, really, who falls asleep in a suit with that much makeup on? Rather, all who cherish his memory are invited to the Villager home next Saturday where Dr. Tocks will be administring free injections, followed by a demolition derby, board games, and a catered meal featuring seven courses of his favorite foods. Vinyl had hoped to live aboard a cruise ship once he retired, and was planning to do just that after making his final student loan payment next August. Friends and family had planned to scatter the cremains at sea, but they were unfortunately lost when his long suffering housekeeper mistook the urn for one of the gravy tureans and ran him through the dishwasher.

In lieu of flowers, Mr. V would have preferred you go buy yourself a nice set of sheets and some new bed pillows–two luxuries in life he was never without.

She also hasn’t quite figured out the difference between being friends with someone on the Book of Face and “liking” their business page. So if she has liked, lets say, Oprah, and the person who runs Oprah’s Facebook page posts that Oprah will be appearing in DC to launch a new line of Very Important Things, and everyone should come on out and see her, Mama thinks it is a personal invitation from Oprah herself.

So for several weeks now I have been hearing Mama mention that she has been invited to this concert or that event, and I figured that something was amiss. So I logged into her Facebook account (I feel  no guilt about this, as she has me log on from time to time herself to figure out what happened to this or that.) and sure enough, she has “liked” the page of a hometown musician named “Mini Thin”. (by her own confession, she thought she was liking an old diet pill…because, well, when has she ever seen a pill she didn’t like?) Now, Mini Thin, as do most musicians and artists I know, always invites the entirety of people who have “liked” him to his various concerts and appearances. So Mama gets an invitation to a Mini Thin “event” on a frequent basis, and takes them as personal invitations from the artist himself.

I tried to explain to her that, while she should certainly go see any of these concerts if she wanted, Mini Thin sent this invitation out to all of the hundreds, or maybe thousands, of people who had liked his page, so she was under no obligation to go.

“Oh but I called and talked to him on the phone.”

“Why?”

“He invited me a concert up there at the Turnpike Tavern they’s gonna have on May 11th, and I wanted to see more about it. He wants me to come dressed as Miss Kitty!”

Let me go off on a tangent here.

Right after Mama divorced her second husband, just before she plunged into the abyss of bat shit craziness and lost her looks, she took a gig doing singing telegrams for a local company that did events. I think she actually did them twice, which means its a record length of employment for her.  I don’t know the details, but somehow Mama ended up with a Miss Kitty (of Gunsmoke) costume after her short lived stint as a singing performer was  up. (I’m betting she just never returned the damned thing.) Anyway, Mama has been known, from time to time, to dress up in this Miss Kitty costume for her various gentlemen friends. She always threatens to wear it to different birthday parties and functions, but as far as I know, that has not happened. It’s unlikely that she could even get into the Miss Kitty get up, as she weighs a good 50 pounds more than she did when she was originally fitted for the costume. This costume has been weighing heavily on her mind lately. A half dozen times over the past month, Mama has set her facebook status as “Miss Kitty”. (She’s also messaged a local physician and offered her services as the Gunsmoke legend for his upcoming bachelor party.)

So, one can imagine the story Mini Thin had to tell his friends when a pilled up middle aged lady called him up and offered to dress up as a Wild West hooker for his next performance.

As I was trying to wrap my head around this phone call, Mama suggested I look her friend Mini Thin up on Facebook. I already had, of course, and from what I can gather he is a white rapper who is best known for a rap about Coal Mining.  (if any of  his fans see this and I have totally butchered his bio, please be kind! I confess here and now that I have not attempted to learn about his career.) He’s a nice looking, well built guy with a bunch of tattoos, and in almost all of his pictures, he is wearing a tank top, a backwards ball cap, and loose fitting pants.

“He looks a lot like you.” Mama said. How on Earth she gets that is beyond me. Outside of both of us having dark hair, we could not look LESS alike. I would not even go to bed in a tank top.

Today was no different.

“What’s the weather doin?”

“We had like four inches of rain yesterday.”

“I think we had six.”

“Hopefully it will wash the pollen away.”

“My nose is so stopped up! I caint hardly stand to go outside.” (not that she would anyway.)

I asked what she had done this weekend.

“I found me a true friend!” Mama’s friendships are about as functional as her romantic liasons.

“Do tell.”

“She’s got red hair. And she lives over here with her ex-husband.”

“Oh God…”

“She’s kinda nervous and high strung.”

“Imagine that.”

“But let me tell you how good a friend she is…she gave me the title to her trailer to hold on to. She’s afraid that ex husbands gonna try something. She’s the one who paid for it! I told her wouldn’t nobody bother it over here.”

“And?” I was waiting for the part that told me what a good friend this red headed neurotic was. But I guess that was it…entrusting the title to a mobile home now earns one the badge of sisterhood.

“I guess me and Florence are on the outs.” (Florence, of course, is the true friend Mama found after falling out with her other true friend, the black girl NeNe)

“Why?”

“Well you know how I like my things kept straight.”  Oh yes. One look at her home would tell anyone what a neat freak she is.

“What?”

“Well I had lined up on the coffee table some of my things. A little journal I bought to keep a diary in. And a bookmark in memory of those 13 miners that died. And two little heart charms. And my cigarettes. I guess you’d call ‘em charms…I don’t know what they are exactly. Somebody give me one of ‘em and I bought the other one at the Little Brick House…do you remember going in there when you were little?”

“What does this have to do with Florence??” My patience was thin.

“Oh, and a note pad. Well, she reached down there to get her a piece of paper.” She stopped, as if no further explanation was necessary. My mind was still trying to make a mental picture of all this junk on the damn coffee table.

“And?”

“Well I don’t like anybody messing with my stuff! So I said ‘no, no, no!’ and I ain’t heard from her since.”

“Really?”

“Can you believe that?”

“At this point, I can believe anything.”

Back when we was together the first time, Timmy talked me into taking some sexy pictures in my lingerie. And I thought, Lord if he’s got a new woman, I don’t want him jackin’ off to my pictures, so I called him up and told him he needed to mail those back to me.  I don’t guess I thought it out to good. See, I get my mail up to my mothers house. Out here in the trailer park, you gotta worry that somebody will get in the mailbox on food stamp day, and I only get a little bit of help anyway, so I need to make sure it comes to me and not one of these pillheads that live out here. Anyway, Timmy sent ‘em registered mail, which I thought was real nice of him, but my mama had to sign for ‘em, and she’s gettin’ on in years, so I guess she thought it was something for her. Next thing I know she was on the phone blessin me out cause she said she didn’t raise me like that. I said “Mother it ain’t like I had my twat hangin’ out! Girls wear less than that to the beach nowdays”

I called my son to warn him, and he couldn’t understand why I’d asked for ‘em back after all these years. But just imagine if Timmy’s new woman had found ‘em? How disrespectful that woulda been. He said if anything I shoulda just told Timmy to burn ‘em…but I don’t trust him to do it. And besides, I was hopin’ there might be one in there that was good to put up on Facebook.

But I’m worn out. I ain’t left the trailer since I got back. I’m supposed to take it easy.

But let me tell ya about my family. Most dysfunctional sons of bitches you ever met. I always thought family was supposed to be there for ya  but not these days. I asked if they would take up a collection and help me get some new appliances for out there to my trailer so I could move home. I gotta get away from Rusty. He ain’t never gonna quit drinking. And not one of them would help me. Somebody said I ought to go get a job,  but if I’d have waited another day or two to go to the hospital, the nurse said I’d have been dead for sure.  But they said I couldn’t even live out there until it was cleaned up. Damn thieves broke in there twice and made the biggest damn mess you ever saw. Who would do that to a person? But how am I supposed to get it cleaned up if I ain’t living there? My son said I could go out during the day and work on that while Rusty was at work. But I gotta get that Ford Tempo on the road first. I can’t sit out there all day without a car. What if I need cigarettes or something? And then there’s gas money. It’s file miles from the trailer park out there to my old place, and with gas what it is these days, who can afford it? I’m on a fixed income! I noticed today I got 120 friends on that Facebook! I know most of ‘em. One of them’s a guy I knew years ago. He’s a doctor now. Does some kinda ultrasonics. Hit on me big time once! I think I’ma see if he’s still interested. It’s time I lived life for me, maybe I can land a rich husband so I can finally take it easy. So I got Florence to take some new pictures of me. These hormones they got me on have given me these big titties so I put a cute tank top on. I need to color my  hair but I looked alright. Ain’t a man alive I can’t turn on!

Anyway, I better go lay down. I still ain’t feeling 100 percent. You know if I’d waited another hour or two to get to the hospital, I’da dropped dead. It’s gonna take a little time before Im back on my feet, but I’ll get there. I’m tough.

Bye for now! And remember, God loves you.

I tried to walk her through the ins and outs of the site. And have continued to try. It’s like nailing Jello to a wall.

Status messages? My instructions were that the status message was a place to share whatever was on her mind, or what she was up to. While most of her status messages are a single capital letter (butt dialing? was she trying for a complete thought? Is it an homage to Sesame Street? “Today’s status message brought to you by the letter K”), she manages whole words sometimes. But seldom more than one.

Some sample status messages: (take directly from her Facebook page)

“SEX”

“LAUGTER”

“SUNSHINE”

“L”

S”

“LIFE”

“beauty and beast” (she apparently found the caps lock button that one day.

“WEST VA GALS ARETHE GREATEST IN THE WORLD”

“T”

“*insert name of ex-husband, ex-boyfriend, estranged family member, dead relative here*”

“I ASK WHERE ARE YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS WHEN YOU NEED THEM MOST” (we’re all right here, we just didn’t bring our checkbooks.)

“GOOD FOOD AND A GENTLEMAN I AM A LADY”

You get the idea. Usually she will post the same status, or some variant of it, three or four times a day.

But not quite grasping the concept of a status message isn’t the only fun she’s having on Facebook. Apparently, she sends out lots of friend requests. LOTS. To people she doesn’t know. I still have the password to her account, and three times now, she’s gotten a Facebook spanking and been banned from sending friend requests because she sends them out to people she doesn’t know.

Then there are the messages. The woman has absolutely nothing to talk about. The messages are simply “keep me in your prayers” if its someone she thinks she can elicit a little pity from, “I LOVE YOU” to anyone else, or if it’s a man she considers a fit candidate for husband number four, it might devolve into horror. As was the case with her exchange with one gentlemen, whom she would pepper with “mmm you look mighty fine” or “i can tell theres never a dull moment with you”  (after he returned her “hi” twice–doesn’t take much to shake things up for Mama I guess.) If more than twenty minutes passed (remember, the concept of being at work is foreign to her), the poor fella would get a “haven’t heard back from ya” message.

And finally there are the pictures. Mama’s trailer park cohort took some unflattering photos in an attempt to show mama the importance of putting on proper undergarments before leaving the trailer. Mama asked her to put them on Facebook. So there she is, on the interwebs, with one noticeably larger boob running left, and the runty other one trailing to the right, glassy eyed, in a pair of sweat pants for all the world to see.

Delivah me.

A friend a Rusty’s has a used frigidaire for only $225. I need me some appliances so I can move back out to my old trailer, cause I am ready to leave Rusty for good this time. Won’t be like the last 12 times…he aint gonna sweet talk his way back in no more. I caint decide if I ought to get the registration on that Ford Tempo up to date or buy this fridgidaire. I’m on a fixed income, so I caint do it all. And ain’t got nobody to help me! I only get $720 a month plus my food stamps, how they expect someone to make it on that?

My mom’ll give me that washer and dryer she has down in the basement, and Im hopin once I tell this fella the situation he might just give me that frigidaire. That’ll just leave a stove and I can go home. But I ain’t doin’ it for myself, I think it’ll be good for my mom. She’s got dementia and they say if you keep ‘em active, its good for ‘em. So me and her can go out to my trailer and plant flowers. Cause nobody but me helps with her. And you’d think I was askin’ for a million dollars when I told the family I need me some new appliances. They don’t know what a big help I am. If they was to have to pay somebody to take care of Mom they’d have to give ten dollars an hour, minimum. I told em I’d take five or six under the table, you know, so I dont have to give up my benefits, and they said they werent goin to jail for me. Horse shit! The governments got bigger fish to fry.

My phones been ringing off the hook…that little girl that used to be my neighbors callin my phone and hanging up every time I answer. My son said I ought to just ignore her calls and she’d give up, but aint nobody gonna treat me that way. I had my friend Florence call her and tell her to leave me alone. That seemed the sensible thing, get someone else involved so she’d know I aint one to be reckoned with. She calls me again and I’ll take that phone down to the state police! She’s probably just lookin for drugs! I ain’t got any except what the doctor prescribes!

Oh well. I guess I’m gonna go lay down, I’m worn out. Probably won’t get a wink a sleep with her callin me.

Bye for now, and remember, God loves you!
Iona Traylor