Page 23 of Home Body
Agnes’s emphysema from smoking was finally going to do her in. She’d never tried to quit. It’d been as if the woman wanted to die.
The mother had long been a stranger to her daughter. Mamie and Butch were Dalia’s parents. They had little contact with Agnes when the trailer park closed and she moved into an apartment, living off the small government disability check sent her in the mail each month. By then, Dalia was a teenager and had done an admirable job of pretending her real mother didn’t exist. The teen made no effort to see the woman in person.
But a year ago, when they got a call from social services saying Agnes was terminally ill and had become homeless, Dalia and Mamie saw to it that the derelict got put into the nursing home. Primary costs were covered by disability, but Dalia paid for extras like new clothes, a comfortable recliner, and a new TV set. And Mamie saw to it that the biological mother of her daughter always had cozy new nightgowns, plush robes, and comfy slippers, not that Mamie ever got a thank you. Mamie was, after all, ever so grateful that Dalia had been born to this Earth. She had to thank for that.
“You’re a stupid girl.”
The comment pulled Dalia out of the trance she’d fallen into out of boredom. They’d been there for an hour, and she’d been daydreaming about that deputy sheriff, Brody McIntyre, imagining what it would be like to kiss him.
“What?” she asked, surprised that Agnes was awake and staring at her. She’s heard good and well what Agnes had said but had long ago become immune to her cruelty.
“You. You’re a stupid girl.”
“Agnes,” Mamie huffed, “there’s no need for that.”
The callous invalid coughed, gasped for breath, and pointed an arthritic finger at Dalia. “All these years and you never figured it out.”
Dalia became alert, curiously leaning forward to better hear. “Figured out what?”
“Good god, girl, didn’t you ever notice that…” Agnes fell into a coughing fit, motioned for a drink of water, and sucked greedily through the straw when Mamie held the glass for her. The few minutes it took for Agnes to regain her composure seemed like hours to Dalia. “Didn’t you ever notice that you look nothing like me? You act nothing like me? You’re nothing like me in any way?”
“What are you getting at?” Dalia stood up and glared down at the pathetic woman lying on her deathbed.
“I’m not your mother. You’ve been duped,” Agnes cackled with sadistic pleasure.
She choked while struggling for breath again. Sherri, efficient and competent in her nursing duties, rushed to her patient’s side to adjust her oxygen. After fiddling with the settings on the tank, Sherri stood at the foot of the bed, having heard the shocking admission. She seemed poised to catch whoever might faint first.
Slowly, like a momma bear rising to full height with her claws out to protect her young, Mamie stood up and loomed over Agnes. “What do you mean, you’re not her mother?” she seethed.
Rheumy eyes landed on Dalia. “I…I bought you.”
With that Agnes Singleton took her last breath and died.
A searing stab of disbelief cut through Dalia, a psychological knife eviscerating her to her very core.
Mamie gasped, her hand over her mouth. The scream that followed shocked even her. “You bitch!” She started to cry.
Sherri checked her watch to note the time of death. “Why don’t you two get out of here. No need to stay with her now.” Her voice firm, the nurse saw no reason for them to pay their respects to such a hateful woman who’d waited until her dying breath to drop a bomb on them.
Mamie collected herself and guided her shocked daughter out of the room. “Thank you, Sherri,” Mamie said, glancing back to catch the nurse tossing the sheet over Agnes’s head.
In a stupor, walking the walk of the dead, Dalia and Mamie went past Clarice without a word and left the building. But Mamie doubled back.
In a steady voice she told Clarice, “Have her cremated. I’ll pay for it, of course. But tell them to dispose of the remains. We don’t want them.”
“Will do, Mamie.”
She went back outside to stand beside her beleaguered daughter.
Dalia could hardly speak, her voice shaky and weak. “What the hell, Mama? Did that bitch adopt me? Or was she lying, like usual, just to be mean?”
Mamie hesitated. No real mother, the kind who loved a child more than she loved her own life, should ever have to say what she must say.
“Honey, I think it must have been a private adoption, because she said she paid for you. Regular adoptions don’t work that way. People pay something but not much. I fear that for once in her life, she was telling the truth.”
Dalia looked off in the direction of a copse of trees where a family of birds shrieked at each other in some kind of domestic squabble. Squinting while she watched them, Dalia’s mind spun with the knowledge of what she’d just learned. She looked backat her mother, who stood tall and strong, shoring herself up for her daughter’s inevitable tears.
Instead, Dalia threw up her arms, did a little dance, and yelped. “I’m free! The bitch isn’t in me or Rose! Hallelujah!”
