Someone stole my jacket!

One day I arrived to find Nellie waiting for me at the front door of the nursing home. “Hello! How are you?” I said brightly.

            “Bad,” was her terse reply.

            “Why bad? What’s wrong?” I asked.

            “Somebody stole my jacket!” Nellie was nearly bursting with indignation.

            Oh, dear. “Which jacket?” I tried to think of what might have happened. “Where was it?”

            “It was my white one—the knit sweater jacket that I always wear. It was hanging in the closet and now it’s not there. That new girl must have taken it. I know she took it.”

            Ahh. That jacket. I knew it well—and I’m sorry to say that I am quite certain no one else would have wanted it. It’s old and yellowed, stained from years of wear, not at all pretty. But the fact remained that it seemed to be missing. “You say it was in your closet? Did you look all through, on the floor and everything?”

            “Yes, yes, I looked and everybody else came and looked and the director looked and nobody can find it. You can look again if you want to, but it isn’t there. It was that new girl. I asked her about it and she just acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about!”

            That poor attendant. I could imagine the hullabaloo Nellie had raised when she noticed her loss. She is extremely vocal when she is upset, and even though her rantings are all in Russian I am certain that everyone within earshot must have been fully aware of her displeasure. Hoping to miraculously see the missing article of clothing, I looked in the closet, and found no jacket. I looked on the floor, and found…no jacket. She continued to fume as I tried to calm her. “Everybody keeps saying to me, ‘Maybe it’s in the laundry, maybe it’s in the laundry.’ But I don’t use the laundry!” Her voice rose again to a near-yell. “The director came and looked earlier, and he said that if we don’t find it, they will buy me a new jacket.”

            “Well,” I ventured, “that’s good, right?”

            “But I bought that jacket myself!” She was almost wailing. “It was a good one, and I liked it. It had a little crocodile right here on the front…I liked it.”

          I'm afraid I haven't seen the jacket yet, though weeks have passed now. Happily, Nellie hasn't brought it up again. I am forced to the conclusion that either she has forgotten it, or she's ashamed to tell me that the same thing happened as the last time "someone stole her jacket." Last time it turned out that she had simply left it at her nephew's house.

Don't pay them anything!

         Once, early in our friendship, Nellie took it into her head that she needed glasses. Her eyesight wasn't very good and seemed to be getting worse, and she complained fretfully that soon she might be blind. So, since she insisted that it had to be done, we arranged for her to visit an optometrist. Medride could take her, but there was a problem; Nellie cannot speak English and it's nearly impossible to get accurate prescription eyeglasses if one cannot communicate with the doctor. I would have to go along. Accordingly, I arrived around nine-thirty on the morning of her appointment to find her awake but not at all happy about it--she had barely finished breakfast and was having trouble getting her clothes on. Apparently, Nellie's mornings do not usually begin so early. Attendants scurried to escape her frustrated wrath as I entered and declared hopefully that it was a beautiful morning. She growled at me in reply, but managed to scrape together a bit of civility by the time the van was ready to pick us up.

             The optometrist, whom I'd never met before that day, was a gentle man who did his best to accommodate my adopted babushka once he understood the situation. We waded through the eye exam, hoping that Nellie understood the questions, and finally arrived at a prescription and chose a pair of frames. The trouble hit when the sweet receptionist asked for her co-payment; since Nellie did not have any money, I proceeded to pay for her--and Nellie nearly came unglued. "Why should you have to pay anything? I have insurance, right? Why do you need to pay any more than that? You shouldn't pay! They shoudn't make you pay! Don't pay them anything."

            I tried to calm her. "That's the way it works, Nellie. Almost any doctor you visit will ask for a little bit of money, because the insurance won't pay for your visit right away. It's alright, it's not very much. Don't worry. It's just the way it works." Nellie couldn't believe that we weren't being cheated, swindled, and downright hoodwinked; she shouted and cried and stormed, but finally let me pay the small amount. The glasses would be ready in a few days, so I took my exhausted friend home and planned to go back with her to pick them up on my next day off.

            Our next visit to the optometrist (not quite so early in the morning, this time) passed practically painlessly. The doctor adjusted her frames and sent us on our way, probably glad to be finished with the unreasonable Russian lady. Back at the nursing home, I expected Nellie to put her glasses on at once, but she shut the case in her drawer and told me she was too tired.

            You may imagine my feelings. Not cowed in the slightest, however, Nellie refused to wear her new glasses—not that day, not once since. At least, not once that I know of. There are some things no girl can understand.

Kidnapped

The ritual sack of fruit had become a habit. If I happened to miss a Tuesday visit, Nellie almost invariably called me to insist that I stop by if only for a minute to pick up my apples. "They'll go bad!" she'd exclaim, forgetting that I never asked her to save them for me. I smuggled them home resignedly every week, only rebelling occasionally when she piled up fifteen or twenty because she couldn't remember how many she'd taken.

"I can't possibly eat that many!" I've told her...oh, a good dozen times now. But "six or eight" somehow always morphs gradually into more, and more, and more, until I manage to impress on her (again) that my husband and I don't just sit around eating fruit all day long.

So I was used to taking things home; one day, however, she took the smuggling a step further. I arrived to find a pretty old fashioned baby doll sitting on Nellie's bed. "Isn't she beautiful?" Nellie demanded. "A lady gave her to me. I just love her!" She fondly tickled the doll's chin and directed me to admire the sweet expression on her painted face, which I obediently did. The doll was extremely cute.

Then the conversation took a decidedly bizarre turn. "I really love her," Nellie continued, "but I don't need her." Well, who did need a doll? I didn't see any problem with keeping a pretty thing if she liked it. "So," Nellie concluded, "you need to take her home."

"Me? Why do I need to take her home?" I didn't follow her line of reasoning. I didn't need a doll any more than she did.

"Because. You need to. She needs a good home, and you like her, right?"

Obviously. Wasn't it self-evident? Because I had admired the pretty baby doll, she belonged with me. As I think I may have mentioned, one does not easily win arguments with Nellie, and this battle was not one I felt passionate about. I gave in. Of course I would take the doll home.

Then she seemed to change the subject abruptly. She pointed at a shirt on the chair, and I began to look for whatever rip or tear I needed to mend. "What do you want me to do with the shirt?" I asked, confused, for it looked like it was in pretty good shape.

"Oh, you must take it home too," she told me. "Wrap the doll inside it and carry it that way."

"Is there something I need to fix?" I still didn't understand.

"No, no. Just bring it back next week." Nellie lowered her voice. "You have to hide the baby so no one sees you carry her out!"

Ohhhh. I was going to kidnap the baby. I burst into laughter, and Nellie joined me. Even she could see the humor in this situation. Even though we could not stop our giggles, however, it remained absolutely necessary that I cover the baby doll as I left. What if the lady who had given her to Nellie saw what was happening?

Forbidden Fruit

I can't even remember now precisely how it started. I certainly never intended to go into smuggling. I guess one thing led to another: one day Nellie gave me a couple of apples, and next thing I knew, I was lugging a bag of contraband produce home every Tuesday.

Most nursing homes have some sort of snack cart  for the residents--healthy and not-so-healthy munchies that they can take back to their rooms and eat whenever they want. Nellie's is no exception; I always saw the cart in the hall when I passed, full of apples, oranges, bananas, pudding and jello cups, cookies, crackers and chips. Each afternoon when we sat down to tea, she tried to make me eat approximately one of everything. I tried and tried to explain to her that I really had eaten lunch not too long before and would be eating dinner as soon as I got home, but she always seemed to be sure that actually I was starving. Finally I had to resort to simply refusing to eat it all. "Well, then, you must take it home and eat it later," she insisted.

I sighed. Arguing with Nellie is fairly futile. "Alright," I conceded, "but I don't eat a lot of sweets and chips for snacks. Mostly fruit."

She took me at my word. I think it was the very next week that she welcomed me with a conspiratorial  smile and hustled me in, directing me (in pantomime, because she has gotten so accustomed to resorting to charades with everyone else that she often forgets that she can actually talk to me) to pull closed the curtain that divides her room from the other half. Somewhat mystified, I obeyed. Once the curtain was drawn, she put a finger to her lips and pointed to a well-worn gift bag on the chair. I raised my eyebrows. "What?" I whispered. "What do you want me to do?"

Gesturing impatiently, she let me know that I was to take the contents of the bag and transfer them to my own--the bag I carry the teapot, cups, and kettle in. I looked inside, and rolled my eyes. There were a week's worth of apples--a generous week's worth--snagged from the snack cart and saved for me. What could I do? I loaded up my bag and said "thank you." As I mentioned, it's hard to argue with Nellie.

That, I think, was the beginning. Since then, she's added the occasional orange or banana to the mix (though she rolls up the bananas in newspaper because she can't stand the smell) and sometimes applesauce or fruit cocktail. I've had to explain to her that she really shouldn't take the diabetic shakes for me. Most weeks she has collected a bag of popcorn which she tells me I must feed to the birds. The birds in my neighborhood must look forward to Tuesday evenings; perhaps they celebrate with a movie night. But that was the beginning of my smuggling career.

Just a Tiny Bit Pessimistic

As you might have gathered, my dear babushka tends to be just slightly pessimistic. Actually, if there is even a shadow in the bright sunshine of a lovely day, she will fret and brood over it until she’s forgotten that the sun shone at all. Last week one of the first things she said to me was, “Soon I will be eighty-six years old. And what if then all I can do is lie in my bed with my mouth half–open like some of the old people who live here? What if you never come to see me anymore?”

            “Why wouldn’t I come to see you?” I asked.

            “Well,” she wasn’t quite sure. “You might not.”

            “I would come to see you,” I declared firmly.

            “You would?” Nellie was like a little child grasping at a fragile hope. “Those are sad thoughts, aren’t they? I shouldn’t think like that, should I?”

            “Nope. You should think happy thoughts, silly.” It was worth a try, but even I (incorrigible optimist that I am) was not convinced that she would be able to change a whole lifetime of negative thinking overnight.

"What if he drinks?"

Nellie and I have a mutual friend, a girl I went to highschool with and with whom Nellie used to go to church. A year or two ago, Christy suffered a miscarriage and Nellie was heartbroken for her. Last winter, however, Christy and her husband had a beautiful healthy baby boy. As far as I knew, the whole family was doing great down in Texas—so it was somewhat of a surprise to me one afternoon when Nellie began telling me how worried she was for them. “I want to call Christy’s mother, but I’m afraid,” she said, extremely agitated.

            “But why? Why are you afraid?” I was confused.

            “Because maybe the baby is sick. Or maybe he died. I’m afraid to ask. And I can’t speak English—how could I ask her? What words would I use?”

            “Well,” I tried to think of some simple words she’d remember and be able to pronounce, “you could ask, ‘Baby good?’”

            “But what if he’s dead?”

            I lifted my eyebrows in bewilderment. “Why in the world would he be dead? He was just fine last time you spoke to them, wasn’t he?”

            “And even if he isn’t sick, it’s still no good because he’ll probably smoke.”

            I hadn’t the foggiest notion where that had come from. “What? Who smokes? Christy’s husband? Nellie, what are you talking about?”

            “No, no,” she explained, “the baby boy.”

            “The baby? Nellie, what do you mean? He’s just a baby. He doesn’t smoke!”

            “But he will grow up so fast, and then maybe he will smoke.”

            “Or maybe,” I shook my head at her, “maybe he will grow up and not smoke!”

            The tiniest glimmer of relief washed across her face. “Maybe he won’t smoke?”

            “Yes,” I assured her. “There is a very great possibility that he will not smoke.”

            “Oh,” she began to relax a little, until a new dreadful thought occurred to her. “But what if he drinks?”