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Nonfiction

Wake Up, Maggie

Photo Credit: Lily Gottlieb

Rhona Blaker


It is four o’clock in the morning and my mother can’t sleep.

“I don’t suppose I could ask you to help me with the telephone,” she cries from the den. She is literally crying. Tears stream down her cheeks as her breath becomes a hiccup of sobs. I get up from the couch in the living room where I have been trying to sleep and search for a box of tissues. She is sitting up now on the low den couch with three fleece Dodger blankets tangled around her knees and feet. She gets cold, and begs us to turn up the heat even in the middle of summer. The blankets are lightweight, and we have dozens of them – they give them away at the stadium several times a year. Moe wears them like a shawl and always takes one home with her when she goes back to her own house. She calls out again: “Wake up, Maggie! I know you’re not going to help me, but you can’t blame me for asking!” 

“I want to help you,” I reply, even though my name is not Maggie. “Tell me how I can help.”

“I want to use the telephone!” she spits, angry now. “Is that so much to ask?” Her breath is sour. She wouldn’t let me take her teeth out and soak them before bedtime. Her gray-brown hair stands up in spikes around her softly lined face. Her hazel eyes are red and unfocused. Macular degeneration means she sometimes has to look sideways to see where she’s going. 

I turn the lights up to half-strength and ease myself into the rocking chair that sits across from her so that my eyes are level with hers. The book-lined room is narrow, and our knees are almost touching. I take a deep breath and try to remember the coping skills I learned when my children were young. “Who do you want to call?” I ask calmly. As if it were a normal request. I just want her to be happy. That’s all she ever wanted for me.

“How is that any of your business?” She grabs the oval opening of the square tissue box with two fingers and flings it at my head. She’s not a very good shot, so she misses me completely. She is, however, strong for her size, so its force knocks over a philodendron that sat on top of the glass-fronted bookcase behind me, scattering potting soil and gravel and a graduation portrait of my daughter across the ivory carpet. I suck in another breath.

“If you tell me who you want to call, I can help you find the number.”

“I know the number!” She begins picking at the blankets. She would suffocate me with them if she could. I keep my distance.

She sighs, deeply offended that she is forced to deal with so many stupid people in this miserable world. She takes her own deep breath and tries another tactic. Icy politeness this time: “I would very much like to use the phellatone.” She speaks slowly, with precise diction that flattens her soft Edinburgh brogue into cut-glass Received Pronunciation. A pause, as she works out how best to deal with the help. “I will be most happy to remunerate you for any costs that are incurred.” She gazes around the room, studying the family photos and the floral wallpaper with equal intensity, finally letting her eyes rest on the coat of dust that covers the small TV set. She arches a single eyebrow at the clumps of dirt scattered on the floor. Someone is clearly not doing their job.

“I’ll be happy to bring you the phone as soon as morning comes,” I reply. “No charge required.”

“It is morning!”

“Four o’clock in the morning. Not a good time to ring people up.”

“I need to speak to my mum. She’ll be worrying herself sick about me. She doesn’t know where I am!”

“Your mum’s not at home. She and your dad are at the seaside this weekend. That’s why you’re staying here with us.” Grandpa David died in 1953. I can hear my husband snoring upstairs and am glad we haven’t woken him. I don’t want him to overhear that, for me, love is a lie.

“Why would she go to the seaside in December?”

“It’s July.”

“I want. To Speak. To my mum!”

My mother is about to turn 87. My grandmother died in 1969. If she were alive today, she would be 114 years old. My stepfather, Bob, explains this to her every single time she says she wants to call home. He is a military man who believes that if he lays out the bare facts often enough and loudly enough, he will be able to yank the woman he adores back from the void of vascular dementia. For him, love is a battlefield.

My mother believes that if my grandmother finds out she is sleeping in the same bed with him, she will be in deep trouble, so she is desperate to get her parents’ permission to spend the night at Bob’s house. Which is actually her own house in Burbank that she’s lived in since 1971. She and my father, her ex-husband who is also named Bob, bought it with the proceeds from Grandma Elizabeth’s estate.

I prefer to lie, because every time New Bob tells Moe that her mother is dead, she wails with grief, as if she is hearing the news for the first time. Déjà vu all over again. And again, and again, and again.

“I don’t want to be here,” my mother howls.

“It’s not for much longer.”

“One more minute is a month too long! I want to go home. You can’t hold me prisoner.” She finally succeeds in pushing the blankets off her lap. Her shiny black loafers are on the wrong feet. She must have found them in the dark while I dozed. She tries to push herself up, but can’t gain any traction against the flat Berber carpet, so she tumbles backwards instead. I rush to catch her before her neck hits the hard back of the couch. I covered it with a collection of velvet throw pillows earlier in the evening, but now they’re all on the floor. Except for the one she managed to lob directly into the fireplace, even though there’s a wrought iron screen standing in front of it. 

“Don’t touch me,” she screams. She flails her arms and the back of her right hand hits me hard on the left cheek. A sharp fingernail scratches the liquid surface of my eye. I stumble backwards, shocked at how much it hurts. “That’ll teach you!” she shouts. “Now bring me the phone!”

I surrender, and bring the cordless phone from the kitchen. I pull the plug out of the jack before I hand it to her, hoping to avoid another incident like the time she dialed 911 when she thought I was trying to stab her with a nail file. I told the police officer it was funny because we only keep the landline in case of natural disasters, not fabricated ones. She was not amused.

Moe looks at the receiver, presses some buttons, starts to pant when she can’t remember the number, and then hurls the small black handset across the room where it bounces off a heavy stack of art books. “Do you think I’m an idiot?” she screams. “Where’s the rest of it? You only brought me half a telephone.”

“That’s the way phones work now,“ I explain, scratching for the battery that landed under the couch. “It’s a new century. Technology marches on.”

“Oh missy, you think you’re so smart,” she sneers, pounding on my back with her fists as I’m down on my knees. “Well, I think you’re styupid. You’re a styupid, styupid girl and I want you out of my house!”

I lose control. I stand up to my full height, seven inches taller than her but sagging at the seams. Clearly not a girl anymore. I grab her by the forearms so she can't hit me again. Brittle bones tremble under skin so thin it feels like it might tear just from being touched. “You are not allowed to hit me!” I shout, my face inches away from hers. “This is my house! You just broke my phone!”

I take a ragged breath and lower my voice. “It is the middle of the night,” I plead. “It‘s time to go to sleep.”

“You just said it was morning!” she says with a wide grin. Then she kicks me in the shins.

She remembers! She can’t remember my name. She laughs out loud when I claim to be her daughter. She doesn’t remember teddy bear tea parties with home baked scones, annual trips to The Nutcracker, camping trips to Grandfather Mountain and the day she cried with joy when I finally became pregnant and told her I would never stop needing her. But she remembers that fifteen long minutes ago I said it was morning. I want to wake Jon up and tell him.

When I release her wrists, she topples forward onto my chest. I wrap my arms around her and stroke her back. She relaxes her head into the shadow of my shoulder, triumphant now that she has won the battle. After a minute, she allows me to lower her frail body down onto the wide couch. I re-tuck the sheets, replace the pillows, cover her with the pile of blankets and kiss her forehead. She fingers the fringes of the red tartan blanket I laid on top. “Is this one mine?” she asks.

“They’re all yours,” I say.

“I thought so,” she replies with a smile and closes her eyes. “We’ll ring my mum in the morning.” 

“Yes, we will,” I promise as I dim the lights and grab a Dodger blanket for myself. I spend the rest of the night in the bentwood rocking chair as penance for losing my temper. How will I explain the bruises on her arms to the hospice nurse when he arrives at 9:00 a.m.? I sleep on and off, alert to the soft sounds of her damp respiration, grateful for each rasping breath that confirms she is still alive. I miss her so much. I miss her all the time, but she’s still here. She’s right here next to me, body whole and soul intact.

About the Author

Rhona Blaker is a proud UCLA alum who also holds an MFA in Critical Studies from the California Institute of the Arts.  She has twice served as a fellow in the UCLA EPIC/Mellon program that is dedicated to providing inclusive classrooms for all students, and she has studied with Lou Mathews, UCLA Extension Distinguished Instructor, for many years. Wake Up, Maggie is a chapter from her memoir-in-progress entitled A Dance Called America.

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