7 min read · 1,277 words
I got a good woman fired because she tried to tell me the truth and I didn’t want to hear it.
Her name is Odessa Pruitt. She worked nights at Magnolia Bend, the assisted living place where my mother has lived for three years. I’m Hanh Tran, I’m fifty-eight, and I keep the books for a shrimp dock outside Bayou La Batre. That means I read every number on every page for a living. Please remember that. A woman who reads every number paid $900 extra a month for fourteen months and never once asked why.
I know how that sounds. I will tell you my reason, and it’s not a good one.
The letter came in May last year. Two paragraphs. It said Mom’s care needs had increased and that starting June 1 her rate would go up $900 a month for “Enhanced Care services.” No list. No nurse’s name. No phone number to call about it. I read it standing at the mailbox, and the first thing I felt wasn’t worry. It was relief. If Mom needed more care, then somebody else was giving it, and that somebody wasn’t me.
My mother is eighty-four. She came over from Vietnam in 1981 with me and my brother Tuan, and she cleaned hotel rooms in Mobile for twenty-two years so we could finish school. Now her memory goes in and out, mostly the new things. Her body is okay. She walks with a cane, she dresses herself, she needs help with her pills and the shower. That’s how she was in March. That’s how she was in June.
Odessa caught me in the hallway that June, by the laundry cart. It was 6:40 in the evening, and it was my first visit in three weeks. I remember because the cart had a wheel that squeaked.
“Miss Hanh, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“That letter they sent you. They say what changed?”
“Her needs increased.”
Odessa shook her head slow. “Your mama needs what she needed in March. Same pills. Same shower help. I’m the one with her at night. She’s the same lady.”
“Then why would they write it?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m telling you to ask.” She looked at me a second. “And it wouldn’t hurt you to come see for yourself more, baby. You’d know.”
That was the part that did it. I said, “Excuse me?” in the voice I use on shrimp buyers who short me. I told her I pay a lot of money so my mother gets taken care of, and I would appreciate it if she minded her own business. She said, “Yes, ma’am,” very quiet, and went back to her cart. I can still hear that wheel.
The next morning I called the director, Mr. Kessler. I said the night aide was making comments about my family’s money and I didn’t want her around my mother. He said, “I’ll handle it, Mrs. Tran. Thank you for telling me.” By July Odessa was moved to the other building. By August a girl I didn’t know was doing Mom’s nights. When I asked the front desk about Odessa, they said she “was no longer with us.” I said okay. I didn’t ask more. I was relieved about that too, if I’m telling you the whole thing.
So I paid. Every month, $900 more, on the first. I’d see it in the ledger and feel a little sick, and then I’d feel better, because paying felt like doing something. It felt almost like a visit. I told myself that and I believed it.
My brother Tuan is in Houston. I called him once about the letter. “Pay it, Hanh,” he said. “It’s Mom. What are we going to do, argue?” That was the whole talk. Neither of us is proud of it.
My visits went from every Sunday to every other Sunday to whenever. The room smelled like the lotion they put on her and it made my chest tight. Mom would look at me kindly, like I was a nice neighbor. Some days she’d say my name right. Some days she’d call me by my aunt’s name. I started finding reasons. Dock was busy. Tire was flat. Next weekend.
Here is something I didn’t think about at the time. Mom kept saying things about Sunday. I’d come on a Tuesday and she’d say, “Sunday lady brings the lemon tea.” Or, “Sunday lady fixed my blanket the right way.” Once she pointed at the blue cup on her table and said, “That one is hers, she brings it.” I said, “Who is the Sunday lady, Ma?” She patted my hand like I’d asked something silly. “You know. She comes.” I didn’t know. I didn’t ask again, either.
The care conference was in July. You already know what the two printouts looked like, same scores, same three checkboxes, one different date. Mr. Kessler said it was “a clerical refresh.” Eleven days later the regional director flew in from Atlanta, a small gray-haired woman named Ms. Cordell, and before she even set her purse down she said, “Mrs. Tran, we’re refunding you $12,600, and I’m not going to pretend we don’t owe it.”
Then she slid a stapled log across the table. It was the Sunday visitor sign-in book, copied. “Before we talk about anything else, I want you to look at this,” she said.
Same name, every Sunday, starting the second week of September. O. Pruitt. 1:00 to 4:30, mostly. Forty-six Sundays. Odessa came on her own day off, after I got her moved and then let go, and she signed in at the front desk like any other visitor, because Mr. Kessler had told her that was the only way she’d be allowed in the building. She brought the lemon tea in her own blue cup. She fixed the blanket the right way.
My name showed up nine times over the same stretch. I counted twice. I’m a bookkeeper. I counted a third time.
Ms. Cordell told me Odessa had called the corporate hotline in June, a week before she talked to me in the hallway, to say residents were being moved to “enhanced” plans without any change in care. That hotline call is why Ms. Cordell was sitting across from me. And the one thing I’d handed Mr. Kessler, in my own angry voice on the phone, was the reason to get rid of the only person who’d noticed. He’s gone now. I’d like to say that made me feel something. It mostly didn’t.
I drove to Odessa’s house that evening. She didn’t make me stand on the porch long. I told her the whole thing, the letter, the call, the relief. I didn’t dress it up. She listened with her arms folded, and when I stopped she said, “I wasn’t doing it for you, Miss Hanh.” I said I knew. She said the corporate people had offered her old job back and she’d think about it. That’s all she said. I’m still not sure if I’m forgiven or just finished talking.
Sunday I brought lemon tea in a plain paper cup, because I didn’t have the right one. Mom looked up from her chair and smiled the kind, neighborly way.
“You’re not the Sunday lady,” she said. Then she moved her cane off the other chair. “But you can sit.”