The Sunshine Home: Roy
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
I was still 15 the summer I started working at the rest home near the small town where I lived. I had to get a ride to work with my older sister. She had worked there for a year now. There aren’t many jobs for a 15-year-old in a town of 300, so I guess you could say I was not too picky. And, for the bargain price of $3.35 an hour, neither were the employers.
Roy
I came in for training one Saturday morning. The sun had just risen. By afternoon, it would shine hot and harsh against the dirty, pale yellow cinderblock exterior of the building. The cracked sidewalk would take the full heat of the sun, and what was left of the grass out front would burn up by August.
After the initial walk-through, which lasted about 10 minutes, I was ready to begin the first job of the day: bath day. Roy was at the top of the list. He could always be found sitting outside on a bench, smashing bugs with his cane. All day.
I brought him inside and back to the men’s bathroom. Armed with a fresh towel, a new set of his overalls and a long-sleeve cotton shirt, I went to work.
Now, it may surprise you to know that most old farmers do not wear undergarments. And you can thank me for the thought in your head the next time you pass one on a tractor. Many also wear long sleeves in summer, and flannel at that. Roy was no exception, which made it one step easier getting him ready for the shower.
I sat Roy down on the toilet seat and knelt in front of him on the floor. Had I known then what I know now about the possible substances on that floor, I would not have done this. I reached out for Roy’s slipper.
“Lady,” Roy said, “I’m 95.” My sister had warned me that everything was okay with Roy as long as he called you “Lady.” Anything else, and he was not happy.
“Yes, Roy, you are,” I replied.
“That’s pretty old,” he said.
“Yes, it sure is, Roy, it sure is,” I responded.
“But, you know,” he continued, with a bright gleam in his ancient, dark eyes, “and it’s not every day, mind you, I can still get it up.”
“Not today, Roy.” I said, praying that would be all he needed to hear and this conversation would not continue, or worse. But then, I had some control over these things. I would keep one hand near the cold water knob just in case. There is probably something inherently wrong with a 15-year-old locked in a bathroom with a naked 95-year-old threatening erection, but you just can’t think about these things. And you can’t let it show. It was best for both of us. Never let them see you shocked and never make them feel helpless, that was my first new rule. It’s a fine line to walk, not to tread on someone’s dignity. Roy and I would just have to get through this with all the jokes and banter that we could muster. Business as usual.
Besides, I had a long list of baths to get done, plus 14 loads of laundry, floors to mop, dinner to make and meds to give. The last thing I needed was for today to be “Roy’s day.”
Though, you have to hand it to the old guy, 95 and still ornery as hell. I liked Roy. I imagined him as a young man. I bet he was something.
After the bath, there was the dreaded shave. The day shift during the week, that would be Starla, did as little as she could, if she showed at all. If she was just hung over and not drunk. You could check the chart all you wanted to, and it showed that Roy had been given a bath two days before. But the stubble on his chin and the stink on his old body told me, it had been a week at least.
But I was weekend shift. And weekends are different. On weekends you got two people for the early shift each day. Weekends are when families visit, if they do. It was important to look like there was more than one of us to twenty-five patients when families visit. So, the two of us would clean up the mess of the entire week and any that came along that day.
Outside the bathroom, Roy was clean, shiny and glowing from the attention. He sat in the barber chair waiting for me to begin with the half-working electric razor.
“Did I ever tell you about the days when I danced naked in the circus?” he asked.
I caught my sister’s eye from across the room where she was folding the tenth pair of overalls out of a dryer load. I gave her a questioning glance, “is this for real?” She smiled, and shook her head softly while Roy continued his story.
When I helped Roy into bed at the end of the day, that first day, and every day I worked, he would slide all the way over to the wall, and pat the bed.
“C’mon, Lady!” he say, grinning.
He got a hug, at least on bath days. I sometimes wondered if maybe Roy didn’t really dance naked in the circus. If maybe we all shouldn’t dance naked in the circus. Ninety-five years is a long time. And when you are fifteen, it feels like another century. And, it is, almost. But twenty-five years have gone by now, quickly, quietly. I'm no longer immortal. No longer ageless and full of answers, save one: Dance naked all you can.
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