Cruisin On Desperation. Pat G'Orge-Walker
Lord” before she glared over at Petunia and thought, she’s a pain in the butt but I need someone around who is even more pathetic than I am. Instead of turning the affront into more of a big deal, Needy decided to let the comment go. She still had bigger fish to fry.
While Needy gathered her thoughts to continue with her self-important oration, Mother Blister, who’d sat motionless and looking completely bored on one of Needy’s matching, wobbly wooden chairs with one missing slat from the backrest, interrupted her.
“I’m bored. Let’s get it started before my bladder kicks a mud hole in my behind.” Mother Blister was always straight to the point. She’d tell anyone that she neither had money to spend on frivolous things nor unnecessary words.
“What did you say?” Petunia asked Mother Blister, thinking that perhaps she’d missed something, particularly since the meeting was almost over and she hadn’t had a chance to start her usual drama.
Mother Blister tried to jump up. She couldn’t because of her age, and that mud hole her bladder had started was kicking like a mule on uppers. “Needy, where’s your bathroom?”
“It’s in the same place it was when you last said you needed to use it.” Needy’s voice dripped with agitation. Old or not, that elderly spinster was working her last nerve.
“You know you can lead a horse to a bucket of water but you still gotta show them where to pee,” Birdie chimed in with a wide grin plastered on her pasty face. She’d finally found the nerve to join in but as usual all she got were questioning stares from the others. She ignored the obvious and continued, “It looks like Mother Blister is looking pretty intently at your geranium pot over there as though it might need watering.” Birdie pointed and then leaned her head towards the flowerpot as though no one knew what she meant.
They didn’t.
It took a lot of effort on her part, but Mother Blister finally got up. She claimed her poor posture and back pain was the result of osteoporosis.
Some folks who knew her from way back whispered it was from her years of bending over when she worked as a house cleaner or cleaning out houses. The facts depended on who was telling the tale.
Mother Bea Blister had at one time spent some quality time in minimum security prison for theft and swindling. That well-known fact gave credence to the rumors of her extra-curricular, illegal, income-making ventures, and that the back pain resulted from bending over and picking the locks of several prominent homes where she’d worked.
Of course, there were others that had the misfortune of crossing Mother Blister’s path. They had another theory. They claimed that she was just Rosemary’s baby all grown up.
No sooner had she stood than Mother Blister plopped back into her seat. “Aw, I feel so much better now.” She smiled innocently before adding, “Please stop gawking. At my age, you have to go—when you have to go.”
The problem was that she hadn’t gone anywhere, so where was the pee?
While the others sat dumbstruck and sniffing the air for any tale-tell ammonia smells, Mother Blister dropped her head, which allowed one of her several fleshy chins to rest on her chest as she returned to her self-imposed state of denial.
As was her nature, no sooner had her head dropped than it rose again. She began fidgeting and was wide awake with renewed energy. She pulled a wrinkled, folded paper towel from one of her pockets. She opened it and after rechecking the gummy adhesive on her beige-colored dentures that lay uneven in her hands, Mother Blister replaced the dentures quickly in her mouth and then decided to toss in her two cents.
At her age, her opinion was worth about two cents and a ten-percent off coupon for a box of industrial-strength bladder control pads, but for now, it was all Mother Blister had to offer.
Mother Blister continued staring at the others as she suddenly blurted out, excitedly, “So what do y’all think of my idea?”
Of course, she hadn’t given an idea but to avoid embarrassing her they all nodded and smiled. Everything would’ve been just fine and the meeting could’ve continued if Petunia hadn’t decided to rock the boat.
“Would you please repeat your wonderful idea?”
“I don’t feel like repeating anything,” Mother Blister replied, harshly. Every word she spoke was cloaked with annoyance. “Let someone just read it from the minutes.”
She fidgeted in her seat before continuing. “Y’all go ahead with the meeting. I’ve got to use the bathroom again.”
Mother Blister never moved from her seat but soon, a look of satisfaction spread across her face before she let her head drop back onto her chest.
Like the others, Needy quickly began, again, sniffing the room for any signs of Mother Blister’s real or imaginary watery gift. She didn’t smell anything unusual so she decided to ignore the obvious. “Why don’t we just go ahead and give any reports on dates, good or bad, since the last meeting,” Needy humbly suggested.
It took all the little strength she possessed to act as if she was being considerate and had nothing better to do than to humor and respect their eldest member, especially since she suddenly began to hear a squishing sound every time Mother Blister moved around on her cushioned seat.
So while the other women chatted and bickered, Mother Blister just sat and daydreamed. However, unlike the lonely and desperate women lounging around Needy’s small living room in various stages of hormonal decay, Mother Blister was the only one who really had a date waiting for her back at the Old Ben Gay Arms Assisted Living home. Even in her advanced years, she’d seen more action than a soldier with several tours of duty under his belt.
Every third weekend of the month Mother Blister and her longtime friend and undercover bed-buddy, seventy-year-old Slim Pickens, got together for a little “show me and I won’t tell anyone” inside the home’s fully stocked medicine room. It was where they always tasted the fruit of their illicit rendezvous so just in case they needed medicine or medical equipment to revive each other, it was handy.
The only reason Mother Blister ever left the confines of her secure assisted-living home other than to attend church, a bingo game or the singles club meetings was to keep the other women from nosing into her business. She needed to make sure none of them had any designs on her man.
As far as Mother Blister was concerned, Slim may be old, even a little phobic, since he spent a great deal of time trying to snap his crusty arthritic fingers and click his false teeth for no good reason. And certainly Slim was also quite cranky when he didn’t get his lunchtime prune-flavored apple-sauce cobbler, but he was still more man than the rest of the other women had.
With all the medications she took by mouth and otherwise, it was only fitting that delusions were one of the many side effects.
Mother Blister decided that she’d toyed with the women in the pathetic group long enough. She checked her watch and saw she still had about thirty minutes before she was to meet Slim. She and Slim met at least three times a month. With her memory becoming more and more faulty every day, she wasn’t sure if today was the first time since last month or not. She wasn’t taking chances, so she needed to make sure she had her strength. A nap was in order. She raised her head and then let it drop slowly, making her curly gray wig slide down onto her forehead.
“Have mercy,” Cill mumbled and snickered, using her thumb to point towards Mother Blister.
“Don’t be so mean,” Birdie rebuked her again. “She’s old and we ought to respect the old. We may one day become retarded, too.” Somehow, she always managed to reprimand and confuse, all in the same sentence.
“For you, someday is today,” Cill hissed under her breath. She was too through with Birdie. If Birdie weren’t a white woman with money, I’d have voted her out as soon as she joined, Cill thought.
For the next few moments, Needy continued to bark orders. Birdie tried to sound sympathetic to Mother Blister’s faulty state of mind, Cill sulked and Petunia whined