Aaliyah
“Oh my God, you’re okay!”
I looked at Brenda, my mother’s nurse, like she was crazy as she rushed towards me.
“Huh?” I questioned her.
But she didn’t answer me. She just threw her arms around me as soon as I was in arm’s reach.
When she sighed with relief, I asked, “What are you talking about?”
“Shirley, the receptionist, said that something happened to you.”
“Why would she think that?”
Brenda let me go, saying. “Your boyfriend came up here.”
My heart started to pound so hard that I thought it was going to come out of my chest.
“When she asked where you were, he said that that’s what he was coming up here to talk to your mother about. When she asked him were you okay, he said that he would prefer to talk to her first. We thought something was wrong.”
Brenda watched as fear washed over me and turned my fair skin white. “You let him in the room to see her?”
“Well, yeah,” she answered, sounding concerned.
“Oh my God,” I breathed as I rushed towards my mother’s room.
I could feel Brenda behind me and hear her concern. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?!”
I couldn’t speak through the fear, worry, and my tight chest.
Finally at my mother’s room, I walked through the open door. She was standing in the middle of the floor. She looked so confused as she paced back and forth.
I sighed, realizing that today wasn’t a good day for her.
I raced towards her and grabbed her hand. “Mama?”
Her face contorted in utter confusion as she slipped her hand out of my grip. “Who are you?”
“It’s Aaliyah. Your daughter.”
“I have a daughter?” She looked around me at Brenda with eyes full of so much confusion that it broke my heart. “Brenda, you never told me that I had a daughter.”
This was what I hated about dementia the most. I knew so much about the disease, but every time she remembered someone she had just recently met, before she could even remember me, it still broke my heart.
“Yes, I have Ethel,” Brenda told her softly.
“Where am I?” she asked Brenda.
I cringed and sighed. “Shit.”
My mother frowned and gestured at me. “Listen to this girl’s mouth. No daughter of mine would talk like that.”
“Mama, please,” I begged with tears filling my eyes.
But I knew that there was no use. She wouldn’t remember me. Not today.
As if I wasn’t already frustrated enough, as my mother talked in a delusional way with Brenda, I noticed red marks around her neck that I feared had come from Rah but prayed that they hadn’t. Either way, she wouldn’t be able to tell me today.
“Brenda, let me talk to you outside.”
I walked out without saying anything else to either her or my mother.
I stood outside of my mother’s door pacing with my arms folded across my chest. I was trying real hard not to lose my mind.
These were the people that I needed to entrust my mother with until I could afford to take care of her myself.
The last thing I needed to do was piss them off.
But I was ready to lay hands on every one of these staff members.
As soon as I saw Brenda, I checked her through gritted teeth. “The only person on the list to see my mother is me and her sister, and that is for a fucking reason–”
“Aaliyah, he–”
I was past reasoning at the moment. I cut her off, still seething, “Make sure that your receptionist knows that no one is to visit my mother unless their name is on that very short list. Understood?”
She looked so hurt and offended. I had never been unpleasant to her or anyone else in this place.
But as I thought of what Rah had done to others that he supposedly loved, I knew that there were no limits to what he would do to anyone else.
Just the thought of it had me so pissed that I just walked away from Brenda’s confusion and hurt.
I walked right past my mother’s room too.
I no longer had the patience for the visit I had initially come for.
I charged towards the door. On my way through the exit, I put the hood of my North Face over my head.
I was hiding from the cold and Rah. As I rushed towards my car, I feared that he was sitting outside somewhere watching me.
I tore open the driver’s side door, wondering how much longer this shit was going to go on.
This was the one place that I thought I could come and not worry about him seeing me.
But apparently, my mother would have to go without seeing me for a while.