Housekeeping

HOUSEKEEPING From Braids Too Tight To Sing by George EUa Lyon (Lou): I don't want another soul in my house tracking up my rugs and that's that. I have to go over them ever morning of this world with a broom and I don't intend to do it of an evening too. Help. Some help they'd be. Glenna— she's my daughter-in-law—she drug two of them women in here. Said they were from the Home Health. Huh, I said. I need them like a hog needs a saddle , setting their pocketbooks down by my chairs after rubbing their big feet all the way across my rug. I'm 87 years old and I tell you, I'll not have it. I told Glenna if they came back I'd get a big stick and run them off. I'll run her off too. It's true I don't get around too good and most days I only wear my house coat, but that's because I can't find my clothes. There's a body around here that takes things, I tell you, and that's awful to say when you live alone. It's the truth, though, honey. I'd give a nickel bill just to know what goes with things around this house. Even my bras. And the prettiest stack of pictures Luther give me of the grandkids. Now where are they? I don't know. There's no one comes around here but me and them kids. Luther—he's my son, I reckon—he only comes ever once in a while to talk and fall asleep. Says he comes ever day but I don't believe it. And he never brings me a thing but a handful of pills. I take enough pills to choke a horse. And Luther makes me swallow them down with orange juice. Why do you bring me them things? I ask him. They're what the doctor ordered, he says. Well, let me tell you something else. I seen that doctor and he ain't hardly old enough to wipe his backside. He told me it was just wonderful to be as old as I am and as strong as I am and I ought to be the happiest person alive. Can you imagine saying a thing like that to an 87-year-old woman? Well I just told him I didn't intend to be happy. That set him back a bit. But I reckon he looked something up in his answer book and after a while he was as perky as ever. He makes me mad enough to spit. He's the one, you know, that said I was seeing trash. And me of good family! What it was was the eyedoctor gave me these glasses that are bifocals all over and they ruined my eyes. I commenced to see unclearly and it seemed like little specks were in front of everything. And he called it trash and said it was normal for people up in years to see such as that. Everything he says just goes all over me. I bet you anything that he put Glenna up to bringing them girls in here. You 69 should have seen them. Said they were from the Home Health. One of them wouldn't have fed a crow and the other had buckets so big they looked like hams a-swinging. Sat right down in my TV chair too, that one did. Started talking about light housework and how they would give me a bath and see that I get dressed of a morning. Shootfire! I don't even know these people. They could be a thief and a murderer, the big and the little, for all I know. And Glenna expected me to let them in at the door. The truth is, I don't want to let Glenna in. She's the one that takes things. I know, because I've seed in her house what used to be in mine. Now I don't know just where she lives—off with that boy of mine, I reckon—but I...