April 2002 Issue - Essay # 3
Dancing
With Vera
By Nancy Knauer
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Sleep come free me.
Funny how a phrase like that rattles around in your brain until you make
the connection, when the words form a caption under a scene in your
life. Those words hit home for me when I was 17. I had just started
working at a women's rest home in the mountains of southern Missouri,
near a place called Garden of the Gods. Names don't always match, but
I'd say this one was close with miles of virgin forest land and
limestone cliffs leaning over cold, clear running springs. A land too
rocky for cultivating anything but poverty and faith. The nursing home
wasn't much more than a little three-bedroom block house filled with
cots of leftover women lying in the dark, all of them working that last
line of the song, hoping for sleep. I was on the graveyard
shift and prayed each night that their weary bones and forever reaching
fingers would relax into the August heat, and let me be, leave me in
peace. But it never seemed to happen. Vera was usually first.
She couldn't speak and she hurt so bad, arthritis and stroke and only
God knew what else, but it wasn't the pain, it was the frustration that
made her cry. And even though I didn't know her as such, I knew her
frustration. What I didn't know was how to help her. Each night she
would try and tell me what she needed, and I would try and guess, and
neither of us would get it right. She would press her palm against her
cheek, and I would rub a little Ben Gay along her jaw. A tear would
spill down to fall in her lap as she curled up even tighter, and I would
rock her in my arms and then slide over to the next shadow moaning in
the darkness and repeat the process. One would fall from her
cot, and I would pull her back in, and her faded cotton nightdress would
ride up and I’d see a jagged purple seam where she used to have a
breast, and then another voice would cry, "Help, the snakes!"
and pee on the floor, and I would calm her down and clean her up, and on
through the night I wandered, from bed to bed, body to body. I couldn't
hold back their fears and demons and my own 3 AM willies, and I sat in
that tiny kitchen waiting for the morning light, wishing the relief crew
would just this once come early. Every night was the same. Like a bad
dream, I knew what was coming and was powerless to stop it. Just like
the heat. The only cure was sleep. And then we met Nick. I
came in early that day to help with dinner. I don't know why he showed
up. I guess some things just happen. He was a radio DJ, a local boy, a
lanky haired, restless spirit that swept through that little house like
the wind before a storm, full of dust and grit and choking us with a
stream of dumb jokes and lies a baby could see through, but then he
smiled, and every slumped over, wrinkled little body bloomed under his
touch. Their eyes opened wide, and they curled their lips up to flirt
and pushed up and pulled down whatever they could offer in his
direction. In town, Nick was known as a liar and a drifter, and I knew
better than to fall for his charms, but for that one bright August
afternoon, I loved him completely. He chose Vera first. He
picked her up and placed her feet on his, and then, soft as a feather,
held her hands and crooked back and waltzed her around the room. Her
thin cotton dress that she was always so lost in somehow clung
seductively to her body and flowed on the breeze drifting in through the
open door. For the first time ever I saw her smile, and I saw her leave
her pain on the chair, like a purse you hated but carried anyway because
it was all you had. She started humming to the music while he sang into
her wispy white hair, and they laughed and twirled until she closed her
eyes and relaxed against him with a catch and a sigh. It was only a moment,
but she lived in that moment the rest of her life. Kept it under her
pillow at night, tucked it into her sleeve during the day, and after
that, when she would call out in the silence, it was to present it to
me, to sit in the darkness and share that afternoon of light and music.
I never saw Nick again, and now I'm on the far side of my own middle
years but, like Vera, I keep that moment hidden away and when sleep
won't come and pain won't go, I remember, maybe it’s not sleep I need.
Maybe, I just need to dance in the afternoon sun.
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Author's Biography Nancy Knauer is a 50-year-old who has recently discovered writing and is currently
learning and exploring the craft at The Loft Literary Center in |
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