She whooped. “You do remember! Alright!” She looked to the woman opposite her, who observed our exchange with a grin. “You see that, Maria? Maybe I haven’t gotten that old. I’m going to go home and tell Dennis how Nick recognized me right off.”
The other woman rolled her eyes. “You know Dennis. He’s going to make some crack about whether anyone recognized how much your ass spread.” Her voice had the guttural, metal on metal grind of a chain smoker. “How you’ve stayed married to that asshole all these years, I’ll never understand.”
Zora’s hand closed around my arm but I barely felt it; I didn’t hear whatever she was saying.
I remembered.
I remembered my mother taking me into the clinic where she worked, behind the door of the waiting room to see the “girls” she worked with during the week. She’d had to hold my hand when we visited Ms. Camille and her grumpy counterpart, Ms. Jackie, because I’d been pretty young. Looking around the table, I recognized the other three ladies more quickly, now that they were in context. I’d regaled them with my middle school exploits before I judged myself too old to accompany my mother on her visits to work friends.
The five women went around the table, introducing themselves, reminding me of who they were. Zora stood to the side, biting her lip in the way that meant she was extremely nervous.
I nodded politely through their chorus of how big I’d gotten, how I had my mother’s eyes.
Zora cleared her throat. “I know you were interested in the pictures my parents had in the kitchen, and I thought it might be helpful if you had others. So, I checked in with these ladies, your mom’s old coworkers, to see if they had their own photos. And it turns out they did.”
“And stories,” someone added. “We’ve gotta tell you some of these stories.”
I looked back at the door, contemplating an escape. What in creation was this? A memorial?
I didn’t know if I could do this.
Missing my mother, the pain of that wound . . . the only way I managed it was by not thinking about it, cramming that hurt deep, not letting it or the memories sneak up on me. Memories were the hardest for me. They had the deepest edges and sliced me open so easily.
God, I missed my mother.
Zora’s hand pressed into my back. I let her nudge me toward an unoccupied chair. I worked up a pleasant expression for the women while Zora stood behind me, her hand a comforting weight at the back of my neck.
Ms. Camille picked up a plastic sandwich bag. It was full of photos.
“I had more than a fair amount,” she said, shaking the stack into her hand, “because our old nurse manager loved any excuse to take pictures. I hated it at the time. Times like this, though, you appreciate it.”
She slid photos across the slick surface of the table toward me, one by one.
I caught the first one, then stopped. More photos slid in my direction but I couldn’t look away from what was in front of me: my mother in scrubs, arms crossed around my neck and beaming. Judging by the digitally rendered date in the corner, I’d been ten.
I traced our faces in the picture.
“Take Your Son to Work Day. Remember?” Camille grinned. “You made us promise we wouldn’t make you watch babies being born.”
The women laughed.
More photos came my way, mostly of my mother with her co-workers, at work and at get-togethers. At some point, while listening to one of the women recount the story of my mother singing a Beatles song to a laboring patient, I realized Zora had left without my noticing.
I sat back, taking in the room and my mother’s friends.
The magnitude of this, the gift Zora had given me, was staggering. So few of my Green Valley memories were positive. Seeing the past this way, not through the prism of my last days in Green Valley, changed everything, reminded me that not all of my past was shitty.
We talked for another ninety minutes, chatting and laughing, until Camille signaled a topic change. “We wanted you to have something,” she said, exchanging glances with the other women.
She rose from her seat and brought me a large plastic bag bearing the logo from a local crafts shop.