In a Haze - Jade C. Jamison Page 0,1
how do I know this?), a lovely black woman with super short hair and coal eyes opens the door. “Anna. Look at you, up at this hour. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you out of bed before I got here. How are you this morning?”
Suddenly, my tongue’s tied. This woman seems to know me, but I definitely don’t know her. My mouth gears up before I can even think it through. “I feel pretty out of sorts.”
“I know, honey. That’s just part of the whole experience. How do you feel otherwise?”
She means my body maybe? “Okay, I guess.”
“Are you ready for breakfast?”
See, that’s one of those weird things. I know what breakfast is. Why? How do I know that and yet when she called me Anna, it felt foreign? I want to ask her all kinds of questions but something inside tells me not to trust her. “Yes. I’m sorry, but I don’t remember your name.”
“Rose.”
“Named after your grandma.”
“That’s right. You remember.”
I didn’t even know I remembered until it popped out of my mouth.
We enter the hallway, not quite bustling with activity like the street outside, but there are a few people moving around. It’s then that I notice we’re divided. Most of the people are dressed like me—white t-shirts, gray sweatpants—and the rest are wearing powder blue scrubs like Rose.
As we make our way down the hallway, I take in the repetitiveness of it. All the doors, like mine, are metal with rectangular wired windows, the walls that same shade of off-white, the floors all shiny tile, appearing to be the newest part of this building. As we make our way down farther, I notice places in the walls where the paint has peeled—come off, rather, like something was scraped along it.
We begin to pass an older woman in a wheelchair. She’s overweight, her hair turning into a salt-and-pepper mix, her blue eyes looking as if they’re covered in feathery clouds. My emotions around her (because that’s all I have right now—feelings without words) are encased not in fear but in apprehension. Again, I have no idea why. And, as we pass by her, she lifts her head and her eyes take me in. I see the slightest hint of recognition and then she says, her voice frog-like, “Rep.”
This is one of those things I know somewhere deep down. As we continue down the hall, both Rose and I ignoring her, I know she’s going to say “resent.” She says the part of the word represent as if they’re two words—rep and resent—follow by some mumbling. And she’s only ever said them to me. I don’t know why or what she means. I only know she freaks me out, gives me the creeps.
At the end of the hall, we enter a big room. There are bathroom stalls and, just beyond, a large area with tiny blue tiles of various hues on the walls and floor and showerheads hanging a few feet apart. Rose says, “Go ahead and do your business, honey,” and I understand she’s letting me have a little privacy in the bathroom stall. Already, I’m consumed by a sensation of humiliation, somehow recalling deep down having to be watched while I had to urinate and defecate and while I showered. Deeper, though, I know that somehow those are preferable to bedpans and sponge baths. Somehow, I know I’ve experienced it all.
It's a feeling.
Soon, I’m under the warm water of a showerhead, wishing the pressure was better, praying the water could wash away the blanket on my brain. That’s what it feels like—as if all the answers are there, buried, almost under lock and key, and I can’t get to them. I can almost taste them but they’re out of reach.
The husky woman who was showering near the corner moves closer to me, taking the showerhead next to me. Once more, I have an emotion associated with her. Like the woman in the hallway, I don’t want to associate with this female, either. Both have left me with negative emotions but this woman here makes the fear run deeper. “Ah, my favorite friend Anna with the creamy skin and perky little titties.”
My eyes dart over to her as I swallow hard. Another memory prods me with images of this woman pressing me up against the wall, trying to shove her hands down my sweatpants. My skin crawls as that tiny glimpse floods my brain and I huddle under the water, no longer interested in shampooing my