Dolores Claiborne

    Sometimes she'd even try to slap at my hands when I pulled down the sheet and the blanket. She'd be glarin like she meant to turn me to stone if I didn't leave off and she'd have her lower lip all pooched out like a little kid who don't want to go to school. I never let any of that stop me, though. Not Patricia Claiborne's daughter Dolores. I'd get the sheet down in about three seconds, and it never took much more'n another five to drop her drawers and yank the tapes on those diapers she wore, whether she was slappin my hands or not. Most times she left off doin that after a couple of tries, anyway, because she was caught and we both knew it. Her equipment was so old that once she got it goin, things just had to run their course. I'd slide the bedpan under her just as neat as you please, and when I left to go back downstairs n really vacuum the parlor, she was apt to be swearin like a dock walloper didn't sound a bit like a Vassar girl then, let me tell you! Because she knew that time she'd lost the game, you see, and there was nothing Vera hated worse'n that. Even in her cotage, she hated to lose somethin fierce.

    Things went on that way for quite awhile, and I started to think I'd won the whole war instead of just a couple of battles. I should have known better.

    There came a cleaning day-this was about a year and a half ago-when I was all set and ready to run my race upstairs and catch her again. I'd even got to like it, sort of; it made up for a lot of times in the past when I'd come off second best with her. And I figured she was plannin on a real shit tornado that time, if she could get away with it. All the signs were there, and then some. For One thing, she wasn't just havin a bright day, she'd been havin a bright week-she'd even asked me that Monday to put the board across the arms of her chair so she could have a few games of Big Clock Solitaire, just like in the old days. And as far as her bowels went, she was havin one hell of a dry spell; she hadn't dropped nothing in the collection plate since the weekend. I figured that particular Thursday she was plannin on givin me her goddam Christmas Club as well as her savins account.

    After I took the bedpan out “from under her that cleaning day noon and saw it was as dry as a bone, I says to her, “Don't you think you could do something if you tried a little bit harder, Vera?”

    “Oh Dolores,” she says back, looking up at me with her filmy blue eyes just as innocent as Mary's little lamb, “I've already tried as hard as I can-I tried so hard it hurt me. I guess I am just constipated.”

    I agreed with her right off. “I guess you are, and if it doesn't clear up soon, dear, I'll just have to feed you a whole box of Ex-Lax to dynamite you loose.”

    “Oh, I think it'll take care of itself in time,” she said, and give me one of her smiles. She didn't have any teeth by then, accourse, and she couldn't wear her lower plate unless she was sittin up in her chair, in case she might cough and pull it down her throat and choke on it. When she smiled, her face looked like an old piece of tree-trunk with a punky knothole in it. “You know me, Dolores-I believe in letting nature take her course.

    “I know you, all right,” I kind of muttered, turnin away.

    “What did you say, dear?” she asks back, so sweet you'd've thought sugar wouldn't melt in her mouth.

    “I said I can't just stand around here waitin for you to go number two,” I said. “I got housework. It's cleaning day, you know.”

    “Oh, is it?” she says back, just as if she hadn't known what day it was from the first second she woke up that morning. “Then you go on, Dolores. If I feel the need to move my bowels, I'll call you.

    I bet you will, I was thinkin, about five minutes after it happens. But I didn't say it; I just went on back downstairs.

    I got the vacuum cleaner out of the kitchen closet, took it into the parlor, and plugged it in. I didn't start it up right away, though; I spent a few minutes dusting first. I had gotten so I could depend on my instincts by then, and I was waiting for somethin inside to tell me the time was right.

    When that thing spoke up and said it was, I hollered to Susy and Shawna that I was going to vacuum the parlor. I yelled loud enough so I imagine half the people down in the village heard me right along with the Queen Mother upstairs. I started the Kirby, then went to the foot of the stairs. I didn't give it long that day; thirty or forty seconds was all. I figured she had to be hangin on by a thread. So up I went, two stairs at a time, and what do you think?

    Nothin!

    Not… one… thing.

    Except.

    Except the way she was lookin at me, that was. Just as calm and as sweet as you please.

    “Did you forget somethin, Dolores?” she coos.

    “Ayuh,” I says back, “I forgot to quit this job five years ago. Let's just stop it, Vera.”

    “Stop what, dear?” she asks, kinda flutterin her eyelashes, like she didn't have the slightest idear what I could be talkin about.