Full Turn by Cheryl Snell

The ladies who lunch do volunteer work after. They enter the nursing home by the fire escape, since they’ve been banned before, just for trying to save the dying souls.

I’d rather go to see the babies, one lady says as they climb the wrought iron. So sweet in their cribs, swaddled like bandaged thumbs.

 Oh sure, until one starts crying and all the others join in. You’d be first in line for the exit.

Into the common room mapped with water stains, the women enter like a flock of flamingos, looking from side to side. Pairs of milky eyes turn toward them and a few reach out, calling them by the names of the children who have abandoned them. One of the ladies walks over to the piano and begins to play hymns. A few voices murmur fewer words, trying to sing along. The sounds anger one of the patients. She starts swearing and screaming for quiet. The patients rock off their chairs and couches to tend to her. She screams at each one who comes near her to get the hell away.

One by one, the patients begin to scream vulgarities back at her. She’s shocked into silence for a moment but recovers with a series of bursting f- bombs. The volume of the group of profane old people flailing their limbs, slapping the air or each other, increases. A supervisor runs toward them, muttering the same words under her breath.

“See? This is what I was afraid of!” says the lady who cautioned the others against a visit to the nursery in the first place.

Painting ‘Connections’ by Janet Snell – janetsnell.weebly.com

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