Of Fraktur Art, Fractured Lives, and Other Curiosities

By Celia Crotteau

Once upon a time, Uri and Char Stoltzfus led seemingly charmed lives. Uri was a legendary Army sharpshooter, Char, his wife, a decorated Navy Public Affairs Officer. They had a happy marriage and two healthy daughters. Then came the day when a mysterious sniper gunned down Uri on the grounds of a Buddhist temple in Japan. Uri was killed, or so the word went out. Fast forward a quarter of a century. Uri still lives, although he, Char, and their daughters must deal with the terrible effects of that single misfired bullet. In addition, Uri and Char have recently retired. They are adjusting to the finicky rules and regulations of the senior community into which they have just moved, when characters from the past reenter their lives and force a reckoning long in the making in the lives of all four family members.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 8, 2024
• ISBN: 9798369420492

Celia Crotteau

A Biblical scholar and educator, Celia Crotteau's fascination with women's roles in ancient civilizations has inspired her to imagine how certain Old Testament heroines might have told their own stories. In earlier novels she gave voices to the prophet Hosea's wife Gomer and Ruth's sister Orpah. Now, in her sixth book of historical fiction, she does so with Jephthah's daughter. Celia has also published award winning essays, poetry, short stories, and textbooks and has taught literature, history, and writing to students from sixth grade through college level.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

EBONY: 1985 - 2003

Which twin was the older? What that meant was: who held the right of seniority, slight though it was, allowing her to lord it over her sister? At least that was what being the older had meant when they were little, as Ebony remembered it.

Back then, both had accepted without question that Ivory was older. She had been born first, their parents explained. Once Mommy had pulled their birth certificates from a file in her desk drawer and showed them the exact hour and minute each had entered the world: Ivory at 2:05 pm, Ebony at 2:07 pm. The twins, first graders, easily figured out the two minute time difference in their heads. Both had recently qualified for their elementary school’s Gifted and Talented Program, and adding and subtracting was baby math. The term pm, however, had stumped them.

Daddy understood this when he saw the girls’ puzzled expressions. He watched their reactions more closely than Mommy tended to, and Daddy was more patient and low-key. Usually. Like now. "The letters p and m together after the numbers mean you were born after the noon hour. But let’s simplify it. In the military we recognize that there are twenty-four hours in the day, and we just count up to twenty-four. So, you, Ivory, were born at 1405 and you, Ebony, at 1407. That makes more sense than two sets of twelve, doesn’t it? And you don’t have to use those extra letters that confuse kids, and some big people too."

Both girls had nodded, and Ebony had supplied a solemn "Ja!" She liked to talk like her father did. He used ja and yes interchangeably, and her mother did sometimes as well, though not as often as her father. A form of German had been Daddy’s first language, which accounted for the slight accent that made some people think he had been born outside the United States, a false impression he never bothered to correct. Neither did Mommy.

And neither did her mother, nor her father, bother to admit that she, Ebony, possessed a valid claim to being the older twin.

She understood that fact in seventh grade, while listening to an audio biology textbook about animal propagation. In passing, the chirpy reader mentioned that humans reproduced in the same way. Ebony rewound and played back that section. Twice. She could still recall the anguished realization of what that meant for her and Ivory. It meant the secret triumph that both shamed and thrilled her for finally being able to argue with Ivory about who was older. It also meant the intense fury that blazed at her mother, whom she held responsible. She was, wasn’t she? She was the one who had had sex. Not either of her daughters. Not then, anyway.

Yes, Ivory had been born first, but that was just due to positioning in the womb, and whichever tiny hand or foot had waved at the physician when he ripped open their mother during the emergency Caesarean section. That hand or foot happened to be Ivory’s, so out she came before Ebony, to savor her two-minute seniority over her sister during their entire childhood.

But Ebony had been conceived first, a fact which their parents had never denied. They simply hadn’t told more than the girls needed to know. Wanted to know, perhaps. Had asked. But from birth, Daddy said, it was apparent that Ebony was black, and Ivory was white, which accounted for their odd first names. He had chosen them, Daddy sheepishly admitted, because of a song that came to mind the first time he held them, a baby cradled in either arm, when they were minutes old. He hadn’t been able to consult Mommy, who was still out cold from the anesthesia.

Another flashback to around the time of first grade: standing on their pink plastic stools in front of the bathroom mirror brushing their teeth, the girls studied themselves and asked why, if they were twins, they looked so different. And why did people always assume that Ebony had been adopted? Why not Ivory? Over their heads, their parents had exchanged the mysterious eyebrow-arching glances they sometimes did. Then Daddy sighed and sat down on the closed toilet seat. He took both girls on his lap and explained that another man had planted the seed in Mommy to fertilize the egg that created Ebony. However, that man couldn’t be in her life. He, Daddy, could. He planted the seed in Mommy from which Ivory grew and gave Ebony a sister. He and Mommy decided to marry and use Daddy’s name, not the other man’s, on both girls’ birth certificates. Daddy wanted to be both girls’ father, not just Ivory’s. At this point in the garden/barnyard tale, Mommy, who had disappeared, returned. She laid two documents on the bathroom counter. Ebony recognized her and Ivory’s birth certificates. Just last week Mommy had produced them when they had talked about why Ivory was older…Today their mother’s forefinger trembled as she tapped insistently at the line on which Daddy’s name appeared. This seemed more serious than which girl had been born first.

You call your father Daddy, don’t you? Who else can you imagine calling that, Ebony?

Sticking her own forefinger in her mouth, Ebony had considered. Mommy was right. Of course she was. She was Mommy. Nobody.

Daddy had buried his face in her springy black hair. Ah, my Ebby! He sniffled and Ebony waited to see what he would do next. He got weepy sometimes, went into his and Mommy’s bedroom, and shut and locked the door. Mommy had said that long ago Daddy had been injured in an accident that still made him sad. He didn’t seem sad now, though. He had called her his Ebby. His. Just like she called him her Daddy. Hers.

For years that simple explanation sufficed. Or perhaps the girls were too secure, or insecure, to investigate further. Ivory definitely was. Secure, that is. She knew who her biological father was. Ebony envied her that certitude. Ivory also got to be called the older twin. She had lucked out.

Only after that seventh grade lightbulb moment when Ebony realized that she was actually the older, did she begin to brood. She had been conceived first. She had to have been, given the information which her parents had supplied. Just to be certain, she read more, both about the sex act itself, and about twins, and she discovered that she was correct. Finding out that she was right provided Ebony no satisfaction. Instead, she felt cheated, robbed of the status that being the older would have supplied during their childish squabbles.

She also felt confused. Who was this unnamed man who had supplied the sperm that made her, and why couldn’t he be in her life? Was he even aware of her existence? She wanted to know more. Yet she also wanted to protect the cozy foursome that made up her family. Daddy, Mommy, Ivory, and her – they didn’t need that other man. Okay, maybe the three white people didn’t. She, Ebony, might. She wanted to explore that other part of herself. She had the right, didn’t she? Or did she?

Who should she ask? That meant which parent, because Ivory was as clueless as she was.

The idea of questioning her mother made Ebony squirm. It was embarrassing enough to realize that, in the space of a couple of days, her mother had had sex with two men, first, the unknown sperm donor, then Daddy. Ebony didn’t like thinking of her mother having sex with any man, and she wasn’t about to badger her for details.

Instead, she went to Daddy. But wasn’t that the norm, for both her and Ivory? They hesitated to bother Mommy. She was the one with the high-powered career that moved them here and there every few years. She was a United States Navy Public Affairs Officer, a mouthful of a title, and she made more money than Daddy, or so he teased whenever Mommy complained about paying bills. Daddy, who was in the Army, said he had an easy job. He taught soldiers how to fire guns.

He was reviewing how to do just that when a barefoot Ebony padded across the tiny landing from the room she and Ivory shared. She paused in the doorway to her parents’ bedroom. She dug her toes into the shaggy rug her grandmother Elle called ecru – Daddy and Mommy said ecru was the same as beige – and bit her lower lip.

A sudden misgiving had seized her. Once she started this invisible train rolling, it couldn’t be stopped. Last night, as they whispered to each other in the safe darkness across the narrow space between their side-by-side beds, Ivory had warned her of just that.

Ebony hadn’t replied. She had accused. Or so she later lamented. So you think I should shut up and pretend I’m as white as the three of you are?

She teetered on the edge of an emotional abyss, and she was alone. Her stomach cramped, not because of indigestion or the onset of her period. A visceral rage Ebony hadn’t recognized till now gripped her, a rage aimed not at her mother or father, but at her sister: for not understanding, and for not ceding what she should have long ago, that prize of seniority, of being the older twin. For that acknowledgment mattered. Ebony only wished she could sound as long-suffering and reasonable as Ivory did when she responded to her twin’s stubborn belligerence.

I never said that, Eb. But why not wait till we finish high school, and we’re adults and out on our own? Why spoil things?

Things meant closeness, and security, laughter at Daddy’s corny jokes, and planned pizza and boardgame nights, and –

But Ivory had always been what their mother called her good girl. Ivory obeyed. She also excelled in areas where Ebony struggled. Such as reading. Letters and numbers didn’t swim before her eyes like shimmering tadpoles and minnows, whereas, for Ebony, they had. When she was tired, they still did, which made her empathize with Daddy, and vice versa. In third grade she had been diagnosed as dyslexic, which resulted in her being pulled out of class twice a week for specialized instruction. She also went to summer school, while Ivory was sent to day camp by herself and made a new friend named Ashley whose birthday party she got invited to. Ebony’s name didn’t appear on the invitation. Mommy shook her head when Ebony pleaded with her to phone Ashley’s mother and demand that she be included.

Maybe she forgot to write my name down –

Probably not, sweetie. Ashley has never met you. Mommy’s voice was firm but strained. If Ebony hadn’t known better, she would have sworn Mommy was blinking back tears like she and Ivory did. But this was Mommy, for pity’s sake. Mommy didn’t cry.

At the beginning of the next school year, one teacher had mentioned to her concerned parents that dyslexia was sometimes hereditary. Maybe her unidentified father was responsible for that part of her. That, and the obvious, her dark skin and eyes and hair that an envious Ivory likened to black cotton candy. If Ivory only knew how Ebony longed for Ivory’s fine brown hair. Why, Mommy hadn’t known how to take care of Ebony’s hair. She had taken her to a black hair salon and asked for guidance, which the kind staff had given. Guidance, and the proper hair products. Mommy hadn’t failed her. She had done what she could, but that wasn’t enough.

Come on, Ive! Don’t be such a baby! I want to know. I’ve got to… Ebony had halted in midsentence, befuddled, because what she had uttered was true.

Indeed, she was compelled to, so here she stood. Still, she hesitated. Daddy, absorbed in his reading, didn’t immediately notice her. She took a few seconds to study him. The late morning sun slanting through the drawn blinds touched the raised scar above his ear. It was shaped like a clumsily formed question mark. Ebony now knew that surgery following a gunshot wound had left that scar. There were also scars on his chest, but, because he always wore a t-shirt, those weren’t noticeable. Daddy refused to talk about the event that had left him with multiple scars. A training accident, the twins had decided. They speculated about what had happened to the soldiers who caused it. Given dishonorable discharges? Imprisoned? However they had been punished, they still threatened Daddy, which was why he had changed their last name twice, from Stoltzfus to Sven and eventually to Ess. Ebony appreciated the spelling gradation from tricky to easy.

As she watched, Daddy rubbed the side of his head just above the scar and winced. He might be getting a headache. He got one just before he had what Mommy called a mood swing, so perhaps Ivory was right, and this wasn’t the best time to bring up the subject of her biological father. She spun around, but, out of the corner of his eye, Daddy had caught the movement. He tensed and glanced up, then relaxed and smiled.

Hey, Eb.

Hi, Daddy. You busy?

Nah! I’m never too busy for one of my girls. He closed whatever he was reading and patted the arm of his recliner.

Ebony perched on it and kicked desultorily at the chair’s faded brown leather. Her eyes slid over the book in Daddy’s lap. It was really a glossy manual with a long title, the letters and numbers of which leapt out at her, a jumbled mess, which these days happened only when she was stressed. Like now. She blinked, focused, and glimpsed Official Training and Snip before Daddy’s hand covered the rest of the title. He moved the manual from his lap onto the bedside table.

Struggling with how to broach her uncomfortable concern, Ebony found herself falling back on small talk. She hated small talk.

Whatcha reading about?

Oh, that. It’s work-related. Explains how to help my students handle their firearms more skillfully. Daddy shrugged. "That isn’t what you came all the way in here to find out, is it? You could’ve yelled that question as you were going down the stairs to get a snack and given me a chance to call ‘Bring me some of whatever you find in the kitchen.’" He winked.

Ebony wasn’t in the mood to giggle at his teasing. She gave the chair another kick, this one harder, and cursed herself under her breath. She didn’t want to hurt him. That strong reluctance warred with the equally strong desire to learn more about her very beginnings. Selfish desire won out and emerged with a forthrightness which she instantly regretted.

I wanna know about my biological father.

Why couldn’t she have been more tactful? Ivory would have been. Ivory, however, wasn’t lying awake at night wondering.

Being Ebony, she had voiced what she wondered, and it hung between them, a blunt demand that neither could ignore.

Daddy didn’t immediately answer. He picked up the official training manual on the bedside table and, with a careful and oft-practiced toss, threw it like a frisbee onto the middle of the desk he worked at. Mommy’s desk was downstairs, in a corner of the family room. Hers was strewn with papers, Daddy’s not so much. His work was more action-oriented than Mommy’s, Ebony reflected, before deciding that the comparison was an odd issue to consider just now.

She supposed she might be going into shock – emotional, not physical shock.

However, Daddy wasn’t rushing to the phone to call an ambulance. He sighed, settled further back in his chair, and turned what Mommy called his kaleidoscopic eyes on her. They reflected whatever color he wore. Today his t-shirt was dull green, so his eyes were as well.

Ivory had the same eyes. Mommy liked to say that Ivory was Daddy in drag. She always added that both girls had her figure, which was true. But there the discussion of familial resemblance ended. Until this minute –

Do I look like him? Did you know him? Was he a-a friend of yours before you stole Mommy from him? The latter she could bear. It was romantic, in a twisted way that Ebony decided she could tolerate, if such were the case.

Daddy’s gaze softened. He looked straight into her beseeching eyes and smiled. It was a lop-sided smile that Ebony could only describe as melancholy. Fleetingly, she regretted asking about the man who had made her.

Then she had to concentrate on what Daddy was saying. He spoke as calmly as if he were explaining an answer to, say, a math problem she was having difficulty with.

Do you look like him? Not especially. Your skin tone is lighter than his, but darker than your mother’s. Halfway between them, understand? He gave you your brown eyes and black hair, but I don’t know which person in his family had your particular facial features, if anyone did. He’s a hefty man, and tall –

How tall?

Daddy tilted his head and considered. Oh, over six feet. Six-foot two, maybe.

And whaddya mean by ‘hefty’? Fat?

He wasn’t fat twelve, thirteen years ago. He was muscular. But he was in the military, and the military insists on its members being in prime physical condition. People change when they get out, revert to bad habits –

Ebony waved an impatient hand. She had heard all this before.

So you knew him? He was your friend?

My friend? No, he was your mother’s friend, and I only saw him from afar. I had found out your mother was stationed where I was, and I wanted to size up the competition. Daddy was massaging his temples, which meant his head ached. I’m trying to remember. So much has happened since then.

But why –

Daddy looked up. Ebony – he was married. He urged your mother to have an abortion, which she refused to do. And now, sweet thing, I must ask you to go. I need some time alone.

Daddy –

What? He was fumbling in the bedside table drawer for a pill bottle.

Don’t tell Mommy I asked.

I won’t.

Promise?

"Ja."

Standing on the other side of the closed and locked door, Ebony listened to the guttural moans that quickly morphed into ragged sobs. The sobs were nothing new. The news that precipitated them was. And she hated it. Hated herself for asking. She should hate the man who had impregnated her mother, only to reject his own flesh and blood, pretending that she, who became Ebony, was a piece of garbage to conveniently throw away. She should hate him, but she couldn’t. He was an abstraction, an imaginary figure she couldn’t quite coax to life.

Ebony told Ivory nothing and asked nothing of Mommy. And Daddy told Mommy nothing. He had promised that he would not, and Daddy always kept his promises. Her biological father was married, huh?

Occasionally, over the years that followed, Ebony extracted that detail from deep inside her memory and reexamined it. Her perceptions changed as she matured and grew more tolerant of human frailties. Possessing enough of her own, she was hardly one to judge.

She considered herself stupid. She struggled with academics and disliked school, high school especially, where the guidance counselors seemed unsure of where to place her. She had been labeled Gifted and Talented before being diagnosed with dyslexia, yet she qualified for a long list of accommodations that made the counselors look askance at her. Her classmates were envious if not downright jealous and suspicious of what appeared to be preferential treatment. It’s ’cause you’re black, they ribbed more than once.

But she wasn’t black, not inside where it mattered. She felt deprived. Not that she ever told her parents, because she couldn’t pinpoint what was missing. She simply knew that something was.

Perhaps that was why she lacked the motivation to steer her life in any particular direction, which she definitely regarded as a weakness on her part. Ebony didn’t want to go to college, at least not right out of high school. She refused to enlist in the military, which both parents presented as a viable alternative. Ebony harbored what she deemed a healthy distrust of all government agencies. The Army had damaged Daddy, hadn’t it?

Neither parent denied her charge. They were stationed in Florida then and had rented a beach house for high school graduation week. The windows were left open to catch the breezes that floated through the mesh screens. The breezes brought in a briny smell and the muffled roar of breaking waves and deposited a fine film of sand on the white wicker furniture’s faded flower cushions.

Mommy cleared her throat. You can’t just loaf and expect us to support you forever…

Give me some credit, please! I’m gonna get a job.

She did, at a bar. Bars were plentiful in the seedy part of town just off base. The evening after graduation, Ebony informed the family gathered around the table for a celebratory dinner that she had been hired. Her mother’s parents, who had driven in from Texas to watch their granddaughters accept their diplomas, heard the news, so Ebony wouldn’t have to break it twice.

Grandma Elle frowned. You’re going to work at a bar? As a cocktail waitress?

Ebony huffed. No, I wouldn’t put up with that sort of stuff, no matter how generous the tips are. Cocktail waitresses get ogled and pinched and asked for certain favors, if you catch my meaning.

Ivory, who definitely caught it, sniggered. Ivory glowed with happiness. She had won multiple academic honors and several generous scholarships and was college-bound. The next four years of her life were laid out before her. Not for the first time, Ebony envied her twin’s confident assurance in what her future held.

We do understand your meaning, Eb, her mother inserted. She shot hasty glances at her own parents, who were studiously stirring their coffee. Daddy stared out the window at the chalky sky.

Okay, good. Nah, instead of a waitress, I’m gonna be a bartender. Mix the drinks and set out whatever snacks this place serves and all that shit – sorry – all that stuff. It doesn’t pay much, but they’ll train me, help me get a license, and, well, it is a start.

Grandpa Neil, who always saw the positive side of a situation, slapped his knee enthusiastically. Right you are, Eb. It is a start. You’ll learn a lot about how to handle people, that’s for sure.

I just hope you didn’t inherit my drinking problem, dear.

Oh, yeah. Ebony suddenly remembered that Grandma Elle attended AA meetings faithfully. How she could have forgotten that salient fact she didn’t know, because that was almost all Grandma Elle talked about. Ebony could only bear so much of her company.

She bounded to her feet and offered to help her parents with the dishes. Ivory, who was already stacking plates, looked up in surprise.

Eb, tonight’s my night to help. The twins rotated kitchen duty.

Consider it your graduation present, Ebony quipped. Let Ivory chitchat with Grandma Elle for a while. She preferred Daddy and Mommy’s company. But Daddy – he was still staring out the window.

Her mother reached over and touched his elbow. Uri, she said gently and whispered in his ear. He nodded, rose, and shuffled off in the direction of the room he and Mommy were sleeping in. He moved like a sleepwalker.

Grandpa Neil looked after him, then turned to Mommy, his brow furrowed. Char, is he worsening? Is it time to –

Strands of hair whipped about her head, so vehemently did Mommy shake it to indicate that nothing more should be said. Not by Grandpa Neil, at least.

Top shelf of the bathroom medicine cabinet, she called matter-of-factly after the retreating figure. She whirled around and headed toward the kitchen, then pulled up short as if remembering something. Ivory, she tossed over her shoulder, take your grandparents out for a walk on the beach. They’ll want to hear about your upcoming college orientation. Ebony, it’s you and me for cleanup duty. I do want to talk to you. Privately.

Ebony waited, wondering. She heard the slap of sandaled feet across the deck and down the wooden stairs. The familiar voices drifted up through the kitchen window before they trailed off, dwarfed by distance and nature’s ocean-specific cover noises.

Mommy had already scraped the plates and put them in the sink. She turned on the faucet, upended a plastic bottle of liquid dish soap that squirted out its last few lemon-yellow drops, and busily swished the soap suds over the plates. The water, thanks to the colored liquid soap, resembled urine.

That’s gross, Ebony shuddered. We might as well be washing the dishes in pee. I wish this place came with a dishwasher.

Well, it doesn’t, her mother said sharply, and we’re not washing the dishes in pee. Really, Ebony!

She moved a dish rag in a wide-ranging circular motion that didn’t adequately clean the plates, before holding them under the soapy water as a fervent preacher might a questionable convert and handing them off to Ebony to dry. With a terry cloth dish towel, Ebony did dry. She also quietly worked off dots of tomato sauce and pasta that were still stuck to the plates. Daddy was more meticulous in household tasks than Mommy was.

But her mother’s mind was obviously elsewhere. She didn’t think to rinse the plates, which was just practicing basic hygiene, Ebony grumbled to herself.

Finally, leaning against the sink, her hands up to the elbows in what was now scummy water, Mommy paused. You’re eighteen now, Ebby.

Yeah, Mommy, I noticed. She immediately wished she hadn’t made such a sarcastic retort. It was so middle-schoolish.

For once, her mother didn’t snap back at her. They both had quick tempers. Volatile, Ivory called them. Her mother lifted her hands out of the water and wrapped them absentmindedly in the damp towel Ebony thrust at her.

Eb, I waited till now to speak to you about your father. Not Daddy, your – She stopped, fumbled with the towel, and it was Ebony who finished her sentence: My biological father.

Yes. Mommy looked up at her. He was married, Eb. She waited for the shocked exclamation that didn’t come before continuing. We had an affair that was based on loneliness, not love, I got pregnant, he wasn’t pleased, and we parted ways. Those are the basic facts.

You haven’t been in contact at all since then?

No. Her mother shook her head. He was also in the Navy, but most of my assignments were West Coast, while his were East Coast. She gave a wobbly half-smile. ‘East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.’ Didn’t Rudyard Kipling write a poem with just those words?

I don’t know. Right now, why should either of them care? Mommy could be senseless. Which Daddy was not – Does Daddy know we’re having this conversation?

He does. That may partly account for him being so quiet earlier – Mommy gestured vaguely, and Ebony nodded. As the twins had matured and witnessed more, and Mommy seemingly decided to shelter them less, body language had entered their lives to discuss Daddy. Anyway, her mother said briskly, your biological father’s name is Tyrone, Tyrone Jordan. The last I heard, his home of record was Washington. District of Columbia, that is, not the state. If it helps you track him down, his wife’s name is Bernice.

Beside the kitchen sink, they faced each other. Ebony was quiet, hands on hips, while she mulled over what information she had been given. Her watching mother nervously pleated the dish towel.

Finally, Ebony drew a deep breath. Are you saying that I should track him down? Try to see him?

Her mother sighed and broke eye contact. That’s up to you, honey. Just remember that he may not welcome you with open arms. Probably won’t. Her wistful expression hardened. But I think he owes you a medical history. News about your blood relatives. Those sort of things. Consider using a computer to sneak up on him. You know, gather any info you can. It’s scarily easy to do these days, and I’ve read that privacy will soon be a thing of the past…

CHAPTER 2

IVORY: 2007 - 2010

She hated performing digital disimpactions. Dreaded reading the order on a patient’s chart. Dilly-dallied while preparing. She dilly-dallied now.

These gloves aren’t latex, are they? I’m allergic to latex, just so you know.

Girl, I do know. So does everyone else here. Mrs. King clicked her tongue in disapproval. You think I’m aimin’ to kill ya, Ivory? Is that what you think?

She didn’t deceive Mrs. King.

I hope not. Ivory pulled on a pair of skintight gloves and motioned for Mrs. King to position the shrieking gray-haired patient on her side. Mrs. King did so, parting the floral print hospital gown to bare the patient’s sagging white buttocks. They trembled with an aching vulnerability.

No-no-no-no! Mommy! Mommy! Grammy! The patient, whose arm bracelet identified her as Jane Marie Hoskins, cried out to those long dead. Her skinny arms and legs flailed like the blades of a windmill. Turbine blades, that’s what those were called. Ivory had read the proper name in a magazine recently. Which one she couldn’t recall…

No-no-no-no! Jane Marie Hoskins, whom the staff addressed as Miss Janie, used those same words as a prelude to any personal interaction. Even with her great-niece, her sole living relative, who visited weekly and brought Miss Janie a pint of strawberry ice cream. Come to think of it, Miss Janie even greeted the first spoonful of strawberry ice cream with four no’s before opening her toothless mouth as wide as a shriveled baby bird might. The successive spoonfuls she accepted without protest.

But she was not about to be offered strawberry ice cream now.

Mrs. King angled Miss Janie’s bottom toward Ivory and, her own hands gloved, eased up one doughy cheek to reveal a pink puckered asshole. It quivered indignantly as it braced for a violation. Necessary in this case, yes, but a violation, nonetheless.

Come on, Miss Janie. Mrs. King planted a quick kiss on Miss Janie’s ear. That enema didn’t do the trick. You know we got to do this. You’ll feel much better after.

But would Miss Janie? Ivory hoped so. She ripped open a single packet of Vaseline and dribbled the clear lubricant on her gloved forefinger. The packet reminded her of the condiment packages fast food restaurants handed out at their drive-through windows.

She would not be stopping for greasy tacos or a mystery-meat burger on her drive home tonight, she decided.

Okay, Miss Janie, I’m going to insert my finger into your anus now –

She putting her finger up your butthole now, Mrs. King interpreted, And she’s gonna scoop out that rockhard poop that makes you so uncomfortable.

Switching to mouth breathing, Ivory did just what she and Mrs. King had said she would. She kept her word, she thought, as she felt Miss Janie tighten her anal muscles, which her physician described as flaccid. Ivory disagreed with his description.

Miss Janie, whose smiling photograph had once graced the society pages of the local newspaper, uttered a blood-curdling scream that bounced off the walls of her single room. The door was closed. Mrs. King had remembered everything. As usual. Not that anyone would burst into the room. Here, screeches and howls were more frequent than absolute stillness.

Relax now, baby, Mrs. King soothed. Sometimes she addressed Ivory as baby. But this time the endearment was meant for Miss Janie, who strained against her. Hard.

Mrs. King bragged that she needed no gym membership. She got all her exercise at work.

Ivory felt the same way. Surviving an eight hour shift was an exercise session itself.

Mrs. King was a nurse assistant, a title which Ivory interpreted to mean that Mrs. King’s job was to assist her, Ivory, the only licensed nurse working the 3 to 11 shift on the total care unit in the senior living facility that employed both women.

Mrs. King interpreted her job title differently than Ivory did. She considered herself Ivory’s boss in all but name and pay. Mrs. King based her conclusion on her sixty-plus years’ work experience in every healthcare facility in the area, plus her advanced age, eighty years to Ivory’s twenty-five. She didn’t hesitate to tell her what to do, and when, and how, the last in excruciating detail. Fortunately, so far Mrs. King’s instructions hadn’t contradicted nursing theory. They did push the limits of nursing practice, but Mrs. King reasonably pointed out that the hoped for circumstances nursing educators conjured didn’t match the messy realities faced on their unit.

Them people don’t work for a living. They daydream. Let ’em work a shift here. Then we talk.

Ivory was forced to agree. She did her best, but her starry-eyed idealism had faded in the three years since she graduated from nursing school, passed her boards, and began her first job, foolishly confident that she would succeed at work as easily as she had at academia.

Ebony,