Yellow Curtains

CW: End of life/hospice care

“Keep them curtains shut,” I holler as I snatch that boy's hand away from the curtain for the tenth time tonight. 

Colton clicks his teeth at me, or he tries to. One’s been missing since his mama burned up dinner last week and it wiggled out on a piece of charred biscuit. He goes back to driving his toy cars through the dusty carpet. 

Ain’t dirty. Elaine keeps the place real clean ever since she moved back in with me, but it's old. Needs replacing. 

I stare at the yellow curtains, feeling the sluggish ticker in my chest beat faster. A monitor dings behind me. 

“Mama,” Elaine says, silencing the alarm next to my bed. “Calm down. All the curtains are closed and the door’s locked.”

She hands me the clicker, but I wave her off. She grumbles, but flips on the TV and puts something on. 

“The hospice nurse comes tomorrow at ten,” Elaine says. She thinks I don’t remember, but I do. She told me yesterday. And the day before. 

I just nod and go back to staring at those yellow curtains. 

They’re old and dingy, stained with years of coal dust and finger smudges. We stopped washing them in the machine years ago. We do them by hand now, careful of the fragile fabric. 

I guess we could’ve saved our pennies for new ones, but my own mama sewed those curtains forty years ago. 

I’ve never seen daddy look so proud as he did the day he came home with a bolt of marigold colored fabric and plunked it down on the table. His foreman’s wife had some leftover, so she gave it to us. Mama’s eyes were shiny when she finally took down them old rags and towels that covered our windows and put up some proper curtains.   

Every night, mama drew them tight at sunset. She always told us, “Keep them curtains shut.” 

And I listened. I knew enough about the scary things that lurked in this valley after dark. I was a good girl. My brother, though, was not. 

Dale was sweet on a girl named Ruby two houses over. Every night he waited for her to walk home from the dairy barn where she worked. 

Little me was curious too, eavesdropping as I liked to do, even though I was supposed to be in bed with everyone else. 

I watched from the hallway one night as Dale sat on the sofa, one hand drawing the curtains open while he waited for his girl. 

“Dale,” I heard a voice call, soft and sweet as church bells from the night beyond. 

He perked up, jumping to his feet and leaning further out the window. 

Through the billowing yellow curtains, I saw it. 

Ruby was calling to him, standing out in the dusty road with a bottle of milk to take home. 

She was beautiful as ever. Long blonde curls peeked out under her hat as she waved. 

Her wave was halted, though, jerky and strange. 

And her face. 

It was lovely, as I remembered the other times she’d visited, but something was off. 

Her smile was too wide, eyes hollowed out. Almost like she wore a mask of her own face. 

I stepped forward out of my hiding place in the hallway, but Dale was already gone, making to sneak out the window to visit with Ruby. 

He never came back. 

Mama and daddy searched a full day before they called the law. Sheriff said he must’ve run off. 

The next morning, the hospice nurse prickes my arm as I jerked back. 

“Sorry, Ms. Sophie”, she says, before finally finding the right vein. 

She takes my wrinkled hand in her smooth one and looks at me with the soft, kind eyes of youth. 

“We can increase the dose of morphine if you need it.”

I shake my head. “No. John, my sister’s boy, got hooked on them pain killers, and now he’s on the streets.” 

Nurse Jasmine wrinkles her brow. “This isn’t like that. You need medication to manage your pain. And the end is close.” 

I know my daughter had reservations about putting me on hospice. She felt like it was giving up. But I like these nurses. They don’t mince words. They aren’t afraid to say the hard things. 

I nod. 

That evening, my pain is manageable. My daughter takes me outside to watch the fireflies dance over the backyard as Colton catches a few in a jar. 

When sunset comes, I make her take me back inside, making sure she closes every curtain. 

As I lay in the living room-made hospital room that evening with my grandson and daughter, I brush my hand against those yellow curtains. 

They feel a bit softer and more fragile now, but when I was a girl they were stiff. I remember the feel of them when I hid behind them as a girl and waited for Dale to come home. 

Everyone in our hollow knew he was gone. The cops said he ran. Mama and daddy flip-flopped between thinking he left and blaming each other. But when I couldn’t sleep, I would slip out of the small bed we all shared and sneak across the house to draw back the yellow curtains and wait for Dale. 

One night, I finally saw a shadow move outside. I figured it was a critter, a bear or some skunk come to raid the bird feeder or dig in the yard for grubs. 

But the shadow grew taller. 

It moved toward the window where I waited. 

Curly brown hair and the soot-stained pants my brother always wore walked toward me. 

I almost shouted with joy, only staying silent when I remembered I wasn’t supposed to be awake and didn’t want the end of daddy’s belt. 

“Dale?” I breathed. 

“Sophie,” he answered. 

But the voice was wrong. 

It was deep, where Dale’s voice was just beginning to crack with the change of maturity. 

And his face. 

It was lumpy. Cracks around his eyes led to bloodshot whites that looked too open, too wonky to be my brother’s. 

A slow smile spread across his face. The smile was wide, kept getting wider, until it stretched to his ears. 

I pissed myself and ran back to my parents' bed. 

I got a whooping for peeing the bed. But I never looked out the windows at night again. 

The hospice nurse holds my hand as I fade in and out. 

I feel my eyes flutter, try to hold them open, then fail. 

“It's okay, mama,” my daughter says, her voice shaking with all the love I trained into her. 

“Sometimes, they need your permission,” I hear the nurse say as she squeezes my hand. 

I float above the room now, seeing my feeble body struggling to gasp for breath. 

My daughter, the nurse, and my grandson gather around my bedside in our tiny living room. 

“I love you, Grandma,” Colton says. He sounds older than he should. I want to kiss his soft cheeks. I wish I could get back to my body and make my lips move. 

Elaine is crying, swiping at her nose with a hankie as she clutches my hand. 

From my vantage point above the room, I feel myself fading. 

I look so hollow. My eyes are sunken in, making the skin around them look lumpy and strange. 

My mouth is open in a silent gasp. 

Suddenly, I begin to smile. 

I watch as the smile grows wider, wider, wider. 

My bloodshot eyes pop open as I wail, “Keep them curtains shut.”