Page 29 of Fractured
She smiled up at me, “What would I do without you?”
“Starve,” I quipped.
She cackled.
Then she followed me into her kitchen as I set the bags on her counters.
Then I bent and placed a kiss on her cheek.
Henrietta was now seventy-four, and she had a stroke a year ago. She lost the mobility to her left side, hence, why she was in a wheelchair. But thankfully, she had been able to regain about seventy-five percent feeling back.
And when I pulled out all the healthy items that her doctor told her she needed to eat, she sneered.
I winked, “Found some more recipes. Hopefully, they will taste good.”
She sighed.
Then I went about cooking a week’s worth of meals for her. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
After I had everything in the freezer, labeled, and the rest tucked into her fridge, I started on the dishes.
She was lighting a cigarette as she said, “Heard from Robert.”
I sneered, “What did he want this time?”
She cackled, then she said, “He wanted to know if he could move his family in here and if I wouldn’t mind taking the couch.”
I gasped, then whirled around, my hands with suds on them, went flying, and suds went everywhere. “He didn’t.”
She nodded.
Then I narrowed my eyes, tagged the hand towel by the sink, cleaned my hands off, and then headed to her phone.
I pulled it out of the cradle and punched the numbers that were written down on a pad next to her phone.
Henrietta started chuckling.
It rang, and rang, and rang, and then I heard a man’s voice, “Finally. God. Took forever for you to call...”
I cut him off, “Listen here, you little dick weasel. No. You can’t move your family into your mother’s house. No, she isn’t sleeping on the fucking couch. She has a special bed that she needs so she can get up in the mornings. You’d fucking know that if you pulled your head out of your ass and not be a little dung berry.”
“Excuse me? Who the fuck do you think you are?” He growled.
I growled, “I’m the woman who's been helping your mother for the past ten years. Where the fuck have you been?”
He snapped, “I got kids, bitch.”
I snorted, “How original. It’s okay if you call me a bitch because to assholes like you, I don’t mind being one. Now, either pull your head out of your ass, or I’ll climb in my Jeep, drive up to wherever you are, and beat the hell out of you with a crowbar.”
Then I punched the end button, replaced her phone, and placed my hands on my hips as I tried to rein in my temper.
Henrietta asked, “Did my son really call you a bitch?”
I nodded, “Yep. But I called him worse names.”
She snickered, “That you did, buttercup. That you did.”
Then I got back to washing her dishes, helped her get ready for bed, and then left.
