Rosa

III. The Sisters

III.

The Sisters

She gets off at the sisters’ corner. Actually, of the three, only Winnie lives there anymore; Megan and Adie have been moved to a nursing home, and Winnie’s there alone with her brother Leo, who mostly cares for her. All but her bath; she also spends the afternoons at the Sunshine Club.

When she lets herself in, Winnie and her brother are shouting in the bathroom: she has a great gaping wound where it rubs her and she won’t take it off, yells Leo. What? What? Rosa cries. Her girdle. She won’t take it off. She sleeps in it.

Winnie hated anyone “messing in me panties,” or in her girdle now lately. She was cold, she kept saying.

Yesterday she put her shoes and stockings in the oven to warm them up, nearly burned the house down, he tells Rosa. It’s eighty degrees in here for heaven’s sake!

I just work around it. We see, Rosa soothes. She starts the bath and turns on the bathroom heater. Nice and warm, she tells Winnie, and leaves the girdle and nightgown on while she induces Winnie to step in the tub.

Winnie sits in the bath chair, and Rosa cups the warm water in her hand and pours it over Winnie’s swollen, purple legs. It’s the circulation makes her cold. She peeks under the ruched-up nightgown into the borders of the girdle, sees no gaping wound, only some chafed skin where it’s rubbed her. Winnie allows her to unhook the lower part and wash under, drying carefully before she hooks it up again. Then the upper part, gently removing the nightgown meanwhile. I’ll wrap your shoulders in this warm towel now, she tells Winnie. They know what they need, these old ones. Leo should have more patience.

Still, how could she fault him? He’d promised all three sisters he’d never send them to nursing homes. And kept it for years, paying for home aides and finally moving back into the house to mostly care for Winnie, taking her to the bathroom every few hours and cooking her meals; the other two he visits regularly, though none of the three know who he is for sure.

Did you come with the bread and eggs? she asks Leo after Rosa has powdered and dressed her for a January day in the middle of a warmish October…

We always take a cracked wheat and a rye, and brown eggs, a half dozen, Winnie says.

Yes, ma’am, Leo says. They’re in the kitchen. Rosa seats Winnie in a wing chair at the bridge table, where she’ll play a couple games of gin rummy with Leo. Her memory of the game is accurate and canny. While they play, she always calls Leo “Clarence,” her long-dead husband’s name. He’ll fix her lunch then and take her to the Sunshine Club for the afternoon.