The People Who Make Us, by Beth Cameron-Kilbridge

 

   

“Good evening, Mrs. Magillacuddy, stormy night out there.” 

“Yes Henry, looks like we are going to get a heap of snow before the night is over.” 

“Is this one of your children?”

“Yes, indeed, one of the younger ones.” 

“You have quite a wonderful mother there, young lady.”  He covered the fare collection opening on the till and waved us through.  “Yes, sir,” I smiled as we headed down the middle of the bus before sitting in the two-seater, on the opposite side of the driver’s rear mirror. 

My mother’s name is Margaret Ellen Cameron always was and always will be the name she was born with. However, a Spanish-speaking priest at Saint John’s Catholic Church in Quincy back in 1918 entered her name at Baptism as Margarita Helena.   I’m not only the youngest child, I am her only child. Mrs. Magillacuddy is one of her made-up names.  My mother didn’t like people knowing our business, so strangers got aliases.  As far as I know, however, the bus driver’s name was Henry.

Buckets of snow dumped on the bus, as Henry made his way to Broadway Station with us and a handful of snow-covered paying customers who boarded along the route.  You couldn’t see out the window with the fog from the heater steaming up the pane of glass on the inside and the snow pelting the window from the outside, but in time we arrived, sight unseen, and bid dear Henry “adieu”.

We went down into the subway system below ground and waited.  Eventually, our train came and whisked us along to Park Street Station. With lots of people in woolen coats over party clothes, heading out into the Boston nightlife, we climbed the stairs to the collection of trolley cars headed back out into the storm again. 

We often played a game of our own making, called “what animal just boarded?”  Observing the people who got on the trolley, including their clothing and posture and features, we would work out what animal they had been before entering the door that changed them into people.  Before you knew it, we arrived at our stop atop Corey Hill in Brookline.

The storm was blowing us sideways and with my mother’s cane in one hand, we linked arms to shuffle through the snow towards our final destination, Ross Corey Nursing Home.  There we were let into a dark corridor lit only by the open elevator door that brought us up to the second floor.  We were early for my mother’s 11pm to 7am shift, so I hurried down to Goldie’s room to see if she was still awake.  Goldie had been at Ross Corey as long as me, and I was a veteran of seven years.  My mother took the job as night nurse when I was just about two years old, and we stayed until I graduated from the Patrick F. Gavin Jr. High School.

Goldie’s light was still on and so I sat at the side of her bed and regaled her with tales of the raging storm outside, adding wind and freezing blasts of cold, so she could feel the frosty air.  I told her of the raggle-taggle people out on a Saturday night with red noses from too much weather or drink.  She was a tiny woman with long wavy gray hair that I combed for her. In the morning I would braid her hair and pin it into a stylish bun with fancy bobby pins that her son bought her, before her breakfast tray arrived.  She had a selection of citrus sugared jelly slices in a white box; my favorite was the orange one.  One was customary for my nightly storytelling reward.  My mother came to the door with Goldie’s meds and it was time for lights out. 

Everyone else was already in dreamland and so I joined my mother at the nurse’s station to count pills.  While my mother read the nightly reports I joined Verna in the nurse’s lounge by night, recreation room by day.  Mrs. Boone was the nurse’s aide that worked with my mother for many years; to me, she was always Verna.  She crocheted Afghans during the night.  We had three of them at home.  Her daughter Betty also worked for Mr. Ross, but not on the Friday and Saturday nights when we were there.  Both Verna and my mother had Monday to Friday, nine to five, full-time jobs and so they only worked the night shifts on the weekend.  In the lounge, there was a tiny black and white television that you dropped quarters into for viewing where there might be a movie or Johnny Carson to watch, after which the test pattern came on and a high-pitched sound ending broadcasting for another day.  At that point, I would run out of things to do and try to sleep on the bench in the lounge.  This bench occasionally held a napping nurse much larger than me, who miraculously levitated over the floor on the narrow built-in seat.  It was not a bed to toss or turn, a thin foam cushion covered in a fake olive green alligator pattern on vinyl positioned next to the radiator for maximum discomfort.  Had I not had a sheet, my body would have affixed to the alligator-like gorilla glue and I woke most mornings delirious from the heat.  

I had full run of the second floor, but the first floor was mostly for visitors or day use.  On the first floor, there was a large community room with floor-to-ceiling glass windows. The dining room served visitors and residents and was beside the immaculate kitchen run by Alice.  I never knew her last name; she was the one and only, “Alice”.  The kitchen was her territory and nobody entered freely.  One night there had been a robbery in the neighborhood.  Except for the nursing home, it was a residential neighborhood and quite upscale. Break-ins drew a lot of attention.  I asked Alice if she was afraid, since at night, she was the only one on the first floor.  “Honey, you see all those big old butcher knives over there, ain’t nobody going to bother me in my kitchen.”  Alice, like my mother, was a big woman; she was a black Southern lady full of warmth and generosity. When I was little, she used to pick me up and set me on the counter while she cooked.  As I got older, I got to be her helper. Because of our late nights, I didn’t get to see Alice very often, but I did have full access to the kitchen and over the years when Alice was there late preparing a feast for a Jewish holiday or getting things ready for morning meals, she always had me working with her.  I was proud to be part of her clean-up crew; actually I was the only member of her clean-up crew.  Although all the meals served at Ross Corey were Kosher, Alice sometimes made special southern dishes for a select few.  Slade’s Restaurant in the South End was the nearest you could get to Southern Fried Chicken like Alice cooked, a special place for celebrations with real southern charm. 

The second floor was where all the bedrooms were, and most nights it was quiet with a few sad groans and snoring here and there after the 11pm shift started.  There were a few rooms that were private, but most were for two, and there were even a couple of rooms with four beds.  Over the years I probably slept in all of them.  Most people who entered those rooms stayed until they died, when the bed became vacant again.  The rooms were light and cheery and each bed came with two pillows, crisp white sheets, a thermal blanket and a Bates bedspread. 

Mr. Ross owned the nursing home and was married to a nurse from the Isle of Skye in Scotland. Occasionally, there would be visiting Scottish nurses who worked there too.  Mrs. Ross, “Mack,” was very pretty. They had get-togethers at their home for staff.  I was around the same age as their children and always enjoyed visiting their home in Waban.                   

                    They had sons and a daughter, Donna, but Mr. Ross was always Mr. Ross.  He was a good man who looked after those in his charge, as he would his own family.  He made sure linens and toweling were always fresh and clean and replaced when worn.  Food was always appealing and served on good dishes without chips or cracks.  Residents didn’t always want to be there; left by families that in many cases forgot about them.  For me, it was a place of wonder and stories.  Jewish men and women who welcomed me into their worlds in the final months and years of their lives. 

Sometimes someone would come for a short stay to rest or recuperate, even the Captain of the Queen Mary stayed there once.  Occasionally, someone who had suffered a breakdown would come for a rest.  Once, two very small withered old women were brought in by the police and they were given a room together.  I wasn’t allowed to visit them and their door was kept shut.  Apparently, they were sisters who had been locked in an attic for a long time after their nephew collected his inheritance which included their home.  They were not at the nursing home for long; eventually, a lawyer was assigned to the case and took them elsewhere.  They had beards and long fingernails and were bent over and only talked to each other in low voices.  My mother said their names were Margaret and Elizabeth, just like us, it was very sad.  But for the majority of residents, it became home, and for me, it was a building full of my adopted grandparents.  I didn’t have any grandparents before going there, so they filled a void in my life and I hope I did the same for them. 

Mr. Zakon let me play with his Lincoln logs and as I got older I could read the paper to him.  Some of the residents liked me to visit with them at breakfast time, and one or two didn’t mind my helping to feed them.  It was always a game, with a spoonful of food and a song to go with it, especially after seeing Mary Poppins.  I knew all the songs from Gigi and My Fair Lady and South Pacific too and always sang to them.  They laughed a lot with me there and I loved and respected them. 

When I was small my mother hired a babysitter for me while she went on to Ross Corey alone.  One Friday night when the sitter arrived late and my mother was in a hurry to get to work after having worked all day, she carried out two brown paper bags, one for the trash bin and the other containing her uniform for work.  When she got to Brookline, she called home to have the sitter retrieve her uniform from the trash.  Mr. Ross let her know that I was always welcome and so, in Dr. Denton's sleepers, I became a regular. My mother took me around the ward with her in the mornings to meet and greet everyone. 

The morning after the snowstorm my mother and Verna worked past seven until the relieving shift arrived through the heavy snow, then it was time for us to trudge out into it.  Corey Hill is very steep. Walking up to the trolley stop was impossible, so the three of us started down the long hill to a bus stop at the bottom.  It was extremely icy.  My mother spotted a large piece of a cardboard box and the three of us went all the way down on our self-appointed sled in the middle of the street, laughing all the way.  At the bottom, it was an effort for both middle-aged women to get up, as I tugged and pulled on both of them until they were upright. 

Like so many other Sunday mornings traveling home to South Boston on the MTA we saw families all dressed up and headed for church, from Broadway Station to City Point, there was St. Peter and Paul’s, St. Augustine’s, Gate of Heaven, and finally our stop at Saint Brigid’s Church.  The smells from Hayden’s Bakery at the bus stop drew us into the shop for pastries before heading down one last snowy street to “N” and “6^th and home to my cat Tinkabell and the Sunday Globe funnies.