I Cleaned an Elderly Woman’s House for 26 Years, but After Her Funeral, Her Son Fired Me and Handed Me $300

“Ruthanne,” she said. “R-U-T-H-A-N-N-E. One word?”
“One word.”
“After who?”
“My mama’s mama,” I said. “Ruth Anne Whitsett. Mama ran it together when she named me. She said it sounded prettier.”

The night nurse found her. A woman from the home health agency named Patrice. She called Carlton at five in the morning. Carlton called me at five-thirty.
“Elnora,” he said. “Mother’s gone.”
His voice was very quiet.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Carlton.”
“I know you are,” he said. “You were with her more than any of us.”

The funeral was at First Presbyterian on West Seventh. Three days later.
The church was full. Mrs. Lockridge had been in Maury County her whole life. Garden club. Altar guild. The hospital auxiliary for fifty years.
I sat in the back.
Nobody asked me to sit anywhere else.

Afterward, I helped the neighbor ladies lay out the food. At the farmhouse. In the dining room. Ham. Fried chicken. Deviled eggs. Green bean casserole. Six kinds of pound cake.
People came and went all afternoon.
I washed every dish in her kitchen myself.
Every plate. Every glass. Every fork. Every one of her good china cups with the little blue flowers. I dried them with her flour-sack towels and put them back in the cabinet exactly where she kept them.
It took me until nine o’clock at night.
Thurston and Bertram sat in the front parlor with a bottle of Mr. Walter’s bourbon. Laughing.
Carlton stood out on the porch alone. Looking at the pasture.

Before I left, Carlton came into the kitchen.
“Elnora,” he said. “Will you come back tomorrow? To help start packing up her things? The clothes. The kitchen. I don’t know where anything is.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Nine o’clock.”
“Thank you,” he said.
He looked at me for a long moment.
Like he wanted to say something else.
He didn’t.

The next morning, I drove back out to the Hampshire Pike.
In my twelve-year-old Buick. With a box of trash bags and a roll of packing tape on the passenger seat.
I parked by the back door. Where I always parked. For twenty-six years.
I walked up the steps.

He stood behind it. In a gray sweater. His hands in his pockets.
Behind him in the kitchen, I could see his brothers.
Thurston and Bertram. Leaning on her counter. Drinking her coffee. Out of her good china cups. The ones with the little blue flowers. The ones I’d washed and dried and put away the night before.
Thurston had his boots up on her kitchen chair.

I stood on the back steps of the house where I learned to walk.
Holding a check.
Looking through a screen door at two grown men drinking coffee out of a dead woman’s china.

I don’t know why I said sir.
I’ve been saying it my whole life. To Lockridges. To doctors’ wives. To lawyers. To the dentist with the toothbrush.
Mama said it. Her mama said it. It comes out of my mouth before I can stop it.
Yes, sir.

PART 3