Moth Wings

The cigarette hurt my throat, but I finished it quick to impress Grant. We lean against the pigeon-poo-stained railing under the bridge next to the river, watching the pool we made with our spit. A disgusting moth repeatedly flew into the flickering light that lit up the bridge we were standing beneath. The sound of it hitting the glass was grating.

I flicked the end of my fag toward a passing dog walker whose perfume got stuck under my nose. The group laughed, even Grant. The woman didn’t engage, just sped up to get away from the intimidating lot that was us. ‘What are your plans now school’s done then?’ stick-thin, blond Charlotte asked through her heavy lipstick. I didn’t answer, just lit another fag to validate my status even though I still felt sick and dizzy from the first.

When Ava talked about university and Tom discussed the gap year his parents were funding as a reward for good grades, a pang of heaviness hit my gut, as though I’d swallowed a bag of nails. I didn’t pass anything. Instead I thought it would be funny to pretend to sleep during my GCSEs and set my tie on fire on the last day.

The truth was, other than my obsession with Grant, a boy whose main sentences to me were ‘all right?’ and ‘show us your tits,’ when he was pissed, I had nothing. Except a mum who nagged me for not paying rent. That was the only reason I took the interview for care assistant at the nursing home where she worked as a cook. Mum told me to take night shifts because she was done trying to get me out of bed in the morning.

The training was boring, I doodled, swung on my chair, and chewed my pen to the point it wasn’t fit for purpose while they showed us jolly training videos made in the 80s. The home itself was stuffy and stank of stale milk and piss. The decrepit people I never knew existed in real life frightened me. Not a single resident played bingo, built jigsaws, or went on brisk walks wearing colourful headbands like they did on TV. They simply looked like death.

One man, who looked like a walking skull, had a large house spider crawl from behind his ear across his face. The man didn’t even notice. Just carried on talking his dementia delusion about what time his flight was, with a spider sitting on his nose.

I didn’t jump or speak about it at the time because I didn’t want to appear unprofessional to the manager who was showing me around, but I couldn’t understand how she carried on teaching me as though it didn’t happen. How did she not feel as disturbed as I felt? How was she not repulsed by the thought of touching them?

Five hours before the night shift and I didn’t want to leave the sofa. I didn’t even sit up to eat my spag bol, stayed lying slurping it off the plate watching The Simpsons, even though it made Mum tut while she ironed my new uniform. Mum’s messy bun wobbled on her head every time she moved, it made me
want to laugh at her. She didn’t even try to be attractive. No wonder Dad drank himself to death.

The only thing that tied me to going to the shift was the prospect of £800 at the end of the month, even if Mum was taking £400 of it. The team in the handover stared at me, as though X-raying my ability to be useful. They sat at the reception area, where the family and friends checked in during visiting hours. There wasn’t a spare chair, so I stood behind some plastic flowers in a vase and picked at my fingernails trying to listen, but I didn’t understand anything that was being said. Someone in nursing bay one had fallen and needed neurology observations. Someone in nursing bay three had a pressure sore on their sacrum and needed two hourly turns. I couldn’t stop shivering, but I wasn’t cold.

They teamed me up with a carer called Mandy who had pen stains on her pinstriped green tunic and a few missing top teeth

‘You’re shadowing me, are ya?’ she said, with an excited gleam in her eye. Her voice sounded like a frog was stuck in it.

We were sent to work in the residential bay, which usually only needed one carer for the night shift. I nodded behind my dark fringe and wiped the bottom of my eye in case my heavy makeup ran from the water that uncontrollably pooled in them. Mandy’s breath smelt like that gingivitis Mum had once. It invoked memories of her screaming in my face to get out of bed and go to school.

‘So you’re Debbie’s daughter Alice then?’ Mandy said sipping from her 4-sugared tea from a mug with a picture of a unicorn on it. I nodded quickly. ‘We’ve heard all about you, you know that?’ Mandy gave me a toothy grin. It felt like I’d swallowed a weight. I could only hope that Mandy didn’t tell me whatever mum had said, during what was probably angry rants, about how difficult it was having a daughter as horrible as me. ‘Help yourself to tea and coffee then.’ Mandy pointed towards the kettle. I’d never liked it, but didn’t tell Mandy that. I’ve never understood why something that smells like sweetened cat sick was such a popular drink.

Mandy showed me the cleaning routine. How to put bleach in toilets and wipe plastic-covered chairs while wearing gloves and an apron.

All the residents had already been put to bed by the day team and we answered bells if they called, but nobody had yet. I felt fearful for the moment when they did. Grant’s words rang in my ears. Took a job as a butt wiper, did you?

My neck prickled as though we were being watched. With the long creepy corridors filled with doors that housed the decrepit, I had no doubts that the place was haunted. I fully expected to have my very own horror movie moment. It was a windy and rainy night. A conker tree banged against the window, as though a person was knocking on the glass trying to get our attention, but if we looked, there was only the pitch black of the night. I imagined an elderly man there in the darkness, staring at us, knocking, and waving.

Mandy gabbled on while we cleaned the dining area, as though I was a 40-year-old woman like her, and I understood her life. Her boyfriend Darren wasn’t listening to her, she couldn’t afford a holiday, he didn’t satisfy her needs if I know what she means.

By 12am Mandy made another tea and told me to take a break. I nibbled on the ham sandwich that Mum made me.

‘You want to take first checks then?’ Mandy asked, closing her eyes for just a minute.

‘I don’t know what to do.’ I barely whispered, through the lump in my throat.

‘You just walk down the corridor, don’t ya! Poke your head in the rooms. Make sure they’re still down. If something’s up, come get me or someone from nursing bay one if it’s an emergency.’ Mandy didn’t open her eyes and a slight whistle came from her nose.

With trepidation, I walked the dark maroon corridor. My expensive black trainers I made Mum buy me stuck to the carpet as I went. I didn’t want to open the door to bed one but the fear of getting into trouble spurred me on. Quietly I poked my head in as instructed and saw the frail sleeping form of Ethel, her breath rising and falling. I closed the door closed quietly and paused at the smiling face of her picture. Showing her story, and how she disliked tea. It requested people stop bringing it to her. I opened the door to bed two and saw Burt snoring. His picture with his smiling face which explained his life as a postman. About how he had the same delivery round for twenty years. While I read, that prickle of being watched returned and I saw something moving in my peripheral vision.

‘Mummy?’ a disturbingly broken, hoarse voice said, and I jumped out of my skin at the sight of her. I was too afraid to be professional and was unable to hide the terrified expression on my face towards the withered woman walking towards me. Her cloudy-white eyes squinted, and her arms were outstretched desperately. Her fingers were covered in something yellowy brown; flowery nightgown flowing behind her walking corpse.

I wanted to run. To find Mandy. Raise the alarm. Do something. But I couldn’t move. As her sallow face and old lady perm approached me, I smelt the faecal matter on her hands the closer she got.

‘Mummy?’ She said again, with a desperation I’d never witnessed on any human soul. Her legs, covered in deep blue protruding veins, had dried excrement and urine running down them. Her night dress was soiled and stuck to her back.

Get away from it! I screamed at myself internally, to never again work in this revolting environment, to go home, shower, vomit, but I couldn’t move.

‘Let me take you to a shower.’ I said, surprising myself. My body acted almost subconsciously, instinctively knowing what to do. Like someone deep within me was taking over, guiding this frail woman, who followed as though my shadow, to the bathroom. Was she was pleased to have someone take control because she could not? I put on an apron and some gloves and felt the shower until the temperature was right by asking her for confirmation.

‘Feel the water.’

She nodded her understanding.

She sat in the shower chair and obeyed my gentle commands. As I washed the dried matter off her paper-thin skin, I thought I’d feel revolted, but I didn’t. My only thoughts were on helping in any way I could. When she was fully clean, I asked her to stand so I could wash her bottom. The moment she stood, my lungs and stomach froze. Her womb and bowel appeared to be falling out. I’d never seen anything so red and swollen in my life and it made me clench my legs, as though whatever it was belonged to me.

I couldn’t understand how she could even pee from it. How did it not hurt? Perhaps she’d had it for a long time. She wasn’t reacting to it. Pity swamped my heart, and tears sprang into my eyes. I gently rinsed it with the shower-head until it was clean, not daring to wipe it.

Once clean, I wrapped her in a fluffy towel and dried the floor so she wouldn’t slip.

‘I’m going to your room to get you a change of clothes.’ She nodded to tell me
she understood. I searched the pictures on the doors until I found her face. Bed ten, Beryl
Harding. Ex -Seamstress and mother to eight children. Her bed was soiled and so was the carpet, but I would deal with that later. I picked up a pad and found some lavender body lotion and opened the lid and sniffed it before taking out a fresh nighty from her drawer. The smell of lavender. I hoped that applying it to Beryl would make her feel nice. I took her the dressing gown that was hanging on the door and rushed back to her.

She was waiting patiently, still sitting on the shower chair. With a huge gummy smile on her face when she saw me.

‘Your name’s Beryl,’ I said after drying her some more and applying the cream.

‘Beryl,’ she copied with a nod, lifting her arms up so I had easier access to areas where she wanted the lotion.

‘My name is Alice,’ I told her as I helped her put the nighty on, and she copied my name too. Once she was dressed, I took her to the bedroom and asked her to sit down while I cleaned up. I found the correct linen bag, stripped away the dirty, put on the new, and cleaned the carpet the best I could with the cleaning materials I could find. I couldn’t find the ones we were taught to use. Beryl watched me work, drinking the Horlicks I made her, looking fresh and comfortable now she was clean. I made her bed as well as I could. Considering I never even made my own, I felt I did an alright job.

‘Would you like me to help you get back into bed?’ Beryl nodded. Her pale eyes reminded me of a reptile’s, the way they specked. Pinned, lost and vacant.

I tucked her into the sheets and couldn’t help but stroke her freshly washed hair, so it wasn’t in her eyes. It likely needed to have rollers and a blow dry based on how it looked before, but I didn’t know if that was part of my job and made a mental note to ask Mandy. I stood tall, realising I’d overstepped a professional boundary by touching her hair like that, and gave her thin hand a gentle squeeze.

‘Well, goodnight then. Call me again if you need anything.’ I handed her the call bell.

Before moving away, she squeezed my hand back. ‘Thank you, Mummy.’

I froze, knowing the way I’d usually act in this situation would be mocking. Surely, she knew I wasn’t her mother, but it was only with time and training that I understood. Her disease hindered her ability to find the word for nurse. I looked into her eyes, seeing hollowness and fading life, and smiled.

‘You’re welcome, Beryl.’

She closed her eyes, looking peaceful. And in that moment I knew I had given this lady a temporary respite. After finishing the checks, I got back, but Mandy was snoring. I sat down at the table in the main room and looked out of the window, watching the trees sway with the wind and the sound of the conker tree tickling the glass. I heard a buzzing that used to fill me with dread. Usually, when I heard it, I’d scream to mum. ‘There’s a moth in my room!’ And force her to get it out. They repulsed me.

Listening for its whereabouts, I realised it was trapped inside the heavy curtain, and, cupping it in my hands, gently opening the window with my elbow, I immediately felt the coolness from the wind on my cheeks and heard its high-pitched howl. A rain stroked my heated skin. I lifted my head up, letting it patter against my face, and released the moth. Its wings spread out against the cocoon of my
hands before it took flight. Heading towards the nearest place that gives light.