Chapter 16
Other than the time at the assisted living home, this had ended up being the most discouraging day Awsty had had in a long time. And, it had been compounded by the shoes she had worn job-hunting. She had managed to twist her ankle (hadn’t she already done that?) when she turned quickly to get out of the way of the sprinkler system turning on in front of Grammy’s apartment. Returning from a lousy day, twisting her lousy ankle in those lousy shoes. It wasn’t enough that not one single place gave her application any consideration, she had even looked back through the window of a fast food establishment she’d just filled out the application for, to see the manager crumple her application and throw it in one of the interior trash cans. Why did he do that?! She wasn’t lazy. She’d work hard. She never got sick, well, not real often, so she wouldn’t take sick days. It’s just not fair! She was as good as anyone already working there!
From the moment she twisted her ankle that day, caused by the dastardly sprinkler system, Awsty began seriously limping. But, even the pain that already tweaked at her ankle didn’t keep her from forgetting to put back on the dog collar and “stretched-skin” earring before entering the apartment. Even though Grammy didn’t say a word about her appearance, Awsty knew it rankled her. And, since that was the only power Awsty held over her grandmother, she took advantage of it. She was grateful for any help Grammy gave her, but she wasn’t going to let Grammy run her life. She had basically raised herself, and other than a place to stay temporarily, she could take care of herself. As soon as she could find work, she was definitely outta there!
The very moment she closed the apartment door behind her, Awsty unlaced the knee-high lace up boots, and kicked them off. Really kicked them off! One landed halfway across the living room, and the other flew in a rather odd angle, landing on one of Grammy’s sofa pillows. Awsty gasped as she limped across the room to reclaim it, when she saw that the shoe had left what was going to be a permanent grass stain on the pillow’s adorned side. She was frustrated when she saw the damage, and balling her hands into fists, she shook them while growling out her displeasure. Grammy’s gonna be so mad! I didn’t mean to do it, but that won’t make any difference. She’ll still be ticked off. She’ll probably make me buy her a new pillow! Oh, I hate this! Why can’t I catch a break?!
She didn’t know where Grammy was right then, but Awsty needed a hot bath, some kind of pain medication, and bed.
By five-thirty-three p.m., Awsty had scrubbed herself spotless from head to toe in a hot bath, thrown on a long secondhand t-shirt, located and taken some aspirin from the bathroom medicine cabinet, and crawled into bed, rendered unconscious within fifteen seconds flat.
The note she left on the kitchen table before stumbling to her bed said, Grammy, awful day job-hunting. Hurt ankle. Need sleep. Talk in the morning. Awsty. She had actually written the word Love before her name, but was in such a foul mood that Grammy hadn’t been home to show sympathy and take care of her when she’d arrived, that she scribbled out the word Love, and replaced it with Frustrated.
*****
When Tuesday morning arrived bright and early, Awsty was wide awake enough to have continued the job-hunt, if it hadn’t been for the fact that her ankle was throbbing so furiously from Monday’s incident involving her run-in with the overzealous sprinkler system. She’d lain awake most of the night, and as stupid as it was, in her current pain Awsty felt like the sprinkler had hurt her on purpose. It had it out for her!
Her ankle had ached so badly all night that she couldn’t stand the pressure of the blanket on her foot, so she’d had her foot and leg up to her knee uncovered all night. She didn’t know which had been more uncomfortable, repeatedly waking up from the ankle throbbing or her leg being cold all night.
When Awsty didn’t surface from her room by nine a.m., Grammy knocked on her door.
Awsty growled for her to come in.
Grammy opened the door to enter, but when she saw Awsty’s exposed foot and ankle, she bolted in and dove straight to the injured limb.
“Awsty, Sweetheart, what in the world happened ta yer poor foot?! When yer note said ya’d hurt yer ankle, I never dreamed ya meant this bad! I’m gonna go get the ice pack. Ya shoulda had the ice pack on all night ta take down the swelling. Ya don’t think ya’ve broken it, do ya?! I’ll be right back.” And with those thoughts, Grammy exited the room, reappearing shortly with a filled ice pack, two pain capsules, and a glass of orange juice. She instructed Awsty to take the pain capsules first. While Awsty sipped at the orange juice, Grammy applied the ice pack. Unfortunately, Awsty’s ankle was swollen so large that the ice pack didn’t fit all the way around, and slid off twice in just a couple of minutes.
“I think maybe it’ll stay on better if I tie it on your ankle with a handkerchief.” Disappearing just long enough to find one in one of her own bedroom drawers, Grammy returned and secured the ice pack in place. However, when Grammy tied the hankie in a knot around her ankle, it pinched Awsty’s ankle bone so much that she winced in pain. Grammy removed the handkerchief, but of course, the ice pack slid off when she did.
“Ok, doesn’t look like that’s gonna work. I think maybe I kin just wrap a bath towel ‘round it several times. That’ll keep the ice pack in place.” So she did, and it did.
“Thanks, Grammy,” Awsty said in a soft, pained voice.
“Well, it looks to me, kiddo, like yer not gonna be doin’ any job-huntin’ today. Ya need ta stay either in bed or on the livin’ room sofa today, keep yer leg up, and the ice pack on. We’ll see how it’s doin’ tomorra.
“Ok, let’s see… ya need some breakfast in yer stomach. What d’ya want? I can make ya some oatmeal, or eggs, or…”
“Grammy, what are the chances you’d make me some pancakes? You know those ones you used to make me when I was little. You called them ‘Happy Face Pancakes.’ You made them using bananas. Could I have some of those?”
“Sweetheart, I think Happy Face Pancakes are exactly the ‘comfert food’ fer ya today. Why dontcha just lay there and rest and I’ll go make ‘em. I might even sit in here with ya and eat some myself, if it’s ok. And, if ya feel like it, ya can tell me all about yesterday.”
*****
Grammy almost choked on her first bite of pancake. She coughed a couple of times, then finally swallowed the bite, and put her plate down in her lap, simply staring at Awsty. Her mouth was agape, and her eyes were as round as half dollar coins.
“What?” Awsty asked. Anxiety was rising up within her at the look on Grammy’s face.
When Grammy regained what little composure she had, she pointed at Awsty’s ear and continued to look at it. She only blinked when her eyes got watery, and even then she returned her gaze to the same spot.
“What?!” Awsty again asked, this time with a rising panic.
“Yer ear. I thought you’d stretched yer ear and had a silver thing punched in it? It wasn’t yer ear… yer ear’s reg’lar… I mean, it’s like everybody else’s.”
Awsty reached up and grabbed the “miraculously” normal ear. Oh, she’d forgotten to put her earring back in after she’d bathed. Shoot! She was hoping to play that along for a while yet. Maybe another week or two. There was something inside her that liked the shock registered in people’s faces when they saw it.
“Yeah,” Awsty said sheepishly, “it looked real, though, didn’t it. You should see the looks people give me when they see it for the first time. I knew I’d have to take it out pretty soon, though. I think it’s a little bit infected. It itches.”
“It looks a little red. Let me give you a cotton ball with some alcohol on it. Maybe we can keep it from gettin’ any worse.” When Grammy returned from the bathroom with a damp cotton ball, rather than handing it to Awsty, she dabbed the offending ear herself.
“Poor baby. This should help, though.”
Now that Grammy realized that Awsty’s ear was apparently like everyone else’s, she squinted at Awsty’s face as she returned to her seat. Someth
ing else was different, but she couldn’t figure out what it was. Her face was clean and bore no white makeup, and of course, she didn’t have that black eyeshadow stuff smeared all over her eye lids. But, even as fresh as her face looked, something else was different. What was it?!
“You didn’t say anything about the tear drops,” Awsty grinned, then replaced the look with a wince, indicating that the overriding concern was the pain in her ankle.
“That’s it! The tear drops! I thought they was tattoos on yer face. That’s it! How’d ya get those off? How’d ya get them on, fer that matter? Did ya draw ‘em on? Or paint ‘em on? Ya fooled me twice. I thought they was real too!” Grammy actually giggled a bit. Partly from the fact that Awsty seemed so pleased that she’d been able to fool Grammy. But, mostly because she was almost delirious with joy that without any makeup at all, this young girl, no… woman looked untainted by the world. Looking at her as she was today, she realized Awsty was truly lovely. She looked far too underweight, and her hair was horrible, but really, she was very pretty. If she could gain a little weight, change the color of her hair back to something believable, and somehow lose the worldly look about her eyes, she would be quite stunning.
Chapter 17
Wednesday and Thursday bore no better for Awsty’s ankle. She’d stayed in bed for three days, unable to put much pressure on the offending body part when she rose to go to the bathroom. She was beginning to feel quite discouraged. She had lost three days of job-hunting. Was she ever going to be out on her own?!
Thursday afternoon, when Grammy was out helping one of her neighbors with chores, she thought Grammy mentioned laundry or some such, Awsty decided to get up and try on her lace up platforms. She knew she’d need to be able to wear them soon, in order to continue her work search.
Rising from her bed, Awsty took a half dozen steps to her shoes, which were now in the closet, thanks to Grammy. Rather than walking back to the bed so that she could sit on its edge, Awsty plopped herself right there on the floor to put them on. The swelling was almost completely gone, but that didn’t comfort her much. There was no way on this earth that she would be able to lace them up. They hurt Awsty’s ankle even before lacing them, so she knew it was futile. It would be quite some time before Awsty would ever be able to wear them again.
After removing the boots, traversing across the room to her bed, she sat down on its edge. She sank quickly into a deep despair. Those shoes were the only ones she had. She used to have a worn out old pair of Nikes she’d found in a dumpster, but the day came when the stitching was frayed and had come mostly out of them, and the final assault was when she slipped in them on some slimy undefinable ooze in an alley. She had fallen on her back side right there, and the soles of the shoes decided at that moment to give up the ghost. There she sat in dirty stocking feet, with a pair of dead Nikes as her only company. With a disgusted grunt, she had thrown them into the nearest garbage dumpster, returned to the use of her tall lace-up platforms, and those are what she’d been wearing since that day. What was she going to do now? She didn’t need to look in her wallet to see what money it held. She already knew! None! Not one single penny. Had she still been living on the streets, she would either beg or steal, but not much chance of that happening here. What was she going to do?!
*****
Grammy loved this granddaughter of hers and knew from the one backpack that she had, that Awsty was in real straights financially. Grammy had not really thoroughly perused Awsty’s backpack on Monday when Awsty was job-hunting. She did more of a once-over scan with the zipper open.
What Grammy had not shared with Awsty before leaving the apartment was that she was going to do something to help her. She had to!
Entering the door of the neighbor she planned to help with laundry, she unfolded her plan to help Awsty. She explained in no uncertain terms that her granddaughter desperately needed some help if she was going to have a decent enough wardrobe to secure a job. When Grammy asked if she could help with laundry, cooking and any other chores for pay, this neighbor and two others gave Grammy housecleaning and errand-running assignments for a month. Although the neighbors couldn’t offer an abundance in pay, the amount they offered her would still pocket her a nice little sum of money. At each apartment, she asked one further favor. She wanted to know if the neighbor would pay her at least half the agreed upon amount in advance, so that she could help Awsty to buy some clothing right away. Grammy was loved in this apartment building. She had come to almost every tenants’ aid so many times that they had stopped counting, and simply took Grammy’s word for the financial need she expressed. They accepted the grace Grammy continually showed them, and were thrilled that they finally had the opportunity to return some in return.
When, however, she got to Sheria’s apartment, Monica, Sheria’s daughter, answered the door bell’s ring. She loved Grammy, and as soon as she opened enough to see who it was, she threw open the door and engulfed Grammy in her arms. Grammy couldn’t help but look at those little cocoa brown arms as they enthusiastically closed around her middle.
“Hi, there, Sweet Stuff. How’re ya doin’ today? I don’t get to see ya near enough. How’s school? Is that boy still botherin’ ya or have ya figured some way to get him ta stop? And, ya got new extensions while I wasn’t lookin’. How cute are you?!”
“Hi, Grammy.” She always cracked up that Monica called her Grammy just like Awsty always had. But, the truth was, she loved it.
“Well, answer my questions. The boy? What’s up with him?”
“I did just what you told me to. Each time he’d say something funny about me or my hair, I’d laugh too. And, in between times, I would tell him that he had such a funny sense of humor. I guess when he realized I wasn’t gonna get mad or tell on him, it wasn’t fun anymore. And, after a couple of weeks, he even started asking me to eat lunch with him. Weird, huh?!
“Oh, and now he calls hisself my ‘protector’. Thank you for helping me with that, Grammy.”
“Fantastic!” Grammy squeezed Monica one last time, then let her go.
“Listen, Sweetie, I need ta talk ta yer mom. Is she here?”
“Yeah. She just finished doing Moddy’s hair. Do you know Moddy? Anyway, she’ll be out here as soon as she sweeps up the hair from the floor in her ‘hair room.’” Grammy knew that Sheria was a licensed cosmetologist who chose to work at home to save gas-, wardrobe-, and babysitting money. She needed every penny she made to support her little girl. Being a single mom was no easy task.
Entering the living room with broom and dust pan, she said, “Well, hello there, stranger. Give me a second to throw this out the back into the garbage can and I’ll be right with ya.”
A scant minute later, Sheria, Monica, and Grammy were sitting on the sofa.
“Sheria, I wanted ta ask a favor of ya, but it maybe somethin’ ya can’t help me with. Please let me know if it’s impossible.”
“‘K, ask.”
In the next 15 minutes, Grammy yet again shared her burden and plea to help Awsty get the funds to buy a work wardrobe. Even before she finished, Sheria was getting that I-can’t-help-you-with-any-money look. Before she actually said the words, though, she turned to Monica and lovingly told her to go on two doors over to a friend’s house and play with the little girl.
When the front door closed behind Monica’s retreating back, she turned to Grammy.
“You know me well enough to know that if I had any spare money at all, I would gladly share it with you. But, I just don’t. I am so…” But, before the words were even fully out of her mouth, Sheria said, “Wait a minute… Did you say that she has some seriously hideous hair that definitely needed help?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty bad.”
“I think I have enough leftover dye to do one more coloring on a customer. Only it’s auburn. Didn’t you say her hair is black?”
“Yeah, but her real color must be somewhere ‘tween medium and dark brown, maybe auburn.
“Wait a minute,” con
tinued Grammy, “let me think this through. Awsty’s birthday is still a long way’s away, but I’ve missed her last three.” Pause. “What if I told her we’re gonna give her a Twenty-First Birthday Makeover?”
Sheria got a huge grin on her face. “We can tell her you’re trying to make up for not being with her these last three birthdays by giving her a blowout twenty-first makeover party. I can do her hair, I’ll call my friend, Gemma. She’s a nail technician who owes me one. I’ll get her to do a mani- pedi- on her, and Monica gives the best back and neck massages. Seriously, my girl’s amazing. She can do that! You can come just sit and talk with us while all of it’s goin’ on.”
“Oh,” jumped in Grammy, “I’ll make a birthday cake. Can I keep it here until then? And, I’ll bring some ice cream.
“Sheria, I just love you! Yer one of the dearest people I know! Thank ya for lovin’ me enough to do this fer me!”
“Girl, this don’t even make a dent in comparison to all the times you’ve come through for me!”
*****
In the midst of his studies, Mason had an intrusive picture of Awsty dancing through his head while he was trying to absorb a rather difficult medical procedure in his textbook. It wasn’t a positive mental impression of her. In fact, he was scrunching up his face when he realized it was her in his head. But, long ago, he had learned that when someone is brought to your mind, you pray for them. No ifs, ands, or buts. Just pray.
Closing his textbook momentarily, he bowed his head. Huh… I’m not sure what to pray for when it comes to her. Salvation? Of course. But, more than that. She looked as if she’d had a hard life. She looked emotionally battered and deeply scarred.
“Jesus, I really need to be studying. I don’t want to waste any time. So I’m going to ask You to direct my prayer in the direction You want it to take.
“Awsty needs You… desperately. Lord, let those around her show her unconditional love, patience while waiting for You to do Your Work in her, and… well, just show her Your Love.
“Please bring people in her life that will teach her Your Word, and make Your salvation plan a reality within her heart.