Pearl Beige

Jackie wiped the tears from her eyes once more, then remembered what the day cook had said about running onions under cold water. She turned on the faucet, threw the onion in the sink, and reached for what seemed to be the hundredth potato she'd peeled that evening. Jackie hated cooking almost as much as she hated her job.

When she had applied as a housekeeper at the Rose Garden Group Home six months ago, she didn't even know what a group home was--she thought it was another name for a nursing home. She had never met a retarded person before that day, except for the ones she had passed in the hall in grade school. Back then, everyone called them "opps" because they attended the special opportunity class. Her peers would stare, giggle, and make fun of them as they passed by; Jackie did the same just to fit in.

When Jackie had walked into Rose Garden to apply for the job, a nice young man had greeted her and led her to the personnel manager. Only later did she learn that the man lived there and was a retard. His name was Marvin. She refused to refer to him as "developmentally disabled" which was the politically acceptable term. "Developmentally disabled how?" she'd argue with her co-workers. "Disabled of mind, disabled of body? At least when I say retarded, most people know what I'm talking about." Jackie hated a lot of things about her job, but not the retards. They were her friends.

Marvin was the sheriff of Rose Garden. He was so proud of the plastic badge he wore above the left pocket of his faded flannel shirt. She'd sit with him in the community room, he'd light up his pipe and she her cigarette, and they'd share stories of arrests and goings-on around the outskirts of town. That was before they took away Marvin's right to smoke.

"Who you going to arrest next, Marvin?" Jackie would ask.

"That old scoundrel on the other side of the bush" he'd drawl as he pointed to the couch in the far dark corner of the room. Then he'd grab his tobacco pouch, swing his pipe, and tell Jackie once again how he hadn't been retarded until he got hit by a train. Jackie wasn't sure the story was true, but it was believable because he related it the same way every time. She felt sorry for Marvin because somewhere, back in the deep recesses of his mind, she knew he remembered being unretarded.

Marvin was what the home called mildly retarded, so most of what he said Jackie took seriously. Her next favorite resident, Cleo, was forty years old and both profoundly retarded and profoundly overweight. Jackie didn't feel sorry for Cleo for being retarded because Cleo didn't have a clue. She felt sorry for her because the Rose Garden forbade her to eat what she wanted to eat, and eating was Cleo's main reason for living.

Jackie worked the night shift, so, after everyone went to bed, she'd do the cooking, cleaning, and bed checks. She didn't glance at the clock anymore to see how much time she had left on her shift. When Cleo wandered into the kitchen for food, it was a solid guarantee that the clock read between two and four a.m.

Jackie was once ordered by her supervisor to send Cleo back to bed if this were to happen. Jackie had nodded, agreed, and ignored. The day cooks fixed the residents hamburger soup without draining the grease, fixed mashed potatoes drowning in gravy, and let them drink Kool-Aid with real sugar. Letting Cleo fix a late night snack of a few pieces of toast with butter was no less a crime as far as Jackie could see. So when Cleo walked into the kitchen and grabbed the loaf of bread, Jackie turned her back and went on dicing onions, peeling potatoes, wiping the tears from her eyes, and smiling at the immense pleasure she imagined was on Cleo's face as she bit into that wonderful, forbidden toast.

What Jackie really disliked about her job wasn't Marvin or Cleo. Nor was it cooking or wiping butts or changing the pads on the women residents who were menstruating. What she hated about it was Cheryl Olson, her co-worker.

Cheryl came to work most nights dressed in a housecoat and pink rollers in her hair. She lived two blocks from the group home in one of the subsidized housing units, and Jackie imagined she rolled out of bed and went straight to work without once glancing in the mirror to see if she was dressed for the part. Her six kids ranged from five to eighteen years old. The younger ones were forever throwing rocks at the residents of Rose Garden and downing birds with their slingshots. When Jackie had picked up a dead robin and asked Cheryl what she was going to do about it, Cheryl shrugged. "It's just a stage they're going through," she replied. "They're just kids." So are they, Jackie had thought, as she glanced up at the nest of motherless baby robins.

Cheryl's assigned duties at Rose Garden were similar to Jackie’s: cooking, cleaning, putting the residents to bed, and answering to their late night toileting and other needs. However, Cheryl loved to sew, and so, therefore, that is all Cheryl did. Every night, she would go into what used to be the back office but now housed only a broken copy machine, sewing supplies, and endless boxes of clothes that needed mending. She would drag out the retard’s clothes and make a big deal out of the fact that she had her own sewing supplies because the home didn't supply pearl beige thread or a number nine needle.

Their shift lasted from 11 p.m to 6 a.m., and during that time, Cheryl admired her thread and managed to sew up a seam on one pair of jeans, while Jackie changed five maxi-pads, soaked four pair of bloody panties, sent Cleo back to bed after her nightly toast binge, and checked on Marvin who had trouble sleeping ever since he was forced to give up his pipe. She then rushed another retard, Jamie, back down to his room, turned on his television to a late night talk show, led him to bed, and told him that was a more comfortable place to masturbate than the hallway. Jamie didn't quite understand what she was saying, but he smiled, laid down, and continued his nightly ritual.

When all the bed checks were done, Jackie went back to the kitchen, fished the onion out of the cold water, finished dicing and peeling, blending and seasoning, and set the large bowl of potato salad in the refrigerator. She laid the sharp paring knife in the sink, too tired to clean it, went to the community living room, and sank down on the couch. Her shift would end in two hours; she had to stay awake until then. She turned on the television just in time to catch Jimmy Swaggert and his crying jag. She smiled, amused, listened distantly to his pleas for money, and dozed off.

* * *

Jackie hated looking in her mailbox at the beginning of each shift; it always contained stupid stuff like Mission Statements, improved 401-K Plans, monthly newsletters that extolled teamwork and the wonderful achievements of the Board, and pep notes addressing all the peons like her to work harder. She laid all that aside and picked up a pink slip of paper--a two week notice.

In the exit meeting that afternoon, Cheryl explained to the supervisor how Jackie had fallen asleep on the job, how Jackie often slept on the job, while she, Cheryl, worked diligently at the sewing machine to make sure the residents (not retards, she stressed) had good clothing to wear, and how she always stayed awake because the residents were the most important part of her job.

* * *

Jackie picked up the sharp paring knife from the sink, glanced at the red thread entangled on its blade, and turned on the cold water. The thread turned to pink and then to pearl beige as the red swirled down the drain. She dropped the knife and wandered out into the community room. Marvin was there--good, sweet, gentle Marvin. She sat.

"Marvin, you're the sheriff, right?"

"Yep," he said proudly.

"If you are the sheriff, then you should be able to decide who can smoke and where, right?"

Marvin's eyes lit up. He pulled the pouch full of stale tobacco from his left pocket and stuffed the pipe that had sat empty since the no-smoking rule had been enforced. He lit a match, put it to the tobacco, and took a slow draw; the smoke curled up and he smiled back at her. "Yep, I'm the sheriff." He pointed to his plastic badge. "You're safe while I'm around."

"That's good to know, Marvin." Jackie leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes; she started to drift off, then forced herself to stay awake. Cleo would be up for her toast soon, and if there wasn't too much cooking to do, she could finish the mending before her shift ended. Someone had to do it right.