Night Shifts at the Group Home

for Lily Mae The job was easy: I tucked them in, kicked off my shoes, listened for the floor to go quiet. Everyone slept except one: outside her door, she paced, she hummed, holding the edge of her torn nightgown. Pointing, I told her: to bed.Your bed. But she would not stay there. She was old, older than my mother: manic, caught up in gibberish, determined to sleep on my cot— At first it was just to quiet her. I could only sleep if she slept, and I needed relief from myself. That is how she became a body next to mine whether or not I wanted there to be a body. She climbed into my bed. I let her sleep hot and damp against my spine. All night she rocked, she turned, she poked her spastic elbows into my calves and slurred her broken noises in the dark. All the old fans went round in clicks those summer nights—and she rolled in bed and kicked me in the head and I was happy. No words, no tricks, I just didn't love my loneliness. My mind felt cooler with her there. Beside her, I could have been anyone. She had no word for me and not the kind of mind to keep one. And if she kicked me, some nights, just for the fun of it—who was I to disappoint my one? Sometimes I imagine I was someone she won at a fair as the wheel spun under the floating, unfaltering sun and clicked each lucky one and one until I was happily undone.