Phyllis

I saw her as soon as we walked into Walmart. She was driving a disabled cart out of the store wearing a long flowery dress. Against the usual drab background, she looked like a colorful rainbow gliding past us on a magical motorized unicorn. I yelled at her across the large hall entrance ,“Oh my gosh! You look beautiful!” Either deep in concentration or trying to ignore the crazy lady shouting at her, she silently passed by leaving me standing there gazing longingly at the perfect shot moving further and further away. My daughter, Dotti, laughed hard at my cheery outburst, that was so publicly ignored, but I knew there was a chance we could see her again, we just had to hurry.

This was the second time we were at Walmart that day. Before this morning Dots had never been there so as we walked in I whispered to her,

“ there are a lot of weird people in here,'“ to which she whispered back,

“ you’re weird too!”

We had gone there earlier to get some dish detergent when Dots spotted a Best Friends necklace she wanted to buy, the pink half of the heart for me while she kept the blue half. Trying to teach Dots about the value of money I was reluctant to buy it for her. I wanted her to think about whether she really needed it if she had to buy it with her own money. So here we were again with a fistful of crumpled one-dollar bills from her owl piggy bank. She was sure she wanted it. Standing there as she looked at the necklaces I stashed this moment in the tear-soaked memory section of my mind, where our kids are small, a reminder when she goes through the teenage year, that it was once ok for her to be openly best friends with her mom. .

As we rounded the corner out of the store I saw our rainbow again! Life moves so much slower when you are disabled. She was parked against a wall of windows in between two other disabled carts, sunlight pouring in. Her name was Phyllis, she was waiting there for her daughter Tammy to put the bags in their car. She smiled bashfully when I told her how beautiful she looked in her flowery dress. Dotti uninterested ran off to play with an orange gumball 25 cents had bought her from the machine.  Phyllis was 80 years old and had arthritis. Her husband had died 4 years ago, one week after that she stopped being able to walk without help. Her doctor said it was from the stress of him dying. Before the death of her husband her son had died and now recently her sister, who had been living in Virginia where Phyllis was originally from, had also died.  The only living relative in her life was her daughter Tammy. She smiled but her eyes were heavy. Tammy appeared as we were talking, we helped Phyllis stand up who by now had put on a warm cardigan. As I took the photo she hoped aloud it wouldn’t be appearing in a magazine!

By the time we got in the car, Dotti was chewing the giant orange gumball she had been throwing around the store. She said it tasted odd and spat it out before complaining of a headache and falling asleep. That night with our new matching best friend necklaces on I stroked Dots hair while she threw up orange bile all over the bathroom floor.