I Cleaned an Elderly Woman’s House for 26 Years, but After Her Funeral, Her Son Fired Me and Handed Me $300

So I’d sit.

And we’d talk.

About everything. The weather. Her boys. My Alfreda. The preacher at First Presbyterian, who she said couldn’t preach his way out of a paper sack. The price of eggs. The president. The Titans.

For twenty-six years.

Every Friday.

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She was ninety-four when she passed. Sharp as a tack till the last week. She did the crossword in the Columbia Daily Herald every morning in ink.

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Mrs. Lockridge had three boys.

Not one of them lived closer than Nashville.

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Carlton was the oldest. Sixty-eight. A retired banker in Brentwood. A quiet man. Gray suit. Gray hair. He called his mama every Sunday afternoon at three o’clock. You could set a clock by it.

Thurston was the middle one. Sixty-five. A real estate developer. He builds subdivisions. Big ones. The kind with names like The Reserve at Copper Creek. He drove a Range Rover. He wore boots that had never seen a cow pasture.

Bertram was the youngest. Sixty-one. He’d been a lot of things. A car dealer. A restaurant owner. A man who sold something on the internet. He’d been married three times. He came around when he needed money.

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Thurston and Bertram only came when they wanted something.

Christmas. Easter, sometimes. Her birthday, if they remembered.

They’d sit in her front parlor for an hour. Drinking her coffee. Talking about property values. Looking out the window at the pasture like they were measuring it.

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Last Christmas, Thurston came through the kitchen while I was washing the turkey platter.

He leaned on the counter.

“Elnora,” he said. “You know my house in town? On West Seventh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“My cleaning lady quit,” he said. “I need somebody Tuesdays and Saturdays. Mother pays you anyway. What’s the difference?”

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I didn’t know what to say.

I was standing there with my hands in the dishwater.

Mother pays you anyway. What’s the difference.

Like I was a lawnmower she was letting him borrow.

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Mrs. Lockridge heard him.

She was in the next room. The sitting room. In her chair by the fire. With her afghan over her knees.

She didn’t say a word to him.

But I saw her face through the doorway.

I’d known that face for sixty-some years. Since I was a baby on that porch.

It went very still.

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That Friday, over coffee, she asked me a strange question.

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We were at the oak table. She’d made biscuits. Buttermilk. With sorghum.

She set her cup down.

“Elnora,” she said. “What’s your middle name? I want to get it right.”

I looked at her.

“Ruthanne,” I said. “Why?”

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“Ruthanne,” she said. “R-U-T-H-A-N-N-E. One word?”

“One word.”

“After who?”

“My mama’s mama,” I said. “Ruth Anne Whitsett. Mama ran it together when she named me. She said it sounded prettier.”

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Mrs. Lockridge nodded slowly.

She pulled a paper napkin out of the holder on the table.

She took a pen out of her housecoat pocket.

And she wrote it down.

Elnora Ruthanne Whitsett.

She looked at it for a long time.

Then she folded the napkin in half and put it in her pocket.

“No reason, honey,” she said.

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She went back to her biscuit.

I didn’t think about it again.

Not until the courthouse.

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She passed in her sleep in September.

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The night nurse found her. A woman from the home health agency named Patrice. She called Carlton at five in the morning. Carlton called me at five-thirty.

“Elnora,” he said. “Mother’s gone.”

His voice was very quiet.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Carlton.”

“I know you are,” he said. “You were with her more than any of us.”

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The funeral was at First Presbyterian on West Seventh. Three days later.

The church was full. Mrs. Lockridge had been in Maury County her whole life. Garden club. Altar guild. The hospital auxiliary for fifty years.

I sat in the back.

Nobody asked me to sit anywhere else.

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Afterward, I helped the neighbor ladies lay out the food. At the farmhouse. In the dining room. Ham. Fried chicken. Deviled eggs. Green bean casserole. Six kinds of pound cake.

People came and went all afternoon.

I washed every dish in her kitchen myself.

Every plate. Every glass. Every fork. Every one of her good china cups with the little blue flowers. I dried them with her flour-sack towels and put them back in the cabinet exactly where she kept them.

It took me until nine o’clock at night.

Thurston and Bertram sat in the front parlor with a bottle of Mr. Walter’s bourbon. Laughing.

Carlton stood out on the porch alone. Looking at the pasture.