When I Needed Help, Pt. 2

Agnes arrived the very day we struck our deal, after stopping at home for her pajamas, toothbrush and the like. She wanted to see me in action before accepting my stubborn assertion that I didn’t need ‘round-the-clock help. She shopped. She brought me scrambled eggs and buttered toast on a tray in bed. I felt like a sick little girl with a doting mother. She slept, with the door open so she could hear me, on the couch in the TV room, her head wrapped in a turban from her native Ghana to protect the perfectly coiffed hair I wouldn’t even notice until the next day. I slept, and woke, secure — and free of guilt for being a burden to anyone. I understood two things for the first time: why it is so hard to admit being needy enough for paid help, and why it is a happier solution than either friends or family for those who can afford it or who qualify for subsidized home care. Early on that first day, Agnes asked how I’d like her to address me. “Jane, of course,’’ I said. The question seemed so oddly “Upstairs, Downstairs’’ until I remembered that my mother’s aide always called her Mrs. Gross. Later Lily, the aide, told me she knew from the moment she walked into my mother’s room that this was a woman who liked the distance and formality of the honorific. What my mother hated most of all, common among the West Indian aides, was being called “Mommy.’’ No matter how lovingly the sobriquet was used, she found it patronizing. I told Agnes the story, and she said she was taught early on to ask every client, as each has a different comfort zone. The second day, Agnes, off from her regular job, stayed with me until dinnertime. We had gradually decided, together, that I needed help with specific things, not constant minding. I was not to bend from the waist for a few more days. I was not to shower. I promised, grudgingly. She gave me a look that said, “I’ll know even if I’m not here.’’ For dinner, Agnes reheated matzoh ball soup I’d bought before the surgery — “Jewish penicillin” in my childhood home, and most others like it. Before leaving, she described the spicy cuisine of her homeland. In a few days, she would bring me some to try, she said, but not quite yet. And so it went for days until my next medical check-up. Each afternoon, along with shopping and acceding to my pleas for more scrambled eggs for dinner (not hearty enough for post surgical healing, in Agnes’s view), we talked. I learned about the 10 dialects in Ghana, which ones Agnes spoke, and the French that been part of every schoolchild’s education. I learned about her two grown daughters, her seven siblings, her deceased parents, her decision to migrate to America, her work here. She was smart and funny. She took care of me without my asking. Agnes shook her finger at me when I said I wanted to try and work. I was a limp mess, doing little but moving from bed to couch; blankets covered the windows until the sun went down, as my eyes still were dilated and easily strained. I was unable to even read or watch TV, but Agnes’s daily visits relieved the loneliness. When next I went to the city to see the surgeons, Agnes drove. I didn’t feel diminished to be just like the other old people in the waiting room with their aides; I was grateful not to be there alone. The doctors declared Eye No. 1 a thorough success, albeit with a slow recovery ahead and then an operation on Eye No. 2 in six to eight weeks. Afterward, Agnes and I met one of my friends for lunch at an Upper East Side restaurant. She urged a hamburger on me, and a glass of chocolate milk. She suggested I get a stuffed baked potato and wilted spinach to take out for dinner and stop next door at a popular cupcake emporium. My friend had another potential client for her, but mostly, as an avid traveler, wanted to know all the best places to go in Ghana. We talked and laughed like any other New York City ladies who lunch. When we got the car at the garage, the attendant asked Agnes for her phone number. I wasn’t eavesdropping, honest, just slack-jawed. She politely brushed him off. “That never happens to me,” I told her. “You just need some meat on your bones,’’ she said. Agnes has already arranged to have the day off from her hospital job later this month when I have my next doctor’s appointment. She has suggested we eat at the same restaurant afterward, just the two of us, and repeat our take-out order. I wondered aloud if the same attendant will park the car. We laughed ourselves silly. She’s had it with men, she said, except the ones who welcome a meal and movie from time to time. She does not want to fetch and carry for someone 24/7. She does enough of that already. Our routine continues. Agnes phones from work several times a day to be sure I’m OK. She arrives around 4 p.m., always calling when she leaves work and again as she’s rounding my corner. Over the holiday weekend, she cooked me spicy chicken and rice at her home and brought it here, along with her younger daughter, so we could meet. When I wrote Agnes a check for the week — $20 an hour, up from $17 because she has so eased the way for me and because I know this is only temporary —- she said that visit was out of friendship, not part of the job. Indeed, she has reassured me that once I have a date for the second surgery, she intends to clear the decks and be here with me. Today, the kitchen loaded with leftovers, I felt less needy and wanted her to have an evening dining and watching TV with her daughter. She is grudgingly taking a day off. I miss her.