My elderly mother’s new caregiver seemed lovely, until I noticed Mom had started flinching every time the woman reached past her.
At first I told myself it was just age. Mom startled easier these days. But then little things started piling up.
Her reading glasses disappeared for three days and turned up in the bathroom trash. She stopped wearing the pink cardigan she’d loved for years because it was suddenly “too much trouble.” Half the time the caregiver answered questions for her before Mom could even open her mouth.
Last Sunday I brought banana pudding from the diner Mom liked in Evansville. Usually she’d eat half before dinner.
This time she barely touched it because her hands kept shaking against the spoon.
The caregiver laughed softly and said, “She’s gotten clumsy lately.”
Then Mom spilled some on her pants and apologized so fast it barely sounded like her voice.
“Honey, why are you apologizing to her?”
Nobody answered me.
The caregiver stood up quick and reached for the napkins. Mom jerked backward so hard her chair bumped the wall.
That’s when I saw the bruise under the edge of her sleeve.
Yellow around the outside. Fresh purple in the middle.
I waited until the caregiver went into the kitchen for coffee, then slid my hand gently under Mom’s arm to pull the sleeve back a little more.
There were fingerprints.
Not one bruise.
Several.
Old ones fading underneath newer ones.
Mom kept staring toward the kitchen doorway while I looked at them.
Then very quietly she whispered, “Please don’t make her mad before bedtime.”
And right as she said it, I heard the caregiver stop moving in the kitchen behind us.