On Christmas Day, the first thing Nina Howard noticed when she arrived at her mother’s apartment building was the quiet. The walk through the parking lot from the street could feel like wading through choppy, dirty water, but this afternoon, all was still, and the air was easy, even if the smell was that of metallic, urban winter. Three fat cats lolled on the stained concrete under the wintry sun, but there was no one else around–neither her mother, nor the other residents, were sitting stiff-backed on the benches in front of the lobby, or even plodding around the mailboxes behind the ground floor windows.
Her mother always called them the residents, so Nina did too. The residents: like clinical subjects or wards of the state; the word sounded more purposeful than a mess of single men and women eligible for Social Security who washed ashore from the water of the Narrows a mile away. Springville Manor felt like the end of something, with nothing new on the other side. Everyone who lived there was over the age of fifty-five, but there was nothing assisted about the kinds of living that went on inside it. Everyone was on their own.
Nina believed that no one landed here peacefully because her own mother so clearly had not. Getting here by public transit was hard enough. Still, a home in this city at an affordable rate was cause for celebration, even if its façade and square foot allotment could never match its name. Her mother was rounding another year on the lease, and there was no offer yet of another one.
Still, her mother had wanted Nina to come out here, to celebrate “the reason for the season” and partly to see the white Christmas tree she had decorated this year, again, all by myself.
Christmas was Nina’s least favorite holiday of the year. She had not identified as a Christian since the spiritual watershed of turning seventeen propelled her to college, away from her mother’s then undeniable need and away from the charitable concern of those her mother dismissed as strangers. Though once a promise of forever transformation, her time at the elite university only lasted four years. It was not away. It was like waking from a fitful sleep, into a winter apartment without heat. Nina returned to the city, but she did not return to her mother entirely. She moved to Brooklyn instead.
Listen to me, give me, help me, me, me, me… There had been other family members, but in the end no one else held the responsibility of being Sue Howard’s only child. Over the years, what she called life pared her mother’s conversation partners to two. A decade and a half later, she had no one but Nina and the Lord.
The birth of Jesus Christ was probably as important to her mother as Nina’s own. So each Christmas Nina arrived for her mother, no matter the address, but always early in the day. On the advice of her closest friends and her longest therapist (a true professional who would never go so far as to diagnose someone she hadn’t treated) Nina made sure to have at least one engagement with friends lined up in the city, for after. This evening she would spend time with Mercy, her college roommate, with her large, ribald family at their home in Park Slope.
One kind of dread lifted from Nina as she took in how empty the building appeared. No women.
Sometimes Nina arrived to see a wheeled oxygen tank standing at attention, as the old man who belonged to it laid thin paper plates between the peeling green benches, heaped with brown and orange bits of kibble. Cats would creep forward, from the bushes and the chain link fence.
Her mother could never remember the man’s name.
The residents outside were almost always women, powdery White and dressed in gentle floral colors and sensible shoes. When she saw them, all gathered around in front like that, the hair on the back of Nina’s neck always stood up.
Before stroke shrank her body and her imagination, her mother would take Nina around as they were preparing to leave the building to get something to eat. This was how she first came to know them. Although it never once came up in conversation, Nina knew that her mother had recognized long time ago that her daughter would never stay in her apartment longer than duty dictated.
Early on, it happened the same way every time.
Her mother would hail the Women as she leaned her thin dark frame on her black metal cane.
Hi, hi.
Half a dozen snowy heads would raise in greeting.
This is my daughter. See, my daughter. Look. My daughter.
And Nina, as if impaled by delicate needles, would smile slowly, and The Women would lean in for an appraisal.
She’s so pretty, The Women would agree, speaking to themselves, the birds, and the painfully thin woman in front of them.
Nina recognized in her mother a kind of proprietary pride.
Thank you, her mother would say.
Thank you, Nina would repeat after.
And mother and daughter would turn to shuffle on toward their journey out of the parking lot.
Other times her mother would be waiting for her out there, alone. Sitting on the bench when Nina arrived, like a provocation, she would be Black on black on black, inscrutable and separate from the bright sun and the pigeons milling around her. Her transition eyeglasses obscured her eyes when she sat outside, even on cloudy days.
If Nina arrived and the Women were out, she did not speak to them. She tried to nod in familiarity more than once, and even experimented with waving. Eventually, she perfected staring straight ahead, often with her white earbuds firmly planted in her ears. No matter the lack of music; it was far, far easier this way. From time to time, something pricked at the inside her belly, but anxieties around politeness, manners, or obligation didn’t stop Nina on her forward march to get inside the lobby and avoid chit-chat.
Nina was proud that she had built a life in a world where she wouldn’t sit at anyone’s feet, much less some old White women in a place she could not stand.
The Women knew who Nina was.
In challenge to the sophistication she cultivated in her life away from here, the Women summoned within Nina shadows of adolescence. Nina felt when the looked at her that they were marking time.
But really now, was Nina imagining the lull between The Women when she walked by, the pause in their previous conversation? Because if their heads did not follow her as she moved past, their eyes certainly did. Were they trying to note a resemblance between this young sand-colored woman and Sue Howard, the dark, silent woman drowning in bleach-spattered sweatpants? Perhaps they were trying to put their finger on what it was and how Nina felt about it– the something that had whittled her mother down over the past two years, the process by which an already thin woman had become more and more skeletal.
Nina had to acknowledge that the Women knew more than she did about her mother. They knew more than her strange hours. Like Nina, they knew she never attended bingo night, or Sunday mass in either the basement or at the Roman Catholic Church next door, but they also could observe her from their windows, lurching away with her cane from the building towards geographical points unknown to her daughter.
Sue Howard—always “Ms.” on the junk mail she left on the floor outside her mailbox, never “Mrs.” —was a strange one.
Her mother rarely smiled in public. Maybe the Women suspected it was on account of her missing teeth, or maybe they suspected it symptomatic of her mother’s apparent and seemingly persistent aloneness. No loud relatives spilled from their SUVs in the parking lot to greet her, no smiling daughter and no strapping son-in-law plucked a fat cheeked baby from a stroller to deposit into her shriveled lap. Instead, about once every three months, they would observe this awkward, aloof woman of indeterminate age striding by, of whose looks they once approved.
The strange woman, whom the Women uniformly pitied, had a furtive daughter, whom they could not.
The Women knew the same cab company picked her up and dropped her off three times a week—they could see the flesh and blood faces of the drivers that her mother referred to in conversation simply as “the Africans.” Nina received short summaries during their infrequent phone calls— “I went to dialysis today”— “I decided not to go yesterday”—
“I ate Chinese food”— but The Women saw the rituals of travelling to the outpatient clinic over five miles away.
They observed how she looked if she skipped a week.
Nina approached the front door of the building. There was a door into the foyer with the buzzers for each resident’s apartment, and beside them, another door into the lobby proper. She never understood why, in a building like this, the doors weren’t automated.
She nudged open the first door with her boot while reaching into the coat pockets of her down jacket. There was a faint howling sound as the December air filtered into the small foyer.
Woooooooooo, like the most literal of ghosts.
This was a sound that Nina always associated with visiting her mother, no matter the season—it was as if all the pressure had a sound, and trepidation was rendered musical.
As she felt for her phone, the elevator doors inside the lobby parted, and a single old woman, dressed in a startlingly red pantsuit and matching red pea coat, began to push her walker into the lobby with some difficulty. Her hair was elaborately curled, and as the distance between them shrank, Nina could see that the woman’s cheeks were rouged, and the fingernails that clutched the walker’s metal bar were lacquered crimson.
After a few steps forward, the woman paused to rest on her walker. Through the glass, Nina could feel the woman’s steely gaze on her. The woman looked out of place in the drab pink lobby, but her hair and make-up marked her also as a woman out of time.
Nina strongly suspected she would not open the door that separated them. The Women rarely did, and the set of this woman’s mouth told Nina she would never.
Nina made a performance of patting down her pockets. It was her mother’s fault she did these silly dances to announce that she did have business here. Nina hated how quickly her mind went towards justifying her presence at Springville Manor, but the fact remained that she always had to call her mother to come downstairs and to let her in. For reasons she still didn’t entirely understand, her mother could not buzz her up from her apartment and snorted when Nina had once suggested to have management come and fix the problem.
And a second set of keys—the hassle alone of getting them made.
Nina pressed the rectangle to her ear as her mother’s number rang. She noticed the woman in the lobby start to advance towards the door. After her pause to rest, the old woman had acquired an almost regal bearing, and her face had even become more luminous.
The woman leaned over to hit the exit button on the other side. With one hand on her ear, Nina fumbled to hold the door open with the other as the woman in red glided by in her holiday splendor.
She did not look back as Nina slipped through after her.
You’re welcome, Nina mouthed to her back.
They were all the same.
At her ear, her mother’s tired voice came on.
“Hello…You’ve reached… Sue Howard. I am…not available—”
Nina’s thumb moved quickly. To listen to her mother’s voicemail message in its entirety was to feel once and for all that nothing really mattered in this life at all.
Outside the elevator, Nina jammed the button with her finger. A bright orange number appeared above it. It was coming down from the 8th floor. Not for the first time, Nina had wondered how the building’s slow elevators would impede the quick movement emergency personnel. She busied herself looking at the mail counter, to see if her mother had left anything behind.
There was AARP for James Ridley and an envelope from the Board of Elections for Florence O’Hanlon.
The same hurried hand had written across both envelopes.
DECEASED.
Nina had weathered the years where the company turned off her mother’s phone and she was too stubborn to have Nina pay her bill. It was not unusual for her mother to not pick up on the first ring, but Nina always felt a small twist of dread in her belly when she did not. Sometimes her mother did not have her phone next to her, or she was asleep, or she was in the bathroom.
When Sue did call Nina back, her voice was always weak, as if she were moving away from the phone, holding it away from her body with one thin arm….
Hi. Okay.
…away from the possibility of using any more of her daily word ration, an ever shifting number derived by some formula whose rules Nina never found clear.
And then click.
Proof of life, confirmed.
As the elevator doors opened, Nina stared at her phone’s dark face, willing it to come alive with vibration, willing the name “Ma” to flash across the screen.
Her own smudged fingerprints muddled her reflection back at her.
Still nothing.
Nina pushed to activate the home screen.
There was one waiting text from Mercy. Another was from Steve, a man she had gone on two promising dates with. Echoes from her other world: the screen darkened again.
Inside the elevator, Nina pressed 8 and waited for the door to slide shut. She watched the bars on the corner of her phone’s screen decrease, signaling the elevator’s climb. Her sensible mind reasoned that there was no use worrying if now she could not receive any calls at all.
Her belly roiled. The numbers light up silently as they passed each floor.
At the 3rd floor, the elevator rumbled to a stop and the door slid open.
An old woman, dressed in a gray wool coat and green knit scarf, leaned lightly on a cane.
“Going down?”
She looked beautiful and elegant, and her voice was a fountain of memory: all the women who loomed large with authority for some brief period as Nina trudged to legal adulthood. A strict 4th grade teacher, who seemed to hold all children in contempt but Nina —no, Mrs. S who taught them the dreidel song in preschool—no, Mrs. Baird, a paragon of reserve, when Nina showed up to that food bank each month for a very specific stretch of middle school.
Her head suddenly cleared. Nina shook her head and pointed upwards. Words were stuck behind her lips and her phone still had no signal.
“Going to see your mother?”
She was grateful as the door began to move. Nina felt her tongue, big and dumb in her mouth, and realized that she had not had a drink of water in hours.
As the door shuddered closed, she heard the echo of the woman’s booming voice.
“It’s so good to see you here.”
The next time the door opened, it was her mother’s floor. She hoped that when the door revealed that mauve rectangle of the 6th floor hallway, her mother might be slouching within it, in that specific posture that showed that she had wobbled over with her cane.
I didn’t hear the phone.
However, there was no one there.
Nina stepped out onto the brown carpet. The darkly carpeted hallways, and the salmon pink walls with purplish trim, alluded to an institution. There was sitting area to the left of the elevator. A collection of potted plants surrounded the large window, hanging from green plastic planters and languishing on the wide sill. Nina never recalled anyone sitting in those easy chairs, not even her mother. The battered wooden coffee table was piled with a small number of magazines: People, Woman’s World, or Good Housekeeping.
On occasion Nina took brief detours off the elevator to paw at the magazines, seeking to clear her head and prolong her inevitable knock on her mother’s door. She turned the slick pages until the sound of them flapping in the subdued hallway was overwhelming.
She looked for the mailing labels.
It was always Caroline Manzetti, Apartment # 804.
This was how Nina committed to memory the woman who lived next door to her mother.
Somebody had the idea for plants and arranged them there, and somebody had to commit to watering them and trimming away the brown. Just like Caroline Manzetti had to subscribe to those magazines, and think others might want to read them, too.
Nina walked to the end of the short hallway, the gray light of the window at her back. Her mother still hadn’t called her back.
The time on Nina’s phone read 3:35PM.
In front of her was the hallway bulletin board.
Nina briefly examined the fliers for weekly bingo, a holiday fair, and details for van transport to a trip to the Philharmonic.
You read everything, her mother used to say to her. Even the cereal boxes.
Sometimes in conversation Nina would remember these flyers and ask her mother if she had thought about signing up for the next trip, or eating at the community potluck… she wouldn’t have to bring anything.
No. Too much hassle.
No. I’m too tired.
No. I hear them talk about me.
As she remembered the last time her mother refused, a new addition caught Nina’s eye, a typed announcement on shiny white paper.
The family of Caroline Sistine Manzetti invites the residents of Springville Manor to an evening memorial service.
Tuesday, December 10, 6-8PM
DiPaola Funeral Home
Staten Island, NY
Her eyes darted further down the page, to a color-printed photo of an elderly woman with smiling, brown eyes.
Caroline was a beloved sister, great-aunt, godmother, neighbor, and friend… passed away peacefully…she was 82 years old.
Nina had never actually seen Caroline before, but she was happy to see the warmth contained in her photo’s dark eyes. The old woman’s face had clearly been cropped from a larger gathering, and the beginnings of a shiny necklace floated below her chin.
Nina briefly closed her eyes. She imagined for this woman a lifetime of event halls, christenings, and stuffing cash in cards to mail long after she had been warned not to.
A full life, perhaps. Without the motherhood, perhaps not.
Nina went left, towards the end of the hallway where her mother lived. A few of the oxblood red doors had been outfitted especially for the holidays—wreaths spray painted to give the look of a snow-dusting, the face of a smiling Santa alongside the usual Bible verses, and homey axioms. Nobody here would dare wrap their entire door in wrapping paper.
Door after door, with no noise behind them.
It was Christmas. People had families.
Nina continued to pad down the hallway, lowering her eyes as she passed 804.
There was the peephole, the doorbell, and the number plate.
Beneath them all, the welcome mat God Bless This Home was still there.
At her mother’s door, Nina stopped. It had never exhibited any decoration since her mother had lived there, but now, against the dark red, taped at an angle from the peephole, was a gash of white notebook paper. The paper drooped, barely quivering in the dull, dry air.
Nina pushed the scrap of paper straight against the door. The short message was already clear. It was her mother’s handwriting, a single lower-case sentence.
ive gone away
The scrawl had been there for however long, but the hallway remained bright and quiet on either side of the paper’s curling edges.
Contributor Notes
Amber Joseph is an MFA candidate at Rutgers University-Camden. Her fiction has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail. Her writing on education has appeared on the online platforms for The New York Review of Books and PBS Newshour. She currently lives in Philadelphia.
