Betty

About 12 years ago I lived in a loft next to my landlord's office. He lived with his mother who had Altzheimer's and when he came to work he'd leave her outside in his truck with the windows cracked. Sometimes for a couple of hours. You're probably thinking oh, that's horrible. I did too, until I went to chitchat with her a couple of times and each time she'd start the conversation with a variation of "That nigger stole my purse". After that I didn't really care what he did with her.

He was always in a rotten mood. I would hear him sometimes through the kitchen wall. I could hear him let out a groan and say "I don't care", each word a sentence by itself, in a voice that sounded simultaneously perplexed and enraged. Sometimes I just wished they could both go be miserable somewhere else.

And yet.

There were afternoons when I would take her to the park with Darla and me. She would sit on the bench and look off into the distance, trying to hold onto the things inside her head. Every once in a while she'd say, he was such a nice boy or "oh no, my hair is a disaster, I simply can't" and then laugh shyly, and I could see a glimpse of her fading story.