Give 'm a Hand

Special note: Names, locations, and composite descriptions of people have been intentionally changed in this story.

In February of 2020, my mother asked me to assist her with moving some boxes out to her storage shed in the backyard of her home in California. On the afternoon of this warm winter's day, I went out to the backyard before the planned move.  As I was breathing in the delicious mountain air, something caught my eye near the foundation at the house's western edge.  

It appeared to be an artificial hand.  For a moment, I thought it was a sculpture.  After all, my mother has a habit of collecting odds and ends.  To this day, the living room of her house is filled with clocks and knick-knacks.  

I looked closer.  When I did so, something stirred in my memory.  I remembered a mannequin I'd seen in a department store window.  This was a hand from one of those displays.  The tan color of the mannequin hand had faded. It was also evident that it had spent a lot of time exposed to the elements.  Its surface was mottled with various stages of sun-bleaching, ancient mold, and many small indentations all over the surface that looked like bite marks.

And then I remembered.

It was Mrs. Stephens hand.

I spent a lot of time with Mrs. Stephens in the summer of 1979.  I think I spent a lot of time that summer stoned, too.  She liked to smoke marijuana, and she smoked it quite frequently.  The rooms of her house seemed almost always to be filled with a marijuana fog.  I recall stepping on discarded joints that were scattered about her house.

I remember her smoking and using the cigarettes as a form of social commentary.  

When she flicked her cigarettes, she often did so as a way of punctuating something she was saying.  To her husband, she would flick a cigarette in his direction and say, "f%ck you."  To the gardener who didn't mow her lawn or trim her hedges just so, flicking the marijuana cigarette at him was her way of dismissing him.   If she were attending another neighbors party and didn't like the food, she'd flick her marijuana cigarette onto the plate and then leave it out for another person to find it.  If you offered her a cup of coffee and she didn't like the conversation, she'd leave a marijuana cigarette in it for you to clean up.  Marijuana cigarettes, and her flinging them as a form of social commentary, were such a part of Mrs. Stephens life it is a wonder she never burned down her house - or the town for that matter.  

*    *    *

When I arrived at Mrs. Stephens house on that summer's day in 1979, she was on the floor of her living room.  She lay, splayed out on a giant circular wool rug that was patterned with alternating bands of dark brown and light beige.  The ringed rug and the alternating black and white lined pattern of her polyester maxi dress gave the impression of a mandala.  If I could place her in that maxi dress atop the circular wool rug on a giant spinning turntable, the whole of this scene would have looked a giant infinity swirl. 

She had that 'agog' look on her face.  Finding her like this had become an increasingly regular occurrence.  On this afternoon, as I looked down at her, she was sweating.  Her hair was matted to the sides of her head and her eyes appeared bulged out, her mouth wide open.

In one hand she held the mannequins detached hand.  In the other, an unlit joint.

She spoke, "Orval is that you?"  When she spoke my name, it sounded like "oral," and she slurred her words, so it sounded like she said, "oral izzat you?"

"Yes, Mrs. Stephens," I replied.

"Orval, can you light me?"

I looked around the room for something to light her marijuana cigarette with.  I found a yellow bic lighter on the night stand in her bedroom.

I lit her marijuana cigarette.

She continued with that slurred speech, her eyes protruding a glazed look, "Orval, can you help me smoke it?"

I moved the cigarette to her lips.  her lips puckered quickly, almost instinctively.  As she drew in the smoke, her eyes relaxed.  The lines on her face relaxed.  She began to move.  With the mannequin hand, she swung her arm up and hit me with it squarely on my shoulder.

"Ouch," I said to Mrs. Stephens.

"Orval, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean that.  Could you bump me up?"

In my arms she felt like a warm sack of flour that was left too close to a hot oven, only this sack of flour was Mrs. Stephens, and the feel of her polyester maxi dress was slick with perspired moisture. She wasn't wearing a brassiere. I knew this because I could feel no support underneath the wet surface of her dress as I stood behind her and pulled her into a seated position.

When I think back on that moment and the many other moments I assisted Mrs. Stephens with her joint lighting, the movement of her lips onto the tip of that cigarette always seemed both desperate and determined.

"Orval, here's a gift for you.  You gave me a hand and now I'm giving you one."  She handed me the detached hand from her mannequin.

"Orval, could you come back a little later, hun?"

I left Mrs. Stephens with her marijuana cigarette.

Outside her home, I looked at the mannequin hand.  Gabe, my dog came up to me.  I said, "hey boy, wanna play fetch?"

Gabe looked at me quizzically.  Panting loudly and quickly, his tongue lolled out the side of his mouth. It was getting hot.  His tail wagged vigorously as he barked a reply.

He ran with me to the backyard of our home.  There, I tossed the mannequins hand in the air.  He caught it and returned it to me, barking after each time that I took it from him.  We played like that for a few minutes, and then he changed on me.  Instead of bringing the hand back to me, Gabe would take it and run away from me, playfully.  As catcher became pitcher, Gabe's game became more and more aggressive.  It got to a point where he would dart and dash away from me, hand in mouth, without giving me even the slightest chance to wrest it from him.

Finally, he just took off with the hand in his mouth.

*    *    *

That was the last time I saw that hand, until today.  Gabe's teeth marks still mar the surface of it.

I miss that dog.

I miss Mrs. Stephens.