When He Cheatin' and You Still Love Him by Cachet Page B

“Then last night she slipped back a little. She went from smiling and knowing who everyone was, to fighting off the guards and telling them to let her go home. The problem was that she didn’t know where home was.” She sighed again. “We tried to call you last night.” 
    “I’m sorry. I was so sick I turned off my phone and slept most of the day away,” I told her. “Is she up?”
    “Yeah, you can go on back.”
    “Will do. Thank you Daisy.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    As I walk down the hallway, I swallow the lump that’s in the back of my throat. I hate not knowing what to expect when I come for my visits. When I round the corner and enter my mother’s room, I see that’s she sitting up in her bed. Her eyes are glued to the TV that has one of the many court shows playing. Once she notices that I’m standing there, she grins and motions for me to come in.
    “Hey baby, how are you doing?” my mother asks. She uses the remote on the tray beside her bed to mute the television, before giving me her attention once again.
    “I’m doing okay, how are you momma?” I smile, glad that she recognizes me.
    “Momma?” She runs her hand through her unkempt afro and shakes her head. “Girl, I’m too young to be somebody’s momma. You must have me mistaken sweetheart.” When those words leave her lips my smile drops, because I know that she has no clue know who I am. “Aren’t you Loretta’s kid?” she asks referring to our old next door neighbor. Mrs. Loretta had four daughters, one of which my mother believes I am. “Where is she anyway?”
    Not wanting to confuse her further, I play along.
    “She was busy Lola, so she sent me instead. I came to braid your hair.”
    “Oh…okay.” She looks around nervously before leaning closer. “Do you think when you’re finished you can get me out of this damn hospital? I don’t know exactly how I got here, but they are holding me against my will.”
    “I’ll see what I can do momma—I mean Lola,” I correct myself. “Come sit over here and let me get started.”
    I grab the chair from the corner and slide it closer to her bed. After helping her to sit down, I open up my purse and remove all the items that I need to get the job done.
    “Please do, because I don’t like this place,” she tells me, adjusting the small blanket on her lap. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get your name dear.”
    “It’s Shanair,” I reply.
    “Shanair huh? Loretta sho knew how to name her babies some pretty names.” My mother smiles, “Shanair…I like that, I like that a lot.”
    I watch as she once again aims the remote at the TV, and unmutes it. She goes back to watching her show, while I begin to part her thick gray hair.
    My mother, Viola Washington, who is also known as Lola suffers from Alzheimer’s. Her illness was first diagnosed right before I got pregnant with Kendrick, but it didn’t get bad until about three years ago. In the beginning, she was able to take care of herself and Kendrick with no problems. Other than the occasional memory loss, everything was cool. I didn’t think much of it until things started to get a little weird. I would stop by the house and it would be a mess. Plates of food would be scattered all over the floor, and the house would look a mess. When I would ask her about it, she would only tell me that cleaning up the house must have slipped her mind. Since my mother was a perfectionist, that was weird to me. Soon after that, I noticed that things of that fashion begin to happen more often than not.
    I continued to try to ignore the obvious, until I could no longer turn a blind eye to it. Once day I was at work when I received a phone call from the police station, telling me that they had my mother. Fearing the worse I rushed there, only to find out that they had picked her up when they found her wandering aimlessly down the street looking for her house. After asking who she was and not getting a good enough answer, they found my name and