NonFiction: Coffee, Cigarettes & Grocery Lists

By Jason Irwin

One weekend in March 2018, ten months after my mother’s stroke, I drove to Dunkirk to take her to the hospital for a blood test. Doctors had been trying for years to find the correct dosage of medication for her hypothyroidism. Her stroke and brain aneurysm made it even more vital that she not “forget” about these tests. The hospital had a service where a phlebotomistwould go to the elderly and shut-ins’ homes, but that service ended months earlier for lack of funding. I told my mother I’d drive up Friday after work and take her on Saturday.

Since her stroke, my mother had been living, as she never tired of reminding me, like a prisoner in her own apartment. Her car had died years before and neither of us had the money to buy her another one. That Saturday I stood in front of my mother, holding my car keys, while she, still in her pajamas, lounged on her settee, a cigarette in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. Why was she drinking coffee? The blood test required her to fast for at least twelve hours. 

“Relax,” she said, half in amusement, half in exasperation. “Have some coffee.”

She said she was tired, that she didn’t sleep well and wasn’t in the mood to get her blood taken. Besides, it was cold outside. 

What frustrated me most was her reluctance to let me help her, her reluctance to help herself. When I first asked if she wanted me to take her for her blood test she told me no. She said it was a long drive and she understood if I was too busy. But of course, she didn’t understand, and it wasn’t okay. My mother not only wanted me to come, she expected me to, even when I didn’t have a car and had to rent one. 

So, the blood test was out. I poured myself a cup of coffee and then, a second cup. Later that morning, my mother dictated a list of the things she wanted at the store, and I wrote them down on a sheet of paper: gummy bears, coffee, Fritos, TV dinners, pepperoni and cheese, Ramen noodles, and Jell-O, all the usual suspects. Then she handed over her EBT card and a wad of twenties which she kept stuffed in an envelope inside the cushion of her settee.

“This is for paper towels, Kleenex, and toothpaste,” she said. “Oh, and an eight-piece meal with mashed potatoes and extra gravy from KFC.”

For a long time, my mother received $20 per month in food stamps, then, one month without explanation it went up to $194. No matter, she never came close to spending it all. So, I bought extra foods I knew she’d never buy for herself, foods she felt she didn’t deserve: T-bone steaks, fresh vegetables, as well as some “healthier” TV dinners. I know that many people believe that those on welfare should not buy gummy bears, Jell-O and T-bone steaks, but I thought my mother deserved it. She’d worked hard all her life—starting at sixteen when she was employed at the candy counter at the Capitol Theater, a job she said gave her money to buy her own clothes instead of wearing her cousin Geraldine’s hand-me-downs. 

If she needed something in between my visits my mother could ask her friend Jackie, my Aunt Stephanie, or use the delivery service that P&G Grocery provided, but she usually shewaited for me. 

After I returned from the store, we sat in the living room drinking more coffee as The Everly Brothers, Van Morrison, and Elvis, played on the oldies station. I wrote out checks for bills that had accumulated since my last visit. My mother had two piles: one for bills that needed to be paid at once, like cable and internet, and one for those that could either wait or be thrown away, like her many doctor and hospital bills.

As I wrote out the checks, my mother complained about her home health aids. “They can’t even scramble an egg,” she said in disgust. “They don’t know how to shop or clean.” Some of the aides just sat on the couch and told my mother about their own problems. Some aides even fell asleep or bummed cigarettes off her. One aide asked my mother to sign her timecard, even though she wasn’t staying for her shift. These aids were provided by my mother’s Medicaid spend-down program. Since my mother earned too much money to qualify for regular Medicaid—$11 over the limit—she had to “buy-in” to the spend-down program, paying $300 per month before her benefits kicked in. The spend-down program was designed to help people in a liminal phase—that area between complete disability and self-sufficiency—but my mother would remain in this phase, unmoored in a sea that would grow more and more turbulent with each passing year.

After all the checks were written, with the envelopes addressed and stamped, we’d go out for dinner if my mother felt up for it. On this particular visit she did not and even though we had a bucket of KFC, we ordered take-out: two personal pan pizzas with extra pepperoni from Pizza Hut. I offered to pay, but as usual my mother wouldn’t allow me to. “I won’t eat!” she exclaimed and gave me that look that said she was serious, that look that told me not to even bother. It was her checkmate.

This scene played out between us over and over, the way I remember it playing out between my mother and Nana when I was a child. We had this game where we’d give each other money secretly. She’d hide money in my duffel bag, pants pocket, or in the pages of whatever book I happened to bereading—a few twenties, a fifty. In turn, I’d put money in the freezer, in the basket that sat on the toilet where my mother kept Kleenex and Q-tips, or in the spice rack, which she rarely if ever used. There were spices like oregano and paprika that had been there since I was a teenager. Once I was in my car, on my way back to Pittsburgh, I’d call her. 

“Check in the freezer,” I’d say. Sometimes it was her who called, telling me to check the back pocket of my jeans. It was a viscous cycle, but we enjoyed it.

*

After we finished our pizza, we settled on opposite couches while Jeopardy played on the television. I read a chapter or two from the book I’d brought with me, while my mother scrolled through Facebook, the blood test a distant memory, if she even remembered the reason I’d driven up. Despite her stroke and aneurysm, my mother chain-smoked with a vengeance, maybe even more than she had before. While one cigarette would smolder in her ashtray, she fished a new one out of her case, as if she couldn’t bear to be without one for even a second. 

Looking back, I picture my mother alone in her apartment, believing her life had lost purpose. While she waited for my next visit, I imagine she assuaged herself with coffee and cigarettes and music. I see her sitting there gazing at her own reflection in the sliding glass door, worrying—about me, my uncle, about my cousin Aiesha and her kids, about the government, about not having enough money, about dying, and the hacker—someone from California she was certain had taken over her laptop. She bided her time, for someone to call or visit, for night to fall, for a favorite TV show; she waited for something to happen, something that would either save her or send her to her grave.Sometimes it felt like she deliberately chose the latter.

Jason Irwin is the author of three full-length poetry collections, most recently The History of Our Vagrancies (Main Street Rag, 2020). Watering the Dead (Pavement Saw Press, 2008) won the 2006-2007 Transcontinental Poetry Prize for a first book of poetry. He is also the author of two chapbooks. In 2022 he was a Zoeglossia Fellow and part of the Poetry Foundation’s Disability Poetics Project. His nonfiction has been published in Santa Ana Review, Panorama, The Catholic Worker, and City of Asylum’s Pittsburgh Live/Ability: Encounters in Poetry and Prose Project. He grew up in Dunkirk, NY, and now lives in Pittsburgh PA.