Don't Call Me Madame

As I hoisted myself up into the maroon van, I overheard my driver talking on her cell phone. “I’m picking up Mrs. Durkalski,” she said. “We are coming right back.”

I sighed with gratitude. It is always good to be going home, even when “home” is an apartment in an old folks home, euphoniously called a “retirement community”. I anticipated an evening of curling up in my recliner, watching television with Charlie on my lap.

My driver, Jackie, is an overweight black woman who for the past five years has taken old people to doctors’ appointments and Wal-Mart, or anywhere else they need to go. She astonishes me by wearing nothing heavier than a white tee-shirt, even when getting out of the van in freezing drizzle to help old folks into our van.

On Thursdays she takes three old ladies to the beauty shop. I wait for her to pick them up before she comes to get me. After dialysis I am wiped out. I am grateful when she comes to get me, as I am so tired I could not hold the steering wheel.

I buckled my seat belt, and she took off, expertly maneuvering into the left lane. She braked to a stop behind a line of cars waiting to turn onto the freeway.

“Jackie,” I said, “You called me ‘Mrs. Durkalski.’ My name is Ilene.”

“If my Mama heard me call you that,” Jackie said, “she would have hit me up the side of my head.”

Yes, I also remember when black people were called by the “N” word, and a little girl was “Miss Ilene” while the old black woman who ironed my dresses was simply “Stella.”

The car sped up the ramp. Jackie concentrated, looking for a break between the speeding cars in the next lane.

I waited until our van was moving smoothly behind a black sedan going 65 mph. Then I said, “Jackie, times have changed.”

From now on she is calling me Ilene.