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Hotel Queenie

Goddard College Clock-house Salon Live Read Version 8/1/22

By M. Goodman-DantePublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 5 min read
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Photo by M.

The bathroom adjacent to the dining area simply was not clean enough. Obviously the hotel staff should be more attentive to detail. Queenie was sure of this as she separated the crisp squares of toilet tissue, placing them gingerly on the seat of her throne. There was nothing actually wrong with the bathroom, though she found herself in need of sanitizing nonetheless. “Disgusting!” she muttered, her face contorted as she went about this unpleasant task. Despite her whisperings of despair, she enjoyed the moments of solitude, meticulously folding each square of paper. It was when she was most at peace. Once folded into a square or rectangle, the torn tissue could accommodate a need. The immediate need was to cover the toilet seat of the downstairs bathroom, which was located in the main washroom of the hotel. The hotel was a very special place, indeed!

The hotel had only been in existence a short while. Prior to becoming a bed and breakfast of sorts, it had been a home; the home of Queenie’s daughter and son-in-law to be specific. Prior to becoming a hotel, it was a home. Now, however, it is just short of a luxury hotel with cleaning service, meals, chauffeur, and even an off-site salon, along with physician and pharmaceutical services. Sometimes there were even in-house nurse maid service.

When Queenie began spending an hour at a time after every half-hour break in the bathroom, she was delivered to the doctor, who prescribed daily enemas and suppositories to release an impacted bowel causing possible delirium. The process left her screaming late into the night, and demanding to speak with the doctor about the “unadorable” treatment forced upon her.

Queenie, who was 91, had lived on the second floor of her daughter’s home for a year and a half when she collapsed unconscious locked in bathroom. It was decided best to phone 911 and get Queenie to the hospital as soon as possible. The x-rays, MRIs, PET scans, and lab work revealed absolutely, positively and completely — nothing at all wrong with her.

Queenie was then released into a skilled nursing facility for three months for intensive rehabilitative physical therapy. It was there, in the facility, that what had been left of her mind became something rather different from the original working model, which already worked oddly enough when she moved from Livingston, New Jersey to the historic downtown district of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Once returned from the skilled nursing facility it was established she’d been medicated rather heavily. Though she did not suffer from epilepsy, the final paperwork revealed that she had been given enough anti-seizure medication to prevent recurring episodes in numerous large children and the dose high enough to sedate a large aggressive dog or two.

Upon returning home she had forgotten what home was; she knew only that she was glad to be there at the hotel instead of that other place, despite some of the staff’s shortcomings.

“We are not your servants.” Her daughter would say sternly. “Be nice or these people who take care of you here won’t show up in the morning.” Her daughter meant herself and husband, along with the Caregiver.

“I don’t need anyone to help me,” muttered Queenie with a tone. Her pants were down around her legs, her paper panties lightly soiled, and she was looking around for something which none of the staff could procure. “I just need a Kleenex.” She pulled one out of the inside of the sleeve of her sweater before continuing her retort, “and I am always nice. I’ve no idea how to do anything except the proper thing. It is how I was raised, and I was raised the eldest of all 14 children.” Apparently each year, another sibling was added to the story of origin of her family entering America from England. With each sibling added to the beginning of her life, another person from the present seemed to disappear into a void of lost time.

Sometimes when she had some concentrated clarity on the day, Queenie would marvel that she started out in Lancaster, England and wound up at the end in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. “Remarkable!” Her eyes would get wide. She would shake her head with a smile. Those were the few good days, when she knew exactly where she was at. Those days however were no longer part of the daily process. That was okay though because at the hotel she was safe, regardless of what state of mind she was embraced from moment to moment. It was clear there was a deeper meaning attempting to come out at times, but the synapses backfired and died out before long, leaving the listener waiting for the real meaning behind each sentence.

She walked away in search of more Kleenex and the quiet, sacred, sanctuary of the bathroom, though a few minutes after she sat down on the commode the Caregiver was knocking at the door. “Disgusting!” seethed Queenie. “Leave me alone! I am going to the bathroom.” She was sitting on the toilet, making neat little squares of paper. Gently, so gently, she pulled on what was left of the roll, separating the paper into perfect little rectangles, squares and occasionally even a triangle. She would fill the pockets of her sweater and her pants until she was a full size larger in the hips. She would then forget she ever had them, and would demand that someone find her more Kleenex, or she would say she was in need of the bathroom and would sit in solitude tearing little pieces of paper. It had become the sustenance of her existence, and considering how she little she would eat that was not sweet, it was important that something fill her with vitality. A bumper sticker on the sill of a window in the washroom read, “Art is Food. It Nourishes You!” Queenie was nourished by a form of origami with tissue paper that made her hoarding a point of constant fascination.

Sometimes the Caregiver wondered what would fill her at the end of her own years. Legacy journals? Widower romance at the senior dances? Senior cruise travel? Crochet doilies? Bingo? Shredding toilet paper until the Roto Rooter Man was called a blood cousin? Paper underwear? Namenda and Synthroid and Plavix and Furosemide and Senna? The endless bathroom visits and the constant doctor’s appointments for what actually end purpose?

Time stops and then repeats in strange and jagged beats which no longer sound musical or even at all natural. The faces of family and those who are known exist in a fog, while the people at the hotel become a constant barrage of annoyance.

An image of Jesus handsome and adoring on the dresser. Sacred blessings mixed in with Kleenex replacing nostalgia and ephemera in a tandem of fading memories.

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About the Creator

M. Goodman-Dante

Passionate wordsmith, qualitative researcher, public speaker, photographer. Known for justice based blogging, critical writing, and communication workshops. M is also popular for her more esoteric creative non-fiction and poetry.

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