Descriptive Essay

Armond Lorenzana

ENGL 111

Mr. Schelle

December 8, 2009

The Victims of Time

On a mildly cold, autumn afternoon, the final day of November, I had been dispatched on a mission. Located on the outskirts of Paonia, an average sized town consisting of theaters, schools, stores and banks littering Main Street, in a small, but seemingly new and rich suburb, my destination lied. Such a clean, bright suburb is one of the last areas I would have imagined being part of the hippie-populated town. In this small residential community, the houses shined freshly and purely like white pearls pried straight from a clam during a sunny morning catch. Any filth that encountered these homes left no history behind; only the color of creamy vanilla reigned supreme amongst the houses’ clean walls. To finish the setting of the charming neighborhood, large, spacious trucks, sparkling in their black paint job, mimicked the neatness of the homes.

Once the oval-shaped strip of pavement around the suburb reaches its tip, there are massive piles of rocks that lay on top of one another like heaps of bodies after a war, surrendering to the deadness of the color gray. Frosty from the exhales of the faint, autumn, evening winds, the stony piles sloped well about the size of an average person, eventually coming to a bow underneath a row of windows. The few panels of glass are the only places that allow a glimpse of the outdoors from inside. Behind these portals, I caught the sight of a man garbed in shaded, green nurse scrubs. Cocking my head to the northern sky like a deer on alert, I read the dark, green welcome sign naming the long, brick structure in front of me: Paonia Care and Rehabilitation Center.

After passing through the large, double wooden doors, there remains only one last, dark room the size of a closet. On a rectangular white plaque, it asks of only one thing, “Do not enter if having symptoms of a cold, flu or any other sickness”. Looming above this one instruction is a soap dispenser to sanitize myself of the outside world. I request from it and it replies by oozing out its cleanly juices. The clear liquid glides across my hand like a slug as it secretes a bitter cold trail on my once warm skin. I carry this with me through the next door to arrive at my destination.

White, everywhere! The walls, reception desk, rooms and doors were all the color of a cloud beginning to shift its mood to melancholy. It is the fabled color of purgatory: an infinite white waiting room. This dull white stretched to everything besides the green carpet, steel gray bathroom door, the dining room and people. A small amount of yellow and orange ornaments stuck to the walls in celebration of Thanksgiving. A plump, rosy cheeked, aged woman adorned with glasses and garbed in majestic purple with depictions of blooming flowers, who I will call Mrs. Purple, greeted us. As she approached, I could see a group of white headed, elderly quadriplegics cluttered closely together like cattle grazing: still and oblivious.

My attention returned to the Mrs. Purple. Her golden yellow, curled hair stood out in this nursing home. In her cheery, delicate voice, she told Mike and me, her plan: “You guys should do an activity with them (the elderly). You can do anything; we have puzzles, checkers and chess. They really do like to play puzzles, though.”

Entering the main hexagonal-shaped living room ahead of us, with this knowledge in mind, we chose a puzzle of the United States of America. Once we pulled the puzzle box from the shelves of games, Mike and I turned around and were confronted by the everlasting gaze of these hunched, aging bodies.

“Does anybody want to put together a puzzle with us?” asked Mike in an intimidated tone. The silent reply pierced my ears. The feelings of awkwardness and being unwanted took their grips like parasites feeding from my sense of optimism. Even the most charismatic of people would falter in getting a response from such people.

Mrs. Purple, however, had rounded up a few of these silent souls to sit around the table to construct this three-foot, multi-colored model of the fifty states. Three elderly women had joined us in their wheelchairs and lessened the sense of awkwardness with their mildly eager contributions. However, like a toddler in awe of the “I Got Your Nose” trick, they stared at the pieces in deep contemplation, sometimes mouth agape. Not just limited to the three women participating in our activity, many of these ancient people suffered from deformities. The bones of their hunched backs and crooked fingers seemed to be crying for release from the entombment of wrinkled, spotted skin atop of them.

Across the other side of the circular table, bloody red, hollow eyes stared at me and in a raspy voice called to me, “I wanna go home. I wanna go home. I wanna go home….” It was an awkward situation: normally the wounded are looked down upon as they are usually crawling, but now I was witnessing many hardships at eye level as I sat in my seat. I conversed with this forsaken woman hesitantly, unfortunately, having to raise my voice,

“WHY CAN’T YOU GO HOME?”

“I don’t know. I don’t… I wanna go home,” she replied in a guttural rasp.

“WHO…WHO PUT YOU IN HERE,” I stammered to say to maintain conversation.

“My daughter left me here… I wanna go home,” she continued to drone.

I stopped talking to her. I later found out her home was in Oklahoma City. Only she uttered small cries of despair; everyone else seemed to understand the pain, through kneeled heads and silence.

After the completion of the three-foot United States puzzle, we dumped the last bit of Thanksgiving symbols and colors to rest in a small, flimsy cardboard box, our last assignment as the senior citizens departed to the dining room for dinner. After completing the task, I opened the steel, locked door to the bathroom with the keys provided on a high hook. I did my business under the dark orange glow of the room while thinking of what I accomplished to assist these forgotten people. The silver, wobbly handle failed to flush the toilet even with immense amounts of unnecessary pressure. Unsatisfied with my recently, failed attempt at flushing, I explained the stubbornness of the toilet with Mrs. Purple, and since my tasks were finished, I signed my name for my work, and left for dinner.

We departed from the suburb of beautiful homes and reunited with the familiar, lighted streets of Main Street and cool, crisp night air of the outside world, All the while, I wondered: Did I achieve my mission? Did I give these people even a moment of happiness? I smelled with the air of a foreign land, of pinecones and youth, but in their white, infinite walls of purgatory, their senses, memories and loved ones fly like Halley’s Comet, only to come back every seventy-five years.