By Madlynn Haber
They keep calling me Regina, but I’m pretty sure that’s not my name. It’s a terrible thing when you can’t remember your own name. I don’t want to admit it, so I answer to it when the ladies in charge of me call me Regina. Some call me Reggie. One calls me Gina. The big woman from the islands just calls me Ma. I know I’m not her mother. I did have children. Two boys who are now men. One of them manages my money. He tells me I have enough to keep paying for this place, but apparently not enough to go home, or even out to lunch. I’d like to just go home.
Someone else is living in my house. They tell me that person’s name is Sherry. She lives there with her boyfriend Fred. I don’t know who these people are. My granddaughter comes to visit and asks me if there is anything in my house I would like to have. One time she brings me my wedding album. There are people in some of the photos that I no longer recognize. I guess my granddaughter is friends with that Sherry person, or maybe she is Sherry. Names are the hardest thing for me to recall.
The other son, the younger one, is in charge of my treatment here. They started out treating me for bruises I got when I fell down in the living room. I was on the floor for four days when the older son found me and started yelling at me for being so careless. He asked me why I didn’t call for help when I fell. There was a phone in my housecoat pocket. I said, “Who would I call?”
So, they put me in a hospital to recover from the fall and that was the end of it. They never let me go home again. I went from the hospital to this place. The boys blame it on the doctors. The doctors say the people who care for me here, the ladies, think I need to stay. The ladies say it’s my sons who want me here. Nobody cares that I want to go home.
When the younger son takes me to the doctor, they call me Mrs. Walters or maybe Mrs. Waters. I had a husband once. I remember how he smelled like smoke and pine needles. I lost him somewhere. He disappeared, and then he died. I went to his funeral. I can remember the large photo of him on display next to his coffin. I remember our wedding. Someone brought our wedding album here for me to look at.
I can’t figure out how to find my way home, convince someone to take me there or get whoever is in charge of this place to let me go. I just try to make the best of it. I watch the sun come up in the morning through the big window on the other side of the room and I watch the darkness come in at dusk. In my dreams, I know who I am and where I am. As soon as I wake up, I forget who I am, and I just pretend to be Regina.
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Madlynn Haber is the author of Seasons of Sorrow and Joy (Metaphysical Fox Press, 2025). She lives in a cohousing community in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her work has been published in Poetica Magazine, Buddhist Poetry Review, Eunoia Review, Months To Years, Orenaug Mountain Poetry Journal, and many other journals. Online at http://www.madlynnwrites.com