by Jade Laffiette

She feeds her ice chips from a Styrofoam cup. Her sparse teeth are so thin, so caked with plaque that each quiet crunch is a miracle. Beneath her chin is a makeshift bib to stanch any wayward pieces; it is damp with a fruitful harvest.

It’s funny how history repeats itself. How it is now my mother’s turn to bathe, feed, and change my grandmother. How such a healthy, luscious woman filled with ear-splitting laughter has again been reduced to silent coughs.

My great-grandmother was born in 1920, and by the age of seventy, she developed dementia. My grandmother, a working woman with a husband and three kids, cared for her using perseverance and ingenuity. Mother and daughter lived next to each other, and before leaving for work in the morning, my grandmother would lock the fence of her mother’s house, trapping her in the yard. She would leave out plates of food on the table, glasses of water on the kitchen counters. This worked for many years until my great-grandmother suffered a stroke and had to be put in a nursing home.

Putting her in a nursing home was the last thing my grandmother wanted to do. But it would have been impossible for her mother to receive care otherwise. And so, it was done. My great-grandmother stayed in the nursing home for almost a year, gradually improving. Until she suffered another stroke. Dehydration. Negligence. Where were the nurses?

My great-grandmother would never leave the nursing home again.

I remember accompanying my grandmother to the nursing home on the weekends. I was little then, not even five. My grandmother would wash her mother up, feed her, change her sheets and clothes. She would plait her hair, wipe the spittle from her lips. Sometimes I would stay and watch. Sometimes I would go visit the lounge room where the aquarium and bird cage were, the elderly patients patting my hands with curiosity. At those times, with all the wrinkled strangers, I only ever wanted one person. But she was busy taking care of her mother.

My great-grandmother died at the age of ninety. She lived extremely long thanks to my grandmother’s care. My grandmother’s sister came down four hours from Talladega for the funeral. The two women argued.

You were never there, she said.

I had things to do, she said.

Not long after the funeral, my grandmother retired from her job. She worked for State Farm managing insurance claims and contracts. She was extremely good at her job, and when she retired, the company threw her a big party. I wrote and read a poem for her.

My great-aunt was diagnosed first, but my grandmother—the youngest—had it longer.

It started with Walmart. On the weekends, my grandmother would take my brother and me on her errands, and to conclude the shopping for the day, we always stopped at Walmart. By the time we got back home, she would realize she had forgotten something.

The eggs, she’d say. I forgot the eggs. Let me run back up the road real quick. Won’t take long. My grandfather would open the fridge and see a full carton, but she’d already be down the road.

Then she started telling people that she used to work for Donald Trump. The idea got stuck in her head when he announced his 2016 election run.

He was low-down, she said. Racist. Evil.

She’d repeat things. She would overseason the food, or forget to season it at all. She’d pace the house at night, screaming and crying. She was depressed during the day.

My grandmother is seventy-one now. Her sister died a year ago. She cannot walk. She cannot talk. She has issues swallowing. She’s constipated, and every few days she requires an enema.

My grandfather is optimistic. He loves his wife, and watched her go through this very same thing with her own mother. My mother is helpful. She goes over nearly every day to change her diaper, give my grandfather a break. My aunt plaits her thin, curly hair. My uncle picks up her stiff but frail body so that they can change the sheets. My second cousin calls daily offering advice.

I know, she says. Mama was like that too, she says.

I’m not the only one who can see history repeating itself. But perhaps it crushes me the most. I see my mother—healthy and luscious with ear-splitting laughter—exhausting herself. I see the Google searches on her phone.

Is it normal to. . .? What happens if I forget. . .?

My mother is only fifty years old. She forgets little things like normal people, but every lapse is potential foreshadowing.

My mother tells me to refill the cup with ice chips. She forgets that I already have.

Jade Laffiette is pursuing a BA in English with a concentration in creative writing at the University of South Alabama. She served as prose editor for the Oracle Literary Review from 2023 to 2024. Her writing often explores themes of change, memory, and nostalgia through a personal and reflective lens. Her work has appeared in We Did It First: Poems from Poets of Mobile, Alabama. This is her first publication with River & South Review.