Carol Emshwiller - Josephine

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Josephine

by Carol Emshwiller

Top of list … always at the top of list, rain or shine, day or night: Find Josephine. Nothing can be done

until she's back here at the Old Folks Home where she belongs. Talent night she's our main attraction.

We couldn't do much without her. She wobbles on her slack wire but she hasn't fallen yet. The ceiling is

so high she can do the slack wire act in there in the living room though she has to watch out for the

chandelier. She's not much higher than four or five feet up. When she sings she tinkles out the music on a

toy xylophone. Once she brought her wind chimes down to the living room, put them in front of a fan and

sang to that.

We pretend not to see how wobbly she is. Everybody else is worse. She's the only one with the courage

to dance and sing no matter what. Or maybe it's not courage, just innocence.

Because of Josephine we often have townspeople visiting our performances. We don't know if they

come to admire her or to laugh … at her and at us.

I'm the MC, stage manager, entertainment committee. I'm less important than those who perform. I

suppose I do have some poise, though I've been told I rock from foot to foot. Why would the

Administrator pick a man like me for finding Josephine? Why pick somebody who has a limp?

No, I am the perfect person to send off to find her. Somebody she can have a good laugh at. She'll trip

me and I'll be looking up from the sidewalk, right into her greenish tan eyes. There she'll be, found at last,

but she'll run off somewhere else before I can get up and hobble after her.

· · · · ·

We live in a grand, though ancient mansion. It was the summer house of millionaires. They donated it to

the town for us old people. The living room and dining room are often closed off—too hard to heat.

The breakfast room is the room everyone loves best and spends the most time in. It has windows on

three sides with window seats under them. Five tables—enough for all of us. But I'm hardly ever in this

room except to eat, nor is Josephine. Too many card games and too much Bingo.

Josephine seldom comes out of her room except to eat and on show-and-tell night. (That's the only time

we open the living room and let the heat come up.) Or she comes out to run away. She's always lost. If

not right now then she would be in another minute.

· · · · ·

I wish I wouldn't have to be the one to find her. For the sake of the doing of a good deed, I do it.

She often says, "If not for you finding me, I'd not bother getting lost in the first place." I know that's true.

When I find her (or should I say, when she lets herself be found) there's such a look of … well, it's

complicated, disdain, but if that were all I wouldn't do it. There's relief, too. You'd think I'd find finding

her worth it for that look, and I might if it wasn't for my arthritis. I've been using a cane lately. (Josephine

gets lost in any kind of weather. Thank God tonight it's clear.)

You'd think by now the people in the neighborhood would bring her back when she strays, but they

don't. They're afraid of her. Her hair is wild, the look in her eyes is wild and she makes nasty comments

on their noses. She doesn't dress like anybody else. So many scarves you can't tell if she has a dress on

under them or not. That must unnerve them. And the dress, which is under them, is more like a scarf than

a dress. Everything she wears is like that, and it's always pinkish or pumpkin colored or baby blue. She

always wears big dangly glittery earrings.

· · · · ·

I step out on the porch. I admire the night for a few minutes as I always do. I hobble down the front

steps. Our mansion has a few acres around it and trees so you can think yourself in the country, but no

sooner out the gate and you're in town.

Sometimes I think Josephine is hiding just around the corner, watching me try to find her right from the

start. Probably wondering which direction I'll look in first. Loving how my shirt tail's out, my belt

unbuckled still. (I came straight from my bed.) Loving, especially, my big sigh.

I smooth at my mustache. I had no time to wax it and it's getting in my mouth. I can feel it's as draggled

as the rest of me.

First I check the bushes on each side of the stairs to see if she's crouching there. She can hold as still as a

frightened fawn.

I always bow when I find her. I do that because noblesse oblige. I wear my old boater just so I can take

it off to Josephine. If ever she can be found smiling (that little I've-got-you-now smile) it's because of me.

I limp off, one helpless person in search of another equally inept.

Poor Josephine, here she is, in town somewhere, but I know yearning to be in a forest instead. She often

says so.

· · · · ·

Once a young person came knocking on our door asking for Great Aunt Josephine. (Just like Josephine,

her eyebrows were so much the same color as her freckles they might as well not have been there.) Our

Administrator lied. He said, nobody here by that name. She said she had papers. But he said the papers

must be wrong and he could prove it with other papers. I suspect the Administrator is in love with

Josephine.

The others here call the Administrator fuddy-duddy and fussbudget behind his back, but they don't

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Carol Emshwiller - Josephine

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