a lady rang my doorbell tonight to ask for help with her bath

and now i smell like old lady. because i helped that lady take that bath.

there's a grandmother who lives directly above us. she has lived in the building for nearly twenty years. she speaks just enough english to get by. she has an asshole grandkid whose favorite pastime is jumping off her couch every chance he gets - every time he visits, there's an elephant stampede above our apartment. she sublets the apartment to too many people who wear brass-soled boots while she visits her home country for three months at a time. in short, for an old granny, there's a lot of unnecessary noise coming from her apartment.

she rang the doorbell tonight. i put my friend on the phone on hold. like an unknowing fool, i opened the door.

"i need help with bath."

"come upstairs with me?"

"i having no more roommate."

"i single now."

"i take twenty-minute bath."

and repeat.

huh? after trying to find a way to communicate "no, i'm sorry, i can't do that because, you know, you're not related to me and even if you were, i would most likely hire a home aid to do these kinds of things," i finally got it. she simply wanted me to sit in her living room while she took a bath. now that she lives alone, she was afraid someone could come in and hurt her if no one else was in the apartment. my heart told me that i should help her out. she wasn't asking for much.

but here was the thing: i hadn't climbed a single stair since coming home on friday morning from the doctor's; specifically, a surgeon's. the same one from earlier this summer. it was hard enough to get in and out of a cab, in and out of a cvs that made me swipe my card four times before accepting payment for gauze pads (that cashier is lucky to be alive), and then climbing the thirty-seven stairs to my front door. since then, i had been lying in bed 24/7. could i safely manage a dozen more stairs to her place and back?

i hesitated. i explained that i just had surgery and would need a little time to make it upstairs. i didn't think she'd understand, but she understood surgery immediately. what kind of surgery, she wanted to know? i told her it was my back. i threw on a sweater. i felt ok and was confident that it was the right thing to help out my elderly neighbor.

she offered me fruit. she turned on the television. there was a football game on. she offered a pillow to prop my back up. i politely declined. she finally went to take her bath.

i called my friend back to continue our conversation and eleven minutes into our call, feeling some pain, i slowly stood up. i realized that i was bleeding. my eyes made their way to the stain, the size of a quarter, on her couch from where i had just gotten up. i checked my jammies and there it was: an identical stain.

holymotherofgodofallthingsgoodandmercifulimnotevencatholicsoidontunderstandthepowerofthesaviorsmothersothisisabitpointlessbutohcrap.

have you ever simultaneously felt panic, shame, and shock? it was like that. luckily, i'm eerily calm in these types of mortifying situations that make your head feel like it's going to explode, so i went to her kitchen and retrieved some paper towels to initiate operation damage control. i checked to see if the seat cover was removable so that i could have it dry cleaned, but no such luck: it was one of those cheap couches where the cushions are sewn into the frame. internetz, if that couch weren't upholstered in a red microsuede fabric and my stain-removing skills weren't top-notch, i would not be blogging right now. i would be boxing my shit up ready to move out tomorrow morning or on a frantic online quest to find an identical couch.

i'm now back under the covers. it's been more than two hours since the incident. i am still mortified. i am grateful the stain came out so easily. i am waiting for my alarm to signal the next dosage of pain meds. i am still catching whiffs of old lady from my hair.