Volunteering

Eighteen months had passed. The last set of twins from Abe, Isaac and Isaiah, were big and strong and Black. Both Elizabeth and Douglas had stayed celibate through it all, Douglas focused on a flashy new in-house job, and Elizabeth with her large brood.

They were making pancakes together for the family, once perhaps a sign of a comfortable coupling, but now bereft of intimacy, a completely platonic exercise. Elizabeth looked at Douglas, intently waiting to flip the flatcakes.

"I thought about volunteering at the local nursing home," she said.

"Why's that?" Douglas responded.

"Well, the babies are old enough to get by for a couple of hours with a babysitter here and there," she said. "And I've been housebound for a long time now." Douglas simply nodded.

***

"So, whatever time you can just spare to visit with the patients, that would be tremendous," the manager of the nursing home, a frumpy white-haired white woman, said to Elizabeth.

"Sure, I'd be happy too," Elizabeth said brightly, feeling a rekindling of something new, after all the dark days she'd been through.

Outside the office, she heard a tray fall, and a cup spill milk all over the floor.

"Oh, Leroy, why do you keep doing this?" the nurse aide cried. Leroy took advantage of the moment,using a long, heavy wooden cane to lift up the back of the aide's skirt, revealing a plump Black rear. The aide tutted loudly.

"Oh, Leroy, you're incorrigible."

The manager pursed her lips, frowning.

"That is our newest resident, Leroy Adams. He is ... a bit of a handful."

"You can't just kick him out?"

"His family prepaid and aren't taking our calls. But don't worry, we won't ask you to help with Leroy."

"No, I don't mind ... really."