Backgammon with Babs

“Five-four,” I told her.

“Five-four?” she repeated, her head lowered over the board, her eyes moving here, there, back.

“Five-four,” I said again.

“One,” she whispered, placing her index finger down on the board. “Two,” she whispered, “three, four, five,” she whispered, her finger tap, tap, tap, tap, tapping from spot to spot. She paused then, her finger solidly in place; “Five-four,” she said, reminding herself, and continued. “One, two, three, four,” tap, tap, tap, tap.

She left her finger down. With her other hand she placed a plastic checker down in the spot her finger saved.

It was not only a bad move, it was so lame and obviously wrong and ill-conceived it made my soul ache.

My mother, this woman who sat across from me in her pale blue bathrobe and her pale pink slippers, this thin, un-sunned, unhappy, bored beyond belief shell of what she used to be old woman who now sat slightly crooked in her electric recliner, who had played Backgammon with me for easily thirty years now made me want to get up out of my chair and reach across the little Backgammon table and either kiss her on the forehead or backhand her across the face.

I picked up her dice for her and handed them back. She held out her leather cup and I dropped them inside.

“How’s work going,” she asked.

“Great!” I said. I had not yet found a job. I had just been released last week from jail after nine and half months for drunk driving and vehicle man-slaughter and had reminded her of the drunk driving part four times in the last hour. I left out the part about the two people I had slaughtered.

I shook my dice energetically in its cup. She had blimps all over the board. Almost anything I rolled would catch at least one of her lone pieces and send her "home".

I rolled and could not believe the three-one the dice delivered. I had no good moves to make and I said, “My God!”

I stared at the dice in disbelief.

“If you can’t play well, Marty, the least you could do is play fast!” my mother said. It was maybe the three hundred thousandth, one hundred and twelfth time I had heard her say those exact words.

I sighed as heavily as possible and moved my pieces, then scooped up my dice, and sat back.

“Your turn, Berbra,” I said.

“My name is Barbara,” she said.

She rolled.

Double sixes.

Unbelievably lucky as it just solved all her previous mistakes in one swoop.

“What’d I roll?” my mother asked

I sat in stunned silence.

“Martin!” my mother half screamed.

“I’m not telling you,” I said.

“Martin,” she said again, using her pink slippered right foot to kick me in the shin.

“Two-one,” I said.

“Bullshit!” she said and began reaching for her magnifying glass on the side table.

“Double sixes,” I said.

She began counting, “One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three…

I watched this tiny woman with her shrunken face and her three rings too big now and turned up side down so only the gold bands showed on bone-like fingers, blue veins in her hands; her lipstick not quite centered; her pink tongue peeking from the corner of her mouth as she moved her pieces slowly around the board in the wrong direction.

“Four, five, six!” she said and sat back, taking a quick glance at the over-sized clock on the wall. It was almost dinner time, and she was waiting for one of the nurse’s aides to arrive in the doorway with a curtsy and a dinner tray.

“Your turn, Junior,” she said as her fingers patted around the board searching for her dice.

I shook my dice-cup with great gusto. “That was the worst move I have ever seen anyone make in my entire life,” I said with sincerity.

“Roll!” she said. “The game’s over when dinner comes.”

I shook the dice with even greater gusto and called, “Double threes!”

Double threes would wipe her off the board.

“Double threes! Double threes! Double threes!” I said shaking the dice in the dice-cup at top vollume above me head.

“If you can’t play well—“

I rolled.

Double threes.

“What did you get?”

“Double threes!” I reported with glee. “Double god damn threes!”

“Bullshit!” my mother protested. She reached again for her magnifying glass.

The girl with the long black hair brought dinner and stopped half way inside my mother’s little room. A small tray was in her arms. The only place to put the tray was on the Backgammon board or the bed.

I said, “Ola, Rosa!”

She smiled at me.

My mother began to put away the game.

“What did you get, really?” she asked.

“I got double threes.”

“He cheats, Rosa!”

“I got double threes!” I told Rosa.

She smiled with bright white crooked teeth.

I closed the Backgammon game and snapped the latch and put the game away.

“How’s Leslie and little Pia?” my mother asked of my wife and my daughter for the fifth time today. For the fifth time I let the question slither unanswered into its little black hole.

I stood in the doorway and watched Rosa put the dinner tray on the table in front of my mother.

“See ya, Mom,” I said. She was putting a napkin across her chest up to her chin and seemed absorbed in the food in front of her.

“See you, Mom!” I said again.

“Bye, bye, bye,” she said, waving without looking up.

I waved back, and Rosa smiled at me, and I left wondering about the meaning of life and my double threes as I went down the elevator and out to the sidewalk. The streetlights all came on at that moment and also at that moment it began to rain.

Double threes! I thought as I walked home. What a world.





924 Words-