Angie

Angie

Usually when I volunteer to work BINGO for my high school athletic booster club, I wear a special skin to deflect grousing comments from the patrons and the smoky after-stench from the thousands of fags consumed by the seventy players. Sunday night was no exception.

I walked in through the back door at American Legion Post # 3 in Salem, Virginia to work my shift. As always, I was early. When I arrived at 4:07 pm, only about eight or nine players were there, scattered about the cavernous room. At the far end of the rows of simple tables and cushy Naugahyde chairs, the den of bustling BINGO workers were gathering, buzzing around the central hive waiting to hawk their game cards and instant tickets.

No sooner had I stepped inside the building with my large white Hokie football cup filled with tea firmly clutched in my right hand did I hear a lady scream at me from the other end of the room, “YOU EITHER NEED TO THROW IT AWAY OR TAKE IT BACK OUT OF HERE. THERE AIN’T NO OUTSIDE FOOD OR DRINKS ALLOWED IN THE BINGO HALL!”

“Hello, Mr. Ryder. Thanks for coming to help us work BINGO.” Nope, that’s not what I heard. When I looked at the screaming thirty-something year old lady with the sour puss scowl, I guess my questioning face caused her to feel the need to further explain to me the particular rule. “THERE AIN’T NO FOOD OR DRINKS ALLOWED INSIDE. YOU NEED TO THROW IT OUT OR TAKE IT AWAY!!”

Rather than cause a further scene, I made a smart pivot and evacuated the building whereby I deposited my full cup of delicious Tetley British Blend Black Tea cut with a bag of Organic St. Dalfour Earl Grey Tea back in the cup holder of my blue van. I felt as if I had lost something, a friend. So when I turned and reentered the BINGO hall for a second take, I entered without my usual enthusiasm for meeting and greeting the unusual and quirky normal people who have become my BINGO family for these past twelve years.

That’s why I didn’t strike up my usual banter with any of the regulars. I had been tossed into a piss poor mood and the last thing I wanted to do was sell instant game tickets to people who dropped hundreds of dollars on the scratch game as they ordered me here and there across the hall. “Hey…Instants!! Instants!! I need Instants over here.” I trudged around the hall in a fog, only focusing on counting out stacks of twenty cards for one paying customer after another.

Gladys muttered at me as I walked by her seat near the snack bar. Actually, I didn’t know her name at that time. I just knew her as that-older-lady-with-the-nice-face-who-sometimes-complained-angrily-and-who-always-sits-near-the-snack-bar-in-the-no-smoking-section. Seriously, that’s what I called her in my mind. I wasn’t sure what she said at first. Then she repeated it a little clearer. “This is the last time I’m coming here the way they treat people so rudely.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“That lady is yelling at everyone. I saw what she done to you when you walked in.”

“Yeah, I know. I feel the same way.”

“I’ll take twenty tickets.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“My husband wouldn’t put up with this,” she said. “He’s on the board here at the Legion Post, and I’ll have something to say to him when I get home.”

I nodded.

“That’s him on the wall behind me there,” she said pointing to the wall of framed black and white photographs of post leaders through the generations. I had studied those pictures on my previous trips to the BINGO Hall when sales were slow. There must have been fifty framed photos. Each one was of a man who had served our country proudly. I always wondered what their stories were.

“He was wounded in Saipan during the war and lost the use of his legs, but that ain’t stopped him.”

That’s when my curiosity about this lady kicked in. I’ve been working BINGO for twelve years, and that-older-lady-with-the-nice-face-who-sometimes-complained-angrily-and-who-always-sits-near-the-snack-bar-in-the-no-smoking-section has always been there. I decided I wanted to know more. I wanted to know what made her so quick to anger, what gave her that look of sadness and intense loneliness.

“So where will you play BINGO if you don’t come back here?” I asked with both of us knowing that she’d be back at the Legion Hall next week.

“Well, I only play to take my mind off my troubles, but I don’t just play here, you know. I also play out at that old furniture store over on Williamson Road. I like it better then here.”

“Oh yeah, I know that place, the one with the big glass windows in front. But I haven’t ever worked there before. You know, that’s funny because I’ve worked in a lot of places over the last twelve years between the Gator Swim Team and the Northside Boosters.”

“The Gators are at that place now, two days a week,” she volunteered, warming up to me. “You know, I live over near there, so I could go there a lot easier than coming here. I live over there by Hollins College.”

Changing the subject and taking a chance, I asked, “Do you have kids and did they go to Northside?” Northside is the high school in that particular area and the school where my brothers, sister, and I all went.

“Yes, three. They all went there, but my oldest …he’s 63 you know.”

“No really? That’s not possible. You can’t possibly have a 63 year old child.” (That’s my Lakeside Amusement Park Weight/Age Game training showing though).

She smiled. “Well, I should have. I’m 83 years old. I’ve been married to my husband for 65 years.”

“Well ma’am, you certainly don’t look it…what about your other kids? How old are they? I’m just curious because I went to Northside and so did my brothers and sisters, and I was wondering if any of us went to school with your kids.”

“Well, like I said Allen, he’s 63, and Mike is 57 and Angie…” Her voice trailed off for a second as she looked away… Angie, she’d be 53….”

We both took a moment. I looked her directly in the eye, and it’s then that I saw the pain -the look of a parent who’s lost a child. I saw her sadness and felt her grief. At that moment in that smoky BINGO Hall, only the two of us existed.

She continued, her voice barely above a whisper, “She died last year from a brain tumor.”

I nodded my head and told her I was sorry and let her go on.

“She was such a smart girl. She went off to live in Ohio and ended up teaching college. She was such a smart girl.”

“It’s just not fair. Not fair at all.”

“INSTANTS!” A voice broke through our veil of solidarity. “INSTANTS!!!”

I nodded my headed and motioned that I’d be there in a moment.

“Did she have a family?”

“Yes, she had two children and her husband of thirty years. We miss her so much.” Tears began welling up in her eyes.

“That’s just not right,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

“What’s your name ma’am? After all these years, I don’t know your name.”

“Gladys, Gladys Gibson.”

“My name is Thom Ryder. It’s so nice to finally officially meet you.” Not letting up and still curious, I said, “So your daughter was Angie Gibson, and she would be the same age as my brother. I wonder if they knew each other. I’ll have to ask him when I see him. Was she in the band or anything like that?”

“No, she was a pretty quiet girl in high school. She spent all her time reading books. Then she went off to college and ended up teaching at a nursing college. She was so smart.”

By this time, the INSTANT!! People were coming up to me and interrupting our conversation. Gladys understood when I’d stop our conversation and count out tickets. She was a BINGO pro. I realized I needed to move on, so I bade her farewell and went off to sell more tickets.

About ten minutes later, I was cruising past Gladys’ seat when she motioned for me to come over. “Here’s a picture of my Angie. She was so beautiful.” Tears were streaming down her face.

I looked at the picture of the smiling young lady in the nice pantsuit. I thought of how her husband must have been devastated. How her children will have to grow up without their mother. How life can be so unfair. I looked squarely into Gladys’ eyes seeing her pain and feeling her love for her daughter, “Yes ma’am, she certainly was.”

I held her gaze for a moment, one of those classic moments you always see in the movies. Then I turned and walked off. Gladys continued to stare at the picture for another moment then turned her attention to her BINGO papers.

I didn’t much care about selling INSTANT tickets any more.