If I Live to Be 100 Lessons from the Centenarians

1 victoria williams "You people have so much fun now." Victoria Williams, at 106 years old, was the size of a twelve-year-old girl. They brought her to me in a wheelchair. On the seat next to her was a black vinyl pocketbook, its stiff handle placed up over her shoulder. Her lips were pressed tight together. She was angry. The health aide pushing the chair rolled her eyes as she approached me in the visitors lounge and said in a low voice, "We've had a rough morning." "Miss Williams, would you like a cookie?" she said, coming around to the front of the chair. "I want coffee," said Victoria Williams, loudly. The woman walked off without introducing us. "Good morning," I said in my most chipper voice. Victoria Williams stared at me like a bug, expressionless. I leaned toward her. There was a faint smell of urine. "I'm the reporter who's come to interview you." "Interview me?" "For radio. I just want to ask you some questions about your life." Victoria Williams was the first centenarian I met. I had applied for a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to interview centenarians and I needed a sample tape, to give the review panel an idea of what my radio series might sound like. I was in a hurry; the deadline was soon. I called the Washington Center for Aging Services, a huge home for the elderly in Northeast D.C. It's not the kind of place I would choose to live in. The aides seemed caring but stretched hopelessly beyond their means. I was taken to a lounge area where residents sat silently, some watching television, some in a stupor. I was not surprised to find myself there for the first interview. It matched my stereotypes and I thought, This is what happens when you're old if you have no place else to go. I expected to see many more places like this. I also expected, at that time, that most centenarians would be like Victoria Williams. The skin on her face was smooth and shiny and taut. She jutted her jaw, sliding her false teeth forward and then back, inspecting me, shifting her attention away from her struggle with the aide, whatever it had been. "Here's your coffee, Miss Williams." The aide returned with a steaming Styrofoam cup and two chocolate-chip cookies on a napkin. Evidently, it was a peace offering, and it was accepted. With her elbows on the armrests and her dark, bony fingers wrapped delicately around the cup, Victoria Williams held the coffee beneath her nose, inhaling the vapor. "My mother and father died and we had to go to work," she started in abruptly, without looking up. "You went to work after they passed on?" "Part-time? No! We didn't no part-time, we worked if it was all day or all night." I shifted closer to her right ear so she could hear me better. She sipped the coffee loudly and said, "Ooh, that's hot!" Then she continued: "We had to work all the time. Didn't no place stay and pay no rent. No! We worked! We stay where we worked." She put the edge of the cookie between her teeth and broke off a piece, chewing as she talked, not looking at me. "You people have so much fun now." I wasn't sure whom she meant. "You think people have more fun now?" "Yeah, you all have a lot of fun, setting down and drinking coffee that somebody make and give you. You didn't make and give us none. We had to make our own." "Miss Williams, do you remember when you were a little girl?" "A little girl." "Do you remember?" "When?" "When you were a girl. Do you remember?" "Yeaaaahh." She dragged out the word and smiled. "What was it like when you were aEllis, Neenah is the author of 'If I Live to Be 100 Lessons from the Centenarians', published 2004 under ISBN 9781400051427 and ISBN 1400051428.