Belinda
By Cherie Logan
Her Detroit Tiger hat was on her head as soon as Belinda opened her eyes. Ernie Harwell blasted on her radio every Tiger game. Long-necked Stroh’s and a joint were all that was needed for game time. She smoked pot on Plum Street and The Grande. Belinda wasn’t a hippie; she liked their weed.
Rent was cheap at her Cass Corridor apartment. Belinda made enough for her bills, Stroh’s and reefer working in a coin laundry. She waitressed at a local bar for beer sometimes and hung out there with her friends drinking and playing cards.
Belinda laughed at everything, even her terminal breast cancer. She refused intervention and developed an open wound. I changed it daily. I was her hospice nurse.
“Damn, khaki pants and that golf shirt. Who picked that? You look like a suburban bitch,” she laughed on my first visit. Belinda made me show my driver’s license to prove I lived in Detroit.
“Your outfit still looks like shit.” She laughed. I laughed. It did.
Belinda’s friends visited her often. Bruce always bought her a Ball Park Frank with extra onions, and others brought the Stroh’s.
Lorraine, a volunteer, brought her food from a church outreach. She had been doing it since AIDS started.
“I am fucking in charge, not you. Not anybody,” Belinda said every time I spoke of the time she would be unable to care for herself.
Belinda became bedridden. She couldn’t get out of her apartment in an emergency. I talked to her about safety.
“Fuck off. You are trying to force me to leave. If I burned, it would be sooner than later. I am a dead woman still breathing.”
I should have consulted social work for placement. I should have done a lot of things, but I didn't. I left placement paperwork with Belinda so I could say I was trying.
What I did do was bathe her every day as she was incontinent. Belinda would yell at me to hurry up. A six pack of Stroh’s awaited her. I was crossing another line but incentives work.
Lorraine came with breakfast one morning and found Belinda dead.
“I’m fucking in charge,” Belinda had written on the placement paperwork on her bedside table with empty Stoh’s bottles and a tiny roach in her ashtray.
“Belinda’s dying is not about me, I know, but damn,” Lorraine said.
I understood. Strange how someone’s death pulls an emotional string and others don’t.
Lorraine picked her Tiger hat off the floor and placed it on Belinda’s unruly hair.
I called the bar. Her friends came with Ball Park Franks and Stroh’s. They toasted to her with their hot dogs and beer. Hugged Lorraine and I. Started a card game to wait for Belinda to leave. The stories began.
“She loved Al Kaline, but Willie Horton was a close second.”
“Ever hear why she loved Willie? He saved Mr. Tiger’s life in Milwaukee. Kaline swallowed his tongue in the outfield. Jim Northrup couldn’t pry his mouth open. Willie jogged over and with his strong ass hands opened it. Saved his life. Mr. Tiger’s mouth clamped again, and his teeth cut Willie. He has a scar on his hand,” Bruce said.
“She knew more about the Tigers than the Tigers do. Never bet against her.” Everyone laughs.
The cards are shuffled, and a new game begins with clicks of lighters and beer caps popping.
Lorraine and I sit silent. Tears slide down her cheeks. She wipes her tears and blows her nose.
No money, no funeral, so Wayne County Morgue it is. Could be hours. It was.
Her friends stayed until she left. The bartender took her Tiger cap to hang behind the bar. The landlord secured the apartment. Gone forever except in memories.
Lorriane and I walked out together.
“I just had a moment,” she said.
“I have them too.”
No words were needed.
1st Place Non-Fiction
Read the piece in “Detroit Voices” featuring the 2025 DWR Award winners.
Cherie Logan has been published in Beyond Words and The Examined Life Journal of the University of Iowa. In 2026, one of her pieces will be published in The Kurt Vonnegut Museum Magazine. She is a member of The Detroit Writing Room. A lifelong storyteller, she speaks at the Detroit Moth. Her nursing career included hospice, medical missions and disaster relief.
