would bring order to motherhood. Jimmy and his wife were both hell-bent on getting ahead and would work themselves to death if I didn’t nag them into taking an occasional vacation. And Eric, he was as quiet as his father, and no one but me, who had listened over the phone as he cried his heart out over lost love more than once, knew that he felt everything twice as deep as his brother or sister.
From the moment I told the Supremes I was sick, Clarice would try to take over my life. First she’d want to take charge of my medical treatment. Then she’d get on my very last nerve by trying to drag me to her church for anointings and such. And Barbara Jean would just get all quiet and accept that I was as good as dead. Seeing her grieving for me ahead of time would bring back memories of all she’s lost in her life, and it would depress the hell out of me.
My brother, in spite of being raised by our mother, had grown up and become a man who believed that women were helpless victims of our emotions and hormones. When he found out I was sick, he would talk to me like I was a child and pester me just like he used to when we were children.
And James. I thought of the look I used to see on James’s face in that horrible, gray-yellow emergency room light whenever one of the kids suffered some childhood injury. The smallest pain for them meant despair for him. Whenever I came down with a cold or flu, he was at my side with a thermometer, medicine, and an expression of agony on his face for the duration. It was like he’d pooled up all the love and caring his father had denied him and his mother and was determined to shower it onto me and our children ten times over.
I made up my mind right then that I’d keep this whole thing to myself for as long as I could. There was still an outside chance that it was all a false alarm, wasn’t there? And, if this chemo was indeed “well-tolerated,” I might be able to tell everyone about it at my leisure. If I was lucky, in five or six months I could turn to James and my friends one Sunday at the All-You-Can-Eat and say, “Hey, did I ever tell you all about the time I had cancer?”
When I didn’t say anything for a while. Alex spoke faster. believing he had to provide me with some sort of consolation. But I wasn’t the one who needed to be consoled. Behind him on the windowsill of his office, Mama sat with both of her hands pressed to her face. She was crying like I had never seen before.
Mama muttered, “No, no, this can’t be right. It’s too soon.”
Mrs. Roosevelt, who had been lying on the sofa against the wall of Alex’s office, rose and walked over to Mama. She patted Mama on the back and whispered in her ear, but whatever she said didn’t do the trick. Mama continued to cry. She was crying so loud now that I could barely hear the doctor.
Finally, forgetting my vow not to talk to the dead in the presence of the living, I said, “It’s all right. Really, it’s all right. There’s nothing to cry about.”
Alex stopped talking and stared at me for a moment, assuming I was talking to him. He apparently took my words as permission for him to let go because within seconds he was out of his chair and crouching in front of me. He buried his face in my lap, and I soon felt his tears soak through my skirt. He said, “I’m so sorry, Ma.” Then he apologized for not being more professional as he blew his nose into a tissue I pulled from the box on the corner of his desk and handed to him.
I rubbed his back, pleased to be comforting him instead of him comforting me. I bent forward and whispered, “Shh, shh, don’t cry,” into Alex’s ear. But I said it staring ahead at my mother as she sobbed into Eleanor Roosevelt’s fox stole. “I’m not afraid. Can’t be, remember? I was born in a sycamore tree.”
Chapter 12
Clarice turned around in her chair to get a good look at the newly redecorated All-You-Can-Eat. It was just before Halloween and the restaurant was dressed up for the