by Africa Fine
“You know what my mother used to say: Close your mouth before you to let in the flies,” Elaine cackled in her Haitian accent.
I smiled. “What are you guys doing?”
“Surprise,” Jack and Monica yelled, coming closer to hug me.
I glanced over at Aunt Gillian to see how she was reacting to all the confusion. She looked a bit confused but happy. Her gaze was fixed on the swaying balloon, which she watched with a childlike pleasure. Then she stood up and moved faster than I had seen her move in years, heading toward Jack and the balloon. Time seemed to both speed up and slow down as she fell in the middle of the room. She tripped, or her legs gave way. Aunt Gillian lay in a heap, moaning in pain as we all rushed be the first to help her.
We spent the perfect Christmas alternating shifts at the hospital. At first, Aunt Gillian’s fall seemed straightforward. A broken hip: bad, but manageable. Then, her doctors told us that hers was a bad fracture, and she might not be able to walk without help after hip-replacement surgery. Aunt Gillian got her new hip on December 31, her seventieth birthday. She was not awake to appreciate the flowers Monica had brought, the soothing words Jack spoke, the way I paced her room, unable to sit still for fear I would break into pieces.
Jack and I were alone in the room with Aunt Gillian. He watched me pace for a long while.
“Why don’t you sit, Tina? Relax a little.” He smiled at me across the room.
“I can’t. It’s just too much,” I said. I felt as if I wasn’t making any sense, but Jack nodded.
“The fall. Gill’s story.”
“It’s just that, she has this daughter, Lily, and I don’t know where she is, what she’s doing, why she’s not here instead of me.” I stopped my pacing next to Jack’s chair. He pulled the other chair in the room close to his and patted it. I took a chance and perched on the edge of the chair, ready to get up again at the first sign of panic.
I felt the tears welling up in my eyes, and I commanded them to go away. “Knowing a little makes me want to know it all even more. And now…”
Jack grabbed my hand. The warmth from his skin made me blush. I looked around the white walls of my aunt’s private room, out of the window at the view of the Intracoastal, down at the tiled floor.
“Don’t think like that. This is just a setback. Gill’s going to be okay.”
I could no longer stop the tears from falling. “But what if she’s not?” I whispered. “Old people don’t always recover from something like this. They get infections, bad ones. And pneumonia. What if we spent all our lives arguing and being mad at each other, and this is how it ends? What if she…is not here, and I don’t have anyone? What if I never find out about my parents, about Lily?”
My voice rose until I was sobbing out the words. Jack stood up and pulled me to my feet. He held me tight, his arms squeezing me with just enough pressure to help me calm down. When I regained control, he pulled back to look into my eyes. I tried to look away but he watched me until I had no choice but to return his gaze.
“Are you a quitter?”
I shrugged.
He shook me a little. “Are you?”
I closed my eyes for a long moment and opened them again.
“No.”
“Then don’t quit now. Your aunt needs you. Forget about all that stuff in the past. Focus on now, and tomorrow, and the next day.”
I couldn’t help smiling. “Now you sound like Aunt Gillian.”
He gave a soft laugh. “She’s a smart lady. A tough lady. Like someone else I know.”
We looked at each other, still embracing, and my muscles felt as if they were melting into his. We might have kissed, but just then a nurse walked in to check on Aunt Gillian.
It was clear and sunny the day Aunt Gillian came home. There was just a bit of January bite in the air, and I wore a sweater for the first time in months. I came alone to the hospital, leaving Jack and Elaine to wait at home. While she was in the hospital, I’d given serious thought to what it would be like if Aunt Gillian was gone, and I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. The doctors said she was fine, aside from needing physical therapy for her leg, so there was no imminent danger. There was just my own realization that Aunt Gillian wouldn’t be here forever.
She left the hospital on a Tuesday in mid-January. Classes would be starting soon, but I didn’t feel the anticipation I associated with the start of a new semester. I was too busy thinking about endings to enjoy the beginnings.
My aunt was confined to a wheelchair while she recovered from her surgery. Although she didn’t say much about it when her doctors explained it, I could tell by the way she looked at the chair that she was depressed about not being able to get around on her own. Elaine would live with us full-time now, since my aunt would need round-the-clock care that I was not equipped to provide, and the doorways in the house would need to be retrofitted to allow her wheelchair to pass through. Each day took away more and more of the old Aunt Gillian, and on rare lucid days, she realized it. It was difficult for me to see her becoming more dependent. It must have been excruciating for her.
Aunt Gillian was quiet as we prepared to leave the hospital. She made a joke about her “new wheels,” and she smiled when I cautioned her about driving like Dale Earnhardt Jr. She was quiet on the way home until we neared the house.
“Could we go to the beach?”
I glanced over at her. Not once had she wanted to go to the beach since she had lived in Florida. When she first arrived, it had been too hot, she claimed, and by the time it cooled off, I didn’t think she remembered that she lived near the ocean.
“The beach?” I didn’t want to go. I wanted to get home, get into a routine, see Jack. But I thought about endings again, and decided that my aunt should not be denied this simple request.
“You’ll need to put on a sweater and a hat,” I told her. She beamed at me and nodded.
I turned the car around and we drove south to Delray Beach, where I knew there were restaurants that wouldn’t be too crowded on a Tuesday morning. We found seats across the street from the beach, allowing us to look out at the water while eating a light brunch. Aunt Gillian’s mood seemed to grow darker as we sat, and I ordered for both of us after she claimed she didn’t care what she ate. I felt a tinge of irritation but I reminded myself that she had every right to be moody. We were quiet, enjoying the view, until the food came. I was about to bite into my omelet when Aunt Gillian spoke.
“Tina, I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to be around.”
I paused, fork on the way to mouth. She had never called me Tina.
“Please don’t talk like that.”
She grabbed my arm, sending the fork clattering to the table. She didn’t seem to notice the noise. Her fingers felt bony and frail.
“You have to face reality. I’ve always thought of myself as someone who doesn’t run from problems, who faces life as it comes.”
She looked out the window, but I knew she wasn’t seeing the palm trees or the calm blue water. Then she looked back at me.
“But it’s not true. I’ve been running for as long as I can remember.”
I shook my head, confused. I opened my mouth to speak, to tell her that she would live for many more years, to tell her that she was the strongest person I’d ever known. But she waved her hand at me.
“Just let me tell it to you. Let me tell you about Lily, about your parents, about you. Then you’ll know.”
For the first time in my entire life, I was doubtful about wanting to know. At that moment, I knew that the truth would not be easy, that what had been easy was not knowing, imagining, making up my own history to fit the person I wanted to be. Once I knew the truth, all other possibilities would disappear, replaced by facts shaped long before I was born.
I wanted to stop Aunt Gillian, but it was too late. She was already telling her story.
Chapter 26
“She was not alone”
Gillian hadn’t seen or spoken t
o Brenda in seventeen years, not since her sister was three years old. They were strangers more than sisters. So when the young woman showed up at her door in Cleveland on a warm summer evening, Gillian didn’t recognize her. Nor did she recognize the chocolate-skinned young man standing next to her.
“Can I help you?”
Gillian was polite but distant, thinking the young people, dressed in neat, conservative clothing, were Jehovah’s Witnesses selling pamphlets and salvation. Gillian wasn’t interested in either. She had just arrived home after a long shift on the neonatal-care floor at the hospital, and she needed peace and quiet after listening to tiny babies crying all day long.
“I think so. I’m Brenda.”
Later, Gillian remembered her sister’s nervous smile at that first meeting, and the way she had clutched the young man’s hand, as if she feared one of them might run if they weren’t attached.
Gillian offered a small smile, her patience running thin. It seemed that the Witnesses weren’t teaching their converts to get to the point. She waited for the girl to say more, and when she didn’t, Gillian took a closer look. The girl was wearing a neat skirt, the kind a secretary might wear, and a white oxford blouse buttoned up to the top. Her hair was pulled back into a severe bun, and she wore no makeup. Gillian glanced at the boy. He looked uncomfortable but handsome in his blue suit and shiny black shoes. He wouldn’t meet Gillian’s eyes. She looked back at the girl, sensing that she was the reason they were here.
Although the girl looked serious and scared, there was something familiar about the shape of her lips, the spacing of her eyes. The silence threatened to become excruciating, with Gillian watching the girl, thinking about whom she resembled. Then, the name clicked.
“Brenda?”
The girl nodded.
Gillian took a deep breath and leaned against the doorjamb. “Brenda Jones.”
A wide smile spread across the girl’s face, and Gillian now knew whom the girl reminded her of. Her mother. Their mother.
“I’m Brenda McElroy now, actually,” she said, holding up her left hand, the one that was not clutching the young man’s hand. She wore a tear-shaped diamond set in a plain gold band on her third finger. “I’m your sister.”
Gillian had spent many years avoiding the past. She hadn’t given much thought to the family she had left behind in Baltimore. She hadn’t allowed herself to entertain nostalgia, to worry about how her baby sister was doing, to wonder if her father was still alive. She didn’t have the luxury of such thought. Gillian was a survivor. She survived her marriage to Jeremiah. She survived the birth of her daughter, Lily. She survived life. She still worked as a nurse, still cashed Jeremiah’s checks every month, and still held her head up high every day. Survival took up all of her attention. It was all she had.
Now, here was baby Brenda, no longer a baby, no longer a Jones. She invited them inside and poured glasses of iced tea before addressing the white elephant in the room.
“Brenda.” Gillian looked over at the young man, not wanting to exclude him. “And Ernest.”
She stopped there, unsure what to say or ask first. She didn’t know what to feel about her sister’s arrival. On the one hand, it would bring complications into her life, because that is what family members did, whether they meant to or not. Gillian prided herself on the simplicity of her life. She worked. She had casual friends with whom she had shared cocktails and dinner from time to time. She owned her home, which she still loved even though it was a remnant of her failed marriage to Jeremiah. She did what she wanted, when she wanted, and was beholden to no one.
On the other hand, Gillian felt an unfamiliar stirring in her chest as she watched her sister sitting in the formal parlor of her home. She wasn’t sure, but she thought the feeling was joy.
In the end, her words to her sister were simple.
“I’m so glad you’re here.”
Brenda beamed, first at Gillian, then at Ernest. “Me, too.”
* * *
Besides the news of her own recent marriage to Ernest, Brenda brought bad news as well. Their father had died just a month ago. He’d died doing what he loved, cutting hair in his shop. The customers said that one minute he was talking politics and complaining about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the next minute he was lying on the floor dead of a heart attack at sixty.
“It took Mom this long to go through Daddy’s things, or else I would have told you sooner. I was going to call, but well, I thought it would be better to talk to you in person.”
Gillian shifted in her seat and digested this. She felt a twinge at the thought of her father’s death. As far as she was concerned, he had abandoned her long before she left home, and at thirty-five years old, she had put her years as Daddy’s girl behind her. She couldn’t miss him, but it made her feel sad that he had known where she was all these years but had never contacted her. It seemed that she and her father were more alike than she had ever realized.
The other thing that gave Gillian pause was the word “Mom.” It took just a moment of confusion before she realized that Brenda was referring not to their own biological mother, but to Eloise, the woman Franklin had married when Gillian was in college. She was surprised to still feel a germ of resentment toward the woman, but she knew that it made sense that Brenda would think of her as her mother. Brenda was a baby when Eloise married their father, and she had never even known their real mother, Marianne. Gillian wondered how much Franklin and Eloise had told Brenda about Marianne, whether she knew anything about the manic depression, the hospital, the suicide.
She shook her head as if to clear away those thoughts. It didn’t matter. Not now.
“How is your mother?” Gillian asked out of a sense of decorum.
Brenda didn’t reply right away. Instead, she shared a long look with Ernest before turning back to Gillian with an insincere smile on her face.
“She’s good. Fine.”
Gillian took another look at Ernest. He was perhaps the same age as Brenda—eighteen—which she could see in the tautness of his smooth dark skin. But his eyes seemed older, more knowing, than those of her sister. She wondered what had gone on between Brenda, Eloise, and Ernest, and she made a mental note to ask Brenda about it sometime when they were alone. She had a feeling that there was more to this visit than telling Gillian about their father’s death, but she didn’t want to scare her away with too many questions.
“Are you hungry? I was just going to cook dinner.” Gillian could see relief in Brenda’s eyes. Either she was very hungry, or she didn’t want to talk about her stepmother.
“Follow me to the kitchen and we can catch up while I cook.”
* * *
Gillian insisted that Brenda and Ernest stay with her—where else did they have to go? She learned more about her sister over the few days that turned into weeks, then months. Brenda and Ernest had eloped. Eloise and Franklin had not approved of Ernest, who, although he had been a top student in his high school, had no desire or plans to attend college. Instead, he wanted to be a poet, and he spent his days writing in wire-bound notebooks and his nights working as a fry cook at a local diner. This was not the future the Joneses had envisioned for Brenda, and they’d told her so.
“Ever since I was a little girl, I did everything they told me to do,” Brenda explained to Gillian one morning. Gillian was preparing for work and Ernest was still sleeping, having stayed up late writing, according to Brenda. Gillian knew better, because the heating vents carried sound, and she did not believe the sounds she had heard coming from the guest room involved any writing at all. But she could not begrudge the young couple their pleasures, not even when their joy in each other reminded her of the early days with Jeremiah.
“But I couldn’t lose Ernest. I wouldn’t.” Brenda still had the facial expressions and mannerisms of a child. Gillian could imagine her sister stomping her foot in frustration when she was forbidden to see Ernest. She considered telling Brenda about her own elopement, bu
t the words wouldn’t come.
From the start, Gillian enjoyed her role as big sister, as a member of a true family for the first time in many years. But she noticed things about Brenda, things that made her feel small and petty. Sometimes she couldn’t decide whether her sister was petulant and demanding, always wanting her choice of food for dinner, the lights set just so, the plumpest pillow; or was Gillian’s long-dormant resentment of Brenda coming through, clouding her view of her sister until truth and lies were indistinguishable?
As the weeks turned into months, Gillian wondered what her sister’s plans were. Ernest had gone out and found a job at a deli much like the one he had left back in Baltimore, saying that he wanted to pay rent that Gillian refused to accept. He worked days now, leaving Brenda alone in the house for hours. Gillian wondered what her sister did during those hours. She offered to help Brenda enroll in a local college, but her sister pouted at the idea of going to college in Cleveland.
“I always planned to go to Georgetown, or at least Howard, if nothing else.” Brenda said this in a snobbish tone, and Gillian couldn’t help resenting the implication that Howard was an inferior choice. It had been good enough for her, but it seemed that Franklin and Eloise had demanded better for Baby Brenda.
So Brenda spent her days ignoring the lists of activities and errands Gillian suggested, doing little of apparent value, waiting for Gillian and Ernest to come home. Over time, Gillian came to understand why Brenda found Ernest so irresistible. He was quiet, and polite, and he spoke only when spoken to. His silence was in no way rude or disrespectful. He valued words and used them with care. And he adored Brenda. He doted on her, fulfilling her every wish, sometimes before she uttered them aloud. He never seemed to be frustrated by Brenda’s petulant moods, giving her the same slow smile whether she was in one of her bright, talkative moods or in a pout. He treated Brenda like the princess Brenda believed herself to be.