by Susan Vaught
That book got published in 1929, the same year I was born in Oxford, Mississippi. My name is CiCi Robinson, and time was, I wanted to write like good ole Count No-Count. I wanted to be brave as he was, talking about Black and White and telling the God’s honest truth about the life I lived and the world I saw.
But I was Black, and I was female, and stuck in Mississippi. The most I could hope for was getting through the winter in our nailed-together clapboard house with its dirt floor and newspapers and quilts lining the walls to keep out the wind.
Black girls who lived in patchwork houses didn’t dare dream of writing stories.
MY MOM REALLY DID SEE dead people.
Okay, so she was a coroner.
When my dad saw dead people, he puked. I’d probably do the same thing if Mom let me see the actual dead people, which she didn’t, except through the crack in the curtains on the view window at the back of her office, all covered up, just shapes under blue paper sheets.
Dad was an organic gardener, and all about tomatoes, not death. Mom said he was a hippie. As for me, I was a “late in life child,” according to Mom. Grandma Beans always called me an “oops baby,” or just Oops for short. It really got on Mom’s nerves. Grandma Beans moved in with us five years ago, when I had just turned seven. She had a lot of time to irritate Mom before she forgot how to do it.
“Indri called him Worm Dung,” I told my mother with absolutely no tears at all, even though I wanted to cry. The alcohol stink in her morgue office burned my nose and eyeballs, but I was trying to avoid the whole dramatic tendencies thing, since she was working extra hours plus teaching a class through the summer, and drama made her cranky. I sat in a chair with my back to the view window and pretended there was no crack in the curtains, and there weren’t any dead people right behind me, none at all. No drama, no drama, no drama . . .
Mom didn’t respond to me or look up from her papers.
“Worm Dung. That’s my new name for Mac Richardson,” I said a little louder, and really trying to mean it. “What do you think?”
Mom scooted a bunch of reports into a stack, then laid her pen on top. I was too far away to see what she had been working on, but I knew it was diagrams of a human body with stuff marked with Xs and circles. It was kind of weird, knowing that she turned whole lives into shapes on a page. How could people get shrunk down to outlines and pen scratches when they died? But Mom had to check everything out, to see what went bad inside people and what killed them. Those Xs and circles didn’t say a thing about who could play cornhole or understand humans and relationships or write world-changing novels. They didn’t tell anybody which people were sad because their mom or dad had to go to war, or tired because they were taking care of a sick grandmother. For all I knew, one of those dead people might have been dumped at a locker too, somewhere in their lives.
“What I really think is,” Mom said, “you’re too young for a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, so it doesn’t hurt my feelings that Mac’s out of the picture.”
I managed something close to a respectful frown, I hoped, because Mom didn’t do disrespectful any more than she did drama. “You never liked him, did you?”
Mom gave me a puzzled glance and leaned back in her rolling chair, the one with Ole Miss stitched into the leather in fat red and blue letters. Her navy skirt and white blouse were perfectly tucked together, but wrinkled at the end of the day. Her makeup still looked flawless, and she had her long brown hair braided into a tight knot on the top of her head. Mom was tall to my short and skinny to my chunky. Her skin paled in the bright blue-white ceiling bulbs, next to my in-between color that was darker brown, like Grandma and Dad. Everything about my mom was beautiful and professional, always, except when she got tired—and she had been tired a lot this past year.
“I barely know Mac Richardson,” she said in a voice that reminded me of my third-grade math teacher. “So how could I dislike him?”
My eyes roved around the pine paneling of her office walls, bouncing off her degrees and pictures of her with important people and framed newspaper articles about her work on high-profile cases. “Well, he is a Richardson.”
“Old Polish proverb, Dani.”
I sucked down a sigh. Old Polish proverb was Mom-shorthand for, Not my circus, not my monkeys. That was one of her favorite sayings, even though she was a lot more Irish than Polish.
What Mom meant was, the fight between Grandma and Avadelle Richardson wasn’t her feud, or Dad’s, or mine either. People could write news articles all day long about Beans vs. Richardson, but we didn’t have to fight just because they wanted us to.
“I know,” I said. “The Magnolia Feud is Grandma’s battle.”
Mom nodded. “It was hers, yes.”
My breath hitched. Mom gazed at me without blinking.
Was.
That word seemed to hang in the air like a sad balloon tethered by Mom’s silence. She was waiting for me to get something, but—
Oh.
That Grandma Beans wasn’t able to feud with anybody anymore.
I had a sudden image of the day Grandma moved in with us, how she drove up in her huge black Lincoln, threw open her door, and stretched her arms wide for me to run into her hug. Then she spouted off a quote and waited for me to tell her the author, novel, and year it was written. That’s how she was with me, my whole life—before.
Now, if Mom drew one of her outlines of my grandmother, there would be a big X where Grandma’s brain should have been, because that’s what was going bad inside her. It would kill her too, probably pretty soon.
I spent a few seconds studying my feet, and when I lifted my eyes again, Mom looked twice as tired, and somehow more wrinkled than she had a second ago, and I knew it might be my fault. I thought about Dad, and how while I was at school, he had worked all day looking after Grandma and his garden and the house. When he went to the doctor last month, his blood pressure had been just awful.
This isn’t going to be easy, Dani, Mom had told me when Grandma Beans came to live with us. We’ll all have to make sacrifices. From this day forward, our family has a pact to do whatever it takes to make the rest of her life comfortable, and only focus on real problems.
When I thought about Mom and Dad and Grandma Beans, and sacrifices and doing whatever it took to help family when they needed it, my stomach got tight. Worm Dung didn’t seem like something to discuss anymore, so I put him on a table in the back of my mind and covered him with a sheet, and scrawled a giant red X on the picture. There. Done with him.
“Can we get dinner on the way home?” I asked, thinking of ways to make stuff easier for my tired parents.
Mom got up and smoothed her wrinkled shirt as she shook her head. “Your father’s cholesterol doesn’t need a hamburger.”
“What about a salad from Living Foods? They’re all locally grown and organic, right? So it’s like cooking out of Dad’s garden, only somebody else does the work.”
“You know what? That’s a good idea.” Mom straightened and actually smiled at me. “We can splurge every now and then. Last day of school is as good of an excuse as any.”
“And when we get home,” I said, “I’ll do the first check on Grandma.”
* * *
“Mac dumped me,” I told my grandmother, because she had never minded hearing about my life and what happened, even if it wasn’t her circus or her monkeys.
Grandmas were special like that.
“Only, he didn’t dump me, because we weren’t going out or anything. He said we can’t be friends anymore.”
Grandma Beans didn’t say anything back, or give me a kiss, or squeeze my hand. She lay in her hospital bed, covered with a white sheet instead of a blue one, and she barely moved at all.
“He says it’s because reporters are trying to stir up stuff about the Magnolia Feud, but that’s ridiculous. The last time reporters bothered any of us was three years ago, when that tabloid guy tried to hit you up at the hardware store.” Late-afternoon sunli
ght played across my fingers as I rested my hand on her chest, really light, no pressure, to feel the up-and-down movement of her breathing.
“Everything okay, Dani?” Mom called from down the hall, as if she knew I was having dramatic thoughts.
“Yes,” I said. “Grandma looks fine.”
“Give her a kiss, then, and go eat your dinner. I’ll feed her in a bit.”
“Okay.” But my hand didn’t move, and my attention drifted to the room’s open window. The curtains swayed in a soft breeze. That window was always open, rain or shine, hot or cold, because way back when we all talked with Grandma about how she wanted things. “When the time came,” she told us, she wanted a lot of fresh air. Since then, we’d had to move her four-poster bed out and replace it with this hospital kind. It sat in the middle of the floor, along with the temporary cabinets Dad had built to hold sheets and incontinence pads and washcloths and wipes and medicine. We could have kept her regular furniture, but Grandma thought this way would be easier on us.
You’re going to let me die at home. Least I can do is be considerate and not ruin the furniture.
Don’t be silly, Mama.
I’m never silly, Marcus. That would be you, with your big ole grizzly bear head and that hippie beard.
Back when she remembered us every day, Grandma liked to laugh and pick at Dad and spend hours working on her latest paper while I played on the floor at her feet. My eyes darted to the few tables lining the walls, where we kept her papers even though she couldn’t write anymore. Before Grandma got Alzheimer’s disease, she taught elementary school for thirty years, then taught sociology and civil rights at the University of Mississippi—Ole Miss—for fifteen more. She wrote a lot of books and articles on stuff like The Social Implications of the “Magical Negro” in Folk Tales and Whitewashing History.
I tried to read a couple of them last year, but I had no idea what they meant. Mom said Grandma was a “fire-breather.” Dad said she was relentless. Grandma called herself a “jaded realist.” That was over a year ago, when she still talked plain and made sense. Now—well, now the times when Grandma still felt like Grandma didn’t happen hardly ever.
Heavy sadness settled in my chest, and I blinked fast to keep from crying. No use thinking about Grandma when she could write and talk to me and hug me. That was just more drama. The papers blurred out, then came back into focus. I turned away from them and bent over and brushed my lips against Grandma’s soft cheek. She smelled like baby oil, and she didn’t have wrinkles like a lot of old people, even though she was so scrawny her skin should have hung on her like an oversized football jersey.
The hospice doctor had given us a booklet, Gone from My Sight: The Dying Experience, written by Barbara Karnes, R.N. The booklet told all about what Grandma’s dying would look like. But with dying, nothing was that certain.
When it’s natural, people die on their own schedule, the doctor told us. To quote an old proverb, death always comes too early—or too late.
In the “One to Two Weeks Prior to Death” section, the booklet described a bunch of changes, like pulse getting faster or slower, sweating, trouble breathing and congestion. The hospice nurses had taught me how to check her pulse, so I did it every day, and I looked for changes. This evening, Grandma’s pulse was seventy-five, right where it usually was. I watched her breathe a few more times, and didn’t hear any rattling. When I scooted my hand off her chest and touched her fingers, they were warm. For now, she was okay.
Sooner or later, Oops, we’re all gonna be okay. Grandma used to tell me that whenever I got upset. It always riled me up. Now, it made a weird sort of sense. Grandma’s eyelids twitched as I pulled away, and she muttered, “Marcus?”
“It’s me, Grandma. It’s Oops. Dad’s the giant guy with the beard to his chest.”
“Marcus,” Grandma muttered again.
Her clouded eyes opened, and she stared at the ceiling. Her knobby fingers worried the sheet pulled up to her chest, and she sighed. A tear leaked out of her eye.
My heart broke a little bit, and I kissed her cheek again. “Don’t cry, Grandma. Dad’s downstairs. I can get him if you want.”
This time as I pulled back, her head swiveled slowly in my direction. Her gaze stayed cloudy and far away, like she could see into a thousand worlds I didn’t even know existed. After a few minutes, her lips pulled upward, and I knew she was smiling. Her next word came out garbled, but I could tell it started with an ew sound.
I grinned back at her even though I really, really felt like crying instead. “That’s right. It’s me. Your little Oops. I love you, Grandma.”
Her right hand shook as she tried to lift it. I picked it up for her and I put it on my face, along the side, where she had always patted me. She kept smiling for a second, then another tear slipped out of her eye and plopped down on her pillowcase.
She started whispering, and I had to lean in close to hear her say, “I’m gone, Oops. I’m all gone.”
I kept my ear right in front of her lips. “No, you’re right here, in the house with me. With us.”
“Gone,” she muttered, and her eyes closed, but her face looked like she’d swallowed a mouthful of lemon juice. I knew that face. She was upset, and I hated that.
I leaned closer. “Can I do something for you?”
“Get the envelope,” she told me. “Take the key. It’s for you when I’m gone. I’m gone, Oops.”
Envelope? Key? What was she— Probably nothing. “You’re not gone. Everything’s okay, Grandma.”
Grandma turned her head side to side until I stepped away from the bed again. I didn’t want her to stay upset or get so worked up she had to have medicine.
“I was there,” Grandma said. She coughed. “You get that stuff out of my bag, you hear me? Get the key. I gave it to history. I let the ghosts keep it for you.”
“Dani.” Mom’s voice came from the bedroom doorway, sharp enough to make me twitch. “I told you to go eat your dinner.”
“Sorry, but Grandma’s upset about something. She’s talking.”
Grandma stirred in the bed, more than I had seen her move in days.
“It’s time I tell you. It’s time I tell her.” She let out a little sob. “I’m gone.”
When I glanced at Mom, she looked surprised. After a few seconds, she murmured, “Go on now. Eat.”
My first urge was to argue with Mom that I wanted to stay and listen. When hospice first came in, they suggested staying in the moment, going from feeling to feeling and memory to memory with Grandma. They talked about how she might have things to resolve, and how we should help her.
I was there . . . get the key. It’s time I tell her. It’s time I tell you.
That sounded like something to resolve. But what did it mean? Something about an envelope and key in her bag—she probably meant one of the purses hanging in her closet, but those were her private property. We didn’t go into her bags and things, even now, and didn’t plan to, not until she really was gone.
Grandma told me to, though. She said to get an envelope and a key from her bag.
“Time to eat, Dani,” Mom said. “Before your lettuce wilts and you get a mind to go for macaroni and cheese instead of something healthier.”
As Grandma calmed back into silence, Dad loomed in the doorway and came to stand beside Mom. He was made out of muscles from years in the Army and all of his gardening, and he had on his black T-shirt and his work-in-the-yard jeans. Sweat glistened on his forehead, from when he was outside earlier.
He looked at his mother, then Mom, and then Dad’s eyes fastened on mine. He could probably see how much I wanted to stay, and he shook his head once.
Close that mouth, the head-shake told me. And, Your mom is stressed enough, and, Don’t worry, I got this.
To Mom, he said, “Love you, Cella,” and kissed the side of her head.
Mom relaxed into Dad’s kiss, and that fast, I found myself smiling. It was the first time since the cornhole tournament that I’d f
elt a little happy. Grandma was completely peaceful again, the house quiet except for the sound of everyone’s breathing.
As I left the bedroom, I went past the table where some of Grandma’s papers lay waiting, with a heavy miniature Liberty Bell weight holding them down so they wouldn’t blow around if some of Grandma’s fresh air got frisky.
I’m gone, Oops.
My hand was still on the knob of Grandma’s bedroom door.
Gone.
I used to think gone meant dead, but that was before I understood there were sicknesses like Alzheimer’s disease that could eat away a person’s mind but leave their body behind.
So what did gone really mean?
“Mom told you to go eat,” I muttered out loud, to get my own attention. Everything inside me wanted to go to Grandma’s closet and go through her bags. Instead, I went downstairs like I was supposed to. I even sat down and took bites of my salad, tasting nothing much as I crunched away on the greens, which had gotten kind of soggy after all.
But mostly I thought about Grandma’s closet and her bags.
It’s for you when I’m gone.
“Just talking out of her head,” I mumbled to myself. I ate more limp healthy organic salad, but when I tried not to think about the purses and what might be in them, I thought about Mac. Five minutes of that was absolutely enough, so I got up and fetched the gigantic Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language Mom kept in the living room and lugged it to the kitchen.
Surprise, surprise. Dead was like, the fifth definition of the word gone. Before that came “past participle of go; departed, left; lost or hopeless;” and “ruined.”
Wow. By that definition, Grandma was sort of gone already, and she did say it herself.
“I’m gone, Oops,” I repeated her words aloud, to the few pieces of tough broccoli and cauliflower left in my bowl. My grandmother with all of her quote games and world-changing books, and the Magnolia Feud, and the weird thing she said about writing something down, and whatever was in her purses that she left for me for when she was gone—whatever gone really meant—and a disease that robbed her of the ability to explain it all to me—yep. It was a big ole mystery.