Rain Song

by Alice J. Wisler

  Chapter Thirty

  The next morning, after a troubled night of sleep where Iva kept shouting in my dreams that Ducee was dead, I toss on a pair of jeans and a UNC-Greensboro T-shirt and check my answering machine. Seeing that no one has left a message, I feel Ducee must still be alive. If anything happened, Iva would have let me know.

  Quickly, before heading to the hospital, I open my email. I ignore all the messages—mostly spam—except the one from Harrison.

  Nicole,

  Do you remember the day we went to the park and two Japanese girls made a crown out of clover for you to wear? There was a patch of clover and you were in the middle, the other girls surrounding you, creating this crown for your head. They were mesmerized by your red hair. I visited Watanabe-san today and she regrets that the picture she took of you wearing the clover crown didn’t survive the fire. She has lots of pictures on her bulletin board that she was able to save. She wonders if your father has that clover photo in the boxes of items packed up for him. I said I’d ask you.

  Harrison

  Clover crown, I muse. I do wonder what that looked like. As for the boxes neighbors apparently packed for Father after the fire, I have yet to see the contents of those. They were shipped to his parents’ house and stored in their attic.

  I went up there once. That was the day I broke my ankle and was told never to enter the attic again.

  “There is nothing up there for you,” my father’s mother sternly told me. “Nothing.”

  ———

  Two days later, Ducee is moved to a private room. The nurses cart all the flowers, balloons, and cards she’s received to her new room, a room with yellow walls, the color of her own kitchen.

  Alone with her in the room, I gradually make my way to my grandmother’s side and remove strands of her gray hair from her pale face. Gently, I run fingers across her cool forehead, cheeks, and eyes.

  Ducee doesn’t make a sound.

  Sitting on the stool by her bed, I remember how Ducee cared for me one summer when Father drove me down for a four-week visit. I’d been in Ducee and Grandpa Luke’s home only three days when I came down with the flu.

  “Why do my eyes hurt? Why am I so hot?” My questions had been constant, even back then.

  Ducee smoothed my hair back from my flushed face.

  “Why does my foot feel funny?”

  “Just rest, dear. It’ll be okay.”

  I started to cry.

  “Oh, honey,” Ducee whispered. “Shhh. Shhhh.” She brushed her fingers over my aching arms. “There, it’s okay. Don’t you know you are my chutney girl?”

  At the time I thought, “I am Ducee’s chutney girl. I guess I am going to be okay.”

  Now Ducee twitches just a tiny bit, which makes me think I should phone every relative.

  I wait and watch as she opens her eyes. I feel I am viewing a child’s first steps. I want to hurry the process, yet I know I need to be patient.

  Ducee swallows, and then mumbles.

  I lean in, place a hand on Ducee’s shoulder, and touch my fingers to her left cheek.

  Ducee’s lips are colorless as she moves them.

  “Just rest,” I manage to say. “It will be okay.” And, oh, how I want to believe this.

  I tuck the white sheet against Ducee’s shoulders as her eyes shut.

  Later she asks for a sip of water and gets frustrated when some of the liquid dribbles onto her checkered hospital nightgown.

  “Shh,” I tell her. “Shhhh. Don’t you know you are my chutney girl?”

  I hope that is a smile I see on my grandmother’s lips. She looks peaceful. On second thought, it could be her dying face. A face I have yet to see. How do I know that it isn’t?

  This could be the day her heart, which was under the surgical knife years ago, decides it can take no more, and stops.

  “Emma.” Like a blessing, I hear my mother’s name float from Ducee’s lips. “Emma.”

  “Ducee?” I edge closer to her.

  Ducee’s eyes flutter open, catch mine in their gaze, and she smiles. I know it is a smile. She is not going to die. Not now. Ducee slowly whispers, “Did anyone ever tell you . . .”

  “What?” I strain to hear.

  “That you . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “ . . . have hands . . . like your mother?”

  ———

  The attic belonging to Father’s parents was dank and musty. Somehow I knew that there were boxes up there, boxes that had been sent from Japan, filled with items that survived the house fire. I suppose Ducee had told me. Curious, one afternoon while the adults were downstairs watching a game on TV, I snuck upstairs and pulled down the attic steps. The dark hole leading up to the attic gave me goose bumps, but I told myself that the wonderful reward would be opening those boxes and finding pictures of Mama in Japan. Perhaps there was even some of her jewelry that had been rescued from the fire, like the turquoise bracelet she received after graduating from nursing school. I had heard about that bracelet from Ducee and imagined how it would feel against my skin, on my wrist. The thought of having something to wear of Mama’s produced a happy sensation within my twelve-year-old heart. With determination, I embarked on the steps, slowly making my way up. Downstairs, a door opened and slammed; I felt my heart freeze in my chest. Fearful of getting caught in the act, I quickly bounded up the last steps. In the darkness I could smell the coolness and ancient odors of the attic. One more step and I’d be inside, but instead, I lost my balance and fell six feet to the floor. Pain seared my whole body as I lay in a lump on the rug in the hallway, certain that blood was pouring from every crevice. I couldn’t move. I was sure I was dead.

  “Nicole?” I heard my grandmother Michelin approaching me. “Nicole? Where are you? What have you gone and done?”

  I had to wear a cast on my ankle for six weeks. No bracelet of Mama’s to dangle on my wrist, or photos of her and me to gaze at—just an uncomfortable piece of plaster to add to my clumsiness.

  ———

  Ducee’s room is silent after the doctors make their rounds. I sit, stand, look out the window, think about Harrison, and sit again. I guess I could write to tell Harrison about the failed search for my mother’s belongings. For all I know, the boxes could contain a picture of a little American girl in a clover crown woven for her by two Japanese girls. But someone else will have to venture to the attic to sort through boxes to find it.

  In the early afternoon as a thunderstorm brews, Grable visits. From the minute she enters the room, I feel anxious.

  Seated beside me on a stool, she’s unsure what to do with her long nails. They are painted a rosy red, the color of Monet’s cheeks when she’s flustered. She runs the back of a finger over a thumbnail, studies another nail, and then folds her hands so that her nails cover her knuckles. “The doll has been wonderful. Thank you.” Her smile is fleeting, just a quick gesture.

  I think that perhaps I’ll now tell Grable about Harrison. It would pass the time as we sit beside Ducee. I could tell her how we met online and build up to my plane ticket to Japan. She can keep a secret.

  As I am about to begin, clearing my throat and wishing for a glass of water, a nurse opens the door. Systematically, she marches over to check on Ducee. We watch as Ducee has her pulse and blood pressure taken. The nurse refers to Ducee as “Mrs. Dubois.” I forget sometimes that my grandmother has another name besides Ducee.

  Ducee remains quiet, breathing slowly. How can she sleep so much?

  When the nurse leaves the room, Grable says in a voice that hangs heavy in the air, “Dennis is in love with someone else.”

  I want to tell her that isn’t true, that Mr. McGuire isn’t sure it was Dennis and another woman at his store that morning months ago. I want to tell her that Dennis loves her, that their wedding ceremony is something Ducee still mentions, that Dennis is going to take Monet to the park this afternoon and embrace her when she sails down the slide.

  “He’s tired of us. Tired of
Monet and nobody knowing what’s wrong with her. He’s tired of me. Of me being tired.” Grable’s sigh expands to fill each corner of the room.

  “He says he loves Monet.” She pauses to take a breath, a breath that seems to swallow her. “But he wants to move out. Away from us. Away. For good.”

  I fight the desire to chew a nail, a short and broken nail, one that will never be tapered and glamorous, frosty, and red. I fold my hands instead. Rain pelts the windowpane by Ducee’s bed, angry and fierce. “Grable,” I say over the noise, “I’m sorry.”

  “We used to have it all. He used to love me, and I was enchanted with him.” She looks at her shiny wedding diamond. “But it crumbled.”

  I hate not knowing what to say.

  “I hope the divorce doesn’t harm Monet. Sometimes at night she just presses her nose to the window in hopes she will see him coming home.”

  “I’m so sorry, Grable.” It is such a lame thing to say. A time like this needs a symphony of mellow and heart-wrenching violins playing. Not little ol’ me, unsure of what to say and so aware of my bitten nails.

  Looking out the window, Grable muses, “Why do we need to find out what is wrong with Monet?”

  I hope she doesn’t expect me to have the answer to that.

  “There is no cure, anyway. All these doctors poking and prodding and trying to come up with some sort of neurological or behavioral reasoning for why she’s unique.” She inhales and lets the air out slowly, deliberately. “She is who she is.” Her words seem as though they’re coming from a well-scripted play, one of optimism and strength, yet her eyes are shadowed by a forlorn look on her face. “She might be autistic or have some condition no one has ever been diagnosed with before.” Shrugging, she folds her hands in her lap and stares at them.

  Time ticks away; I’m aware of the clock on the wall.

  Thunder crackles in the distance as the rain picks up speed.

  My cousin continues to watch her hands, as though if she were to take her eyes away from them, they might disappear.

  I think about reaching over to hug her or saying that she can bring Monet over anytime to feed my fish. But before words form in my mouth, Grable rises from her seat.

  She is gone as quickly as she entered.

  The room is consumed with pain. I feel its heavy weight pushing against every sterile crevice, each tile on the floor. The sound is booming in my ears, louder than any thunder. I want to comfort, yet I need to be comforted.

  I touch Ducee’s cheek. “You can’t leave me now, Ducee. Please, not today.”

  And as the room grows dark, I wonder at how we humans are born to pain, experience it constantly, and yet never learn the techniques of dodging it. We just learn to cope, to live. And some of us, if we are lucky enough, to thrive, in spite of it all.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The news I hear at the coffee-scented nurses’ station when I arrive at the hospital this rainy June morning is that Ducee asked for pineapple chutney. The nurses on duty are clearly amused.

  “Pineapple chutney!” A short nurse in a pink smock laughs and takes a sip from her Starbuck’s cup. “Sounds very tropical.”

  Tropical, I think. I’ve never heard that said about our family’s pineapple chutney. If the tradition of making the sweet condiment really started in Ireland, and Mama took the recipe to Japan, there is nothing tropical about it at all. Except for the pineapples, which grow in balmy regions.

  I walk into Ducee’s room and swallow hard. She is still here, still in the white bed, living, being tended to now by a nurse named Violet.

  Just as Violet begins explaining her concern over Ducee’s blood pressure, the door swings open and Iva bounces into the room with a jar. It’s pineapple chutney; she went home to get a pint for her sister.

  “The chutney is here. The party has begun,” Iva says with delight.

  I know Ducee would like tea with chutney and crackers, and Violet is kind enough to provide us with both crackers and tea.

  We help Ducee sit up in her bed, two pillows propped at her back.

  I get the task of opening the glass jar. It takes me only two tries—not bad—and the lid is off.

  With a knife, Iva spreads dark yellow mounds of sweetness on the tops of a few crackers. She hands a cracker to her sister.

  Ducee takes three meticulous bites, leans back on the pillows that seem bigger than she is, and says, “Ah, did that hit the spot.”

  Violet asks what it is that she’s eaten.

  “The finest food this side of heaven,” replies Ducee.

  “Fried chicken or pizza?” asks Violet with a smile.

  Ducee says with all the enthusiasm in her tiny body, “Pineapple chutney.”

  Violet looks as if she might be sick.

  “It’s tradition food,” explains the older woman. “It’s what keeps us strong and united.”

  Violet says, “United?”

  “Yes, yes. Like family. Do you know what the difference between united and untied is?”

  Iva and I shoot each other looks of, where is she going with this?

  Ducee smiles. “The letter i,” she says. “It just depends on where it sits, doesn’t it? Yes, that’s it, yes. Where one sits determines how she hears and views the world around her. In unity or untied.” She shifts her body slightly under the sheet and repeats, “Untied.”

  Violet is used to all types of patients, I’m sure, and in her medicine chest of replies, finds a response to my grandmother. “You are quite wise, Mrs. Dubois,” and then she takes her blood pressure and heads out the door.

  Iva fidgets, moving from Ducee’s bedside to the window and back to her bed, like a caged animal.

  Finally, Ducee cries, “Oh, Iva, go have a smoke!”

  Iva stops in her tracks, and I see relief spread across her face. “Really? I won’t be long.”

  “I’ll be here. It’s okay,” I reassure my aunt. I know she would never want her sister to be alone, especially during the day in this hospital room.

  We watch Iva slide out of the room, dodging a potted Begonia sent from The Twins, her long legs gliding over the linoleum.

  When we are alone, Ducee turns to me and gives a warm smile. “How are you, my dear?”

  “Me?” I snort. “How are you?”

  She smiles again, and I see flecks of life in her bluish-green eyes, eyes that were sallow just days ago. “My heart just fluttered,” she says.

  “It wasn’t just a flutter this time. You had a heart attack.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes.”

  Ducee grins. “Well, well.”

  She asks for a sip of tea, and I apologize that it’s not ginger.

  “I don’t know what happened to me. It was a glorious morning. Brilliant.”

  It was. I’d been shopping. Shopping as if all was well while just miles down the road my own grandmother was having a heart attack.

  “Did you see the sky?” Ducee closes her eyes. “As blue as a Staffa Aster. Yes, yes.”

  I couldn’t pick an Aster out of a lineup, much less a Staffa kind.

  “Maggie McCormick and I did enjoy a few sugar cubes, and she ate a whole baked potato as I gave her a good brushing. And then, quick as a flash, here I am.” She smiles broadly, her thin lips barely visible.

  “Your heart must have hurt. You had a heart attack.” I wish the woman would realize that she’s not at a picnic in the park.

  “Aren’t those nice?” she says referring to a lime green vase filled with pink and white roses, yellow daisies, and purple horns of plenty.

  There are so many vases and baskets of flowers on every flat surface of this room. Relatives, neighbors, and church friends have come out of the woodwork to send flowers and cards to my grandmother. The fourth-grade Sunday school class even delivered a stuffed brown bear with an attached red balloon that reads, “We can’t bear to be without you.” The get-well card from a grandniece in Elizabeth City with the pink-tongued poodle on the front is ironic, since Ducee is
far from fond of the breed. Lou Anne, the relative who is a Realtor and sold my house to me, sent a tin in the shape of a house. The tin is filled with peppermints.

  Ducee looks at me as I admire the newest addition from Cousin Aaron and Puddin’. It is a stone sculpture of two opened hands, palms cupped, and on the index finger of one of the hands sits a tiny sparrow. The line from a song Ducee often hums, “His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me,” is printed in silver letters across the other palm.

  Birds of the air. Lilies of the field. Here today and gone tomorrow. God cares for them and oh, how much more He cares for you and me. This is one of Ducee’s Southern Truths she’s paraphrased from the book of Matthew.

  Suddenly she says, “Don’t miss your flight.”

  I look at her, my little grandmother in a bed surrounded by tangible love—all these gifts from others.

  “You haven’t missed it now, have you?”

  I shake my head. I am about to protest.

  “I wish she’d written more.” She yawns. “Nowadays we have video cameras. I so wish she had one back in the sixties so that she could have filmed it all. Then I could have watched, and you could see what it was really like then. But no, all we had were letters. And I’m afraid your mama didn’t write enough of those.”

  So Mama didn’t send enough letters back home to her parents in Mount Olive? Mama wasn’t perfect.

  Ducee seems to be in a talkative mood. Perhaps her heart attack has triggered her memory. Maybe she will say that she knew Mama was pregnant when she died.

  “Ducee, what else do you remember?”

  But Ducee is asleep, her head against the pillows, her mouth in the shape of a tiny O.

  I make my way to the stool by her bed and just watch.

  She’s told me that she used to hover over my bed as I slept during the first nights at her house after Father and I came back from Japan. She says she would cry because she missed her Emma so much and that to watch me without my mother tore her heart to pieces. She knew her lap would never be large enough to hold me and give me what I needed from a mama. But she made a promise that she would certainly try to be the best grandmother she could be.