by Xenia Ruiz
Jade came by during the last hour of my treatment. She showed me some drawings from the kids, which made me smile. Sitting in a nearby chair, she leaned on the armrest of my chemo chair, interlocking her fingers in mine. Immediately, it reminded me of Eva. Almost as quickly, I pushed the thought of her from my mind.
“How’re things with ‘Akeel’?” I asked, emphasizing his name sarcastically because I knew it would amuse her.
She smiled. “Good, I guess. He’s a nice, sweet guy and everything …”
“But?”
“He’s a little too nice.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s just so sweet.”
“I guess it’s true what they say. Women like bad boys.”
“No. Not bad boys; guys with an edge. With a little excitement.”
“Maybe he’s what you need right now. The opposite of Brandon.”
“I don’t know if I can measure up to his standards. He’s a church boy and he claims he’s celibate.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” In my eyes, not having to imagine my baby sister having sex was a good thing.
“I don’t know, is it? I’ve never had a relationship that didn’t involve sex. Have you?”
I hesitated, then shook my head. Not anymore, I thought.
“I don’t know. It might be fun to see how long he lasts,” she said.
“Don’t you go tempting that church boy, Jezebel.”
“Shut up.”
She climbed into the chemo chair next to me, forcing me to move over as she laid her head on my shoulder. “Adam …”
Soon, I heard her sniffling and felt the tears seeping through my hospital-issue gown.
“C’mon, girl. Don’t start. You know I got to deal with your mother and her tears. I can’t take the both of you.”
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed quietly. “I don’t want you to …”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“’Cause I still need you.”
“Yeah, to babysit.” I chuckled half-heartedly.
“Promise?”
“I swear.”
After the chemo session, all my body craved was sleep. When I got home, I didn’t even make it to the bedroom, plopping down on the sofa and sleeping for four hours straight. When I woke up, I dragged myself from the sofa to the bedroom, only to fall into bed, fatigued. After another half hour, I had to force myself to get up and drink the required eighty ounces of water needed to flush the drugs out of my system. I was also instructed to exercise despite my weakness. The trips to the bathroom were about as much exercise as I could muster.
Television is never more mundane than when one is sick and stuck watching it for entertainment, or to kill time. Not even cable provided stimulation. Just a couple of weeks before I was up on the latest national and world news, but the outside world had become insignificant as the cancer took precedence. News to me meant negative CT scans and low tumor markers. Half the time I ended up turning off the set and listening to music, going through my entire CD collection from the late seventies until the present, eventually dozing off. Sometimes I woke up humming the last song that was playing just before I fell asleep.
At first, the side effects from the chemo were familiar and tolerable: flu-like symptoms, low-grade fever, mild nausea. The best part was that I had no loss of appetite—in the beginning.
By the end of the first cycle, which included five straight days of chemo, I spent the weekend inside my loft under two comforters curled up like it was winter, with chills, dizziness, lethargy, and nonstop nausea. The nausea was the worst; I almost prayed that I would vomit. Food lost its appeal and I was grateful for the Boost shakes I was able to keep down.
Swallowing my pride, I called Eva a couple of times, but her voice mail at home was full. Her assistant at work told me she had a family emergency, but couldn’t give out any more information. I then called Luciano to see if he knew anything, but he wasn’t able to reach Maya at work or on her cell phone either. I realized then something was definitely wrong.
Birthdays had never been a big deal for me. December babies always got cheated; the closer to Christmas, the bigger the rip-off. My family tried to make my thirty-seventh birthday special by throwing a surprise party, not a good idea given my situation. I was in my second week of chemo and developing more side effects from the drugs: a pimple-like rash on my back and torso, swelling in my legs called edema, and headaches. The headaches made me think of Eva and I wondered if hers had improved. I was given more medications for these side effects, which in turn had side effects of their own. Needless to say, I made a concerted effort to appear appreciative for the sake of Mama and Jade. I had become very adept at hiding my misery and pain behind false smiles.
After everyone left, just as I was being lulled to sleep by the sibilant sound of the TV, I heard a report about a shooting on a college campus. As I struggled to stay alert, I remembered my mother mentioning something at the hospital about a school shooting, and then I vaguely recalled the news report about a shooting the night of the snowstorm, the night Eva spent on my sofa. A spurned boyfriend had gone on a shooting rampage at ISU, the school Eva’s sons attended, killing eight students. Half-dazed and lightheaded, I sat up as the photos of the dead students were flashed on the screen, holding my breath, thankful when her sons weren’t among them. I began to put two and two together and presumed she must have gone downstate to check on her sons. Exhaling, I waited to hear how many students had been injured, and after learning six still remained hospitalized, I dialed her cell phone, hoping she had it turned on. I was surprised when it began ringing.
“Hello,” I heard her anxious voice.
“Eva?”
“Adam,” she said, and I thought I caught the slightest hint of disappointment in her voice.
“I just heard about the shooting. Where are you?”
“I’m down in Marion, near Carter. At the hospital.”
“Are your sons okay?”
“They’re in the hospital. Eli was shot twice, and he has a broken leg. He’s conscious, but Tony’s on a respirator. He was shot … in the head.” Her voice was so deadpan, I figured she must have been numb with grief.
“Eva, I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. Maya and Simone are here. And my father, the pastor, and some church members. Everyone’s helping out, praying. I just happened to go outside for some fresh air. They’re supposed to call me if Tony wakes up, so I can’t stay on the phone too long. I don’t have call-waiting on this thing.” The connection was so clear she seemed close enough to touch, yet her voice was so distant, distorted.
“Oh, okay, I understand.”
“How have you been?”
“Me?” It’s my birthday, I thought. I have cancer again, but other than that, life’s great. “I’m fine.”
“Yeah? You sound tired.”
“You do, too.” I wanted to tell her that I wished I was there with her, but I held my tongue. This was not the time. Also, I didn’t want to put my heart out there to get shot down. I was too weak for rejection.
“I haven’t slept much.”
“Me either.” I paused, then I took a deep breath and plunged in. “I’ve been thinking about you. About us.” Suddenly, there was static as if she had moved out of range, perhaps deliberately, followed by silence that lasted so long, I thought we were disconnected. “Hello? Eva?”
“I have to go, Adam. I need to check on Tony.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks for calling. I’ll call you, or call me back, whatever—”
There was more static and then we were disconnected for real. “Yeah, whatever,” I said to the dead air.
As much as I hated to, I took a medical leave from work and a temporary absence from the Big Brothers program. It bothered me to back out on my obligations to Justin and Ricky, especially with Justin leaving for Midwestern U in the next month and Ricky improving in his new school. I couldn’t let them witness my decline in healt
h, though, especially Justin, who had watched his father slowly die from AIDS. At first, I thought about taking them out to dinner at Enchanted Castle, a pizza place with video games and karaoke, the only restaurant they had ever agreed upon. Somewhere I read that whenever parents had to break any bad news, like a divorce, they took their children to eat at a favorite restaurant. This seemed like a terrible idea to me, because the kids would always associate the place with the bad news, like the news of my father’s cancer being synonymous with Navy Pier. I didn’t want to do it at their house, so I brought them to my place, something I had occasionally done.
Ricky took the news fairly well, perhaps because he was too young to comprehend the complexity of cancer and because his father’s illness and death was a family memory he had been told rather than experienced.
“Are they going to give you pills like me?” Ricky asked, his thumbs and forefingers moving lightning-fast on the controller of the PlayStation 2.
Perplexed, I looked at Justin, whose hands were frozen on his controller.
“He’s talking about his Ritalin,” Justin said quietly.
I chuckled. “No, it’s a little more complicated. I have to go to the hospital and get my medicine through an IV. An intravenous line that goes into here,” I explained, showing them my central line scar.
“Coo-ool!” Ricky said, taking his eyes off the football video game long enough to crane his neck to look at me. “I wish I had one of those. Then I wouldn’t have to swallow those stupid pills.”
I laughed and ran my hand over his head.
“Does chemotherapy hurt?” Ricky then asked, his eyes back on the TV screen.
“Not really. It makes me a little sick and really tired, so I won’t be able to do a lot of things I used to. Like work and run. Or pick you guys up and take you around.”
“How long before you get better?”
“Not for a few months. Maybe as long as six, it’s hard to say.”
“Stop asking so many questions,” Justin rebuked Ricky.
“That’s okay. He can ask me questions.”
“Whatever,” Justin replied, annoyed.
“Man, I’m kickin’ your team’s butt,” Ricky cried excitedly.
I looked over at Justin, who had set down his controller on the coffee table and was leaning back in the sofa.
“Justin? You want to ask me anything?”
He finally looked solemnly at me. I realized I was his age when my father died, but he looked so much younger. I remembered feeling so old.
“Is your cancer curable or incurable?” he asked.
“It’s about ninety percent curable,” I told him honestly. “When it’s caught early.”
“That’s like a B.”
I laughed quietly. “Yeah, it’s like a high B, and a B is better than an F.”
“I got a B on my math test,” Ricky piped in. “I forgot to tell you—touchdown! Ha! I beat you. Bears win the Super Bowl!”
“Like that’ll ever happen in real life,” Justin said dismally.
I leaned back in the sofa next to Justin. “You know, one day, you’re going to be glad you have a brother.”
Of course he turned up his lip in revulsion.
“While I’m off getting treatment, I want you to do something for me.”
Justin lit up, though he was careful not to show too much enthusiasm and lose his coolness.
“Stop giving your mama such a hard time,” I told him seriously, then grabbed him in a half nelson. “If she calls and tells me you’re making her cry, you and me are going to go at it like Mortal Kombat.”
He scoffed.
“But seriously, when I went away to college, I missed my mama most of all,” I said.
“Wimp,” he teased.
I wrestled him to the floor, but he got the best of me in a matter of seconds because I had very little strength left.
Later, when I dropped them off back home, Justin turned to me and asked, “Do you still believe in God?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Why?” he asked, a look of bewilderment on his face.
“Because the alternative is worse.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“To believe in nothing.”
He contemplated my answer, bunching his lips to the side, trying to weigh its validity. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to believe in nothing.
During the treatment sessions, I passed the time with other men in the neighboring chemo chairs, and we got to know each other very well, sharing cancer war stories and providing encouragement. We threw around terms like CBC reports, seminomas, teratomas, and the names of chemo drugs like we were doctors in training. There was Dan, a guy five years younger than me, who was a chemo cycle ahead of me. He had gone to my alma mater and was a social worker, so we had a lot in common. Then there was Mark, who made the nurses blush with his incessant flirting and never lost his sense of humor, even after he was told the cancer had spread to his kidneys and would require a transplant. When I told him about my screenplay, he said he had a brother who was an agent, and he offered to put in a good word for me. I was always the only African American, and a couple of times I got the predictable, “I thought Black guys didn’t get this kind of cancer.” But I learned that when there is a common enemy, race sometimes takes a backseat.
The hardest thing was watching the men who had wives and girlfriends with them. Of course, I wouldn’t trade the support of my mother and sister for anything, but sometimes I missed not having someone special by my side, someone who could go home with me, lay with me, and wake up with me to face the next day’s battle, and subsequently, the future. But then I tried to convince myself that it would probably be worse having one more female worrying about me, smothering me. And in the beginning, it worked.
I knew Mama and Jade would never complain about driving me to my appointments and being forced to rearrange their lives, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty having to depend on them. I knew Mama was seeing Mr. Stevens on a regular basis and that Jade would rather be with Akil despite her protestations that he was not her type. In addition, Jade had the kids and her business to run. On the days my mother did not accompany me, she would go to church, to pray for me while Jade escorted me. The third and final week of the first cycle involved only one course on one day instead of five days. It was only the beginning of three, possibly four, cycles. The apprehension of starting the five-day treatment cycle all over again in another week set me on a collision course of depression and bitterness.
On the last day of my first cycle, it was Jade’s turn to come with me. As soon as Rachel, the infusion nurse who was hooking me up, disconnected my central line, I felt sick and threw up, despite having had the antinausea medication. Jade, who had been a nonstop chatterbox about the latest wedding she was planning, gasped and turned her face away. Most of the bile landed on the floor, but some splashed on Rachel’s white shoes. I groaned loudly, cursing under my breath.
“That’s okay, Adam,” Rachel said sympathetically as she began to clean up my mess. “Don’t worry about it, okay?” Of all the nurses, Rachel was the best, the most patient. She patted my shoulder but I shook her off and immediately regretted it. I got up and walked to the bathroom to wash up. It was the first time I had thrown up; not a good sign.
By the time I went back into the room to apologize, she was gone.
Jade returned to her seat and began showing me more drawings from Kia and Daelen, her hands shaking. It was hard for me to force a smile, so I didn’t try.
“Hey,” she said, her voice trembling as she blinked back tears. “What’s going on with you and Eva?”
I closed my eyes again and breathed slowly in and out through my nose, wishing she’d go away with the rest of the world. “Me and Eva? There is no me and Eva.”
CHAPTER 23
EVA
DURING MY PREGNANCIES, I used to crave hot chocolate with marshmallows. Anthony joked that our babies would be born the color of milk chocolate a
nd covered in marshmallows. On the day Tony died, the day after Christmas, the first day of Kwanzaa, I had gone to the cafeteria for some hot chocolate. The cafeteria had run out of marshmallows and a staff member had to go to the supply room to get more, and, because I couldn’t drink hot chocolate without marshmallows, I waited. With the exception of the day Eli regained consciousness, I never left Tony’s side for long periods, not even to visit Eli as he got stronger and better every day.
As I walked back to Tony’s room, I saw Maya and Simone holding on to each other, and Anthony and my father leaning against opposite walls—all of them crying. The doctor met me at the door as I tried to get through. He explained that Tony had a seizure, and, despite their best exhaustive measures, they weren’t able to save him. Then he apologized, but I could tell they were just words, a speech he had rehearsed in medical school while practicing different facial expressions, trying to see which looked the most sincere. A nurse tried to usher me into the hall, telling me I should wait until they cleaned him up. I handed her the cup of hot chocolate with the extra marshmallows and pushed her aside, my face daring her to touch me again. When I took Tony in my arms, he was still warm, and as I held him, his body slowly grew cold, causing my own body to shudder. Even as I felt his spirit leaving, I held him tighter, trying to hold it back. My father’s words came back to me: “In the end, like in the beginning, we all belong to God.” Remembering how I used to kiss Tony’s soft spot when he was a baby, the pulse beating against my lips, I kissed the top of his head. I willed it to beat once again.
In my heart, I knew there were some things we as mortals weren’t supposed to understand and the death of a child was one of them. I would never, nor did I ever want to, understand why that boy killed my son. Why he killed all those students before turning the gun on himself. Why couldn’t he just kill himself? I thought angrily. Maybe God was testing my faith. Or maybe He was punishing me for Adam. Yes, Tony’s death was my payback. God may have forgiven me, but the consequences of my immoral act remained. I played, now I had to pay. Now I had to take my medicine like a good Christian.