by Xenia Ruiz
Despite this, there were days when I felt like I was actually getting better, overcoming the side effects, winning the battle. As my strength returned and my frame of mind improved, I began to take longer walks, e-mail friends and coworkers, and work on my screenplay. I began incorporating my illness into the screenplay, which kept my mind off the cancer. It was as if by transferring the illness to the protagonist in my future film, I was purging the poison from me.
There were even moments that stretched into hours that stretched into days when I forgot I had cancer—as long as I didn’t look in any mirrors. My hair loss was a constant reminder that the cancer was real. And it wasn’t a vanity issue, rather my hair had been an act of resistance, one of those never-ending battles with my father who felt that anything longer than a military cut was anti-and counter-everything he stood for. My father had always worn his patriotism like a medal. He hated people who celebrated the Fourth and Memorial Day with barbecues and picnics without giving a thought to the soldiers who had fought and died in past wars.
I remembered seeing pictures of myself as a child with an Afro in the seventies and thinking how rebellious and free I looked. In the eighties when my boys in high school were abusing their hair with the Jeri Curl, I began braiding mine. My father and I fought over my braids like suburban fathers battled with their punk sons who had green-dyed Mohawks. In his last days, my father asked me to do something for him. Anything, I answered. He asked me to cut my hair and I did. After the funeral, I started growing it again. Dreadlocks were not only an expression of my African heritage, but a sign of nonconformity, a last stand against my father, even if he was no longer here. So, yes, losing my hair was very traumatic.
By the end of the second course of chemo, there was no use putting it off and I decided it was time to shave my head. The fact that baldness was in, and even considered sexy according to Derek and popular media, did little to cheer me up. Reluctantly, I let Mama, the ex-beautician, do the honors. She did it in the kitchen, away from any mirrors, and then I washed my head in the sink. When it was time to look at myself, the steps to the nearest mirror were the longest I ever had to take. My head felt weightless without the excess mane, detached from my body. I was alright when Mama embraced me from behind, murmuring gently, “It’s only hair, Love. It’ll grow back so fast.” I even held it together when Jade burst into tears as soon as she saw me. But when Daelen announced, “Unc-Adam don’t got no hair no more,” I lost it. I went to the bathroom and cried like a kid who was denied candy, swallowing sobs in huge gulps.
The only solace was that my eyebrows and eyelashes had so far been spared, although Luciano joked that my eyebrows could use some thinning. The best part was that I had no razor stubble and I wouldn’t have to shave, something I had always found cumbersome.
And then just as I was getting used to my shorn head, Dr. Desai gave me the latest results of my blood tests. My tumor markers were up and the CT scan showed that while one of the lymph nodes had only slightly diminished in size, the other one had grown considerably. In addition, a teratoma was discovered, which, although a non-cancerous growth, had the tendency to grow and push other organs out of the way and lead to additional cancerous growths. Surgery was strongly recommended.
“There’s no way around it, Adam. The chemo’s not shrinking the nodes,” she insisted. “You need the RPLND.”
Retroperitoneal lymph node dissection. I had read about the major surgery required to remove the lymph nodes, followed by a two-week bed rest. The chemo guys referred to it as “ripped” surgery because the doctors literally slashed an eighteen-inch incision from the sternum to below the belly button, then pushed the major organs aside in order to cut out the lymph nodes located deep in the abdomen. The first time, my lymph nodes had been cancer-free.
The news literally knocked the air out of me. When I started breathing again, my breaths came fast and hard, labored and I couldn’t control them. Dr. Desai kept asking me if I was alright as she searched her office for a bag. When she couldn’t find one, she pushed my head down between my knees until I stopped hyperventilating. Her warm hand felt soothing on the back of my neck.
“What if I don’t have the surgery?” I stupidly inquired.
“What, are you kidding me?” she asked in disbelief.
Ever since I received the news, I had taken to rubbing my torso trying to imagine what it was going to be like to have a huge scar, to be without lymph nodes, whose purpose and existence was a mystery until now.
There was no one I could talk to about death, or rather the possibility of my dying. I certainly couldn’t talk to my mother, who shunned all negative talk and quoted Proverbs 18:21: “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” She truly believed in the power of positive thinking and speaking, that if I believed in my heart that I wasn’t going to die, and spoke the words, then I wouldn’t die. Never mind Jade who cringed at the sight of a needle. And whenever I brought up the topic with Luciano, he brushed me off, repeating, “You ain’t gonna die, man,” as if him saying so made it so.
I thought about calling Eva, but the last thing she probably wanted to do was talk about death. I could only imagine the pain she was going through, having both her sons shot, and then losing Tony. I couldn’t even begin to imagine anything happening to Kia or Daelen. I had wanted to pay my respects but I wasn’t sure how I fit in since I wasn’t family or a friend. In retrospect, the sympathy card I sent seemed inadequate, but her lack of response in the past few months confirmed that she probably no longer considered me a part of her life. I tried not to think of her at all: her skin, her lips, her touch, and especially that last night, the night that determined the beginning of our end. In an ironic twist, now that sex wouldn’t be an issue for me, at least for a while, I was probably the perfect guy for her.
A few weeks before, Jade told me she had run into Eva while shopping at a local department store. She told Eva I was sick and suggested that she call me, but I never heard from her. Sometimes I thought about calling her just to hear her voice, her laugh. I thought about lying to her, tell her I was over her, that I wasn’t mad at her, in the “I ain’t mad at you” sense of the phrase. Since she never called, I figured she had succeeded in getting me out of her mind. I tried to do the same, but just as I thought she was gone from my memories, the littlest details would come rushing back. Like the way she asked for her condiments on the side whenever we went out to eat. Or the way she cocked one eyebrow when she was about to argue or didn’t believe something. And always, there were hands, her soft, silky hands locked in defense, a reminder of her mother’s adage that the best way to avoid trouble was to keep her hands together. All these things I thought about when I thought of Eva.
With the surgery postponed until May, I decided to go back to work part-time. Half-days were about all I could muster, as long as I didn’t have to do too many home visits or deal with too much stress.
As I tried to catch up on paperwork and phone calls, numerous coworkers dropped by to welcome me back, which took up most of the morning. The first week I was back, Derek was on vacation. When he strolled past my open door the following week, he let out a joyous shout.
“Hey, man, how’s it going?” he greeted me happily and loudly. Grinning, he came in and pumped my hand. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming in, you nut?”
Derek had taken over many of my cases while I was out and had kept in touch via e-mails. His support had been a godsend.
“I wanted to surprise you,” I said, getting up as he swallowed me in his running back embrace, patting my back several times.
“I see you decided to emulate your mentor,” he joked, stroking his bald head.
I laughed, touching my Kangol. “At least mine’ll grow back.” Still uncomfortable with my naked head, I kept a cap or hat on at all times. No matter what hat I wore, however, it was impossible to ignore the drastic change.
He sat down and we talked, discussing my treatment an
d the pending surgery, before he brought me up-to-date on my caseload.
“How are you?” I asked him seriously, after we were done with business.
After contemplating my question, he answered, “I’m doing … better, what can I say? I miss her, you know. But it’s all part of life, right?” He got up and cracked his football-player neck from side to side. “Feel like doing lunch?”
Food still held no appeal for me. “Not today. Maybe Friday?”
“Friday’s cool. Good to see you back, man.” He left only to pop his head back a few seconds later. “Oh, forgot to tell you. Ronnie Aguire? He’s in lock-up.”
I leaned back in my chair in frustration. “Aw, man, when did that happen?”
“Yesterday. He got mad at his boss and threw one of those fryer baskets at him. You know the ones they use to fry French fries? Luckily, he hadn’t put it in the grease yet. The man wasn’t hurt but he’s pressing charges—if the boy doesn’t apologize.”
I shook my head disappointedly. Ronnie had been doing so well. According to Derek’s earlier e-mails, he had started attending classes, working at Wendy’s, and making all of his probation visits. “Floremont or Merriville?” I asked, naming the local and downstate juvenile detention centers.
“Floremont. I tried to talk to him when I visited last night, but he tuned me out,” Derek said, resolutely. “Maybe he’ll listen to you. All the man wants is an apology.”
Floremont, literally translated, meant “flower mountain.” The juvenile lock-up, however, was no rose, but it was a mountain of a building, a gloomy behemoth looming on Roosevelt Boulevard, a street that time had seemingly passed by. In an effort to renovate the institution and keep costs down, the city had recently sandblasted it, but now the edifice looked worse, ghostlike.
Ronnie casually strolled into the visitor’s room, the permanent sneer on his face as he tried not to look surprised at my appearance, but I had changed too much so that he couldn’t play it off.
“What happened to yo’ hair, man?” He dropped onto the chair opposite me. “Man, you skinnier than me.”
“Chemo.”
“Wha-a-a? I didn’t know you had cancer. They just said you were sick,” he drawled.
“What’s going on?” I asked, getting down to business. “You were doing so well.”
“Yo, the man insulted me in front of everybody. Called me a lazy bum. I ain’t lazy. I been bustin’ my back working O-T, he know that.”
“You can’t go around throwing stuff at people when you get angry. All he wants is an apology.”
“He gon’ apologize to me?”
“I doubt it.”
“Then I ain’t apologizing.” He slapped the air like he was swatting at a fly.
“Don’t be stupid, Ronnie. If he presses charges, you will go in this time. You like this place?”
“I don’t know. I could get used to it,” he said unperturbed, but he wasn’t fooling me.
“Yeah, okay. You do that. You get real nice and comfortable,” I said indifferently, getting up and heading for the door. I felt myself deteriorating, even though I had been sitting most of the morning. I could feel a fever coming on and congestion in my chest, which meant I was probably getting an upper respiratory infection. From now on, I wasn’t going to put any extra effort into people who didn’t want to do for themselves.
“Yo, that’s it? You gon’ give up on me that easy?”
I turned to look at him, my hand still on the door. He was standing up, his arms spread wide, his face hard with bravado.
Normally, I didn’t use my disease as an excuse for anything, but I was fed up. “Ronnie, I’m going through some serious stuff right now. In a couple of months, I’m going to have major surgery. In the future you’re going to find that this petty stuff is nothing compared to what life’s got in store for you. You’ve got to learn to put things into perspective, decide which battles are worth fighting for. Sometimes you’re just going to have to submit.”
“I submit to no one but God,” he said bitterly. “Then do that.” I knocked on the door to notify the guard I was ready to leave.
“Mr. Black, Mr. Black,” Ronnie called out. “Hold up, hold up.”
I turned around again, my eyes narrowed from exhaustion, impatience, and the pending fever. “What is it, Ronnie? I got things to do.”
“Can I… can I just talk to you about something right quick?”
Ordinarily, it was at this point where I would be swelling up inside, proud of myself for getting through to another troubled youth. But the past week had been an emotionally draining one for me and I didn’t think I had any more compassion to lend. I couldn’t even fake it. Then I looked into Ronnie’s pleading eyes, crying loudly for help. I gestured to the guard that I wouldn’t be leaving just yet.
After leaving Floremont, I found myself driving toward Montrose Harbor. I parked the car half a block away and walked the rest of the way since the parking lot was closed for the season. Whenever I felt a need to escape for some solitude, I drove to Montrose, secretly hoping that I’d run into Eva. But I never did. She either stopped going or we kept missing each other. In spite of this, I kept going back because being near the water made me feel something I hadn’t expected: a sense of invincibility, like I was the last man alive on earth and not even death could touch me.
Most of the time, few people braved the frigid wind-chill factors and the icy winds, which were harsher closer to the lakefront, confirming Chicago’s much-deserved nickname. Even though it was March, huge chunks of ice still floated in the lake and the Chicago skyline looked like gray icebergs in the distance.
Today, however, there were city workers walking around, measuring the landscape, taking notes. I had read in the paper that they were going to be renovating many of the lakefront beaches, an estimated billion-dollar project. Ordinarily, the allocation of government funds for beautification purposes rather than for the city’s needy social programs would really set me off, but not today. Today, my physical and spiritual health was at stake.
It turned out that Ronnie didn’t really want to talk about anything, he just didn’t want me to leave. So even though my eyes were beginning to burn from the fever, I sat and talked with him about anything and everything until visiting hours were over. Traveling down Lake Shore Drive, the words I had said to Ronnie kept coming hauntingly back to me: Sometimes you’re just going to have to submit.
There were many times I felt something pushing me toward God, a gnawing feeling I couldn’t quite explain. At first, I thought about re-dedicating my life to Christ to get closer to Eva, to understand her, be a part of her world. Then later, I thought it would bring her back to me. In the end, it was just plain old fear, fear of cancer, fear of death. I had started praying more often, but it wasn’t the same as allowing Him in my life, completely. I didn’t want to be like my father, on his deathbed when he got saved. Some people got to see the light before they see the light, Mama had said about Daddy. When was the right time to come to God? What was the right reason? I wondered.
Walking on the bottom stepstone closest to the frozen water’s edge, I tried to remember the day I first accepted the Lord, when I was twelve. While I couldn’t remember the exact words I had been instructed to say, I remembered being dunked backward into the church’s baptismal pool, holding my breath, waiting for Jesus to enter my soul. When I emerged from the water and opened my eyes, my mother was the first person I saw. Seeing her glowing face was like seeing God’s light beaming down on me.
With my shoe tips perched on the edge where the stone ended and the ice began, I waited for the words to come to me, wondering if I should be down on my knees. I tried to recall the words my father spoke. Lord Jesus, I ask You to come into my heart …
“Lord,” I started. “God …”
“Don’t you go jumpin’ in ’ere,” I heard someone behind me say. “Cuz I ain’t gonna save ya.”
I turned around slowly to see a city worker lumbering down the steps, his barre
l chest leading the way, busting out of his city-issued jacket. He was carrying surveying equipment and he wore a crooked smirk, like he was looking forward to witnessing a suicide.
I gave him a dismissive laugh. “There’s only one person who can save me,” I told him, surprised by the authority in my voice. The words were not mine; they had come to me seemingly from nowhere. But I knew they came from somewhere, someone else. Someone who had been trying to come inside for the longest time. Someone who had always been there from the beginning, after I had turned away, and was still there, now that I was trying to come back.
The man’s sneer disappeared as he walked away, almost slipping on a patch of ice.
I turned back around and got to the matter at hand.
“Lord, I feel like You’ve been trying to tell me something,” I whispered. “If this is what it is, give me the right words.”
And He did.
CHAPTER 25
EVA
THE ELEVATOR DOORS opened and I got on, my nose buried in a book about gunshot victims and posttraumatic stress disorder in hope of deterring anyone who wanted to talk. At first, I thought I was alone because the elevator was so wide, since they used it to transport patient gurneys and large equipment. But after I pressed the button for the top floor and walked to the elevator’s rear, I looked up from my book and noticed a man leaning against the wall near the number panel on the other side. His head was bowed and his eyes were closed like he, too, was purposely avoiding eye contact, or maybe praying. Then he raised his hands at his waist and folded them, the index fingers and thumbs touching.
He wore a blue bandana, which was tied on the top portion of his head, and I could see that the back of his scalp was bald, but not in the way when men shaved with a razor. There were no razor bumps or hair follicles, and I realized that his baldness was a side effect from disease. I had seen others like him here before, men and women of all ages, children and even babies, with no hair, wearing baseball caps, scarves, and other headwear. Some patients went bareheaded, modeling their baldheads without shame. Usually, they were on their way up from, or down to, the basement, the “lower concourse” as the hospital referred to it, as if the fancier name concealed the hazardous radiation and chemotherapy treatments taking place on that level.