Forgiveness Road

by Mandy Mikulencak

  Cissy also returned to her regular sessions with Dr. Guttman. He’d started asking her to talk about how the cutting was related to her daddy’s abuse, which made her feel unsafe. She asked God to join her at the next session, but She said that wasn’t a good idea.

  “But why not?” Cissy pleaded. She didn’t expect Her to say anything. She just wanted someone next to her, for support.

  God concentrated on the chess board and ignored Cissy for the most part, even when she let out huge sighs and rolled her eyes.

  This one-sided conversation reminded Cissy of when she used to pray to a God she didn’t know existed and ask for something special. When she didn’t get it, her mama would say God knows best and doesn’t answer all our prayers. Cissy thought having God right in front of her would give her an advantage over those people kneeling beside their beds.

  “You’re not real, are you?” Cissy asked, trying to get a rise.

  “What if I’m not? Would it matter?”

  It wasn’t the reply that Cissy expected. God’s words usually brought comfort, but today they seemed just plain hateful.

  “Why would you say that?” Cissy asked. “I haven’t asked you for a lot. Why not just come to one session with me?”

  God just shook her head and left.

  Cissy’s belly was trying to tell her that her next meeting with Dr. Guttman might not go well. She didn’t have anything but a hunch, but it was enough to make her sweat strangely and chew her thumbs raw.

  Dr. Guttman must have noticed her hesitation in entering his office.

  “Cissy, are you well? You’re quite pale,” he said.

  “I’m fine.” She sat down in the middle of the sofa instead of the chair by his desk, where she normally sat, and scanned the room from corner to corner. Dr. Guttman asked why she seemed so agitated.

  “I’m just fine.” She tapped the toes of her right foot—three taps, two taps, three taps. That was the most calming combination this week. Fuzzy slippers, however, didn’t make a satisfying sound.

  He asked if she would please sit still for a while because he had something important to discuss. Her belly shouted, “I told you so!” Sometimes, she hated having a good sense about things.

  Cissy could count in her head as well as with her feet so it wasn’t such a big deal to stop the tapping. Counting and concentrating on Dr. Guttman’s words at the same time, though, wasn’t so easy anymore. From what she pieced together between the counting, Nurse Edna had reported she’d exhibited signs of isolation, like not talking with the other girls or watching TV as much.

  The news hurt because she liked Nurse Edna more than any of the nurses. She was the only black nurse on staff and tall and skinny like Cissy. Her afro shone about her face like a halo. She was the kindest of the nurses, but Cissy sensed her kindness came mostly from pity. You could see that sort of thing in a person’s eyes if you paid attention.

  It hurt even more to learn Nurse Edna told Dr. Guttman that Cissy had been talking to herself.

  “Well, that’s just ridiculous!” she said. “Why would she say that about me?”

  “So, you don’t talk to yourself when you’re playing chess?” he asked.

  “Ohhhhh,” she said, understanding his questioning. “I don’t talk to myself. I talk to God when we play chess.”

  When Dr. Guttman started scratching in his notebook, she instantly regretted sharing her special secret, which wasn’t a secret if the nurses had already been spying on her time with God.

  “How long have you been playing chess with God,” he asked.

  Cissy told him she’d first met Her two weeks after arriving at the hospital. When he asked if God talked back to Cissy, she laughed out loud.

  “Why would I talk to someone who wouldn’t talk back to me?”

  Dr. Guttman and Cissy spent a good half hour just discussing the sorts of topics she and God talked about. He’d never shown himself to be so curious.

  “Does God ever ask you to do things,” he asked.

  “What kinds of things?”

  “Does She ever ask you to hurt yourself or others?”

  “Why would She do that?” Cissy asked. “You’re asking some pretty asinine questions for a smart guy.”

  “Asinine?”

  “I heard Nurse Brown use the word, so I looked it up and wrote it in my notebook. It means stupid or foolish.”

  “I know what it means, Cissy.”

  He scratched away some more and she asked why he didn’t seem more surprised that God visited her. She thought it was a pretty big deal, especially the revelation that God was a woman.

  Dr. Guttman closed his notebook and leaned forward as if ready to tell her a secret.

  “Sometimes the patients I work with make up imaginary friends,” he said. “It makes them feel better, the way that counting makes you feel safe.”

  “She’s not imaginary. I hate that you don’t believe me.” She took out her notebook to scribble the sadness he was causing. The fact that Dr. Guttman caused the sadness was the greatest blow of all.

  “I believe this woman seems real to you, and that’s what is most important.”

  Maybe having God in the room for the visit wouldn’t have helped after all. Cissy might have begged Her to show Herself to Dr. Guttman to prove she wasn’t crazy. And if She hadn’t done as Cissy asked, it would have been the second thing God had denied her. Cissy didn’t think she could take that much hurt in one day.

  * * *

  God seemed unconcerned when Cissy told Her about Dr. Guttman saying She was make-believe.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have mentioned me,” She said, and took out Cissy’s queen with Her knight.

  Cissy hated that She could talk and play chess at the same time. Everything about God annoyed her today. Why didn’t She ever wear anything else but that blue-green chiffon dress? Even Maria in The Sound of Music had day clothes and evening clothes.

  Cissy flipped the board off the table and watched the black and white plastic figurines skitter across the floor. Her eyes dared God to get mad, but She just stared the way She always did—Her features as blank as the Mona Lisa’s.

  The nurse on duty rushed over when she heard the pieces hit the tile. “What happened here?”

  Cissy knelt on the floor and began picking up the pieces so she wouldn’t have to look the nurse in the eye. “Everything’s okay. I accidentally bumped the table.”

  The nurse hesitated before leaving. Cissy got up only when she saw the nurse had returned to her station.

  “People get angry at me all the time,” God said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t still love them. Sometimes anger helps them get to the root of the matter.”

  “Why do you always talk like that? How much does my brain have to hurt before you talk normal?”

  “Pick up the rest of the chess pieces,” She said.

  “I don’t want to play anymore.” Cissy leaned back into the chair, arms crossed.

  “If Dr. Guttman had believed you, would that have made me more real?”

  “You are real to me,” she said. “I just wanted someone else to know that you picked me special to visit.”

  “Are you worried that believing in God makes you crazy?”

  “No, I’m worried other people will think I’m crazy because I see you,” Cissy said.

  “Is Santa Claus real?” She asked.

  “Santa isn’t real.” She grew angry that God was making fun of her. “Our parents put out the presents and pretend to be Santa.”

  “Do Lily and Jessie believe in Santa Claus?” She asked.

  “Of course, they’re little kids. Why are we talking about this?”

  “Santa is real to millions of children because they believe deep down in their hearts he exists. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks because that belief is so strong.”

  God held up Her hand to stop the questions that Cissy wanted to ask.

  “Lots of people don’t believe in me either,” She said. “That doesn’t m
ean I don’t exist in the hearts of the millions who do believe. You don’t need someone else’s validation to make me real to you.”

  “But I can see you. Kids don’t see Santa. What if Dr. Guttman thinks I’m crazy talking to you?”

  “Like I said, millions of people talk to me every day and they aren’t crazy.” She touched Cissy’s hand. “It’s called faith.”

  The nuns at school had talked a lot about faith. Cissy recalled the martyrs in Bible stories who were put to death because they believed in a God others doubted. Sister Mary Francis relished telling these stories. She’d gnash her teeth like a lion when she told the story of Perpetua, who was torn apart by wild beasts in the Carthage arena. She’d hold her neck protectively when she spoke of poor thirteen-year-old Agnes, who bravely offered her neck to the executioner’s sword.

  “There has to be a reason I can see you.” Cissy’s face burned red-hot.

  “It’s not wrong for you to want me to be real. This is a hard time for you and there’s so much for you to process. I’m helping you with that.”

  Each day seemed harder to slog through. Nothing ever changed. Eat, sleep, read, watch TV, repeat.

  Cissy used to badger her mama about how boring summers were, each day merging into the next until school would start up and she’d wondered where those three months had gone. Now the variety of those days unfolded before her: writing plays and performing them with her sisters, catching insects and looking them up in the encyclopedia, baking cookies with Bess and delivering them to the nursing homes, lying in the cool grass of the front yard reading her favorite books, luring crawdads out of their holes with bacon on a string. Now, even the funniest TV shows brought no more than small smiles, not the hoots Cissy remembered sharing with her baby sisters.

  “You’re the one thing that keeps me from becoming like everyone else here,” Cissy said. “Without you, I’m afraid I’ll turn into something I’m not.”

  “What aren’t you?”

  “Crazy,” she whispered.

  God, still wearing the blankest of faces, asked if Cissy wanted to continue the game. She hadn’t dispelled Cissy’s nighttime fear that she’d risked speaking in the daylight.

  Cissy snuffled back her disappointment. She leaned down to pick up the chess pieces from the floor and saw Martha standing at the edge of the recreation room, her lips in a hard line. Without waiting for Cissy to explain, she turned and stomped off down the hall.

  Chapter 19

  After Janelle returned from the visit with Dr. Guttman, she’d refrained from driving, but not because Caroline demanded it. Her body demanded it. She didn’t know if she’d been this tired all along, or if her cells gave up a little after hearing Dr. Stone’s diagnosis of cancer. Janelle spent day after day sitting on her front porch, reading books that held no interest, but passed the time. She skipped her weekly wash and set at the beauty parlor, and instead let her hair air-dry after showering. Makeup seemed superfluous, as did wearing anything but dungarees and cotton smocks at home.

  Many afternoons, Ruth would join her. She sat in Beau’s chair and they played rummy and checkers. Some afternoons, though, they didn’t need cards or words. They stared past the scorched brown grass and knotty willows, not focusing on anything in particular, happy to have each other’s company. The occasional squeak of their wicker rockers reminded them to get up and refill iced tea glasses or grab a bite to eat. Otherwise, the hours passed comfortably.

  Janelle and Ruth had been together longer than she’d been married, and like a marriage, their relationship had good years and bad years. Ruth came from a family of women who took care of other people’s households and reared other people’s children. Despite their friendship as children, Ruth became a different person when she took over Janelle and Beau’s household. She went about her chores with a blank face, never engaging in the conversations Janelle longed to have with her.

  Janelle’s parents had had money, well at least enough to put on the pretense of having it. When she was young, she didn’t see Ruth as being outside her social sphere even though she was the daughter of their housekeeper. Ruth and her mother hadn’t lived on the premises. Ruth’s father dropped them off each morning at 5 a.m. for a twelve-hour day. The crunch of gravel in the drive would wake Janelle and she’d sprint downstairs, ready to begin the day’s adventures. Ruth’s wicked sense of humor and knack for mischief sometimes resulted in Janelle’s father taking a birch switch to their hides. Neither girl cared. The fun they had far outweighed the punishment. Life seemed so glorious in its simplicity. Not having siblings made Janelle cherish Ruth’s friendship all the more.

  Ruth, though, felt that childhood friendships were to be outgrown, especially when she became Janelle and Beau’s housekeeper.

  Their friendship never really went away. Sometimes it just appeared dormant, like bulbs planted in the fall that must weather a winter before blooming. Over the years, Janelle and Ruth had more than a few arguments when navigating their new roles. Ruth expected to run a household the way her mother and grandmothers had. Janelle wanted things to be more relaxed. She wanted to have talks like they had as children. Ruth had said that it made her uncomfortable to be overly friendly. Soon, Janelle pulled away and the relationship grew formal, almost stilted. After Janelle gave birth to Caroline, Ruth cared less about the hierarchy in the house. That baby mesmerized Ruth, softening the hardest of her edges. She couldn’t bear to hear Caroline cry and would cry along with her. Some nights Janelle would find Ruth, tears running down her cheeks, rocking a squalling Caroline and singing a hymn. More than a few mornings, she found them asleep in the nursery rocker, Caroline slumbering across Ruth’s sizable bosom. After Caroline’s birth, Janelle had miscarried two other pregnancies. Ruth mourned for weeks, heartbroken she’d been deprived of loving two other precious souls as she did Caroline. Janelle accepted the losses for what they were—her body rejecting cells not strong enough to multiply and survive.

  When Caroline was growing up, Janelle appreciated that Ruth took the lead in child rearing even if it meant that the two started to develop a bond closer than the one Janelle had with Ruth in their younger years.

  It was only since Richard’s death, though, that Janelle appreciated Ruth’s ability to fill an emptiness in the house she couldn’t bear otherwise.

  “I love you, Ruth,” she said, and patted her forearm. “I don’t tell you often enough.”

  “You’ve never said it, Mrs. Clayton. Is the heat getting to you again?” She winked.

  “Ruth, why can’t you call me Janelle now that it’s just the two of us?” As soon as she said the words, she wondered why. Lately, her words had declared independence and it proved impossible to stop them.

  “I’ve called you Mrs. Clayton for too long to go changing to your first name.” Ruth let out a deep, throaty laugh. “You needn’t worry. I know we’re friends.”

  “I haven’t always been a good friend,” Janelle admitted.

  “I didn’t need you to be a good friend,” Ruth said. “I needed you to understand you had your place and I had mine. It didn’t mean we stopped caring for each other.”

  “I pushed you away more than was necessary.” Janelle felt a surge of regret. Sometime after Caroline’s third birthday, Janelle decided that if Ruth wanted theirs to be a typical employer–employee relationship, that’s what it would be. She’d be Mrs. Clayton. It all seemed so silly now. She and Ruth were in their seventies. There was no one around to judge them if they wanted to recapture some of the lightheartedness they shared as little girls.

  “You never mistreated me like your mama mistreated my mama,” Ruth said. “I’ve enjoyed my time here. At least we’ve not grown tired of each other.”

  “No, we haven’t,” Janelle said, chuckling softly. “Although sometimes it seems like we’re close to it.”

  Ruth smiled before her face turned somber. “I know you have the sickness,” she said.

  “I figured you did.”

  Ruth didn’t ask
for details and Janelle offered none. Ruth probably recognized Janelle’s decline in the past weeks. At their age, they’d seen many of their contemporaries fall ill to any number of ailments. Death was just a part of life.

  “It’s getting to be lunchtime,” Ruth said, slapping her thighs. “How about some cold fried chicken?”

  “That’d be fine.”

  Ruth’s gait had turned into a pained waddle in recent years. Arthritis had laid claim to her hips, and she swung her rigid body from side to side to propel herself forward. Janelle had suggested they get someone younger to help around the house, but Ruth had acted insulted and Janelle dropped the conversation. Still, it pained Janelle to see her ascend the stairs one step at a time or bend over to rest, hands on knees, while hanging the wash on the clothesline out back. In a contest of stubbornness it’d likely be a draw, so neither of them took the challenge.

  “There weren’t any wings left,” Ruth said when she returned, setting down a tray of food between them.

  “That’s all right. I like wings when they’re fresh out of the frying pan. Drumsticks are actually best cold.”

  “There’s only one drumstick left, ma’am, and it’s mine.” Ruth waited for a reaction, so Janelle glared in mock disappointment. These moments were a precious glimpse into an earlier time.

  “There was a bit of cucumber salad left,” Ruth said. “I know how much you like it.” The salad had been a favorite of Beau’s. A dressing of mayonnaise, white vinegar, black pepper, and caraway seeds wilted the thinly sliced cucumbers while allowing just a hint of their crispness to remain.

  Janelle hadn’t much of an appetite since having the stroke, but meals with Ruth weren’t about the food. They were about the space between them that needed tending. Neither of them was prepared for a goodbye, and certainly not one of words. Janelle allowed Ruth’s caretaking, and Ruth accepted that allowance as a gift, knowing Janelle’s controlling nature.

  “You want some pie and coffee?” Ruth asked when they’d finished lunch.