A Long Time Comin'

by Robin W. Pearson

  “I’m not ‘worried’ about Kevin—at least about this baby. Or Mama either, for that matter. Even though I didn’t plan it, I can do this on my own . . . with God’s help if I need to.”

  “You young people and your plans. You thank everythang’s supposed to go by some big plan you created. Then, when things don’t work out, you run around like crazy chickens, blaming God.” She waved her hands above her head. “‘What do I do? What do I do?’”

  “Speaking of plans, you’ve had a sudden crimp in your own.”

  “If you call ’cute my’loid leu-ke-mia a ‘crimp,’ then unh-huh, I guess I have.” She looked up at Evelyn from her crouch by the basket and caught her granddaughter’s look. “I might as well say it straight, as you and yo’ mama been meddlin’ around in my personal business anyhow.”

  “We—”

  “Just hush up, gal.” Granny B clipped wet underwear to the line. “Best you own up to it. It ain’t like I got somethin’ to hide no mo’. Just like you ain’t gon’ have much to hide in a few mo’ months.” She paused to appraise Evelyn’s midsection. “Make that a few weeks.”

  Evelyn watched her for a moment, bending and clipping and sidestepping, bending and clipping and sidestepping. “Nothing to hide? It’s not like Mama went looking into your private medical files. The information came looking for her.”

  “Well, my business mighta gone lookin’ for her, but here I find you all chin-deep in it.” Granny B moved to the second row. She pushed the bag of clothespins down the line, out of her way. “So what? You came over here to Sprang Hope to get into this business of my bein’ sick? You wont to know just how long I’m gon’ be round, botherin’ you folks?”

  “No, I’m here to make sure you stay around, botherin’ us folks.”

  Granny B barked. “And just how you s’posed to do that? You makin’ deals with God? Huh, I think He done put enough on my plate, thank you very much.”

  “Maybe, but your daughter—”

  “Which one? ’Lis’beth?” Granny B straightened to eye her granddaughter. “What y’all got cooked up?’

  “We don’t have anything cooked up.” Evelyn took a pair of women’s briefs and pinned them to the clothesline. She shook her head. Just how many pairs of white panties does any woman need? “The first we heard of your illness came from somebody other than you, and we just want to know what’s really going on. You know, like . . . when did you get diagnosed? What are your symptoms? What can we do to help? Have you and your doctor considered a bone marrow transplant or chemotherapy? Mama and I want to make sure you and your doctor are clear on your method of treatment.”

  “We is.” Granny B went back to her bending and clipping and sidestepping, though Evelyn intuited she was also sidestepping a bigger issue.

  “You is? I mean, you are?” Suspicious, she let a pair of underwear hang by one leg. “But from what Mrs. Tagle told Mama—”

  Granny B’s head snapped around. “Ruby? What she know ’bout—?”

  Evelyn mentally kicked herself for the slip. “Anyway, that’s not the point. It was our understanding that you weren’t getting treatment at all. Oh, wait! Are you seeing somebody other than Dr. Hedgepeth? Do you have a specialist we don’t know about?”

  “No and no.”

  “No? Then what—?”

  “You is full of questions about thangs that ain’t none of yo’ concern.” Granny B finished the underwear and picked up the now-empty basket. “Haven’t you learned yo’ lesson yet ’bout stickin’ yo’ nose into other people’s situations?” She walked away.

  Evelyn tried to make sense of what Granny B had, or rather, had not told her as she stood there.

  Evelyn limped back to the house, pulled open the back door, and stepped inside. She didn’t have to look for Granny B. She was staring out the kitchen window, sipping from a glass of ice water. Evelyn searched for a way to start.

  But before she could wrap her lips around the words, Granny B stated, without preamble, “I know you got somethin’ to say as usual. Stop chewin’ on them words and spit ’em out.”

  Evelyn jumped. “Well, since you know so much, you know what I was going to say. ’Cause I have no idea.”

  Granny B seemed to take her time setting down the glass beside the sink. Then she faced her. “You gon’ ask me ’bout what I’m doin’ to fight this animal that’s eatin’ away at my insides. You gon’ ask me what my doctor say ’bout all this, what he doin’ to cure me. You wonderin’ why I ain’t told nobody nuthin’ until now.” She waited a beat. “That ’bout it?”

  “You’re getting there.”

  “Well.” Granny B wearily took the few short steps between the sink and the table. It was then Evelyn realized her grandmother had leaned against the countertop for physical support, not to enjoy the view. “Well.” Granny B pulled a chair from the table, lifting it so it did not scrape the floor. She sat with her back to the refrigerator. Her eyes gazed out into the wide space of the backyard, perhaps taking in the clothes flapping on the line or the birds perched on the back fence. While she focused on that unknown spot, she said dryly, “I ’spect you gon’ sit down.”

  Evelyn eased into a chair.

  “I don’t rightly know why I see fit to tell you ’bout all this, but see’n as how you and yo’ mama know so much as it is, I guess I might as well.” Granny B reached down into the right front pocket of her plaid housedress and withdrew a lace-trimmed handkerchief. She first wiped away moisture from her forehead and around her mouth, and then she wiped her chin, her neck, and down to the first button of her faded-red housedress. Finally she folded the cloth into a tiny square and returned it to her pocket.

  Evelyn itched for her to go on. She had never known Granny B to sit still. “Are you in pain? What made you go see Dr. Hedgepeth in the first place?”

  “Looking back on it, I guess I’d been feeling pretty bad for a while,” Granny B responded quietly. “I cain’t even say what exactly. I didn’t really hurt nowhere, but I just got tired and stayed tired. I been gettin’ weak—one day, I could barely lift that coffeepot over there on the stove. I dropped it and got coffee all over this here flo’. I had to go sit down two hours ’fo’ I could get in here and clean it up. Made such a mess . . .” Granny B tsked, fading off, shaking her head slowly.

  Evelyn didn’t know if she was thinking about the mess or how bad she’d been feeling.

  “Most times, I’m all right, but . . .” Granny B let the words crawl until they stopped altogether, which allowed Evelyn to fill in the blank with her own wild imaginings.

  “Why didn’t you say something, Granny B? Mama never would have allowed you to go to that—”

  “’Lowed me?” Granny B snapped. “It was fo’ me to decide when or if I would go to the doctor.” Granny B expelled a breath. “Well. After ’bout a week or two, I did start feelin’ a kinda pain, just this heaviness, this achy-ness down somewhere deep. I waited, but then it seemed like it wouldn’t go away, no matter what I tried. So I asked Ruby to carry me to see that Dr. Hedgepeth—who, by the way, don’t know more’n my hairy behind ’bout curin’ nuthin’.” Granny B snorted. “All he did was write down a lot of words and make me take a lot of tests. It didn’t make no kinda sense the blood they took from me. It took weeks ’fo’ he was finally able to tell me I had this disease.”

  “Acute myeloid leukemia.”

  “Yes, that.” Granny B swallowed and smiled slightly. “Ain’t that a mouthful of nonsense? Hurts ’bout as much to say it as it does to have it.” She walked over to the sink and picked up her glass. She drained the water in a slow gulp, and then she upended the glass in the sink. The ice clinked and rattled against the stainless steel.

  Evelyn waited until Granny B rinsed her glass and set it on the draining board before she spoke. “But what did Dr. Hedgepeth say?”

  “What did he say?” Granny B’s raised eyebrows indicated the answer was obvious. “Well, I got it, and they ain’t no givin’ it back. So it’s mine, just like this h
ere house.”

  “Okay, we know you have leukemia. But I know that you can treat it. What did the doctor say about where we go from here?”

  “I know exactly where I go from here—to that piece of dirt I done picked out in my backyard.” Granny B pointed through the back door.

  Evelyn didn’t turn to look. “Granny B, that’s not what I mean, and you know it!”

  “You know, chile, I don’t rightly care what you mean. Do you see me askin’ you a bunch of questions ’bout that baby you carryin’ around? I haven’t asked you ’bout when you gon’ tell yo’ mama or yo’ husband, or what you gon’ do ’bout bein’ pregnant. You know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

  Evelyn jumped up and grabbed her grandmother’s own words from the air and waved them high. “Aha! So you admit that this is absurd!”

  “I ain’t admittin’ no such thing. I was talkin’ about you. I’ve lived long enough to do all manner of foolishness—you got plenty mo’ years and mistakes ahead. Now, I ain’t asked you what I need to do ’cause I already know. I been runnin’ for a while now, thinkin’ it won’t find me, but this disease know where I live.” Granny B rested against the sink and again gazed out the side window. “I accept it now, and I don’t need no interference from nobody to make it worse.”

  “Are you in much pain?” Evelyn dreaded an honest response.

  “What kinda question is that to ask me, gal? This ain’t really ’bout the pain. I been in pain all my life from one thang or ’nother.” She crossed her arms. “But see, that pain? I’s able to control that. I could see where it was comin’ from. Livin’ is all ’bout hurtin’, at least in my ’sperience. For me, death just gon’ brang the end of my pain.”

  Granny B pressed her lips together for a moment. “But dyin’ ’cause of somethin’ like this? I cain’t control it.” She looked at her granddaughter. “I guess I thought like the rest of you that I was just too mean to die. Ain’t that somethin’? I guess mean people die, too.”

  Did I think she’d just keep washing clothes and cooking tender greens through all eternity, while children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren lived and died? Evelyn didn’t know the answer, and she wasn’t prepared to respond to Granny B’s admission or her apparent acceptance of the inevitable. But she could deal with scientific facts.

  “Granny B, you say you can’t control dying, but you can. Know how? You get treated. That’s what Mama and I are talking about, giving you some sense of empowerment over this—this—this animal as you call it.” Evelyn’s voice rose a bit as she struggled to find the right words, but she remained seated. Her hands clenched with the effort to contain herself.

  “Empowerment? You young folks always throwing round that word like it mean somethin’. You ain’t got power from nobody but God. Self don’t give you nuthin’.” Granny growled as she faced Evelyn. “And I’ll tell you somethin’ else. I won’t get power from takin’ medicine that gon’ leave me bald and cause me to waste away to my bones and make me sicker than this ’cute my’loid mess. And then, after all that, I still got to die. You thank power come like that? Well, it don’t. I faced up to dyin’. And it ain’t hard really. It may be hard for you and yo’ mama and for anybody else to deal with, but I faced it head-on befo’. I got the power.”

  “What? Your faith?”

  “Gal, hush yo’ mouth. God been here with me all the time. He ain’t goin’ nowhere even when I do. What I’m talkin’ ’bout don’t got nuthin’ to do with Ruthena’s white man in the sky. It’s ’bout what’s really goin’ on right here in this po’ black woman’s body. People die, and that’s a fact. Ain’t no need in delayin’ death or makin’ me suffer just so y’all can feel like you doin’ somethin’.”

  “But—”

  “Uh-uh, no. Now, this my body. Y’all come traipsin’ through this house and in my life anytime y’all feel like it. You even get into my personal medical condition, but you won’t interfere in this. You cain’t strap me to no machine and make me take nuthin’, least of all somethin’ that come from somebody else. I got this here, gal. I got the power.”

  “What is wrong with you? Is this leukemia affecting your mind? Are you telling me you’re completely refusing treatment, that you’re just going to sit back and die to show you’re in control or to hurt us the way you hurt after Milton? So you can keep on with this ridiculous resistance to help from somebody else? That’s a death wish!”

  Evelyn collapsed into her chair, her mouth agape. “What kind of sense does that make? Yes, it’s your body. Yes, you say what, how, when, where—we acknowledge you’re in control, Granny B. But you don’t have to take this stance to show us that you mean business. Okay, you’re fed up with the whole lot of us. We’ll step back and let you handle your own visits, your own treatments—”

  Granny B shook her head. “See, that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout. ‘You gon’ do this, you gon’ do that.’ Have I lost my mind? Nobody got to do nuthin’, leastwise hurt ’cause a what I done. What y’all young folks say? All I got to do is stay black and die? Well, I got the first part down, and now I’m workin’ on the second part.”

  “Granny B, that’s not funny.”

  “Now we agree on somethin’!” Granny B slapped her hands together.

  Evelyn jumped in her seat.

  “There ain’t nuthin’ funny about this, so you gotta know I’m serious. You cain’t do nuthin’ ’bout this decision, Ev’lyn, so you can rest easy. I’ll even tell yo’ mama ’bout it so you can just take a load off. I’m not crazy. Talk to my doctor, and he’ll tell you. He’ll even ’splain that my decision make a whole heap-a sense ’cause that medicine he was gon’ give me couldn’t do much anyway. Maybe buy me a month or so, but that ’bout all. This leu-ke-mia ain’t stoppin’ long enough to let nobody off, Ev’lyn. This train’s a-movin’.” Granny B walked around their chairs to lean against the doorjamb of the back door. “Now, I’m speedin’ past eighty years old, and I’m gon’ spend my remainin’ time doing what I wont, not layin’ up sick.”

  Evelyn took a deep breath. Does she really think we’ll just let her go off and die somewhere like a dog? She started to silently tick off salient points on her fingers to help Granny B see the light.

  “I know you sittin’ there wonderin’ how you can get me locked up so you can have yo’ way.”

  Evelyn looked up at her. Okay, forget number three.

  “Fact is, Ev’lyn, I just waited too long to do somethin’ about it. By the time I got to the doctor, it was too late. All Dr. Hedgepeth can really do now is waste my time. He cain’t do nothin’ fo’ me. Talk to him—he’ll tell you.”

  “But if that’s the case, why did he contact Mrs. Tagle and have her talk to Mama?”

  “I didn’t say he didn’t want me to get chemother’py. He mentioned some kinda medication that might help slow thangs down, but he just say it won’t do a heck of a lot of good. You know educated folk. They thank they can use they books to fix ever’body’s problems, even though they smart enough to know they cain’t.” Granny B made a wry face. “Now, I’ve had plenty-a time to wrap my mind round this. You gon’ need some time to do the same.” Granny B paused a half beat before adding, “It’s kinda whatchyou doin’ ’bout yo’ baby.”

  “Would you please stop talking about this baby? The two situations are totally different!”

  Granny B calmly studied her over her shoulder. “Oh? Just how so?”

  “Well, for one—” Evelyn was about to say that her pregnancy didn’t affect anyone else, but it did. “But—” This time she almost pointed out that it was her body. “You see, you—” Again, she clamped her lips together. Then she growled low in her throat like some cornered animal and blurted, “’Cause it is!”

  Granny B laughed shortly. “You don’t like havin’ to justify yo’ decisions, do you? You don’t thank I have a right to make you ’splain what you doin’ ’cause it really don’t involve me, does it?” Suddenly sober, Granny B returned her eyes to the view outside. She
said quietly, “Sho’, I’d like to tell you to take yo’ fool head out the sand and grow up. I’d like to tell you, you’s somebody’s mama now, so act like it. I wish I could tell you it ain’t all that bad—after all, you got a husband who’s workin’.”

  She drew a deep breath. “I could point out you got a husband you love, even though he’s made you so mad you could spit. And that he loves you. You got a nice house and a family that’ll be buttin’ in and offerin’ help you don’t even need. I’d like to tell you all them thangs, but I’m sho’ you been thankin’ of all this yo’self and you don’t need to hear me spoutin’ off ’bout what you can see plain befo’ you.”

  Evelyn fought the urge to squirm.

  “I respect the fact that you got a head and you can bang it against that wall over there as much as you wont. You gon’ make the decision that’s right for you ’cause it’s yo’ business, and whatever you do ’bout yo’ life is yo’ business. ’Cause the decisions you make? You got to be at peace within yo’ own skin. You got to live with ’em.” Then she whispered, “Or die.”

  Tears coursed down Evelyn’s cheeks by the time Granny B finished telling her all the things she would like to tell her but wouldn’t. She wanted to shout, “You’re wrong! Be quiet!” But then she thought about Kevin and all the decisions she had to make. She held her stomach and choked back a sob.

  Granny B continued to stare outside, giving Evelyn time to put her face back together. They remained in those positions for a good while—Granny B by the back door, Evelyn at the table silently weeping, going over argument after useless argument in her head, trying to formulate a response, however inadequate.

  But then Evelyn got it.

  Granny B did understand this, her need to protect her most private, innermost self. She knew Evelyn’s business was hers, and she possessed sole ownership of her own and could and should protect it. That’s what Granny B had done when she’d come across Evelyn in her room weeks ago. This was how she felt right now when Evelyn was trying to get her to confront something she probably faced every morning when she looked in the mirror. Finally she got it.