by Curtis Bunn
“Researchers are stumped by it. There’s a five-year survival rate in only fifteen percent of the cases. They give me only a few months, up to six if I’m lucky.”
The pastor shook his head. “And the treatment?”
“Well, the treatment is chemo, chemo, chemo…to extend your life a little—maybe. It’s a cancer that can’t be beaten, I’m told. Had more than a few opinions on it. So, I watched my aunt die of cancer. She was less than a hundred pounds by the time the chemo burned through her body. She ‘lived’ probably an extra week, a month or something. But she was not really living. She was in bed, sick, weak, barely conscious. She was not herself. And that’s what the chemo did to her.
“I can’t be that way, Pastor. I’ve got to try to live my life, what I have left of it.”
“Are you saying you’re not getting any treatment?”
“I’m not. I’m going to pray on it and live, as you said earlier. I can’t do that in a bed, sick and weak.”
“You’re obviously a smart man and know what you want. I hope you’ve exhausted your opinions and explored all the options.”
“The doctors don’t agree with me. My daughter didn’t agree with me. But after I explained to her that I have to live and not just exist, she understood…said she did, anyway.”
I started to cry then. Not for me, but for my child. I breathed to her heartbeat. If anything hurt me through this mess, it was knowing I wouldn’t be with her and knowing how devastated not being here would be for her.
“Maya is everything to me, pastor,” I managed to get out. “I can’t think of her now and not get upset.”
“Our children are like appendages, extensions of us,” Pastor Henson said. “I understand how devastating this can be for you… and her. Be an example of courage and strength for her. I think you’re already doing that, but I had to say it anyway. You have to live your life as you see fit. I cannot argue against not getting chemo if there is not real evidence it’s going to make your more comfortable. I’ve seen how it can debilitate. But you’ve got to pray, see a therapist and have you considered natural, holistic remedies? There are people you can see who have what doctors consider radical treatment options because they are not medically approved. But many have found better results that way, at least from a comfort level standpoint.
“If it is God’s will that the disease takes over, then so be it. But, for the sake of extending your life and remaining able to function, the holistic method might be an option to research.”
“Interesting you bring that up because I learned about someone in Atlanta who has an all-natural, holistic program. My daughter found her. I don’t know the specifics, but it’s about cleansing the body of toxins. My Obamacare insurance—which I love, by the way—does not cover it. No insurance does. It’s pricey, but I have 401(k) money that I can dip into.”
“I think you should try something,” the pastor said. “I understand how harsh chemo can be on the body. Maybe the natural option can be more effective and not as invasive.”
We exchanged pleasantries for a few more minutes before I rose from my seat. Pastor Henson moved from behind his desk, came over and hugged me.
“You’re a strong man and you’ve done the right thing by praying to God and placing your faith in Him,” he said. “I’m here at any time to help in any way. Here—these are my home and cell phone numbers. Use them at any time. Any time. God be with you, Brother Calvin. God be with you.”
I left there feeling like I had nourished my soul, if not extended my life. I thought about my friend Kevin, and something led me to the barbershop.
As I lived the life I wanted, I also wanted and needed to do some of the things Kevin wrote that he never got to do. First thing was to get a haircut. Excuse me: a shaved head.
I hadn’t even thought about what I’d look like bald. When you know you’re going to die, appearances hardly mattered much anymore. Instinctively, I shaved and ironed my clothes and made sure I looked my best. But it was pure force of habit. I didn’t have a woman—got rid of one about six weeks before the diagnosis because she brought drama every other day. And what good was it now to meet anyone? My desire for intimacy was close to zero, which saddened me because I had been quite amorous since I was a teenager. And who would want to get involved with a dying man anyway?
So cutting off all my hair didn’t matter to me as much as it did honoring my friend. I went to my barber, Kevo, over at Iverson Mall and he looked at me as if I asked him for money when I told him, “Cut it all off. Shave it.”
I didn’t have that much, but what I had was distinguishable and was a part of my appearance that helped shaped my physical image that people saw when they looked at me.
“What?” Kevo asked. “You mean lower than usual?”
“I’m going for something new. All of it. A bald head worked for Kojak, Jordan, Ving Rhames and just about anyone else. Maybe it will work for me.”
“So you’re serious? OK, if you say so. But this is cool. Your hairline was starting to run away from you, anyway. Plus, it’ll take some years off your look.”
I laughed with him, but he had no idea that I didn’t have years left. I learned to laugh to fend off crying, which was interesting because before the “news,” the only time I recalled crying was at the news of my mother’s death from an aneurysm more than a decade earlier. I found crying episodes to be signs of weakness and pitiful, especially from a man. Tears were for women.
When I told my father my position on that, he held himself back from smacking me. “Son, don’t be stupid. What are you, a caveman? You cry if you have a heart. It has nothing to do with strength or being a man. It has everything to do with having compassion, having emotions, having a heart.”
I heard him, but I didn’t really understand at the time. I got it later, though. The number of people who burst into tears at just the mere notion that I had cancer showed me they had compassion for me, compassion for life. And, when I was alone, I cried. Every day. I cried because I had compassion for myself. I cried because I was scared. I cried because it was OK for men to cry.
I didn’t tell Kevo, my barber, what was going on with me. He was so emotional about the Redskins or President Obama, I could just see him making a big scene out of it right there in the shop. So I kept it to myself, thinking I’d tell him at some point.
Meanwhile, he took his time cutting off my hair, as if he were savoring the moment, cutting me down in layers before getting to my scalp. Then he ran the clippers from front-to-back, slicing as low as he could get. Finally, he covered my head with shaving cream, adjusted the chair so I was reclined and, with a razor, carefully, almost surgically, swiped away every strand of hair on my head. I closed my eyes as he did and I thought of Kevin. Funny thing was, I thought of how hard he would laugh at me with a bald head. And it made me smile. If it were funny enough, Kevin would laugh so hard that he would bend over and point at you and stomp his feet. He’d move away from you but not too far that you couldn’t see tears streaming down his face.
His laughs were a performance. Kevo caught me smiling as he was wiping down my head with a warm towel.
“What’s so funny?” he asked. “You haven’t even seen yourself yet.”
“No, I was thinking about what Kevin would do if he saw me.”
“Oh, man, you know he’d be all over the floor laughing at you. He laughed so hard that I thought he would choke. That was your boy. But I miss that dude, too. Do you know he told me one day he’d like to get a bald head?”
“What? I didn’t. That’s why I’m doing it now. He wrote me a letter. Said there were some things he didn’t get to do and one of them was to see what it was like to have a shiny bald head. So, I thought I’d try it out for him.”
“That’s all right, Calvin,” Kevo said. “That’s all right.”
He raised the chair upright and when he finished wiping away the leftover foam, he cupped some witch hazel in his hands, rubbed them together and covered my now-bald dome with
it. Then he handed me a mirror.
I looked at Kevo before I looked into it. He smiled. “Too late now,” he said.
I placed the mirror in front of my face and I was alarmed by what I saw. My heart dropped at first because the initial thought was that I looked like I was a cancer patient who had lost his hair from chemotherapy.
I stared at myself and tried to find me in this hairless person. But my eyes would barely deviate from my head.
“What you think?”
“Gotta get used to it. From the eyebrows down, I look like myself. But the whole picture, that’s something else.”
“You look younger,” Derrick, a barber working across the shop, said. “With that gray gone, you dropped about six or seven years.”
That was it. I was prematurely gray, since my twenties. The gray gave people, especially women, this idea that I was older than forty-five, even though my face was wrinkle-free. I still played basketball and as much golf as I could and I ate right…for the most part, to keep my weight down. I did have a soft spot for bread and desserts. But I controlled it for two reasons: one, l had a kidney transplant and staying healthy through diet and exercise was a must; two, I liked to be presentable.
I never considered myself a “ladies man,” but I loved women and went through my share. Maybe I was a “ladies man” and just felt bad about labeling myself as one. In the end, it didn’t matter that much.
“You have the kind of head the ladies will like,” Kevo said.
“I have to like it. And, as Derrick says, I look younger. But I look strange, too. This is gonna be interesting.”
I usually hung around the shop for a while to participate in the loud conversation about sports and women, mostly, or current events. But I was not in the mood for much laughter. That was a hurdle I really wanted to get beyond. I wanted to get back to laughing, and I just didn’t know how because I couldn’t find humor in much.
CHAPTER FOUR
HEADED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION
Sporting a new bald head, I made my way toward Northwest D.C., where my daughter was to meet me for an early dinner at Ben’s Next Door on U Street. I didn’t tell her about my new look. I figured a surprise would make her laugh, which would make me feel good because I felt guilty about all the tears I had caused her.
I was glad she picked that spot, but going there made me sad. The Fourteenth and U Street corridor had been a stopping post for blacks in D.C. for decades. At one time, in the 1960s, it was a bustling, happening section of town. Bill Cosby had taken his wife on dates at Ben’s Chili Bowl, next to where we were meeting. Over the years, prostitution became the area’s biggest business and the community crumbled. In the last few years, as white developers came in and turned rundown or abandoned buildings into out-of-sight-priced condos and apartments, the black residents were forced to move while whites came in.
It was equal parts astonishing and sad to see white women pushing babies in carriages and their husbands jogging in a neighborhood once important to a lot of blacks. Gentrification was real, and seeing it in “Chocolate City” bothered me.
I hadn’t had much of an appetite since the world came crashing down on me, but I took advantage of any opportunity to spend time with Maya. She worked at the State Department after two summers of internships there. We vowed to have dinner at least twice a week after work.
When I walked into the restaurant, she was at the bar. She looked right at me and turned away; didn’t recognize me. Instead of coming over to her, I watched her from a distance and lost myself in all she meant to me.
The longer I stared at her, the more she looked like her mother, which caused even more emotions in me to rise. Skylar was an enigma, especially for a woman. I couldn’t trust her and I grew so angry that I could not even speak to her. Maya’s beauty and temperament were similar to her mom’s. But she was made of something pure inside that was all her own.
With those thoughts in my head, I finally went over to my daughter.
“Well, hello there,” I said.
Maya looked up at me and had this confused look. She recognized the voice, but the bald head threw her off. I couldn’t quite remember seeing the expression her face wore.
“Maya,” I said.
She burst into tears. I immediately hugged her. But I wasn’t sure why she was so upset.
“What’s wrong?”
She composed herself and leaned back to look at me. “Dad, what happened? Did you get chemo? I thought you weren’t going to do it.”
“No, honey, I’m fine,” I said. “I just came from the barbershop.”
“The barbershop? You got all your hair cut off? Why?”
“Remember I told you I was going to do some things Kevin wrote that he did not get to do? Well, getting a bald head was one of them.”
She took a deep breath and placed her hand over her heart. “Daddy, I don’t know what I thought when I realized it was you, but it scared me. It’s bad enough I’m scared every time I call you or you call me; I hold my breath to hear the tone of your voice. I brace myself for you to be in pain or panic.
“For some reason, seeing you with no hair made all kind of bad thoughts race through my mind. Oh, God. I need a drink.”
“A drink? I heard in this movie, ‘Never drink to feel better. Only drink to feel even better.’ ”
I enjoyed a glass of wine from time-to-time, but gave up alcohol after the transplant. “I was just saying that,” Maya said. “I’m not drinking.”
“Come on, let’s get a table—unless you want to sit here at the bar,” I said.
“OK, we can stay here,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I guess I should have warned you about the bald head. I thought the surprise would make you laugh.”
She ran her hand over my head. “It does make me laugh now. But when I first saw you… I’m sorry.”
I rubbed her back.
“It looks good on you, Daddy. You look younger. You look hip. Probably all the ladies will be all over you now.”
“They always were; ain’t nothing changed,” I said, and we laughed. It felt good to laugh with my daughter, more than it had in the past. Every experience felt like it could be the last experience. It was never that way before.
“I have some more information about the holistic treatment in Atlanta,” she said. “She has a track record of success.”
“What does ‘success’ mean, though?”
“It means some clients who have been told that the cancer was fatal made full recoveries,” she said. “Some started it too late or after having already had chemo, but had a much more comfortable life. We don’t know if it’s too late, but I don’t want to wait any longer to get you down there.”
“There’s no one in the whole D.C. area with holistic treatments?” I asked. I was going to go to Atlanta if need be. It was summertime and I was off from my English teaching job at Ballou High School, so time off from work was not an issue.
“I’m sure there are,” Maya said. “But I was referred to this one person.”
“OK, I’m in. I haven’t been to Atlanta. Heard a lot about it. I look forward to seeing the city.”
“This isn’t a vacation, Dad. This is…I don’t know what to call it. But you’re going to be on a serious regimen and you have to follow it.”
I hadn’t seen her so serious about anything.
“Do I have to take some time off and go down there with you?”
“Maybe you should come for a few days,” I said. “We could hang out. We haven’t done a trip since we went to New York around Christmas two years ago. We can catch the bus next week and—”
“The bus? Dad, you’re kidding, right? Why would you get on the bus? That’s not a good idea.”
“You can meet me down there then. I want to get on the bus. I thought about it. I can be among the people and absorb more. I feel like I need that. Not that interested in flying.”
“What are you going to do on a bus, Dad? Come on, now. I’ll buy your plane t
icket. The bus takes too long and anything can happen. You don’t need to be traveling through fourteen stops that will take fourteen hours when you can be there in less than two hours. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It doesn’t make any sense that I have cancer and have been told I have a few months to live when I feel just fine. So I don’t pay that much attention anymore to things that do and don’t make sense. I do what works best for me.”
Maya wanted to say more, but she didn’t. She could tell it wouldn’t do any good. I had made up my mind.
“OK. Fine. But I think you should go this weekend. I have your first session scheduled for next Monday.”
This child of mine was something. She was taking over.
“Excuse me?”
“Dad, please don’t argue with me on this.” Her eyes started to tear up. And all my resistance went poof.
“OK, baby. Thank you for looking after me. I appreciate you.”
She sipped her water and then reached down and pulled up a Whole Foods bag. In it was Alkaline water, purported to slow disease. Then she handed me a brochure.
“Read it.”
“I will.”
“Now, Daddy. Please read it now.”
I was not in a mood to read about cancer treatments, but I could not help but please my daughter. And so, I went through it as fast as I could.
It read: “Some patients are hesitant to try alternative therapies because there is not a large body of evidence surrounding their efficacy. However, many alternative procedures–including acupuncture, Reiki and aromatherapy–have played a significant role in cancer treatment for hundreds or even thousands of years.
“Holistic therapies are palliative in nature, meaning they focus more on relieving symptoms than treating a singular tumor. They are typically used to relieve symptoms and side effects of traditional treatment as well as improve a patient’s quality of life.
