History Lessons

by Clifton Crais

  My mother’s injuries ended a period of her life lived mostly independently, if negligently and certainly in poverty. Despite her age and declining health, Mom had managed to stay in her small Florida apartment. She lived much as she had for over fifty years: with a flea-ridden cat; roaches scampering across floors and walls; maggots growing from pots of food left on the stove; a stack of bills she felt entitled to neglect. Kinta visited regularly. They went shopping. Mother read and painted, and on Sundays leafed through the advertisements and human-interest stories scattered across the local paper. Sometimes Marie would come by and try cleaning up.

  “She wants to be buried with Grandmother, in the Salvant tomb, back in New Orleans. Would you find out? It would mean a lot to Mom, to know she could be with her mother, be back home.”

  I called the cemetery, discovered who owns the legal rights to the tomb. I talked to a distant relative living in Metairie, offering genealogical information connecting my mother to Joseph Salvant Jr., her grandfather. Yes, she can be buried with Grandmother when the time comes.

  Mom also wanted me to help with the legal morass. Months in hospitals and rehab units generated enormous medical expenses. She relied entirely on Social Security. Medicare covered many of these costs, but not all. In less than a month she expended the entire coverage on rehabilitation. Where she was staying charged nearly $7,000 a month. Medicare initiated liens against Stein Mart. Mother’s attorney filed a claim against the company, followed by a lawsuit. Dates were set. Interrogatories demanded. Mom and others would be deposed. I studied theories of liability in personal injury law, and how the legal system determines the value of life and human suffering. Most of the elderly who suffer similar injuries perish within a few months, and Stein Mart’s initial strategy was to hope that mother died. She had no economic worth, and death would conveniently get rid of any future costs. But Mom hung on, and Stein Mart agreed to mediation.

  The injury and resulting lawsuit brought me back to Florida. I sat with my mother in the hospital, describing my work, asking a few questions when I thought she was up to it. She kept her spirits up, and even a sense of humor. “Son, thank you for your visit,” she once said. “You’ve greatly enriched my death.”

  The insurance settlement provided my mother with more money than she has ever had, though the funds have been swiftly depleted by the costs of living in an assisted care facility. Mom grew tired of the Jacksonville Sunrise. She felt isolated and lonely. Most of the residents came from the Northeast, solid middle- and upper-middle-class folk, the sorts of people Mom had catered to when she sold cosmetics decades ago. She wanted to go home. She wanted to go back to New Orleans. For just over a year, she moved in with my sister Sabrina, not long after they had completed rebuilding the home that had been destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. At the beginning of 2013 this proved too stressful for my sister. Another flurry of phone calls ensued, discussions of what to do, where Mom might go, how to explain that Sabrina just couldn’t cope any longer.

  I was deputized to explain to Mom that she had to leave. We sat in my sister’s kitchen around a fruit tart I had brought from a fancy French bakery. Her eyes no longer seemed as forbidding. Mom seemed forlorn, scared even, and certainly abandoned as I explained why she had to leave, and that I had found a new place on Magazine Street, not more than a stone’s throw from where she lived much of her life.

  She seems happy now, or at least happy enough for a woman in her nineties and in rapidly failing health. There is the Times-Picayune to read for entertainment, though now reduced to just twice a week, and a flock of parakeets that have been set free in the atrium and nest among the plastic trees. The residents are almost exclusively longtime New Orleanians, with accents that melodically slur one word into the next and stories of Mardi Gras and the city’s never-ending commotions. Mom has her nightly dinner with a friend, an elderly woman from Uptown.

  In the last few months her condition has taken a turn for the worse. Mom can barely move her walker ten feet. She complains of pain in her broken hip. Mom is wasting away from congestive heart failure. She’s also not eating; in just a few weeks Mom sheds nearly twenty pounds. She spends almost all of her time in bed. And just as Susan dies from cancer I learn that during a recent trip to the hospital the doctors discovered a tumor in one breast and suspicious spots on her lungs. I phone my sisters. Marie is convinced Mom is about to die any second. Sabrina thinks she has a few more months. I don’t know, but I make sure the nurse has a copy of her living will and the “do not resuscitate” order.

  I call once a week, sometimes twice. Lately I’ve had to pass on the sad news of Susan’s illness and death. “Mom, Susan’s really, really ill. I don’t know how much more time she has.” Then, “Mom, Susan died. She was at home,” and I explain to her the services, how we are all set to converge on New Orleans for the memorial.

  “I am so sorry,” she says, as if she were offering an apology.

  Her mind is slipping away. A nurse picks up the phone the next time I call. “Your mother’s dying,” the nurse tells me. She needs more care. We make arrangements for hospice and after that cremation and burial. Often she is not sure who I am. “It’s Clifton,” I say, “your son.” I repeat a succession of statements each time we speak, hoping they will have some kind of mnemonic power: I am married, have kids who are galloping into adulthood, teach in Atlanta. I ask about the weather. “Thank you for calling,” she mumbles, and then after a few minutes puts the phone down. She is forgetting who I am. She is forgetting everything.

  I visit Mom the morning after Susan’s memorial service. We had placed my sister’s ashes next to where I surreptitiously buried my father. Afterwards we all gathered at Sabrina’s house for a lunch of po’boys from Domilise’s. We talked about Mom and her declining health and signed forms anticipating the inevitable. We all knew we would be mourning again soon, though I wondered if by this point we were all immune. We’ve been grieving our entire lives.

  Over the course of a few days, children and grandchildren took the elevator up to Mom’s apartment. Marie visited and was shaken by what she saw.

  “I think she’s waiting to see you,” Bill told me, waiting to see her children one last time.

  So I visit. I bring her a blueberry muffin. Kinta is there, dutiful as always. “Mom, you want a cup of coffee with your muffin?” Mom lays crumpled up in bed, barely able to raise her head. She drinks a few sips, eats some crumbs, and says few words, but she keeps closing her eyes and drifting away.

  My children are there and my wife, and we all take turns trying to make conversation. Mom seems exhausted. Pain ripples across her lips. Her legs shake as if she is cold or has a fever. I am not sure she knows who we are, though for a second I see a flash of recognition in her eyes.

  We visit for an hour then prepare to leave. It is the last time I will speak to my mother. The questions I couldn’t ask, the things I could never say. All of it will remain unsaid.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I COULD NOT HAVE WRITTEN THIS BOOK WITHOUT THE help of my family, especially my mother. It was not easy for her; I know she holds within her many regrets and considerable bitterness. Nonetheless, she supported my research by agreeing to be interviewed and allowing me access to sensitive mental health records. My sisters were also helpful (even if Susan refused to be interviewed), especially Kinta who read through an early draft and occasionally forwarded photographs and other records.

  Anna Von Veh, Sita Ranchod-Nilsson, Ulf Nilsson, Elizabeth Gallu, Thom McClendon, and Kerry Ward also read early drafts and offered helpful suggestions. Emory University colleagues Angelika Bammer, Anna Grimshaw, Howard Kushner, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, and Abdul Jan Mohammed read the early chapters. I am particularly thankful to Angelika and Anna for inviting me to share two chapters with their graduate seminar. Undergraduate students in my “Writing Memory” course made many helpful observations, as did audiences at various readings.

  Three decades ago, my undergraduate mentor, Gaby Spiegel, w
as the person largely responsible for getting me into the graduate program at Johns Hopkins University. Gaby read a later draft. Her comments and wisdom helped me complete History Lessons.

  Librarians and archivists were unstintingly helpful. I am also thankful to Drs. Goldberg, Chance, and Giustra. David Raney offered expert editorial advice as did Chantal Clarke. I am especially indebted to my agent, Jessica Papin, and my editor, Dan Crissman, for making everything happen.

  Pamela Scully has been there, always. Spouse, colleague, muse, Pamela supported the project when all I had was a few vague questions. This book is for her, with love.

  CLIFTON CRAIS is Professor of History and Director of the Institute of African Studies at Emory University, where he teaches courses on history, violence, and memory. He holds a doctorate from The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of five scholarly books, including Sara Baartman and the Hottentot Venus, coauthored with Pamela Scully. He lives in Atlanta.

  Printed in the United States Copyright © 2014 The Overlook Press

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  JACKET PHOTOGRAPH BY KATHY PRICE-ROBINSON

  AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY ANN BORDEN

  THE OVERLOOK PRESS

  NEW YORK, NY

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