Down by the Riverside

by Jackie Lynn

  I nodded, realizing then that the pediatric facility was just across the river. It made sense that they would bring the young girl to this area.

  “She has cancer,” Clara reported. “In her blood,” she added.

  “Leukemia,” Janice said.

  “I see,” I replied, and then because of my background, I asked. “Lymphoblastic?”

  Janice seemed surprised.

  “I’m a nurse,” I said, explaining. “I worked on the heart unit most of my time, but I did a rotation in oncology.”

  The young mother nodded. “ALL,” she reported.

  I knew she meant acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common form of childhood cancer. I also knew it was primarily treated with chemotherapy and that the remission rate was usually quite good.

  “I remember the first time I heard the acronym for the disease, “I said. “I thought that ALL must be how it feels for a family when they have to deal with it. All of life becomes affected.”

  Janice dropped her eyes away from me. I had said too much. There was an uncomfortable silence. The clouds moved above our heads, an awkward dance of shadows and light.

  “Would you like some tea?” I asked, trying to ease the stiffness of our conversation. I stood up to go to my camper and retrieve a couple of glasses.

  “No, thank you,” the young mother answered. “I’ve already had too much caffeine today.”

  I sat back down.

  “They’re going to use my blood to try and make hers stronger,” Clara reported.

  I smiled. I understood that this probably meant that they were doing a bone marrow transplant, a sign that the standard treatment of chemotherapy hadn’t worked.

  “When’s the transplant?” I asked.

  “She went in today for the first part. We thought they weren’t going to admit her until the end of the week. They’ve been running a lot of tests and she’s been really weak. But they decided to go ahead and keep her. They started the high dose of chemotherapy this morning. Clara has her procedure tomorrow.”

  I saw the one tear slide down her cheek. She reached up and quickly wiped it away.

  “So.” Janice cleared her throat, stopping the run of emotion. “I need to take some things to the hospital.”

  She pulled her shoulders up and back, a struggle against such a heavy heart, and took a deep breath, gathering her strength. A woman going into battle.

  “Frank,” she said, looking in my direction, “that’s my husband.”

  I nodded.

  “He said that he would stay tonight and then I’ll stay tomorrow with both of the girls. My mother’s supposed to come this weekend.”

  “Well, really, I’m happy to spend my afternoon and evening with Clara.”

  The little girl beamed.

  Her mother smoothed back her daughter’s hair, thumbing the tiny braids.

  “Normally, I would never ask anybody for this, especially”—she hesitated—“a stranger.” Then she appeared embarrassed for her words.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, without knowing what else to say. “I don’t blame you for feeling that way; I’d be worried like that, too, if I were you. I know that I am a stranger to you—” I stopped and thought a second.

  “I can give you the name of my last supervisor at the hospital or my brother’s phone number. They could vouch for me. But really all I can tell you is that I will take care of your daughter.”

  Janice closed her eyes.

  “My head’s so full of things I’m supposed to remember—” She stopped, took a deep breath, glancing up at me again.

  “Usually, Clara stays with my sister, but since we came to Memphis and she has to be with us to give her blood and do the transplant and my sister has to work—”

  “Janice,” I said, interrupting her, reaching across the table. “It’ll be fine.”

  I rested my hands near her.

  She nodded. And we both knew that I meant only the circumstances of her youngest daughter. I had been a nurse long enough and she had faced disappointment enough to know that no one could make such a grand sweeping promise about the rest of her life.

  “Mama,” Clara replied in a consoling tone. “I got a cell phone if Ms. Rose gets freaky.”

  We both laughed, grateful for a simple moment of relief.

  “Don’t worry about us. You just go and be with Jolie.” I felt a drop of rain, looked up and saw that the clouds were about to break.

  “We’ll be here when you get back.”

  We paused, the three of us sitting gingerly with her sorrow, and then immediately, having calculated the weight of the storm, we all stood up, taking our leave, and hurried to our campers.

  And suddenly, the sky burst open and the rain fell hard, stinging us, a swell of low, hot grief.

  TEN

  What color are you?” This was the first question Clara asked me once her mother drove off.

  I watched the young woman from the window by the stove as she pulled away from the campground. The rain, though heavy, was just beginning, so the dirt on the driveway and roads was not yet thick or packed. The swirls of dust, like ghosts, stirred behind her.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I answered, as I poured us both glasses of juice.

  She was sitting on the bed, her legs swinging beneath her. She had packed a small bag of toys and coloring books, a couple of movies, before she came over. She was fiddling with the contents as she waited for her drink.

  She explained. “I mean, I’m black. My mama is black. The woman with the big dog at the end of the row is white. That man you were with is black.” She set the bag beside her and picked at the Band-Aid on the inside of her arm. “What color are you?”

  I put up the carton of juice and realized that no one had asked me that question since I was a child. Tight, forgotten memories rushed out.

  The dirty names; the ugly looks from the perfectly blond girls on one side of the room and the complete disdain from the dark, angry ones on the other. The questions about my mama’s long thick hair and deep black eyes, my father’s light complexion. The way I was teased at swing sets and in sandboxes, called things like “half-breed,” or “high yellow,” the sticks and stones of children’s play. The hard way I learned how to hit.

  By the time I was in junior high, I became friends with a girl named Shelley, who was as brown as a hazelnut and as fierce as any boy, and two sisters, Luz and Maria, Spanish, Catholic, and very worldly. With their companionship and loyalty, I no longer needed the other girls, whose pleasure included lining up against one another. Once it became clear that it no longer bothered me, I quit being teased and I quit being asked.

  I’m sure the mystery of my racial definition crossed the minds of people when, as a young woman and later as an adult, I came into the room where they were, entered into their conversations, flirted with the possibility of relationships. But no one had asked me in years. I had to think of how to answer.

  “Well,” I said, gathering my thoughts. “My father’s mother, my grandmother, was Irish. My father’s father, my grandfather, was black. My mother’s mother was full-blooded Lumbee Indian and her father was also white, though not completely, I think.”

  I sat down at the table by the window. “So, I guess that makes me . . .” I hesitated, trying to figure out how to explain.

  “Confused,” the little girl replied.

  “Yes,” I answered, thinking how perfectly a child can name a life. “I would say that’s about right.”

  Clara’s question reminded me that my whole life up until Shady Grove had been a struggle with identity. That I never knew where I belonged, and perhaps nothing demonstrated this more than trying to fill out the race box on forms or questionnaires.

  I have wrestled with labels and names and categories because I have never known what it has been that defines me the most. Was it my father’s defiance of anything other than his whiteness, a prejudice that led him to hate his father and later himself? Maybe it was my mother’s longing fo
r a deeper connectedness to her ancestors’ earth? The way she kept a small cup of red dirt near her bed, the way she ran through the house, unlocking and opening all the windows and doors?

  Was it my grandmother’s sad green eyes, her rambling Irish poems of seasides and lost love or my grandfather’s broad, thick lips, the son of a son of a son of a slave?

  I have never been able to pin down the one thing that soothes my stirred and troubled spirit.

  By the time I was out of school, on my own, dating Rip, I was satisfied with my discontent and I wasn’t questioned about it so much anymore. I just picked the box that could be most helpful. If it provided me with financial aid in college or a little bit of an advantage, then I played that minority card. If it meant the consequence of discrimination, applying for a car loan or trying to get an apartment, then I claimed my whiteness.

  When we became a couple, I showed Rip the family pictures before he ever asked about my heritage, and I don’t believe that it was ever an issue with us. By the time we were married, the darkest members of my family, my father’s father and my grandmother Freeman Franklin, the Lumbee, were both dead, so the Griffiths didn’t have to share company with them at the wedding or at the social events that brought both clans together. And because I bear more resemblance to the Caucasian side of my ancestry, he and his racist parents just assumed I thought of myself as white. And mostly, I did.

  “Never mind,” Clara said, noticing the way the question stunned me. “It’s not important.” She pulled her feet under her, sitting on them. She drank long swallows of her juice.

  “Mama says that the color of somebody’s skin doesn’t tell you anything you really want to know about a person anyway.” She handed me the empty glass.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she answered. “It’s what you carry inside that matters, the things in your heart,” she added, sounding much older than her young years.

  I nodded.

  The storm blew hard against the camper and we both watched out the window as the rain fell in wide watery sheets; the sky a portrait in darkness.

  “What’s funny,” the little girl noted, “is that on the inside we’re all the same color anyway.”

  I looked at her, unsure of what she meant.

  “Our blood,” she said, realizing I didn’t understand. “Everybody has the same color blood.”

  “Red,” I answered.

  “Red,” she repeated. And I knew that she had seen enough of her own and her sister’s to be assured of this.

  A bolt of lightning streaked across the sky. A few seconds passed and then came the large peal of thunder.

  Clara jumped.

  “Storms scare you?” I asked.

  “Just the loud ones,” she replied.

  Clara is more of a child than I ever was. Even facing all she faced, the sickness of her sister, the complete hold that the disease had over everybody, the demands it made on her parents, her grandparents, on her. The trips to doctors instead of amusement parks, the stays in hospitals instead of hotels, the needles and tests she endured to discover that she was a match for the necessary marrow, all this and so much more than anyone can imagine, and yet she remained so unspoiled, so undamaged by disappointment.

  “Why do you think you’re so strong?” I asked her after we had eaten bowls of soup and were popping popcorn to enjoy while we watched one of the videos she had brought with her.

  We had already discussed the marrow transplant and she understood completely how the procedure went. She knew that she would be put to sleep and that a large needle would be inserted into her pelvic bones. She knew that she would probably be sore in her lower back for a couple of days, that there were risks of complications, but she was not in the least bit frightened.

  “Oh, that’s easy,” she answered.

  I waited. The rain was easing up. The storm, just a break from the heat, was blowing past.

  “Jolie has an angel.”

  The microwave stopped and I carefully pulled out the bag and opened it.

  “An angel?” I asked.

  “Yep,” she replied.

  I poured the popcorn in a plastic bowl and handed it to her. She reached across the table for the salt.

  “Did your sister tell you this?” I asked, taking the shaker from her and using it myself.

  She shook her head. “Didn’t have to,” she explained, taking a handful of popcorn and stuffing it in her mouth.

  I sat down across from her, waiting for her to swallow.

  With her mouth still full, she added, “I saw her.”

  I filled up her glass with more juice.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Here,” she answered.

  “Here?” I replied.

  She nodded. She was growing a little impatient with my confusion.

  “At the river,” she said, as if I was not very smart.

  “Outside?”

  She rolled her eyes and nodded.

  “At the tree.” She pointed with her chin in the direction where I had seen both her and her sister the day before.

  “The angel was in the tree. And when I saw her, I knew no matter what, that me and my sister were going to be okay.”

  She ate more of her popcorn. I took a few bites of mine. We sat in silence.

  “What did she look like?” I finally asked.

  “Soft,” she replied. “Like a cloud, but not a rain cloud, not like today, like a pillow cloud.”

  “Right,” I said, like I understood, though, of course, I did not.

  “And you had never seen her before you came here?”

  “I heard her once,” she answered, “Jolie was talking to her late at night.”

  She drank a swallow of her drink. “At home,” she explained. “They were talking really low to each other, so I didn’t hear what they said. I figured the angel was explaining things to her, letting her know what was happening.” She put down her glass.

  “But I never saw her until we came here. Until that night I snuck out of the camper and saw her in the tree beside us.”

  “Was that the night you also saw the man who died?” I asked, remembering what she had said about having seen Lawrence. That he was singing or praying, or something she had said. That he wasn’t sad.

  She nodded then she shifted in her seat, moving closer to the table. She leaned in toward me to whisper, “I think he saw her, too.”

  “Where was he?” I asked, trying not to sound too nosy.

  “He was farther up, near the edge of the tall grass, near the broken rails,” she said, acting as if she was not at all bothered by my questions.

  I remembered where I had stood earlier, where I had touched the river for myself.

  “And he was down in the water?”

  “No, just sort of by the edge. He was singing a song, and I think he was washing off something, like his hands maybe, and he stuck something in his pocket, something red, I think; I couldn’t really see what it was.” She squinted her eyes as if she was trying to remember.

  “Anyway, then he looked up in the tree and he laughed. He laughed like he saw her and knew her or something.” She took another handful of popcorn.

  “Are we going to watch the movie now?”

  “Yes,” I said, but not ready to be finished with the conversation. “Did he see you?”

  She shook her head. “No.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  I reached for a napkin and handed it to her.

  “Just the angel.” She wiped her mouth again. “He only saw the angel.”

  “What happened after that?” I asked.

  “He buttoned his jacket and then held out his arms to the river like he was thanking it or something. Then he looked up at the pond like he heard something.”

  “And then?” I asked because she had paused.

  “I heard somebody moving around in my camper, so I thought I better get back to bed or I’d get in trouble. So I ran inside.”

  I nodded,
trying to imagine how her story played out.

  “And the angel floated away,” she added. “Just as I opened the door. She flew right past my face, like a piece of silk.”

  She dropped back against the chair, pulling her bowl with her. “And since I knew that she was Jolie’s angel and that she was going to look after us both, I knew everything was going to be okay.”

  She waited a minute, trying to be patient with me. “Can you put the movie in now?” she asked again.

  “Sure,” I answered and got up from my seat and moved over to the bed and started the video.

  It was the story of a reluctant princess, a comedy, a silly thing, and though Clara said she had seen it already four or five times, she finished her popcorn at the table and then fell on the bed laughing, pulling me beside her.

  We watched the entire thing without speaking again of dead men or hospitals or cancer that would not be cured. We watched the entire movie, laughing and holding hands, the wind dying down and the crescent moon rising; Clara fell asleep just as the princess claimed her kingdom and went home.

  Janice returned right as I flipped off the TV. I saw the lights of her van pulling up the driveway. I straightened up the camper a bit until I heard the gentle knock on the door. We did not speak to each other, only smiled and nodded as if she had heard and I had spoken all the words we needed said.

  I stepped aside as the young and spent mother walked over to the bed where Clara was fast asleep. Janice bent down and gathered her daughter in her arms. I opened the doors for them, first mine and then hers. I followed them into their camper, and as if I had been instructed, pulled down the sheets of the bed, and watched as she laid her youngest child down.

  I whispered good night, receiving her kind farewell, and walked outside. Then leaning back against a tree, in the stillness of the night, the river roaring at my feet, I waited for Clara’s angel.

  ELEVEN

  Even though I knew it was foolish to go searching, and even though I was prepared to wait longer than I wait for most people, and even though I prayed prayers I had not spoken aloud in more than twenty years, the angel did not show.