PANDORA

by Rebecca Hamilton

  I was all about the acclimating. Was doing alright with it for the most part even though at night I almost always needed help with falling asleep, so Ridley was sure I had plenty of blue pills at the ready.

  I was also all about letting two and then three days go by before I called Mama, practicing not being so needy or homesick. She seemed to be right as rain, ‘cept for a new cough she was nursing away with over-the-counter suppressant. She insisted I speak with Calvin too, so that he and I could continue to bond the way a daddy and daughter ought. For some reason I found it harder than ever to refer to Calvin as Papa. Was as though that title had come and gone for good with Papa Roosevelt.

  The days stumbled into weeks and before I knew it Ridley and I was having our one-month anniversary dinner, roasted chicken complete with basil from our very own garden. At first I had kept on him about what was happening with the money from the fire insurance. Wasn’t that I didn’t like the bungalow none, even though it was barely big enough for Rid and me to pass one another without knocking bodies.

  “The money is coming any day now, Bug. Then we can shop for a new apartment in the city,” he would say.

  He had taken me into downtown Johannesburg and it felt exactly like the kind of place I hoped to live one day. Yet, in a weird twist, the more time I spent at the bungalow the less I felt like getting accustomed to somewhere else. I mentioned this very thing to Ridley one night thinking he might find it more ironic than contrary. Instead, he got angry. Right in the middle of my presuming that the bad luck streak I had left Alabama with was good and done. At once, the energy between Ridley and me felt “off.” The Magical Knowing had been eerily quiet up until then and Vee hadn’t been by at all. I began to wonder if the Knowing had been attached somehow to Mama and Alabama.

  “Here I’ve been busy making plans for us to move into a beautiful place in the heart of the action. I mean, damn it, Truly! Make up your mind!”

  “I didn't mean nothing by it, Rid. I'm only saying if it's too expensive to go there I'm okay with being here in the bungalow. It’s sorta homey, is all."

  Then Ridley’s eyes got stormy and he slapped his hand on the table. "Everything is expensive, Tru! And I'm the only one contributing any funds to this household. Besides, my parents own this place and they want to put it up for rent, so we either pay them or we move out."

  I felt my eyes go damp at the edges. "I can get a job and help out with finances."

  Ridley sighed and came over to me. Rested his palms on my shoulders. "Sorry, Tru. I am. It's just that I'm a little stressed out. The bills pile up so fast and I don't wanna work more hours since then you'll be alone."

  I turned and pressed a kiss on his knuckles. "I could call Mama and ask her to wire us a bit. Till we get on our feet. Sure she won't mind. And I could find employment too. Might be fun."

  Ridley paced a line back and forth till I thought he would trudge a hole through the floorboards. "I hate to do that, Bug. To have to rely on your mama."

  "Could be a loan. Sides Mama don't mind none. Papa Roosevelt left her so much money

  she barely knows what to do with it!"

  "You sure? Just a loan. Maybe a thousand would cover it.” Ridley’s voice went back to being cool and kind.

  "She'll be happy to help us. I’m sure."

  So it was that things turned softer between us again. Mama sent one thousand dollars. Then a couple weeks later she took it on herself to send another thousand, in spite of Calvin saying how we kids ought to be trying harder to stand up on our own feet. I tried not to be real worried that each time we spoke Mama’s cough acted up worse and plus she said she’d been suffering with fevers too. I waited for some sign from the Magical Knowing that would tell me if things was badder than she was letting on. But none came.

  It was nearing eight weeks in the Bryanstown home of Ridley and me when I thought it might be nice to have his folks by. I hadn't met them yet, and some nagging voice in my head seemed to want to make an issue of that.

  "They'd love to come, Bug, but my pop still isn't well enough,” Ridley reported and that put an end to that. Five hours later, as I lay twisted up in the bed sheets staring up at the ceiling, I heard her voice. At last.

  “Truly.”

  Vee. This time it sounded as though she wasn’t right near me, so I slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the window glass quiet as I was able so as not to rile up Ridley.

  I was full out expecting to see nothing besides my own worn reflection against a backdrop of Bryanstown clouds, but Vee was there instead. Where my own face ought to have been.

  “You came. I was thinking I might have hurt your feelings or maybe you couldn’t find me.” I whispered. Her hair wasn’t blowing. Her eyes was drawn open wide with concern. She spoke in that way she had of doing so without her mouth.

  “You need to go to her.”

  I understood straight out who she meant. “Mama. She isn’t well. I knew it. I knew it.”

  “Go to her, Truly. Time is wasting.”

  Ridley stirred in place. I spun for a check of him and then spun back, but Vee had disappeared. I grabbed hold of my cell and composed a text message to Gwendoleen.

  “If you can go by Mama’s place and check on her I would surely appreciate it. Many thanks. Tru”

  I crept into bed. Laid my head down on the pillow next to Ridley’s. I wasn’t sure how he would feel about going back to Richter. We’d been planning to surprise everyone by going home for Christmas. But now . . . time was wasting. I would go to Mama, with or without Ridley.

  #

  If it hadn’t been for the blue pills I never would have slept a wink. And if it hadn’t been for the ding of my cell phone I never woulda woken up.

  Ridley’s spot was vacant and the scent of coffee was airborne. I grabbed my phone and stared at the screen.

  “I went by your Mama’s house first thing. It looks like she isn’t there. Fact, it looks like she hasn’t been there for days. Mail’s piled up. Newspapers too. Hope everything is okay. G”

  My heart was thudding on the wall of my chest. Every nerve in my body was lit up like the sky on Independence Day. Vee had warned me, and now the Magical Knowing was insisting:

  Mrs. Mari Kaye DuPont was in trouble.

  Twelve

  I ain’t never had a heart attack before, but I was near enough to it when it took ten calls before Calvin answered the phone. The morning sky was foggy and so was my mind. All I knew was what Gwendoleen had said about the house being left haphazard and how Vee had made that serious warning dressed up as advice. Go to her.

  “Where’s Mama? Where is she, Calvin?”

  “Sorry, Truly, we didn’t want to worry you, but your Mama is in the hospital.”

  “She’s what?” I grabbed hold of the jar with the blue pills in it and flung it across the room. Ridley jumped up from his chair at the kitchen table and came to me, his face drawn over with creases of concern. I put the phone on speaker and held it up in the palm of my hand which was trembling something awful. “What’s happened to her? Is it serious?”

  “The doctors don’t know for sure yet. But it isn’t going well. Perhaps you and Ridley should come back to Alabama.”

  Ridley nodded along.

  “We’ll leave right away. Calvin, tell her I’m coming, won’t you? And tell her I love her.”

  I had done many things since I arrived in South Africa. Ate new foods and saw new animals and grew things and made love under the South African stars.

  But I hadn’t cried until right then. Ridley folded me into his chest and I stayed there enough to feel sorry for myself - for my bad luck, and sorry for Mama who had surely suffered the biggest brunt of it.

  “We’ll go. Right away,” Ridley said. “Right away, Bug.”

  My legs was quivering. My throat was tight as a wet woolen sweater. I wanted the blue pills. Those same ones I had thrown across the room. I needed them to help me be calm. Didn’t I?

  For the first time in what felt like weeks, I
saw Jayden’s face in my mind’s eye. He wanted to say I told you so. To gloat over how Ridley had turned me on to some fancy foreign herbs and now I was hooked. I pushed out of Ridley’s arms. I didn’t want him. Or his pills. Or anything here. Not anymore.

  I wanted to go home.

  #

  “All that glitters is not gold.”

  Vee was back, and like a broken record she repeated this same message to me again.

  Ridley and I had just set down on American soil, Alabama dirt to be precise. Calvin insisted on collecting us from the airport and, naturally he was late to arrive. Ridley stood outside in the passenger pick-up area watching for Calvin’s car while I hovered inside the terminal, keeping out of the rain.

  This time she appeared in the mist just beyond the glass doors. I wanted to speak to her, tell her how Mama was sick now and see if this news came as any shock to her. Yet I turned away. If Vee’s visits was responsible for the troubles all ‘round me lately, then I would avoid her, if that was even possible.

  Ridley and I had mended fences while we was mid-air. I forgave him for introducing me to those pills and he forgave me for imagining that his motives was anything less than pure. It was stress and shock over Mama that had brought it on. Jayden was wrong about Ridley and I aimed to be sure he knew it.

  Calvin pulled up behind the steering wheel of a black satiny-painted Cadillac with rims that had eight bright silver spokes in each. After the engine in Mama’s Dodge bit it, they’d purchased this car. Their first “together-mobile” as Mama had said. Sure didn’t seem like anything my mother would have ever picked out on her own, what with all that manly-looking chrome. I left the front seat to Ridley and I rode in back. Calvin was delivering us straight to Mama’s bedside.

  There was something in how he said it. Real cryptic and finite.

  I was closer than ever to losing her and the Magical Knowing was stamping that hunch as valid. Even so, I refused to believe that the Visitation Death was going to be Mama. If anyone was supposed to meet with an untimely passing, it shoulda been me.

  We caught every red light. Got behind every slowpoke who seemed to forget where the gas pedal was.

  While Calvin and Ridley passed idle chatter between themselves, I silently willed our journey to come to an end before Mama’s did.

  Thirty minutes later I sped down the slick tile corridors of the very same hospital I’d been in after the Pacachi nearly drowned me. No amount of Knowing in the world could have got me geared up for what I seen. Mari Kaye DuPont looked to be every bit of ninety years old. Her cheeks was hollowed out and colorless. Her eyes was like dried out prunes balanced carefully in their sockets and she had a thin tube shoved up her nose. She’d lost at least twenty pounds, if I was to venture a guess.

  “Mama, I’m here.”

  My mother dragged a smile out across what once was her face. How could this have gotten so bad, in such a short span of time?

  “What’s going on with you, Mama? What are the doctors saying?”

  Calvin had told me that they didn’t know much, but there had to be something they was missing.

  Mama motioned for me to lean in close. “It’s them scoundrels, Truly. All those years of doing what I shouldn’t. Brung me bad karma, at last.” Her shell of a voice blew into my ear.

  I shook my head. “Can’t be so. Just can’t be.”

  Mama wasn’t scared of nothing in this whole world ‘cept for that wicked karma. That’s why she didn’t want to tell me about Vee. Didn’t want me to make the connection. ‘Cause she feared the bad luck that would come of it.

  I looked behind me at Ridley and Calvin as they filed in real quietly. Something was missing. The how. The why. I took hold of Mama’s left hand, soft as I was able. Her fingers was like dried-up twigs.

  And they was bare. In that instant it caught my eye. Mama’s gold wedding ring in a glass on the rolling table beside her bed. And laid right next to it was Calvin’s.

  My head began to throb so heavy it near knocked me down.

  Three words paraded through my brain.

  All that glitters.

  #

  I’m at County General with Mama. She’s fallen ill.

  I texted Gwendoleen from my position, square at Mama’s bedside. That was where I planned to stay, at least until the moment things began to look up. And they would. They simply HAD to. Ridley and Calvin stayed till they was too tuckered out and then they headed for home.

  If it didn’t seem right that Mama’s brand new husband wasn’t the one glued beside her, I didn’t right care. It was her and me first and forever. Mama had said so herself.

  I watched her sleep, watched her limp little chest rise and fall. Something had gone very wrong in these couple months and the Magical Knowing was fixing to tell me what that was. I rested my hand on Mama’s belly, closed my eyes and focused real hard. I felt her excitement at being a married lady, her sorrow at having her body turn on her. In her heart I felt her love for Calvin mixed up with her love for me. And in Mama’s mind, bits and pieces of confusion and doubt misfired with the notion that she had finally gotten what she wanted outta this world.

  Confusion and doubt.

  There it was. My mama had been courting doubt right along with her super-sized new-bride happiness. Tears bit at my lashes till I set ‘em free.

  I removed my hand and stared at my phone. There was one more text I had to send.

  I’m here with Mama, at County General Care. Something has gone terribly wrong. I miss you. T

  I sent that one to Jayden.

  I kept vigil till six a.m., not bothering to chase down sleep or any such nonsense. Long as that machine kept beeping and Mama’s pulse kept pumping I was okay. Nurses floated in and out of the room and I ignored them for the most part. But right ‘round sun-up a testy old nurse’s aide dropped in to inform me that it was fine I had stayed all night, but other visitors wasn’t yet allowed.

  “Other visitors?” I asked, and right then Jayden Collins stood in the doorframe. Ain’t built a nurse yet who could keep Jayden from being where he wanted to be.

  “Please,” I whispered.

  Jayden didn’t wait for permission. He was at my side, his arms snatching me up in a half-second flat.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Damn if I know. She started out with a cough and a fever. And now . . . this.”

  Jayden let me go and for an instant I wished he hadn’t. It scared me the way my heart had of reserving room for him in spite of my deep affection for Ridley. Jayden cleared his throat.

  “I’m sorry, Tru. I feel like somehow I let you down.”

  I shook my head. “You didn’t. Not at all. I’m thankful you’re here, Jay. I am.” And we held hands for a while without saying anything else that might feel right or wrong. He hung out long enough to see Mama wake up and spare him a smile and then he left, saying he was still “just next door” if we needed him.

  “Go on home, Tru.” Mama’s voice was wrung out as a wet dishcloth.

  “To South Africa?”

  Mama shook her head. “To our place. I ain’t fixing to leave this earth without a helluva dang fight.”

  I stayed until Calvin showed up at seven and then I went back home, to my old bedroom where Ridley was still snuggled in my bed. I lay down and he cinched an arm over me, so as to keep me close. “I love you, Tru.” Sleep didn’t bother waiting on me to invite it along. It steamrolled right over me before I could even reply, and off I went.

  Seven thick and dreamless hours had passed before my mind saw fit to rouse me. And at that it took the knocking on the front door to do so.

  I tumbled from the mattress, still groggy from pure exhaustion and worry, still dressed in my traveling clothes from yesterday. I had a quick glance in the mirror. My hair color was fading. My face was covered in red blotches and smeared mascara. Mama would say I was a fright-sight at that. The house was quiet, except for the knocking. I spied a note tucked under a picture frame on my dresser.
From Ridley.

  I’ve gone to see your mom and then to spend a few hours with my uncle. What say we meet tonight at Skinners after visiting hours? For ole times’ sake. See you there around nine. X - Rid

  I smiled and headed downstairs. He was ever the romantic, my sweet Rid. The knocking got faster and I thought maybe Jayden had come calling, but when I pulled the front door back Gwendoleen was standing there.

  “Well, I’ll be. Come on in.”

  And we hugged and caught up for a few and it felt like slipping into your favorite pair of sneakers after hobbling ‘round all day in platform heels. I asked her in to stay a while even though I was anxious to shower and head back to be with Mama.

  “I was over at the hospital,” she said. “Your mother seems pretty sick, but she was kind just the same. You know, it’s funny. When I saw Mr. DuPont at graduation I thought he looked familiar. When I saw him again now in passing as I was leaving the hospital, it dawned on me.”

  “What did? What dawned on you?”

  Gwendoleen lingered there in the doorway. “I remembered where I knew him from. He worked at Franklin Roosevelt’s company. I recall seeing him there once when I went to visit my mother at her office.”

  “I don’t think so, Gwen. I mean. Calvin never mentioned having worked for Franklin. He does something with pharmaceuticals. That’s what he’s always done.”

  Gwendoleen shrugged. “I could be wrong, but it sure does look like him.”

  “I appreciate you coming by. And for looking after Mama, too.”

  Gwendoleen and I chatted for a few and then she said she ought to let me get on. I was sure gonna miss her when and if I got back to Bryanstown. I hadn’t made a single friend there yet and it was something that hadn’t really nibbled at me much till now.