by Patti Lacy
Kai felt in her pocket. It was now . . . or next time. With PKD looming, now is best. “Speaking of gifts.” Kai pulled out the blue velvet box that a Boston jeweler thought perfect when he’d appraised and cleaned Mother’s priceless possession.
“What . . . what’s that?” asked Joy.
“Mother’s pearls. One treasure not destroyed by the soldiers. When Mother was on her deathbed, I promised her to one day fasten them about your neck.” Kai’s fingers trembled over the clasp. “That day has arrived.”
“But—” Joy’s face wrinkled like a dried walnut. She clapped her hands over her face. “I . . . I can’t take them.”
Kai ignored her tearful protestations and flung purple-black hair out of the way. “They are yours, Joy. We have always called you our jewel.”
Joy’s shoulders shook with such intensity, Kai could not fasten the pearls. “Shh, little one.” She hummed Mother’s favorite folk song until Joy settled. “It would be disgraceful to ignore our mother’s last wish.” Finally completing her task, she sat back and admired two Chang treasures.
“Don’t you see?” Joy raised a tear-stained face. “You cannot deny me a chance to help.” Again Joy grabbed her hands. “After what you’ve done for me, it’s insane for you to shut me out!”
The creamy pearls, the chirping birds, Joy’s bubble-gum smell—they all overwhelmed Kai’s senses, as did an ephemeral hovering presence. God? Kai again linked arms with Joy. Perhaps it was He and not just Joy she had spanned seas and secrets to find.
“You’ve got to see the ducks!” After they walked Kai to her cab, Andrew grabbed hold of Joy and Gloria and pulled them to the corner. Twilight sun dappled his face with gold, gifting Gloria with another twenty-four-karat moment. How often had she prayed for times like this? Never had she imagined she’d find them in Boston.
“Why ducks?” Joy’s bangs scattered, then settled. “We’ve got ’em at home.”
“Not like these.” Gloria handed Joy a book they’d just bought at a shop down the street. A silly little present, but a symbol of Boston. Kai. Their new start.
“Make Way for Ducklings?” Joy’s snort became a giggle.
She’s too cool for this book and those ducks . . . or so she thinks.
“Fine. Just laugh.” Andrew herded Gloria and Joy across the street. “You’ll see.”
With Joy holding the book, years rolled away, as if the time in Boston, the time with Kai, had rubbed from Joy’s face not only that sleazy makeup, but the last smears of rebellious attitude. Gloria skipped to match Andrew’s enthusiasm. With Joy open to God and their family reading a chapter called trust, years tumbled off Gloria as well.
The first chick seemed to waddle close. Andrew broke into a jog.
“Dad! What are you doing?” Joy thrust her book at Gloria. Father and daughter dashed about, quacking. Gloria’s happiness skyrocketed. Father, daughter, ducks . . . family again.
Because of Kai.
Gloria hugged the book. If Joy proved to be a genetic match for Kai, she would not stop her donor attempt. Both Kai’s and Joy’s lives were at stake. Though she and Andrew needed to discuss it, she knew what he would say . . . what they both would say. If God allowed it, they would obey. There was no choice.
Inhaling the fresh, crisp air, she hurried forward.
“This is amazing!” Joy screeched.
“I told you so!” Andrew playfully punched Joy in the ribs. “Say you’re sorry.”
Joy threw back her hand and laughed. Then her mouth twisted, and she hung her head. “I am sorry. For all I put y’all through.”
“Oh, Joy.” Gloria stepped forward, as did Andrew. They draped their arms about Joy, pulling her close. “It goes both ways, you know.”
Joy found Gloria’s hand and squeezed hard. “I know” came out in her new manner of speaking. Half sarcastic, half humorous, all truth. Perfect.
“This trip’s given us a fresh start.” Andrew reverted to his preacher voice to wrap everything up. Gloria didn’t mind a bit.
“When we get home, Dad, will you baptize me?”
Gloria’s jaw slackened. Another thing she’d prayed for since they’d left Customs with ten-year-old Joy. “Oh, Joy . . .” was all she could say. Again, it was just right.
“And, Dad, could we do it at a lake or something?”
Joy and Andrew kept talking, but Gloria quit listening. Tears pummeled her cheeks. She heard clicks, saw flashes, knew that tourists were photographing a woman having a breakdown by the famous bronze ducks, but she did not care. Shy Gloria was blubbering for all in the Boston Public Garden to see. Her Joy was in God’s family. They’d spend eternity together. If that wasn’t something to lose control over, what was?
“Mom!” Joy shoved her hair behind her ears and unbuttoned her jacket. “I’ve gotta show you something.” Encircling Joy’s neck was a luminous strand of pearls.
Exactly like the ones Daddy had given to . . . that woman. His trophy wife.
“They’re . . .” Gloria’s mouth felt as if it had been deadened for cavity-filling.
“It’s my . . . our . . .” Joy ducked her head. Embarrassed. Insecure. Things that made Gloria find her voice.
“What, Joy?” Gloria gripped Joy’s shoulders. “Tell me. Now.” She added punch to her request. “No secrets. Remember?”
“They’re . . . my mother’s. Like . . . not my real . . . I mean . . .” A gargling sound came from Joy’s throat.
Poor baby. Worried about me. As Andrew stood mutely, Gloria tightened her grip on Joy’s shoulders. God, help me here. Get me over Daddy and his new wife. For once and for all!
Gloria focused on each pearl, a perfect symbol of irritation handled with grace. She rubbed her finger over surfaces smooth as . . . Joy’s skin. “They’re lovely, Joy.” She kissed her daughter’s brow, her cheek. “But not as lovely as you.” Her hand still on the pearls, she said, “Every time you doubt that you are loved, remember this necklace. Wear it with pride. Never, ever worry about my feelings.” When Joy’s head jerked up, Gloria nodded so hard, her earrings grazed her cheeks. “Real family, birth family—call it whatever. Like, I’m your mom. Like, nothing’s gonna change that.”
“Oh, Moth-er!” Joy cried, and burst into tears.
27
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, SUMMER 1999
TWO YEARS LATER
“Lord I lift your name on high.” Could you lift me as well? Kai’s feet swelled within her old shoes. Her hands were red, lumpy messes. Yet she sang with the praise band as she sat on the pew between Cheryl and David. Friends, both of them . . . until Kai recalled how it had once been with David.
Since the diagnosis, Cheryl had expanded her roommate role into chauffeur, errand girl, and spiritual mentor. She had excelled in all roles . . . except that last one. It was not Cheryl’s fault. Kai ached to be at peace with God. Yet the peace radiating from Cheryl, David, and the hundreds packed in this elementary school gymnasium where their church was meeting proved as elusive as Kai’s attempts to battle PKD.
“You don’t have to stand.” Cheryl’s words feathered Kai’s hair, which was dull, listless, and brittle. Like me.
Kai bit back an impulse to snap a retort. No, she would stand, sing, attend Bible study, and slip her tithe into the plate. God could not deny that she had done her best to woo Him as she had once tried to woo fate. Though she longed to slump into her seat, she gripped the chair in front of her and redoubled her efforts at praise.
Somehow she stood through three songs, each with a more repetitive, more arduous chorus. Voices swelled, hands waved, the unmitigated joy creating such a yearning, Kai longed to clap her hands over her ears. She survived by studying the young woman slapping the tambourine against her hip, the man beating the drums with abandon, by following the words on the giant screen set up behind the platform.
Pastor Ed, distinctive with his salt-and-pepper beard and short Afro, activated the mike on his belt and stepped to the podium. “Let’s pray.”
Kai
exhaled. His prayer finished, now she could sit, listen, and beg that the pastor would speak words to tame her restless soul. Or would the one-way courtship of God continue?
“Planes rumble into the air, our freeways pulse with traffic, even the harbor echoes the sounds of the great vessels that churn its waters.” Pastor’s Virginia drawl labeled him an outsider, but these Bostonians embraced him as if he were a Mayflower descendant. “It’s static, all of it. How many hours a day do television, radios, and stereos blare noise into your home?”
“Can we count our kids?” someone called out.
“That’s another sermon,” chuckled Pastor, who went on to speak of Psalms 37:7 and 46:10. Kai thumbed through the pages of the Bible Cheryl had given her, knowing full well both verses were underlined. She had been still before the Lord. Yet God gave her no indication that He heard her. She gritted her teeth. She would keep waiting.
As always, Pastor preached beyond the noon hour. As always, Pastor apologized, blaming the Spirit for his delay. Though David and Cheryl—indeed, everyone, it seemed—shrugged their shoulders and smiled as if they were coddling a cute but misbehaving kid instead of their shepherd, Kai felt her hackles rise at the mention of the Spirit, that hovering presence, yet another thing she did not understand. How could educated people truly believe a specter-like spirit could inhabit a human body?
“Let us pray.”
Kai gripped her temples and bowed her head. God, I want to know you. I want to talk to you. She lost track of her thoughts, distracted by the pastor’s impassioned plea for stillness, by the shriek of an infant, the creak of the gymnasium doors, and finally gave up pretense of a heavenly communication.
A tear slipped onto her cheek. She thumbed it away. Another Sabbath, and nothing new had happened. Could she be still and wait another week? Another day?
The pastor’s amen stirred hundreds from the chairs. Conversation buzzed from row to row, attendees apparently rejuvenated. Church members shook hands, patted backs, spread good will and affection. “Bye,” “Call me,” “Don’t forget” rose from the aisles.
“Meet you at Reuben’s?” Cheryl asked a plump and smiling woman.
Kai stifled a groan. Reuben’s was their normal, and usually enjoyable, Sunday tradition, except today Kai just wanted to get home and crawl under her quilt. But she would not be alone. PKD would snuggle up next to her.
Reuben’s suddenly sounded “yummy,” as Cheryl would say.
David and Cheryl continued canvassing stragglers who might need fellowship and a mealtime recounting of the sermon. Every week, it had gotten harder to fake smiles, pretend to eat Chinese or pizza or subs, all loaded with salt, all straining her overloaded kidneys. Perhaps she could claim a need to work. Head to the office, where it was quiet.
Except there she couldn’t avoid patients’ files, holding evidence of PKD, shouting, “You cannot fight us!” Including her own file.
Kai smiled and waved at a woman in their Bible study, then averted her head to avoid conversation. Since Dr. Duncan had reduced her patient load, Kai struggled to keep busy during working hours, much less weekend office trips. Though difficult, she would join the restaurant crowd. Play the game.
Kai bookmarked both the Psalms verses with bulletin inserts and made her way to the nearest aisle. Though she’d lost fifteen pounds since January, with every step, she felt as if she carried a backpack filled with rocks. A burden called PKD.
“You ready to eat?” Cheryl bounded up, followed by David, whose eyes captured hers in the way that made him not only a beloved physician, but an on-fire witness. Yet gone was the spark that caused those eyes to linger on her face.
David stepped close. His sleeve grazed her arm.
Sparks ignited as his scrubbed cotton shirt brushed her linen jacket. Most days, logic reigned and allowed her to see David as merely a friend. A colleague. Today was not one of those days.
Because of David’s and Cheryl’s long-time friendship, Kai guarded what she told Cheryl about David. Yet one as intuitive as her roommate surely understood how difficult it was to forget her first love. Perhaps her last love . . .
“Come on!” Cheryl grabbed her arm. “Mustard’s on my mind! Pastrami!”
Does Reuben’s have an entrée that will tell me how to be still and wait? As Kai linked arms with Cheryl and followed David to his car, she nodded in sync with Cheryl’s animated chat, but it was all an act. In fact, she starred in a macabre play, dragging from scene to scene, dreading the climax. Was PKD draining her of passion, or was it her failure to find God’s peace? Despite relentless digging in the Bible, questioning of her more-than-willing mentor, Kai simply did not know.
FALL 1999
FORT WORTH
“You wouldn’t believe my lab!”
Twisting the phone cord, Gloria leaned back in the kitchen chair and stretched her toes until they touched the sliding glass door. “Oh, yeah?” She pictured Joy, arms waving, mouth a perfect circle, now embracing college just like she’d embraced youth group and biology club her senior year. “Try me.” Gloria rubbed her toes against glass warmed by September sun and sipped her Diet Coke . . . but drank in her baby’s voice.
“We’ve already dissected a rat. Next week it’s a cat.”
Gloria made a face at the phone. “Like someone’s pet?”
“Moth-er! It’s anatomy class. If I go to med school, I’ll have my own cadaver.”
Gloria sat up straight and pushed away the plate that held her half-eaten sandwich. “Tell me about it, then.” Med school. Nursing school. Lab technician. Thanks to Kai’s input, Joy could choose from a smorgasbord of options. Gloria spied the framed picture on their baker’s rack that captured a Boston spring day two whirlwind years ago. Before Kai lost weight. When purple still streaked Joy’s hair.
Gloria let Joy regale her with the latest Collins Hall dorm tricks. Another miracle, one that she had prayed for: Joy attending Baylor University, where she and Andrew had met and fallen in love.
“It won’t be that long, you know. I’ll be taking the MCAT and—”
“Just savor each moment, okay?” Memories of giggly dorm girls gifted Gloria with another smile. “Make sure to get some sleep.”
Joy’s sigh made it from Waco to Fort Worth. “Kai’s already reminded me.”
Kai. Again Gloria glanced at the photo. “I haven’t talked to her lately.”
“I have! She e-mails nearly every day. It’s so cool—if I’ve got a medical question, there’s an expert in the family. Isn’t that the coolest?”
“What’s cooler is at the rate you’re going, we’ll have two medical experts in the family.”
“Moth-er!” Joy shrieked, in her good way. Her very good way.
“Joy, thanks for calling. I love you.”
“Me too, Mom. Bye.” From Joy, “me too” was a mountaintop proclamation.
Gloria hung up, set aside the letter she’d just received, and dialed Kai’s cell, private work number, home number. Like yesterday, she got only voice messages. She soothed the prickles running up her spine by studying that letter with all the exotic stamps and dreaming . . . all over again.
It was Tuesday. Kai pushed open the door at Boston’s best bakery and set off the usual jingling bells.
“Hey, Doc!” Frank pulled on a server mitt. “The usual?”
Kai watched a little girl press her face against the glass display. “No. I want whatever’s caught her eye.” Bending over, Kai studied maple-leaf cutout cookies, frosted in oranges, reds, and browns. If those can’t lift my spirits, nothing can. “Low-cal, low-sugar, right?”
“Yeah, right. Cream cheese icing’s slathered on, baby! Tell those nurses it’s protein, okay?” With his bulky mitt, Frank grabbed a cookie and waved it like it were a blue-ribbon county-fair entry. As far as Bostonians—and Kai—were concerned, it was! “Two dozen?” he growled, apparently noticing the line snaking to the door.
“Better make it three dozen.” Kai dug in her pocket for money. “Those nurse
s take bribes. And some of us get hungry.” Unfortunately, not me.
“Know jes’ what you mean.” Frank rang up the sale, tied twine around the box, and handed it to Kai.
“Frank, you’re always hungry.” Kai grinned big for her baker, patient, and fellow PKD sufferer. Too bad his schedule didn’t align with hers. He livened up the center.
Smiling, Frank patted his heart. “You hang in there, Doc.”
“Right, Frank. You just don’t wanna lose your best customer.”
“Nor my doctor.” Frank waved her out the door and into a brisk fall wind. Kai’s jovial voice and smile disappeared, leaving her alone with a box of festive cookies, her cab driver, and the awful truth that PKD had gotten into the cab with her.
“Good morning, Doctor.” Erica, the manager of the renal care facility, bustled to the front desk after Kai rang the bell. “Glad you showed. It’s kinda dead today.”
Kai rolled her eyes in mock anger. “Get it straight.” The bakery box plopped onto the counter, her briefcase on the floor. “It’s Kai, not ‘Doctor.’” Kai faked tug-of-war with the treats, as if threatening to reclaim them. “Or I’ll keep Frank’s treats to myself.”
“In that case, I’ll call you whatever you want.”
“That’s better.” Still chatting, Erica buzzed open the door to the treatment floor. Though Kai’s thrice-weekly dread descended at the sight of twenty recliners, twenty stands, twenty dialyzers, one of which would suck fluid—and energy—from her, Erica’s joviality helped. Subjection to dialysis had sharpened Kai’s humor, dulled impatience; things that would make her a better doctor, a better human being. If God let her survive . . .
“Hello, Kai!” Shereen, a petite woman with big brown eyes, was swallowed by the lounge chair, a comforter, tubes, and the massive cleaning machine. With a tiny hand, Shereen waved in her shy yet warm way.
“Hey! Wanna cookie? It’s Frank’s butter recipe, slathered with icing!”
Shereen shook her head. “Maybe later.”
