Cousins

by Virginia Hamilton

  “Okay,” Elodie said.

  “I saw her go down,” Cammy said at the last. “I told everybody I didn’t but I did. It was just—I couldn’t believe it was happening. She looked right at me.”

  “She looked at all us,” Elodie said.

  “Are you sure?” Cammy asked.

  “She was just looking at us all. I looked back and saw her. She knew all us was too far away to help her,” Elodie said. “Then, she forgave us.”

  “Are you sure?” Cammy said again.

  Elodie nodded. “Mama said so. Mama says she’s with Jesus now.”

  A little while later, Cammy and her family went home. Before they left, Cammy saw the way Elodie looked up at Cammy’s dad. Cammy took hold of his hand just to prove who he was to her. He squeezed her hand, bent down and kissed the top of her head in front of everybody. Cammy kept her eyes on her shoes. But, boy, it made her proud to have this man so tall who was also her dad. Sandy man.

  Cammy forgot most of it before they were halfway home. She would recall it though, in days to come. But for now, things flitted in and out of her mind. Night and her room were always in the back of her head.

  She recalled on the long ride home that neither she nor Elodie had mentioned Patricia Ann by name. But no matter who brought up the subject, they both knew at once who they were talking about.

  Snatches of memories, snapshots. Cammy could keep nothing in mind for long. She had a big empty hole inside, she told Andrew one time. She had been lying on the couch. She often lay there now, rather than going up into her room. She avoided her room as much as possible. Once in a while, she woke up with Patty Ann sitting on the cot, but not so often.

  “Andrew, take that cot away,” she told her brother one time. He took it away that very night. And that night, she slept the night through until just before the first light of dawn. She awoke and thought she saw Patty Ann leave the room. “Bye, enemy.”

  “You don’t scare me, kid,” was what was in Cammy’s mind to tell her dead cousin. But she never said it. Still, she had the presence in the dreaming to think that. Almost bold, like her old self. It made her feel better, dreaming, too.

  One time, Cammy was lying on the couch just under wakefulness and still sleepy. The TV was on to daytime soaps. Snatches, when she’d been sick to her stomach. Somebody called a doctor because her mama wondered about her appendix. He came and said, no, nothing like that. Just grief, whatever that meant.

  Good grief, was what Cammy thought.

  “I don’t think she’s ever coming out of it,” Andrew had said.

  She had wanted to say, “Oh, shut up,” but had felt too sick to say anything.

  After a long kind of time, the second thing happened.

  She heard a sound she couldn’t identify. Heard her brother and her dad grunting, lifting something. Then, she heard something smoothly turning, it seemed like. She sat up before she was quite awake. She thought she was up in her room. She thought Patty Ann was there. But when she opened her eyes, everybody was smiling. “See?” said her mama, Maylene. They were all in the living room. Cammy was sitting on the couch.

  “See, I bet you never thought of it,” Andrew told her.

  Her dad grinned from ear to ear.

  “A big surprise just for you!” said Maylene. “And home for supper. We’ll have a fine time, too.”

  Cammy sat there. She stared and stared. She couldn’t recognize, she couldn’t tell. All so many snatches of memory rose up like little twigs on a whirlpool. It was as if a whole lifetime had gone by and she’d forgot what it was all about until somehow, it had come back. It was shocking, the way it would be if Patty Ann came back up out of the bluety.

  And now she recalled. Couldn’t believe she’d so completely forgotten, but she had.

  “Fooled ya!” Gram Tut piped from the wheelchair. They had rolled her in and she’d kept her eyes squinted shut on the shade within. She shot them open just before she spoke these words to Cammy. It had been a hard trip for her. But she’d made it to come bring back her Cammy. They’d told her all about it.

  “Poor baby,” Gram Tut had said. They’d not thought to bring her, but had thought to take Cammy to her. “No,” she’d said. “That baby has to see me come all the way over there.” And so she had. It had been a hard struggle, their getting her cleaned up and dressed. Getting her into a wheelchair comfortably. Getting the chair and her into the Care van with Maylene riding with her to reassure her. And getting her out and into Maylene’s, her daughter’s house.

  Lordy.

  Cammy slid from the couch and came over next to her blessed Gram. “Oh. Oh,” she murmured from somewhere deep in her heart. She came as close as she could, leaning on hard metal to plant a gentle, sweet kiss on Gram Tut’s sagging cheek. Cammy’s chest was just full of love and her eyes filled with it, too. “You came all this way?” she whispered. “Just to see me!”

  Tut’s arms went shakily around Cammy to embrace her. Her breath sounded like a dry rasping. And her fingers felt just like withered, dry leaves. Cammy didn’t mind Gram’s scratchy skin. She always did like winter and fallen leaves in the snow.

  “Lordy,” Tut gasped, “I’m wore out. Child, take me to the kitchen. Let’s get this meal done!”

  “Well, Mom, we got time, you can rest some. You want to lie down?” Maylene asked her own mama.

  “Just sit a minute, is all.” Tut paused, breathing. “Me and my baby girl.” She took Cammy’s hand, patted it. When she touched the child, it was like a blaze of summer coming into her hands. Like her curtains, breeze making them swell up with day and heat.

  “Oh,” Tut said. “I coulda died. All that time, you forgot me, didn’t you?” she said to Cammy. They went into the kitchen.

  There was never any nonsense between them. Cammy told the truth.

  “It was all so awful, Gram.”

  “Tell it,” Gram said, wheezing.

  “Don’t you die on me, too,” Cammy whined.

  “Cammy, stop it,” her mama, Maylene said.

  Andrew came in with armloads of groceries. Set them on the counter. Maylene began putting the bags’ contents into the cupboards. Cammy’s dad came in, spoke kindly to Gram Tut.

  “You know him?” Cammy asked.

  “Knew him before I knew you,” Gram said.

  Cammy thought about that a long time. She sat in the chair closest to Gram’s wheelchair. She had her hands folded in her lap and her knees tight together. She never took her eyes from Gram’s face. They drank in each other.

  Gram rested and had something to drink before she got to talking just to Cammy. Although everyone was walking around or sitting now and again at the table with them, nobody bothered them or cut in on what they were talking about.

  Gram touched Cammy’s hair. “Pretty stuff,” she said. Cammy set still and let her Gram make over her. “She got her daddy’s mouth, you know,” Tut decided, at one point. “Gimmie some more of that apple,” she said to Andrew. She was too tired, and her hands trembled with age.

  Andrew fixed Gram Tut apple juice with a straw. Cammy held the glass for her so she could keep on resting herself. Gram sucked it up through the straw.

  “They didn’t think I could get here … but I did,” she told Cammy. Swallowing, breathing quickly.

  “You’re not too tired?” Cammy asked.

  “Lord no! One day … I’ll sleep forever. So will you!”

  Cammy thought about that. She thought about Patty Ann and forever. She sighed. “My cousin died,” she told Gram Tut, as if she didn’t know.

  “Well, yes,” Tut said. “Terrible thing. Just awful.” A pause while she rested, and then: “One day, you look around … everybody you know is dead. Happened to me. Happens, if you live … too long!”

  She smiled at Cammy. But Cammy was listening hard and hadn’t time to smile. Maylene stood off a ways. Cammy knew she was there. Maylene never interrupted. Even though Gram Tut could shock her by what she said.

  “Effie’s baby dies,�
� Tut said. “Too soon, too soon. Now me, it’d be too late!” she laughed.

  But now she looked hard at Cammy. “You got to stop this,” she said. “We, left behind … have to go ahead on.” She stopped to breathe, easier, it seemed to Cammy. Someone to talk to always helped Tut to find her words.

  Cammy leaned close to Gram and put her hands over Gram’s on the chair rests. “I saw her go down. The bluety just took her out of sight. Where is she, Gram?” She’d been worried about that.

  “Well,” Gram Tut said, and paused. “Her body’s caught down there somewheres … I suspect,” Gram said. “Never to come up again.”

  Maylene sucked in her breath. Cammy heard her dad’s voice. “Don’t,” he said to Maylene. “Stay out of it. She’s fine,” he said.

  “She won’t come back,” Cammy said.

  “No, baby,” Gram said. “Nothing for you to worry over. You’ve been dreaming, is all. Scared yourself. Don’t take on so anymore. She’s gone.

  “We live. We die.” Tut smiled, looked off, dreamily. Just when Cammy thought she’d truly gone off, her Gram said, “Pray it won’t be hard. Sometimes it is. Sometimes not.” Tut spoke slowly but clearly. “It’s not our place … to question His mystery.”

  Cammy was pressed against her Gram. Her eyes closed. Her ear and face hard on Tut’s thin chest. She could hear the old heart of her. It beat slow, steady; every now and then, it gave a slight roll before it beat right on.

  She’s gonna go, too, Cammy thought, and could have cried. But she wouldn’t. “What’s to eat?” she said, huskily.

  “Now there’s an appetite … through thick and thin,” said Gram Tut.

  “I’m here, Mom, whenever you want to start cooking,” said Maylene.

  “Start now?” asked Gram.

  “Nooo,” Cammy moaned and held on tightly to her old love, so fragile.

  “In a minute, then,” Gram said, and put her chin on Cammy’s head with untold gentleness.

  It was a good, long day among them, in that house of Maylene’s. Maylene cooked. Andrew and Cammy’s dad did whatever Maylene wanted. Often, Cammy caught her dad looking concerned at her. That made her happy, she wasn’t so sure why.

  “I been seeing you a lot lately,” she said to him after a while.

  “Getting to be a habit,” Maylene murmured.

  The man, her dad, stared at Cammy’s mama. He thrust his hands into his pockets and looked down at the floor. Maylene smiled to herself.

  Cammy saw it all and felt them winding tightly together among shade trees.

  “Winter’s coming,” she warned her Gram.

  “I know it, too,” Tut said. “Listen, take what comes. Put a focus on … each little thing comes before you. Just one thing at a time. That’s how it’s done. Always be ready. I’m ready.”

  Tut would have her dinner made in the oven. So that was how she directed Maylene to do it. Maylene did it exactly as Gram Tut commanded. Cammy watched closely. She focused herself, just as Gram said she should, on each little thing. When Tut spoke, Cammy watched her lips and felt her words fill up her insides. When Maylene moved, Cammy was right there on her elbow. She peered into the oven, into the oblong glass oven dish Maylene had filled with chicken parts. There was yellow and green pepper. There was red tomatoes cut up. There was salt and pepper and spices like oregano and garlic sprinkled on the chicken. There was water and cooking wine mixed together, just enough to cover the bottom well, about a half inch. There was paprika to help in the browning, Gram Tut said. Later, she would have Maylene add ketsup, vinegar and honey.

  Cammy saw how the chicken was prepared. She thought of nothing else. When the oven door closed on the food, cooking it, she turned her attention to the next thing.

  “Now, turn up to 350 degrees,” Gram said. “Maylene, hurry some. I got to lie down awhile.”

  While the chicken cooked, and Gram Tut napped, Cammy and Andrew made salad. The onion scent went up Cammy’s nose and made tears in her eyes. Andrew wet a towel for her and she washed her eye rims with it. Her dad went away and came back with sheet cake and ice cream just before the food was ready.

  Gram came in, in her wheelchair, looking refreshed. They sat down to the finest meal Cammy had in a long time.

  “Just like it’s been fried,” her dad said.

  “Well, I had Maylene add some brown sugar. Forgot it until the last minute,” Tut said.

  “And the ketsup, vinegar and honey,” Maylene said, “I remembered them, Mom.”

  “Well, I’m thankful for that. It tastes fine,” Gram said. But used to puréed food, she ate very little. She ate some gravy and thin slivers of chicken. Ice cream. Cammy mixed some with the cake and Gram ate that.

  “Gram, you seem like you grew younger while you slept.” Cammy told her.

  Her dad smiled on her.

  “Expect I did,” Gram said. “Sleep’s known to work wonders. So is home.”

  The kitchen seemed small and full, Cammy thought. It was warm, with all of them crushed tightly around the kitchen table. Cammy was squeezed between her Dad and Gram Tut’s chair. She didn’t mind. She focused on eating and tasted every single bit of it as though she never tasted anything before. She drank tons of ice tea. And when that was gone, she drank two full glasses of ice water.

  “Lordy,” Gram Tut said. “Child is growing before my eyes.”

  It was a long, full time over supper. Cammy had two slices of cake and two helpings of two kinds of ice cream. “Not even my birthday, either,” she said, her mouth full.

  “I love sweet stuff,” said Tut.

  “I do, too,” said Cammy.

  “This whole house has got a sweet tooth,” Andrew said.

  Everything came to a close about eight o’clock.

  Cammy went with them to put Gram back in the Care. Maylene called for the Care van. Cammy and Andrew and Maylene rode in it with Gram and the driver. When they got there, Cammy saw that her dad had driven up behind to take them back. But first, they saw Gram in. Care givers placed Gram and her chair on a chair lift out of the van. They rolled her inside and down the hall, past the nurses’ station. It was the first time in a long time that Cammy had not sneaked into the place.

  Televisions were on in all the rooms. Folks were strolling down the halls in their chairs, those who could get around. Old Otha came into view, and peered at them.

  “You finish your hog hut?” Cammy hollered at him, loud, so he could hear.

  “Oh, kid, hush up!” he said, out of sorts from the day’s ending. But he recognized her voice all the same.

  Cammy laughed. Old people always said they were going to do things but forgot to do them.

  They stood in the hall while an aide got Gram ready for bed. It took about fifteen minutes. Her dad came in and stood beside her at the railing. Cammy took his hand and placed it against her cheek. Suddenly, she just couldn’t get enough of him.

  “Can I come to where you and Andrew work?”

  “Want to see my office?” the man said.

  “Can I?”

  “I’ll take you and Andrew out to lunch.”

  “When!”

  “Tomorrow, if you go to school. I’ll come and get you.”

  “Swell!” she said.

  Cammy had a thought hit her all of a sudden. I’ll put my focus on him. There won’t be anybody sad anymore. My hocus focus!

  He squeezed her shoulder, made warm shivers around her neck.

  He’ll be just like Andrew and Mama. Gram Tut and all I love.

  The door to Tut’s room opened. The aide came out, smiled at them as he went by. They went in. Gram was propped up in bed. Cammy climbed the rail, planted a kiss on her good Gram’s cheek. Gram puckered her mouth like she might cry, so Cammy kissed it. Made Tut smile.

  “Listen!” Tut murmured.

  “So, what?” Cammy said in her ear.

  But Gram was so tired, she fell asleep before she could think to say something. Cammy didn’t mind. She never even thought, are you a dead doornai
l?

  She was thinking, when Gram goes, I’ll like to die, too. Just the same as with Patty Ann. With a big hole in me. Even more. Just all empty.

  I don’t know how it ever happened, any of it. Cammy sighed. People dying is awful, awful sad. They never ever will come back, too. Patty Ann. Just nightmares.

  But he’s mine who I never knew. My dad. He’s so nice to me.

  Things. Go down deep. Patty Ann. And all the feelings I liked to buried. But sometimes, they come up again. They come clean.

  All at once she watched Gram’s chest move slowly up and down.

  That’s the focus. In, out, she thought. One time, it’ll have to stop. And waking and sleeping. One time, you don’t ever even wake up again.

  Cammy swallowed hard. Took a deep breath.

  Well, keep your eyes open. Look while you can. Gram! I love you much. That’s it, then.

  I get it, now.

  A Biography of Virginia Hamilton

  Virginia Hamilton (1934–2002) was the author of forty-one books for young readers and their older allies, including M.C. Higgins, the Great, which won the National Book Award, the Newbery Medal, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, three of the most prestigious awards in youth literature. Hamilton’s many successful titles earned her numerous other awards, including the international Hans Christian Andersen Award, which honors authors who have made exceptional contributions to children’s literature, the Coretta Scott King Award, and a MacArthur Fellowship, or “Genius Award.”

  Virginia Esther Hamilton was born in 1934 outside the college town of Yellow Springs, Ohio. She was the youngest of five children born to Kenneth James and Etta Belle Perry Hamilton. Her grandfather on her mother’s side, a man named Levi Perry, had been brought to the area as an infant probably through the Underground Railroad shortly before the Civil War. Hamilton grew up amid a large extended family in picturesque farmlands and forests. She loved her home and would end up spending much of her adult life in the area.

  Hamilton excelled as a student and graduated at the top of her high school class, winning a full scholarship to Antioch College in Yellow Springs. Hamilton transferred to Ohio State University in nearby Columbus, Ohio, in order to study literature and creative writing. In 1958, she moved to New York City in hopes of publishing her fiction. During her early years in New York, she supported herself with jobs as an accountant, a museum receptionist, and even a nightclub singer. She took additional writing courses at the New School for Social Research and continued to meet other writers, including the poet Arnold Adoff, whom she married in 1960. The couple had two children, daughter Leigh in 1963 and son Jaime in 1967. In 1969, the family moved to Yellow Springs and built a new home on the old Perry-Hamilton farm. Here, Virginia and Arnold were ableto devote more time to writing books.