Black Girls Must Die Exhausted: A Novel for Grown Ups

by Jayne Allen

  When I arrived at Crestmire to see Granny Tab, I was surprised to find her in the common area, sitting off to herself in one of the rocking chairs near the window, in front of the willow tree. I smiled to myself wondering whom she had to contend with to secure this kind of prime seating. I walked over to her and pulled an open seat with me the last few feet to sit next to her.

  ‘Hey Granny Tab. Looks like you’re missing your left arm!” I said, laughing. Granny Tab laughed also. She used to say that about Lexi and me when we were younger on the rare occasions when we could be found apart, especially when we both lived in View Park, down the street from one another.

  “Oh yes, Gretchen is on her road trip!” She said, in a tone that sounded like sadness covered with a thin wrapping of forced enthusiasm.

  “I can only imagine what kind of trouble she’s getting into!” I said, hoping to make my grandmother smile again. From the look on her face, I would have to try harder, much harder.

  “That Gretchen is a load of trouble, that’s for sure. I bet she’s having a great time.” My grandmother adjusted her feet beneath her.

  “Looks like that swelling has gone down for you,” I said.

  “Oh, yes, for the most part. Doctor says I should still have my feet up most of the time if I’m sitting, but I just wanted to be here for a bit. No sense being in a rocking chair with your feet up,” Granny Tab said.

  “I was surprised to see you over here, Granny Tab! You doing some thinking?”

  “I reckon I am,” she said pensively. “I was just…remembering some things…” she said, her voice trailing off.

  “Like what?” She paused to look over my face and take my hand, like she usually did when she had something important to say. The interface of our skin was a perfect juxtaposition of dark and light, wrinkled and smooth, old and young. Some part of me loved knowing that we could be so different, and still have the same blood coursing through our veins, and the same love shared in both of our hearts. Granny Tab’s love I never doubted and never had reason to, no matter what else in life was happening.

  “Two, ever since you told me about Marc, and what he said to you about his family,” my grandmother said, turning to me with a look of deep concern on her face. “I’ve been thinking…I have something I need to tell you—and I guess I should… even though it’s not completely my story to tell.”

  “What is it Granny Tab?” I said, starting to feel some alarm.

  “I need to tell you about your grandfather.” For reasons I didn’t know, the word “grandfather” brought a pang to my abdomen. We almost never spoke of him, except in capsule memories that highlighted his dancing skills or his and Granny Tab’s early romance.

  “What about him?”

  “The truth,” she said. “The truth about…what he was.”

  “What he was?” I asked, bracing myself.

  “Tabby,” my grandmother said, motioning for me to pull my chair closer. Once I did, she continued, quietly, “Your grandfather…was…also an alcoholic.” She stopped to let the information register.

  “He was?” I said rhetorically, trying to imagine what that meant. “Is that why you guys separated?”

  “Yes…and no,” she said. “Your grandfather, he was really a great man. He wanted to be greater than the times would allow. The years in the military were hard on him. Having a young wife and child…it wasn’t always easy…and he let it all get to him sometimes…a lot of the time.” I stayed silent, letting her have the pauses to regroup and continue. “He drank. When he got out of the service, there still weren’t that many places that would have us, being a mixed family and all. But mostly on account of the fact that he was black. He couldn’t find steady work very easily, so times got pretty tough. He found his ways to…” Granny Tab turned away to face the tree, and turned back when she had words to continue with. “Manage, is what I guess I’d say. Having a family, needing to provide back then, and with all the nastiness of racism, discrimination, even in California, it was a lot to bear.”

  “Did he ever get help?” I asked. Granny Tab smiled a weak smile at me.

  “Two, we didn’t have those kind of resources back then. And even if we had, we didn’t have the wherewithal to think about any kind of help. It was just something that you bore out in private and tried to hide signs of in public.” She dabbed the crumbled tissue in her hand to her eyes and continued, “Just after he left the service, it got real bad. Real, real bad.”

  “Granny Tab,” I interrupted, alarmed. “Did he…did he…hit you?” My question brought a look of panic to her face and then her head dropped a bit. Again, I saw the wad of tissue go back to her eye.

  “I wish I had a different answer,” she finally replied, almost so quietly I couldn’t hear her. “Most of the time, it wasn’t in front of your father, though. I thought, if he just hit me, he wouldn’t hit Paul. And for a long time, it worked that way.”

  “And then it got bad?” I studied my grandmother’s face. Her tears felt like they were etching into my own soul. I hated seeing her cry, but I knew I needed to hear her story.

  “One day, he got very drunk. He came home in the middle of the day looking for a fight. Your dad was usually at school at that time, but on this day, he stayed home with a cold. Your grandfather was yelling, pushing me. I tried to get him to stop, tried to remind him that Paul was in the house. But he slapped me down, hard. Paul saw.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The tissue that Granny Tab held in her hand was starting to disintegrate. “He tried to defend me, but Grandpa Walker was in a rage by then. He hit Paul, knocked him down hard to the ground. I didn’t know what else to do, I was young. I ran into the kitchen and got the biggest knife I could find. I told your grandfather to get away from my son.” Granny Tab’s tears were flowing heavy now. “I said, ‘Get away from my son!’” She repeated through tears. “And then I told him to get out. I didn’t care where he went, but go. The next day, I took what money I could find, and got on the bus with your father back to West Virginia. We never went back to that house.”

  “He did that to my dad?” I asked.

  “Yes, Two, and I didn’t have the good sense to leave sooner. But West Virginia wasn’t any better. I went back to my daddy’s house with your father. Times weren’t good then for a brown child like him. My baby.” She turned away again. “My family, they didn’t treat us right. Seemed like everybody was so much more concerned with what they thought was appropriate than with what was right. No responsibility for thinking back then—actions didn’t come from the heart, or the head either. They all just did what they were told they were supposed to. And they were told that they had the right to treat my baby boy like he wasn’t their family, like he didn’t deserve to be there. So we left. And my daddy, he knew everything that happened with Grandpa Walker, and he just said, ‘well, I reckon there were worse things about him than just the color of his skin.’ That was the closest to any apology I ever got.”

  “Where did you go after you left there, Granny Tab?”

  “West Virginia was no place for a little colored boy. So I came back to Los Angeles. Your grandfather knew that if he didn’t stop drinking, he couldn’t live with us. It wasn’t safe. But, he couldn’t stop, it had gotten so bad…So, he gave us, your father and me, money to get a place of our own, and I had to sign up for assistance for a while. I enrolled myself in community college and then finished my degree on my own. The first good job I could get was as a teacher, so that’s what I did. That part of the story you know.”

  “Granny Tab, what happened to Grandpa Walker?” I asked.

  “He died, not long after. He drank himself right into the ground. I won’t say that how he got treated is what killed him exactly, because that would be giving him excuses, and what he did to us, and to himself had no excuse. But there were reasons, Tabby—I saw it with my own eyes. I felt it with my own family. I just wish he had gotten a chance
to be the man that I knew he could have been. I would have loved to see him in different times. I know you think that we divorced, but we stayed married all the way up until he died. I never loved anyone else.”

  “Granny Tab…I…how…how did you manage?” I asked. It was all I could muster through my own tears that had started to fall.

  “Two,” she said, following a deep breath, “I just learned that life, no matter what kinda bad happens…it’s all about finding some bit of optimism, some kind of hope that the next moment, or even the moment after that…” Granny Tab looked away as her eyes glazed wistfully in the direction of the willow tree, before she continued, “is going to be all that you had originally wished for, and that your good is still on the way.”

  She blinked away the tears in her eyes that today were almost the color of periwinkle flowers. She looked like my grandmother, but in that moment, different to me somehow. Like the release of all that she had been holding inside, the sharing of it with me had given her back some of the girlish qualities of her youth. She looked beautiful, in the light from the window, like a goddess bathing in her own resplendence. Who knew that those aged hands, showing blue veins and resting on the rocking chair had once held the weight of the world? For a while, we just sat there—quietly, holding the space between us. Sometimes, there is just nothing more to be said. No matter what kinda bad happens…I let her words replay in my mind.

  My phone ringing broke us out of our thoughts and I would have ignored it, but I thought it might be Laila, finally getting back to me and secretly, I was hoping it was Marc. I looked at the screen showing an unfamiliar local number. I held it through another ring, debating whether or not to answer. Something in my gut told me I should.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Hello, is this…is this Tabby?” The woman’s voice on the other end sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.

  “Yes, this…”

  “Tabby, this is Naima Joon, Laila’s mom. Do you remember me?” Of course I did, but the familiarity didn’t bring me any feeling of comfort. Why was Laila’s mother calling me?

  “Yes, Mrs. Joon, I remember you—is everything alright with Laila?” The pause was too long for the answer to be yes.

  “Tabby, I’m sorry for this to be the reason that I’m calling you. I know it must be strange. It’s just that…Laila, she’s in the hospital.” I could feel the tears that were already in my eyes cross the threshold of my lashes and begin to roll down my face anew. Before I could pick a question to ask, Mrs. Joon continued. “She, um…there’s no good way to say this, I guess…she made an attempt…some pills. I don’t even know where she got them. I found her unconscious in the bathroom, on the floor.” Ms. Joon spoke in a carefully measured way. “The ambulance came and got her to the hospital in time. She’s been here a few days.” A few days?? Oh my God. I knew something was wrong. Why didn’t I just go to her place?

  “Mrs. Joon,” I said, “I don’t know what to say—thank God you went to her place.”

  “Her place?” Mrs. Joon said with surprise. “She was at home with her father and me. Laila has been living with us for the past four months! She didn’t tell you?”

  “I…guess…it never came up,” I said, trying to hide my shock. My grandmother was looking at me with concern. I wished that she didn’t have to hear this. I wished that I wasn’t hearing this either.

  “She got laid off, and needed to just reset for a bit. We had been trying to make it work with her back home temporarily until she got something new going. Thank God, because I don’t know how I would have…” Mrs. Joon’s voice filled with emotion and stopped abruptly. I could hear her sobbing in the background. I was afraid to ask the next question, but I needed to.

  “Mrs. Joon, is Laila ok?” I could hear Mrs. Joon’s quiet sobbing slow into a couple of muffled nose blows into what I guessed was tissue. I heard her take a staggered inhale before continuing.

  “She’s better. Stabilized now. The doctors want to keep her a little longer and she still can’t have her phone. I think it would be good if you could come to see her. So far it’s just been her father and me at the hospital.”

  “When can I come?”

  “The hospital has limited visitor hours for…this…for psych. But you can come today until 8 pm. I already put you on her visitor’s list, just in case.”

  “Mrs. Joon, I will be there. I’m just with my grandmother right now in Glendale, but I’m on my way soon. Tell her I’m coming. Please. Please tell her I love her. I’m on my way.”

  “I’ll tell her Tabby. She’ll be glad to see you.” Would she? I felt a clammy sweat come to my hands as I hung up the phone. My grandmother was looking at me. I’m sure she heard the entire thing. I couldn’t think clearly, especially as the warm mud of guilt started to fill my insides. This was all my fault.

  “Is everything ok?” Granny Tab asked, with a look of concern that had now fully replaced the nostalgia of moments prior. No matter what kind of bad happens…my mind kept running my grandmother’s words.

  “I guess you heard that…” I said.

  “I only heard what you wanted me to hear, sweetheart,” my grandmother said. “What did I hear?”

  “You heard that my friend Laila is in the hospital. She…got hurt,” I said. “Her mom wants me to come and see her tonight, well, like now. Are you going to be ok? I was going to stay a little longer since Ms. Gretchen isn’t here.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Two,” Granny Tab said. “I’m tired now anyway.” She yawned, as if on cue. “I’ll probably just take a nap for a bit and then your dad will be here soon enough to pick me up.”

  “Tell him hi,” I said, “and the girls too.” I added, thinking mostly of Dixie. “He and I had a chance to talk last week. And Dixie, I didn’t realize how long it had been since I’d seen the girls. Danielle is almost as tall as me now.”

  “Yes, Danielle is going to be tall. And a real beauty once she gets her braces off,” Granny tab said, smiling. “Dixie, she’s something else. She reminds me of you at that age.” I tried to mask the feeling of jealousy that hit as she spoke of my little sister. “I can’t claim favorites, but you’ll always be my first grandchild,” she said with a wink and a small pinch to my arm. For now, I had to be satisfied with her little concession. “I’m proud of you Two—I’m glad you went.” It would probably take me forever to admit it, but I was glad that I went also.

  “You get some rest, Granny Tab!” I said, with overdone cheer, found and forced from somewhere else in my body. “You’ll need it for Senior Prom! That’s next week, right?” I used the promise of better times to come in the hopes that I wouldnt cause her to worry. I tried not to rush my goodbye, but the rising panic in my gut was difficult to fight. I grabbed my belongings, attempting not to appear as rushed as I actually was.

  “It is!” She perked up entirely. “You’re still coming right? To help me get ready?”

  “Of course!” I said. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  I managed to say my goodbye to Granny Tab even though my mind had been outpaced with the information of that evening. I couldn’t even think about what I’d learned about my grandfather, or how it related to Marc. I was too busy thinking about Laila and the last time we saw each other. Just days after, she tried to kill herself? I spent every minute of my drive to USC hospital replaying the events of that night—how could I have just let her leave like that? The rational part of me said that there’s no way that one thing could have made my strongest friend take such an extreme reaction. But my heart knew better. Did her mother say she was living at home? Why didn’t Laila tell me any of this—even that she got laid off? Did Laila lie to me, or was I just not paying attention? I couldn’t remember. All I knew is that I had to get there—I had to see her. Laila was lucky, but so was I. She was still here—still alive. So, thank God, I had the mercy of a second chance—to ask all the questions that I d
idn’t know to ask. I couldn’t get to the hospital fast enough—I needed to lay eyes on Laila.

  Chapter 29

  Pulling up at the hospital was almost as much of a relief from my thoughts as knowing that I’d soon be able to see, speak to, talk to and touch my friend while her body was still warm and her brilliant mind still capable, competent and governing. “She made an attempt…” Mrs. Joon’s words played in my mind almost like a foreign language that I was just learning—vocabulary words for unfamiliar rituals.

  I called Mrs. Joon back and she gave me the instructions to find Laila’s room. She told me she and Mr. Joon would use the time I was there to take a break in the cafeteria and gave instructions to text her when I was leaving. Walking down the hall to Laila’s room felt surreal and out of place. I started to think of freshman year dorms in college at the USC undergraduate campus not even that far away. I counted down the numbers next to the doors as I made my way to where I was told I could find her. She made…an attempt. I thought about all the things that Laila had accomplished since college. She was even more headstrong and determined than I was. She landed her first newspaper column while I was still in grad school. Whatever she set her mind to, she achieved. Except this. I found myself grateful for whatever miscalculation, or interventions of fate kept Laila from…the unthinkable. My mind signaled a match to the number I was looking for. I was there, at her open door.