T-TAMAR!” AABIDAH YELLS.
“Jesus, why are you so loud?” I complain, and move the still-steaming cup of tea to my left hand and push it as far away as I can.
“You zoned out and I’m not that loud. What’s in that stuff?” Aabidah demands as she shifts her scrutiny from me to Rose.
“It’s my own blend. As I mentioned, you can’t drink it, but hell if it don’t open you up. Mentally and physically. I’ll admit it’s got a bit of a psychedelic edge, if you know what I mean,” Rose replies, and adds a little shoulder shimmy for emphasis.
“Did you just give her drugs? She’s sick, you psychopath!” Aabidah’s eyes are full of fire.
She laughs. “It’s not drugs. And it’s definitely a lot less damaging than whatever her doctors are giving her.” She turns to me. “Did they give you something to suppress the dreams?”
I nod quickly, almost imperceptibly. Just because she’s a psychic, it doesn’t make it any easier to admit a mental illness.
Rose shakes her head. “Those doctors don’t know their ass from a pothole in the street.”
I don’t have anything to say in that regard. The visions started coming almost to the day I had my first real brush with death in the hospital. The doctors knocked me out and I woke up in Paris. I spoke fluent French and worked as a lady’s maid for a Southern belle on her European wedding tour. I slipped into that life like I’d never had any other. It felt so real. Fay was there too, one of the gens de couleur libres attending a local university. I woke up ranting to one of the nurses in fluent eighteenth-century French for about fifteen minutes, and that’s when they started giving me antianxiety medication. The language hiccup was blamed on some brain inflammation and the excellent foreign-language department at my high school.
Sometimes the meds work and I sleep fine, and sometimes, like today, they fail miserably. One moment I’m in the back room of a bar in South Carolina and the next I’m in West Africa, God only knows when.
The visions don’t always come at night. Since my incident at the hospital, there seem to be triggers before they sweep me away. A smell, or a song on the radio. Once, I had a vision set off by the particular gurgle of a mall fountain. I blinked and I was standing on the edge of the Jet d’Eau near Lake Geneva in Switzerland. I pick up the teacup and place it under my nose again. Immediately, the fog behind my eyes lifts and blood rushes to my head. I draw in another deep breath and then another. Damn, it feels good to really breathe.
“I’ll give you a bit of the tea to take home. On the house. So what brings y’all here?”
Aabidah, more annoyed and suspicious than impressed, shoves the unused oxygen mask back in her purse and flicks her waist-length passion twists over her shoulder. “You’re the psychic. Why don’t you tell us?”
I want to pinch her. I’m supposed to be the skeptic, but this breathing tea was worth the trip, so I’m willing to give Rose a bit of begrudging respect.
“Am I dying?” I ask with more volume than I’ve had the breath to give my voice in months. Aabidah’s hand clutches at her shirt involuntarily. If she had pearls on, she’d be crushing them. I don’t know why she’s so shocked. She practically asked the same thing when we went to see my team of doctors last week. Their answer was vague, with talk about intubation and respirators, clinical trials and survival rates, the comically long waiting list for a lung transplant, but nothing solid. Nothing that seemed real, and everything with a hefty price tag. My sister can’t afford much more of this. She’s only twenty-two.
“I like you. Straight to the point,” Rose says.
“Well?” I ask.
“We all are, honey, in one way or the other, but yes, your particular expiration date is much closer than your sister’s or mine,” she says as she unscrews the top of a bottle of expensive-looking alkaline water.
“How long?” I ask.
She tilts her head from side to side and looks at me, peering right into my eyes. “When’s your birthday?” she asks.
“May twenty-second.”
“Ah, well, sorry, kiddo. I don’t see you making it that far.”
My sister erupts into a litany of curses I have never heard spoken in real life, let alone out of my sister’s mouth.
“Aabidah! Calm down. It’s not her fault!” I yell over her.
She immediately stops. “This was a bad idea,” she murmurs to herself, and then turns to Rose. “You’re supposed to make her feel better. Reassure her,” she says sharply.
“Honey, if I lied to people, don’t you think I’d be in better digs than at the back of a dirt-road bar? I tell customers the truth and no more.… But I will say this. Tamar has a short life, but one of the oldest souls I’ve ever had walk in here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Aabidah spits.
Rose sets her gaze on me. “Pour that tea into that aloe plant over there. It looks thirsty. But don’t dump the leaves.” Reluctantly, I empty the cup and hand it to her.
She looks inside, the scrunch of her red lips the only betrayal of what she might be thinking. “You’re meant to have a great love, but a short life. You see here, each of these stems is exactly the same length, lined up the exact same width apart from the others.” She whistles high and long and shakes her head. “I’d need a PhD in astrophysics to calculate how long you’ve lived or will live.” She stops, peering into the cup as if she just saw something new. “Hmm, there’s this bit of—”
Aabidah waves her hand in the air. “This is bullshit.” She turns to me. “We’re going to see Pastor Roberts in the morning. Got me out here in Klan country for this…,” she grumbles as she gets to her feet.
Rose is so mesmerized by my tea leaves she barely notices us as we slip through the curtains. We’re just outside the car when I feel her cool hand grip my arm. “You forgot your tea.”
Aabidah’s still complaining as she slams her car door.
“You could have lied,” I tell Rose.
She shrugs. “You would have been able to tell. Old soul, remember.”
“What does that even mean?” I ask. I don’t have a clue what she’s talking about.
“Just means you are part of an old story. You’ve got a decision to make, though, right? The cryogenics center overseas? Fay?”
I chew my lip. Rose is the real deal. I didn’t want to think about Fay right now. His presence in the equation that is my life doesn’t compute. It’s like a problem where instead of solving for x it’s a fruit snack. And the cryogenics center? That’s the absolute last resort. If it begins to look like I won’t make it at all, then there’s a trial I can sign up for. I volunteer to put my body on ice for a chance at revival once medicine has advanced. It’s far-fetched, and Fay would say it’s straight up B-movie science fiction, but it’s a chance.
Rose helps me load my tank into the car.
“It’s up to you. Part of all this human experience is deciding what you believe.”
I should be grateful for her honesty, the cloudless sky, and the uncommonly cool breeze whipping the overlarge American flag over our heads. Instead I’m all tapped into my feelings, so I take my sister’s approach.
“Sounds like bullshit.”
We see the pastor the next day. He prays with us and, worse, assures me everything will be fine, and that I’m special, one of God’s own.
And then the doctors call.
Turns out the pastor does have some spiritual insight worth something; I am special. So special my super-rare blood type means I’m almost impossible to match for a new set of lungs, which means we’re on to plan E, the cryogenics center. Our last resort to try to pause the clock running out on my life.
“Hypocrite,” I whisper, and then spit pink phlegm into the airport bathroom sink.
“You still thinking about Pastor Roberts?” Aabidah, asks.
I don’t reply. It’s embarrassing how much I wanted his approval after the debacle at Dolly’s Mirror last Saturday. It’s not like he gets the deciding vote on who gets into heaven and who doesn’t. I even asked him, if I wasn’t a virgin, what that would do for my chances. He dodged the question. Typical.
“Forget about him. You know Mother Jackson said he didn’t even go to seminary. He’s nothing but a storefront preacher with a high school diploma. He doesn’t know everything. Don’t… just try not to upset yourself. If you have an episode, they won’t let us on the plane, and we’re all out of that tea Rose gave you. The center was adamant about the window of opportunity for a case like yours, and we waited until the absolute last minute to book this trip. It’s now Monday. We really should have pulled the trigger last Wednesday.”
There’s a bit of censure in her voice, but I don’t pick at it. If I pulled that thread, who knows what I’d find beneath the seams? Maybe there is no experimental trial and all of this is just an elaborate exercise to give me hope, or—worse—there’s no scholarship for patients dealing with hardships and she’s going to go broke trying to keep me on ice, never living the life she’s still got left to live. My heart starts beating too fast, and the health meter on my smartwatch begins to beep loudly, ricocheting off the sickly green bathroom tile. I take in a deep breath, or what passes for one these days.
“I know,” I say, trying to avoid her gaze. “I’m trying.”
“Do you want me to adjust your oxygen levels?” she asks, waving her fingers delicately across my oxygen tank. A lady with her young daughter scoots to the sink on the opposite side of the public bathroom, obviously avoiding me and whatever contagious disease she thinks I might be carrying. The little girl, maybe seven years old, with wide eyes and an LOL-doll rolling suitcase, openly stares.
A disembodied voice crackles over the speakers piped into the airport. “Attention, travelers: Homeland Security has raised our threat level to orange. Keep all carry-on bags in your possession at all times. Additionally, some flights may be delayed.”
We both look up as if the voice will materialize into a person we can focus our attention on. When nothing else follows, Aabidah goes back to adjusting the tubes on my tank.
A sense of panic washes over me and I can’t take it anymore. The trip. The sickness. The complete reliance I have on Aabidah. “Stop fussing. I can do it myself. Can you—I need a minute!” I snap.
Aabidah slowly straightens back up. She gives me an empty smile and tucks a braid behind my ear. Her brow is furrowed. For a moment she looks just like our mother: the little smile lines around her mouth, the flat eyebrows and lone dimple. You’d think having to raise your baby sister after your mother dies would put the years on, but you’d be wrong. I think she really enjoys it—loving somebody fully and unabashedly and having them love you back. She looks more solid than other people her age. Wise and polished. But now that I’m dying, tragically from complications of the same disease that killed Mama, the idea of having to be all alone for the first time is getting to her, and I just can’t take her face right now.
Flat-out angry tears well up in my eyes. I should have gone with Fay to Myrtle Beach on Senior Skip Day last month and finally, finally told him I was ready for more than a few roaming fingers under my uniform skirt. I should have sipped that champagne at my cousin Letitia’s wedding last year and kissed that girl in the bathroom. I should have stuck my head out of the sunroof at junior prom even though it’s what basic girls do. I should have told Fay I loved him, even if it gave him a big head and made everybody start calling me Fay’s trophy. I should be happy Aabidah got into that graduate program in DC.
Should, should, should.
My phone buzzes inside my fanny pack. I unzip it and look at the screen.
Fay: I had a crazy dream about u. Pick up!
Not as crazy as my visions, I want to say, but I don’t. I close the screen and feel the phone buzz; now it’s a call. I know it’s him. I let it go to voicemail. Then on impulse I toss the phone, case and all, into the trash.
Who do I need to call? I’ve got a one-way ticket.