Huntington, West Virginia, 2010
I notice I don’t wake up no more so much as I float up. It ain’t a fast process; it feels like I’m movin’ my way up through somethin’ thick and dark, like the molasses Momma used to put on my toast for a special treat. Mr. Smith used to give us that molasses. I just remembered that. He was a good man, way down into his soul. He owned the general store in Cedar Hollow before he passed, and Lord knows he gave more of it away than he sold. The store, I mean, not the molasses, though probably that, too. I feel a sting of sadness rememberin’ Mr. Smith, until I realize I’ll see him soon, God willin’.
When I’m floatin’ up, first I hear the sounds, the steady hum of equipment, and under that, the hurried footsteps of angels in white as they rush down tiled hallways, answerin’ to that ever-present call of “stat.” When I finally float all the way to the top of the darkness, I open my eyes to the mid-afternoon gloom of an overcast West Virginia evenin’. The glare from the clouds reflects through the uncovered window and causes me to squint in the dim room. I ain’t used to such inactivity and it makes me restless, anxious from the quiet atmosphere and the suffocatin’ feelin’of doom. They is all just waitin’ on us to die here, and that’s the truth. They pretend they ain’t, of course, but I know.
My throat is parched; I reach a tremblin’ hand towards the water glass on my bedside table, prayin’ I don’t knock it over before I at least get a drink. Dyin’, I have discovered, is hard work; even harder is the waitin’. Graspin’ the straw between my cracked lips, I drink. It ain’t creek water, but it’ll do. My thirst finally quenched, I replace the glass and lean my head back against the pillow, closin’ my eyes, my energy spent. It’s hard even now for me to accept my weakened state. I was always so strong; even as a young girl I could whup half the boys my age. Could, and did, quite frequently. You could ask ’em. Some of ’em has outlasted me. Now, though, now I’m done in by a glass of water and instead of tryin’ to beat me at arm wrastlin’, Darryl Lane was in here just yesterday bawlin’ like a baby over my bedside, bless his heart. He always was a sensitive one.
Encounterin’ somethin’ hard in the scratchy softness of my pillow, I remember: the book. It arrived yesterday and I tucked it under my pillow for safekeepin’. It ain’t that I don’t trust the nurses; it’s more that things have a way of gettin’ misplaced, especially with the crowd of people travelin’ in and out of my room all day and night checkin’ on the mess of cords and tubes that is supposed to be keepin’ me alive. More than that, though, I want the book near me, so I can get to it when I need it.
I twist around the best I can, reachin’ behind my head for it, not to read it—Lord, no, I cain’t possibly see it in this glarin’ light—but as a source of comfort. There ain’t no point in readin’ it; I done memorized them passages decades ago, could probably recite the entire book by heart. Gropin’ awkwardly under the pillow, takin’ care not to loosen any of the tubes (I done learned the hard way that pullin’ them tubes out means more of them hurtful needle pricks), I find the tattered volume and grasp it in a gnarled, arthritic hand, my fingers still calloused and stained yellow with the damned nicotine I never could shake. I hold on tight.
In my memory, I hear her little girl voice, as crystal clear as it was the day I met her, and it makes my eyes well up. We always enjoyed readin’ aloud to each other; we began that ritual early on. Those nights when she couldn’t sleep, tortured by them monsters in her dreams, readin’ was the only way to keep her fears at bay. On them nights I comforted her the best I could. I’d heat us up some herbal tea and stroke her hair as she read to me, rub her back as I read to her. After particularly bad nights we would greet the sun that way, her exhausted but relieved at havin’ made it safely through the night, me exhausted, too, but willin’ to do whatever it took to comfort her. Because I knew, you see. I knew, and Polly was there watchin’ over both of us. We was like a chain of women, three generations, all holdin’ on and helpin’ each other through the night, pullin’ on each others strength.
The memories flood over me again now, as fickle as always, mixin’ the good right along with the bad in a parade that marches behind the lids of my closed eyes. Strange, the way the years flow together with no regard to time and place, no separation of events, as if the whole of my life has been one big, unendin’ cycle of emotions. Here laughter and there sadness, terror mixed right in with joy, fury holdin’ onto loneliness. Like a creek, I think, all flowin’ together, sometimes gentle and peaceful and sometimes bashin’ to bits against the rocks.
I hug the ragged book to my chest and keep my eyes closed against the too-bright glare of the overcast afternoon. I want to close the blinds; my eyes is sensitive these days, but I don’t have the strength to stand and couldn’t unhook from all these dadblamed contraptions, anyway. Instead, I turn my head away from the window and shiver. The room is cold; my body ain’t capable of generatin’ enough warmth to keep me comfortable, but I am loathe to whine and I am purely disgusted with myself for my helplessness. I have most certainly lived through worse than a little chill in the air. Hell, there’s days I would’ve killed for air conditionin’, if I’d known what it was. It strikes me as amusin’ that right now I’m hatin’ it so. Ain’t that the way it goes?
My life has been plumb full of hard times, but good times, too. On the darkest of days, it sometimes seemed to me like God put me here on this earth just to test my strength, maybe to see how strong he made me, see if he’d done a good enough job. I wonder what he thinks now. On the darkest of nights, I rejected him altogether. In the end, though, my life has been full, more than enough.
Soon, I tell myself. She’ll be here soon. I can hold on that long. The thought of Jessie calms me, and I relax. As it always does these days, my mind goes back up to that mountain.