“I’m leaving you,” she says this time while squeezing my hand. My tears are instant at the meaning of her words, and they fall rapidly down my face, splashing on my arm.
“It’s okay, Momma.” It’s hard to be strong for someone else when you only want to fall at their feet and beg them to get better, plead with them not to die, but it’s out of their control. It’s what I hear almost every day when I ask if there is anything I should be doing for her: all I get is “Just be strong for her.” But how does someone be strong against something so powerful as cancer? You can’t be. All you can do is hope for the best, and even your best isn’t enough sometimes.
“You’ll be alone soon.”
“I’ll be okay. You just rest.” I pat her arm, hoping to convey that we don’t need to have this talk.
“I have a letter.”
“For who?” I ask her, knowing that somewhere in her room there’s a box of cards that she wrote out when she was first diagnosed. She wanted her friends to know what they meant to her. Most of them hung around until she starting shutting herself off from the outside world.
“You and him.”
My heart drops, and excitement takes over. Is she referring to my father? Did she write about him? “What do you mean, him?”
She turns her head toward the wall, away from me. I get up and move to the other side of her bed and find that her eyes are closed. Gently, I run my fingers over her frail skin, hoping to wake her, but she refuses.
“Tell me, please,” I whisper, begging for her to give me the answers I’ve been waiting my whole life for, but she doesn’t budge. “Mom, please,” I say again, only to jump when the door opens.
“Oh, my God, is she…” Stella covers her mouth with her hand and looks at me. I shake my head, wiping away my tears.
“She’s still with us. She just dropped a bomb, though, and I’m not sure what to make of it.”
I meet Stella at the foot of my mom’s bed and give her a hug before retreating to my cot. During the day, I turn it into a makeshift couch with pillows that I’ve had Stella bring from home. It’s the only way I can feel like I’m functioning and not spending all my time in the orange chair.
“What’d she say?” Stella pulls out tonight’s dinner from her bag. It’s roasted chicken and store-made potatoes.
“Well, I’m trying not to speculate, but I think she wrote a letter about my dad. I’m not sure, though. Lately it’s been a few words here and there. Then she stops talking or she’ll randomly talk about something she did when she was a kid.”
“Wow, your dad?”
I nod before taking a bite of my food. “I’m not getting my hopes up, though.”
“You’ve got to think that there has to be something in her room that gives you some direction, though.”
“I don’t know. With her, it’s hard to tell. Whoever he is, he did a number on her, and she’s not willing to forgive him.”
“Maybe not him, but you deserve to know who he is, and if she’s gone, she won’t be around to tell you how you should feel or act toward him. And she won’t have to witness it. I think a lot of her reasons for keeping him a secret is because she wanted you to love only her.”
“That’s selfish, Stella.”
She shrugs. “Why else would she keep his identity a secret?”
I look over at my sleeping mom and wonder the same thing. Hell, I’ve been wondering who he is for as long as I could remember.
“I don’t know, Stella.” What I don’t say is that he could’ve been married or maybe she never told him about me, fearful t
hat he’d reject us. Or maybe he’s the athlete, which would explain her aversion toward them. I believe the latter to be true because it would fit. I’m tempted to go home and start digging, but I can’t leave her. Her end is getting close, and I promised her that I’d be here, holding her hand.
* * *
For weeks now I’ve survived on little sleep. Each time I’d close my eyes and start to drift, a nurse would come in to check on my mother. It seems that they know just the right time to open the door, much like when you’re at a restaurant and the waitress comes by to ask how your meal is and your mouth is full of food so you can only nod, which is somewhat impolite.
Except tonight when the nurse comes in and checks on my mother, she leaves and returns immediately with another nurse. That’s when I know her time on this earth is quickly coming to an end, and even though I’m distraught, I also breathe a sigh of relief, because soon she’ll no longer be in pain.
“Ainsley?” I hear my name said softly, as if the nurse is trying not to wake my mom. I sit up and slide my legs out from under my blanket to face her. The soft glow from the muted light above my mom gives me enough light to see the features of the nurse’s face, which is enough to confirm what my gut is telling me. “There isn’t much time left.”
I nod, understanding everything she’s telling me. The nurse returns to her duties, tending to my mother, while I sit there and look at her body, swollen with fluids and riddled with cancer. A single tear falls, the first of many to come, I’m sure, as I think about what tomorrow or the next day is going to be like.