Take My Hand(8)

“I mean. Near about every day.”

“You bleed every day? Are you bleeding now?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

No wonder she smelled like that. I told her I’d be back soon with extra supplies for her and her sister.

“My sister don’t bleed yet.”

“What do you mean she don’t bleed yet? You mean to say India hasn’t started her cycle ever?”

She shook her head. Before she walked into the house, she turned back and watched me. I sat in the car with my hands wrapped around the steering wheel. I was shaking so bad I had to hold that wheel tight. They had that young girl on the shot and she wasn’t even bleeding. Even worse, I had just stuck a needle in her. I focused my eyes on the smooth backs of my hands, trying to take it all in. In the funk the girls had left in my nose, I could barely breathe.





FIVE




Summer 2016


I have driven this Volvo since I bought it new fifteen years ago. I live just a few miles from the hospital so it only has a little over fifty thousand miles on it. You suggested I rent a car with all the latest technology for this trip. I refused. Wait until you get in those little country towns with weak radio stations, you said. I prefer the silence, I replied. How will you charge your phone? In the cigarette lighter, the way I always have. Did you change the oil? Girl, be quiet.

The route from Memphis to Montgomery could take me through Olive Branch and get me there in as little as five hours, but I got things to do before I reach my hometown. Business to take care of. Visits. I have called and texted to let folks know. I don’t like surprises, never have. So I am careful not to do it to others.

I gas up the car and wipe my hands with sanitizer. As I settle behind the wheel, my phone rings. It’s Dr. James, my relief at the hospital. He has a question about a patient. I gently inform him that I completed all my charting before I left. I offer to log in to the portal when I reach my hotel, but he is chastened enough. Enjoy your trip, he says. Where are you vacationing, anyway? I pause. Home, I say. Montgomery. As I utter the word, it weighs on me that I have not been back in a decade. Since Daddy passed and Mama moved to Memphis, there is little reason to visit. And to call it vacationing is a stretch. The road in front of me does not promise a respite.

I pull back onto the highway and push the Volvo a little faster. I think of my old Dodge Colt, the gift from Daddy, how much I loved that car and mourned when I sold it. I considered buying you a car for graduation, then stopped myself. I have tried not to overcompensate for adopting you as a single mother. Such folly. It is a burden to stubbornly remain single even when you know it is the right decision for you. I hope I have rightly modeled these modern choices. Mama says, You’re warping that girl with your guilt, Civil. When she says this, I’m silent. There are a lot of things a mother can say to hurt her child, even long after the child is an adult.

Three more hours to Jackson. And to Alicia. Despite our sporadic communication over the years, she may be the one person who understands the path I have chosen. When it becomes clear that a woman of a certain age has not married or had children, folks like to think there’s something wrong with her. As if we can’t find love or tragically let the childbearing clock run out. I always expected this perception from strangers. The myth of old maids is a powerful one. But when you began to ask, Anne, it unsettled me.

I want you to know something. Of course I had opportunities at love. They didn’t work out, but I have not been entirely loveless. And yes, I took prophylactic precautions with a dedication that was more powerful than any maternal urge. These were my decisions. There is no greater right for a woman than having a choice, Anne. And I exercised that right. Fully and consciously.

I’m glad I’ll see Alicia first. Her evenness should calm my mind. I wonder how she’ll look. It’s my fault we haven’t kept in better touch. When we have talked, she has always been the one to reach out. It’s true I haven’t joined social media like some of my generation. Maybe that would have made a difference. The last time I saw Alicia, I was about to graduate medical school and was home visiting my parents. She stopped over at the house and I asked for an update on the Williamses. They have been the glue between us over the years, me asking for news and Alicia providing it. Who would have thought she would be the one to keep in touch with all of us? I guess she was always good at being the go-between. I plan to thank her. I’m even hoping she might come with me. Alicia, the only one who really knows what happened back then, might be able to make sense of it all.

The car hums along steadily as I roll past an eighteen-wheeler and watch the numbers slowly tick up on my odometer. The faster I drive, the longer the miles.





SIX




Montgomery

1973


And then she said, We have to maintain our health if we want to help other people. You got to rest and eat properly at all times.”

Both of us burst out laughing. Alicia snorted when she laughed. For a moment, I thought she was going to spit out her coffee.

“Girl, Mrs. Seager is so strict,” she said. Alicia spooned a chunk of pancake in her mouth. She had ordered a double stack. “But she seem like her heart in the right place. I saw my first patient yesterday and the lady ain’t never even seen a blood pressure cuff. Can you believe that?”

I shook my head and sipped my coffee. “So tell me something, Alicia. How’d you end up in this job?”