Saving Cicadas (33 page)

Mama was stone-faced at the check-in window, and filling out her paperwork, and in the counselor's room. She answered every question with yes or no. I held her hand and whispered in her ear. “I love you, Mama. Don't do this, please.”

“Good luck,” said a sad old woman to me. She was walking a little bundle out the front door and sniffling all the way.

I closed my eyes and prayed that God would give me the strength to do this. I prayed He would tell me the exact right moment to tell Mama my name. I hadn't heard anything from him yet, and we were getting closer, too close. Alisha sat in the waiting room, reading a magazine as if the world were not about to end. But I knew.

I looked around at all the waiting people. It was a quiet place, no chitchatting, no laughing. Solemn faces waiting their turns. I felt sick to my stomach. My mother was not a bad person. She wasn't! How could she do something like this? How could she think it was all right to do?

A woman holding a clipboard came to the door of the waiting room and said flatly, “Priscilla?”

Mama looked up. She turned to Alisha, who smiled at her. I grabbed Mama's hand and said, “Please, Mama, don't go!” I tugged on her, but she didn't budge my way. Instead, she walked like a robot with the woman holding the clipboard. She led her to a room on the left and told her to take her clothes off and to put on a little gown sitting on the table.

It was then I looked up and saw the window. It was near the ceiling tiles. It had wrought iron bars on it with a heart in the middle. As if love was in this room. There was no love in this room, except the love I had for my mama.

“Mama! I remember that window. I remember it! I was born here, wasn't I? I died here in this very room! Oh, Mama, you can't do this again. You just can't!”

Mama paid me no attention. She undressed and slipped into her gown. She sat up on the table and slowly looked at everything, the tools, the stirrups, the window behind her. She saw the light coming in through the little heart in the wrought iron bars. A tear came down her cheek. “Oh, forgive me, please forgive me.”

She shut her eyes hard and held her breath.

“Mama, you have a real, live baby in your tummy. She's a Macy, Mama. She's my sister. Please don't do this. You can't do this again. I won't let you!” There was an
Us
magazine on the counter, and I pushed it off. It flapped to the floor and Mama opened her eyes. She licked her lips and looked around her, the same way she'd done when I threw the picture of Poppy in the attic.

“Oh my goodness, oh boy,” she said over and over and over, arms folded tight in front of her. She was rocking forward and back.

The door began to open. The nurse was coming back in, holding a tray. “Hi, Miss Macy. We doing all right?” She was real happy and chipper this time, like she might be driving an ice cream truck.

Mama just sat there, frozen.

“Good,” said the nurse. “Now, we're gonna get you all comfortable and feeling good, okay? Get you nice and relaxed.”

I saw the shot on the little tray. Mama eyed it too. That's when I heard-felt something in my soul.

Heaven is forever, Lilly. Your mama needs you now.

I knew it was time.

“Mama,” I said, “in this very room, you took my life away eight-and- a-half years ago. But I am real, Mama. I'm a real child. You took my life, and I cain't let you do it again. I just cain't. My name is Lilly Gray Macy, Mama. Lilly Gray Macy! And I forgive you! From the bottom of my heart I forgive you for what you did to me.”

Mama pulled her chin up and almost looked in my eyes. I was standing in front of her, touching her knees. “I'm Lilly Gray Macy, Mama. Your real, live child!” I said again, praying she would hear me. Mama's lips moved. Then she said in a quiet whisper. “Lilly Gray.” “Hmm?” asked the nurse, standing at the counter. She held a shot in her right hand.

“My child's name is Lilly Gray Macy,” said Mama, stunned. She looked as if she'd just woken up and realized where she was. She turned and stared at the print of
Meadow with Poppies
by Gustav Klimt hanging on the wall. It was meant, I supposed, to make the place less scary, more flowerdy and happy, as if people didn't die in this room. But I saw it as a sign from God, that Poppy was in heaven and watching over us, watching over Mama.

“That's a pretty name, Miss Macy,” said the nurse. “Real pretty. Now this won't hurt at all. But I'll need you to be still for me.”

“No,” said Mama, crying now. “I can't do this.” She slipped off the table, the paper crinkling underneath her.

“Go, Mama, get out of here!” I screamed.

“Oh sugar, I know you're nervous, but this'll do the trick.” The nurse moved toward her and touched her on the shoulder. “In just a minute all those jitters will be gone. Now, come have a seat for me.”

“No, you don't understand!” said Mama, tears streaming down her face. “I'm not doing this! I'm not going through with it.”

The woman stopped and looked at her. She seemed annoyed with this turn of events, as if it was mucking up her schedule. “Let me go get the counselor for you, just wait right here.”

“I don't need the counselor! I've made up my mind.” Mama grabbed her clothes off the chair and started pulling them on.

“Becky,” the nurse called out the door, “we need some help here.” Mama slipped on her shoes and grabbed her big brown leather purse and left the gown on the floor in a heap. I took her hand and we hurried past the nurse, but we were stopped by a woman and a man. One was smiling, the other was not. They took Mama's arms and told her to calm down, it would be all right, and before we entered the hallway, I turned and looked at the room one last time. At the place where my life both ended and began. At the window with the heart in it, where barely any light from heaven comes in. And I said a prayer for the next woman who chose to enter this room and for the child she carried who would never get a chance to choose anything at all.

And I prayed for all the lives that were destroyed here in an instant, women and children and men, for years gone past and years to come.

Chapter Sixty
RISE UP SHINING

I've always wanted to save the world. I once thought I'd go into politics or start my own TV show when I grew up,
The Janie Doe Macy Show
. No, that was too long. Maybe just
Janie
, like
Oprah
. Or, I thought I could be a teacher. I would teach kids to fight in this world—not with each other but for what they believe in. I've learned it's all about what you believe in.

I believe every person—girl, boy, handicapped, healthy, white, black, old, young, everybody—has a little light in them. If it were up to me, I'd save the world by making sure all the little lights shine as bright as they can. That way, heaven could look down and actually see them. Not forget about them, like it seems sometimes. And I'd give everybody wings so they could rise up shining like fireflies and fly all the way to the moon and the stars if they wanted to, or all the way to heaven if they had the itching to go so far.

Maybe someday it will happen. It could.

By the middle of August, Mama was showing real nice. She had a soft little pooch she kept her hand on night and day. Her face began to fill out in a good way. She started with Rainey walking in the mornings for exercise. She began to laugh at Rainey's antics again. She hugged her a lot more. She invited Fritz over for suppers. Far as I know, she didn't speak a word of what happened in Fervor to him or anybody else. She didn't call Alisha on the phone anymore, which was a good thing, if you ask me. She was trying to get her life in order, and for Mama, it began with the house. Mama scrubbed and cleaned. She was getting her nest ready for the baby to come.

One day she found Baby Jesus hidden in Rainey's drawer. I wondered if she might be mad at Rainey stealing it, and I almost ran to go find Rainey and tell her she'd been found out. But Mama picked up Jesus and studied his face, his halo. She lay him down on Rainey's bed and fell to her knees. She cried then, longer and harder and sadder than I'd ever seen her. She asked for forgiveness. She pleaded. She clenched her fists. She cried until there was nothing left but my name on her lips.

“Lilly Gray,” she said, breathless.

“I'm here, Mama.”

“Oh sweet child, I am so sorry. I'm just so sorry.”

“I know, Mama. I know you are.”

“I promise you that I'll do right. I will never do anything bad again.”

“I know you won't, Mama. I'm proud of you.”

“Oh, dear God. Please forgive me for what I did. Please, how can you ever forgive me?”

“God can forgive you anything, Mama.”

She took a deep breath and said through clenched teeth, “I love you, Lilly Gray. You are my angel in heaven. I am just so sorry. Oh, dear God . . .”

And in that instant, even though I was hearing what I'd longed to hear my entire life from Mama, I knew she'd finally made her peace with me. Like she'd done with Poppy.

And I was free to go.

Funny thing about making peace. One person can make it and think
okay, we're done here. We can move on.
But the other person, me, might think
but wait a minute, I don't feel peaceful. I don't want to go.

That's how I felt. Mama was my mama no matter what. She and Rainey and Grandma Mona were everything I'd ever known. The fact that I was only half-living here in Forest Pines wasn't cause enough for me to want to leave.

“If I'm supposed to go to heaven, wouldn't I want to leave?” I asked Grandma Mona one morning, sitting on the front porch in the gazebo. We were feeling the air turn cooler and watching mockingbirds play in the sky and the younger Mrs. Shoemaker's new cat chasing a squirrel through our yard.

“Yes. I believe you would want to leave. I imagine God'll put the desire in your heart when it's time to go.”

“That day . . . in Fervor,” I said, “he told me, heaven is forever, but Mama needs me now. He hasn't told me anything different yet.”

“Just wait on the Lord,” said Grandma Mona, rocking. “That's what I'm doing. You just sit here with me and we'll wait together. However long it takes.”

Mama had a nice little belly by the time she found her a good job. Mrs. Arielle had a friend who ran an activity program for children and seniors and adults with special needs. Mama answered the phones in the front office of the Rainbow House, and Rainey got to come for free. She did arts and crafts and made new friends just like her with Down syndrome. She hit it off with one girl in particular, Brenda. Brenda had really bad eyesight and wore thick glasses. She could pronounce her words and read a little better than Rainey, even in glasses, but physically, she was much more impaired. She and Rainey would laugh at nearly everything, at the pictures they drew and funny parts in books. Rainey was making a real friend, and the funny thing was, I wasn't jealous. The old me would have been upset and pouting about losing some of her attention, but no more. Brenda gave me hope that if and when I ever did leave, Rainey would be all right without me.