The Warmest December (25 page)

Gwenyth’s life was reflected in the sparse number of people who attended her funeral: one or two people I didn’t know, five grandchildren, an old friend from her childhood, two daughters-in-law, her remaining sons, and Glenna. We felt ashamed of the emptiness in the small room of the funeral home the service was held in, and so we spread out, attempting to fill the lonely spaces and catch the echo of the minister’s words as they bounced from the dark wood walls.

Glenna sat beside me, fidgeting and whispering apologies in my ear. “It’s okay, Glenna. It’s okay,” was all I could offer her. My mouth was like cotton and my insides were hard and cold like my grandmother’s body.

Gwenyth lay before us, dressed in a smart burgundy wool suit, her hair a mass of tight silver curls, her makeup impeccably applied. She looked the same in death as she did in life: perfect.

The preacher invited people to stand up and say a kind word about Gwenyth Lowe. There was a shuffling of programs and then the creaking of chairs as people eased themselves deeper into the aluminum frames. But no one stood or spoke. The preacher looked embarrassed. His mouth puckered in bewilderment and then he cleared his throat and once again invited someone to stand and speak. “Is there anyone who would like to say something? Anyone at all?”

“I’d like to say something,” a voice called out from the bank of chairs on the left side of the room. Someone gasped in surprise and all heads turned toward the woman who stood up. It was Uncle Charlie’s first wife, Evelyn, the one we weren’t allowed to mention in the house. Evelyn was dressed in a red suit with a fur collar. There was a man sitting next to her, who I assumed was her new husband. Evelyn raised her hand and moved a perfectly curled lock of hair from her forehead. That’s when we all saw the ring—so disgustingly huge that it didn’t just sparkle, it glowed.

Evelyn was rich now and she had taken the time to drive in from her home in the Hamptons to pay her former mother-in-law her last respects.

“I’d like to say that Gwenyth was a bitch on wheels,” Evelyn said and smiled broadly. Someone chuckled and Delia pulled air between her teeth. “And I know a lot of you here agree with me, whether you care to admit it or not.” Evelyn’s eyes rolled over the faces that watched her. “She ruined my marriage to her son and for that I owe her a debt of thanks.” She smiled maliciously, nodded her head at the preacher, and sat back down.

The room was reeling from her words. Even the preacher was speechless for a long time, he just kept looking down at his Bible and then back at Evelyn. “Any—uh—hum … anyone else have anything they’d like to say?” he asked cautiously.

I searched within myself and found no bits of remorse or intimations of grief that would inspire me to speak over Gwenyth’s body. She had never really been a grandmother to me; she was always Hy-Lo’s mother, Mrs. Lowe.

Hy-Lo’s head dipped lower at this loss and his chin rested on his chest throughout the service, but he did not cry and his shoulders did not heave. He handled the death of his mother as he did everything else in his life: he climbed deeper into his bottle.

I sighed at the memory and felt a pang of pity for him. My hand moved up and rested lightly on the fragile skin of his arm. I expected my body to shake with disgust and my hand to recoil against the feel of his flesh against mine, but none of these things happened and so I left my hand there until the early-winter evening glowed purple through the window and I was confronted with a memory so blanched with time that it was almost unrecognizable to me.

“I don’t want to go.”

“C’mon, Kenzie.”

“No.”

“C’mon, please?”

“I say no!”

“Okay, if you come out I’ll buy you an ice cream.”

“No, no, no! Chocolate?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Sprinkles?”

“Rainbow.”

I must have been three years old, maybe younger. Hy-Lo was searching for me, yelling my name through the apartment. “Kenzie! Where are you? Kennnzzziiiee!”

It was a game we played when my mother went out and left us alone. Before he moved from beer to vodka, before he stopped simply yelling and started slapping.

I had hidden myself in Delia’s closet and placed my sneakers on the wrong feet and had horribly knotted the laces. My coat, an Easter lightweight that was pink with a white collar, covered my head and blocked out the blotchy darkness of the closet. I felt well hidden, but he found me anyway, pulling me from the closet and hoisting me up in his arms and then spinning me wildly through the air.

We laughed together, father and daughter, and afterward I rested my head in the smooth curve of his neck and delighted in the feel of his rough whiskers as they brushed against my forehead. Chocolate ice cream danced in my mind and I felt safe wrapped in my father’s arms.

The memory moved me to tears and my forefinger traced the length of his arm until it reached his wrist and finally the creased back of his hand.

I waited, hoping that his hand would flinch and jerk until finally turning over and welcoming my fingers into his palm. I waited and watched his face for any change. I waited and realized that my hand had enclosed his and his fingers had bent to oblige.

Chapter Sixteen

I
made the eight o’clock meeting on the second floor of a three-story building in a space Genie Carpets once occupied. It was a bright and airy location with floor-toceiling windows and whirling ceiling fans. Even in the early darkness the room made it seem more like early spring than the dead of winter.

Bolts of carpet were stacked like colorful logs in the four corners of the room and
Going Out of Business
signs lay in neat heaps on the windowsills. Large fluffy pillows with mosaic designs had been strategically placed around the floor and the lingering scent of myrrh curled through the room. I smiled a bit and looked around at the flustered faces of some of the older women who were trying to figure out how they were going to sit on the floor without embarrassing themselves.

I took my place in what I thought to be the coffee line, behind a large white woman with red hair and black eyebrows. She turned and offered me a smile; I returned it and then dropped my eyes. I didn’t need to make friends; I just needed to find some peace.

The line moved past cookies, donuts, and brownies. “No coffee?” I asked as I stood at the table blinking at the clear water the woman behind the table had just poured into my cup. “No.” The woman laughed at the surprise in my voice. “Just herbal tea.” The meetings always had coffee. “And no smoking in the room,” the woman added and turned her teapot on to the next cup.

“Oh, okay,” I remarked and made my way further down the table toward the multicolored boxes. Green tea, chamomile, Red Zinger. I was dazzled by the array but all I really wanted was coffee. I closed my eyes and stuck my hand into the first box my fingers found.

This was a women-only meeting run by a lady named Fatima, who had been clean for nearly twenty years. She was almost sixty, but didn’t look a day over forty-five. “Welcome,” she said, and her Jamaican voice boomed across the room grabbing your attention by the chin. “Hello, my name is Fatima and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hello, Fatima.”

I had pulled my pillow as far away from the crowd as I dared without someone calling me out. I sipped my herbal tea and listened as the stories rolled on like meadows after a war, trampled flowers, torn trees. That’s who we were, wartorn meadows on the verge of new growth.

“Well, ladies, it’s almost ten o’clock, would anyone else like to share?” Fatima asked, her large dark eyes searching through the sea of female faces.

Heads turned and swiveled, hands pointed, pushed, and pleaded, but no one would take the last call. How ironic, I thought to myself; in our drinking days, we all would have jumped at last call.

“Well, thank you for coming and have a blessed evening,” Fatima said and flashed her brilliant white smile.

My coat was halfway on, one empty sleeve dangling mercilessly behind my back as I attempted to grab at it with one hand while balancing my cup of herbal tea with the other. For a moment or two I looked like a cat chasing its tail.

“Here, let me help you with that,” a familiar voice said, so I stopped and allowed the delicate hand with the simple gold wedding band to help.

“Thanks,” I said, turning and coming face-to-face with Nurse D. Green.

I was struck dumb for a moment or two; my mouth was working but nothing came out except the clucking sound my tongue made against the roof of my mouth. “How are you doing?” Nurse D. Green asked, rescuing me from saying something stupid.

“F-fine,” I said and blinked a few times.

“I like this meeting, is this your first time here?” There was that smile again, the one she wore like a badge all day long. She looked terribly normal at the moment: her hair was wrapped in a colorful kente cloth, her lips glowed warm with a cinnamon gloss, and large hoop earrings dangled from her tiny ears, giving her a pure Afro-Caribbean look, something her starched white nurse’s uniform camouflaged.

“I—I didn’t know you—” I started my question and stopped just as abruptly.

“Of course you didn’t, how could you, that’s what anonymity is all about.”

“Yes, yes,” I said because I had nothing else to say—but so much I wanted to know.

“Well, it’s late …” Nurse D. Green started to say and then she let her words float for a moment while her mind worked with something else. “Can I give you a lift?” Her eyes sparkled and I saw that her offer was genuine.

“Oh, I’m way out in East New York … It’s a good trek … I can catch the bus …”

“Oh, it’s on my way, really, come on.”

I found myself strapped into Nurse D. Green’s red Jeep Wrangler. She’d had it for twelve years and had bought it used, a large hole was wearing in the floor beneath the gas pedal, and I could look down and see bits and streaks of the black tarred roads we traveled. The trip was bouncy and the tea ran through my system and settled uncomfortably in my bladder. I held it for as long as I dared.

“Um, you know what, I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” I said over the sound of the engine, the creaking gearshift, and the Bob Marley cassette tape that had probably sounded nice three thousand plays ago, but Bob was dragging through “Redemption Song” and now it sounded like crushed glass to me.

“Oh, okay, let’s pull in here.” Nurse D. Green made a sudden and vicious right turn from the left lane into the parking lot of a McDonald’s. My heart was in my lap as I waited for someone from one of the cars she had cut off to pull up beside us, snatch us both out of our seats, and beat us unmercifully. “C’mon,” she said as she hopped out of the Jeep, ignoring the horns and screams of obscenities that came at us from the street.

“Something to eat?” she asked as we exited the ladies’ room and headed toward the glass doors.

My stomach was aching, but I didn’t have more than two dollars in my pocket. “No, I’m fine,” I said and pushed the door open.

“Oh, I need a Big Mac,” I heard her say and turned to see her positioned in line behind two teenage girls who should have been in bed on a Tuesday night instead of hanging out at the local McDonald’s.

I let the door close and walked over and sat down at one of the white Formica-topped tables. I hoped she was getting it to go. My eyes were beginning to hurt against the bright lights of the fast food place and I actually began to long for the darkness of the Jeep.

“Here, I got you a chicken sandwich, french fries, and a coffee.” Nurse D. Green plopped down across from me and placed two orange trays down on the table.

I looked at the food and my stomach growled. I quietly reminded myself of the two dollars that sat folded in the back pocket of my jeans. There was at least five dollars’ worth of food in front of me.

“Hey, eat up … it’s on me,” she said and dumped three packs of sugar into her cup of coffee.

“Thank you,” I said and tried not to seem too eager as I unwrapped the paper from the sandwich. We ate in silence for a while, our eyes playing tag and then dropping down to our food. I was dabbing a french fry in a glob of ketchup when she finally broke the quiet.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked and popped the last bit of her Big Mac into her mouth.

My mouth fell open, “Of course,” I said trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. Did she think I was an idiot or something? Did she think I took rides from strangers? Of course I knew who she was. “From the hospital,” I continued and tried not to screw my face up.

“No.” She laughed. “Not the hospital … before that.”

I examined her face, the rosy cheeks and small button nose. There was some hazel in her round eyes and her skin glowed the color of gold holiday ribbon. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t remember you from anyplace else but the hospital.”

“Well, maybe you were too young, I mean I would see you at least once a week with your mom and brother; how are they?” she asked.

“F-fine,” I lied and left it at that.

Nurse D. Green tilted her head a bit and seemed to look through me. “Oh,” she said, and I knew she knew I was lying.

“Well, I was dating your Uncle Randy for a while, but before that, you know, we were all friends. Hy-Lo, Charlie, Randy, and me. I grew up with them on St. John’s Place.” She took a sip of her coffee and I thought that it must surely be cold and then I thought about how small our world really was.

“You grew up with Hy-Lo?” I knew I sounded like an idiot but I couldn’t help it. I had never met anyone who grew up with Hy-Lo, not counting his siblings. I thought that Hy-Lo had killed off all of his friends so no one would ever know anything about him.

“Uh-huh,” she said and nodded her head. “My mother and your grandmother Gwenyth were good friends. We were at her funeral,” she said and then her eyes went soft. “I’m very sorry,” she added.

I wanted to tell her that there was no need for her to be sorry, because I wasn’t. “Thank you,” I said instead. Her eyes moved over my face and I knew what her next set of words were going to be. I braced myself.

“How are you handling … um … your dad’s … um, condition?”

I took a deep breath. “Fine,” I blurted out and knew that my pitch was too high, making it sound happy instead of sad. I felt ashamed and cleared my throat and avoided her eyes.