Chapter 1 Monique #2
“Being a single person with a cancer diagnosis can seem limiting, but you didn’t do anything wrong. Try to accept the positive change in status, Monique. Be in the moment.” He said these things as if he knew first-hand what he was talking about. “No one deserves cancer, but everyone deserves love.”
Those encouraging words were misdirected, though. Monique had plenty of people she loved.
“I’m going to spend time with the people I love right now,” she said as she grabbed her coat.
The sharp bite of her words ricocheted across the aged cinder-block walls and linoleum flooring.
She worked her arms into her coat sleeves—the healing but still-tender port scar on her upper chest reminded her of its presence with every swift movement.
“I don’t doubt that,” he said, grabbing his too-thin coat off the back of a chair and following her out the door, then into the hall.
“Your kids are great. Thoughtful and loving, just like you. But I wonder… who sees your pains and all those wonderful parts too? Who sees beyond just what you’re capable of? ”
Dr. Tedrow lingered there for a moment as if he knew he’d asked an unanswerable question and took preternatural satisfaction in puzzling unsuspecting victims.
Then he turned on his Birkenstock-ed heel and drifted in the opposite direction.
A light snow joined Monique on her drive home. In her headlights, icy snowflakes danced in a kaleidoscope of holiday cheer. Her neighbors always did the block up. Kwanzaa kinaras now joined fat Christmas trees in front windows as she drove past.
Turning into the alley was like a switch had been slapped off. Her view became a dull, dark gray-brown as she pulled into the garage and made her way up the back walk to let herself into the Chicago bungalow she’d lived in most of her life.
“Hey, Ma,” Justin said around a mouthful of something as Monique made her way through the back door and into the kitchen.
She hung up her keys on the hook that Granddad had mounted just for her—right next to his.
Justin’s keys occupied that hook now. Mimi’s hook that Jasmine had claimed was unoccupied.
Monique’s mother, the kids’ Nana, on the other hand, was never one for key hooks or anything orderly, always toting a bag that held the entire universe and still could never find whatever she had been looking for.
“Hey, baby,” she said, exhaustion greeting her as sudden as an eager pet.
After kicking off her shoes, Monique slid her feet into a pair of house shoes as she worked herself out of her coat and draped it over her arm.
“Where’s your sister?” Monique asked, dragging her free hand over Justin’s shoulders, as was her habit whenever she passed him.
He shrugged and replied, “She said she’ll be right back,” before stuffing the rest of his peanut butter sandwich into his mouth.
Monique fought the instinct to roll her eyes. Jasmine had been away from home for a whole semester and forgot the house rules. “Tell her to come see me when she gets in.”
“Aiight, Ma.” Justin grabbed a water bottle from the fridge and downed most of it before Monique made it to her bedroom door. “How was group?” he called after her, burping loudly. “Excuse me,” he said reflexively.
That boy… A smile broke through her exhaustion, and she chuckled. “Group was as good as it can be, baby. Thank you for asking.”
As she reached for the knob to open the door up to her room, Justin was upon her, smelling nutty and sweaty, and a little bit sweet, and pressing a cold, damp kiss against her cheek.
“I know it’s hard—well, I imagine it’s hard—but it means a lot that you keep going. It’s good for you—good for all of us.”
Justin’s surprise affection always brought the best kind of overwhelm. Now, in all his height and limbs, he wrapped himself around his mother, becoming a protector, a shield, a comfort. Time was funny like that. Bending in on itself, flip-flopping.
He passed her and turned into his open bedroom doorway. Monique followed and stood at the threshold, watching him do whatever it was nineteen-year-old boys did at nine-thirty on a weeknight.
“What’s up?” he asked, looking up from his duffel bag as he pulled out scuffed and dented shin guards. His eyes were so big from that position, like a baby doll’s. She wanted to hold him to her but resisted.
“Nothin’, I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
An ABCs poster still hung on the wall, now covered with dinosaur and sports stickers.
The walls desperately needed painting. The blinds dangled in an up-down kind of way that mimicked Justin’s smile.
His dresser and shelves were littered with trophies and figurines.
Not much had changed in this room since they had moved in back when the twins were in preschool.
She wondered, then, where Justin might want to be next.
“I’m good, Ma. Just getting myself together for tomorrow.
Gonna hit the pitch after work.” Justin was about two things—well, maybe three if his need for fuel counted.
But soccer and his security job at the conservatory were his great loves.
“Go change and relax. I’ll put the kettle on and tell Jas to come find you. Okay?”
She’d been dismissed. Unsure if this was an acceptable role reversal, a bewildered Monique climbed the narrow stairway up to the still mostly unfinished attic that she called a bedroom.
She gripped the aged wood rail, worn yet shiny from lifetimes passing through.
Monique used her arms just as much as her legs to summit the stairs.
Breath labored, she leaned her head against the cool wood paneling.
Her bedroom always felt more cavernous after group.
The nonexistent walls closed in on her, loneliness echoing off the exposed beams overhead.
The December wind, Chicago’s infamous hawk, rattled the leaded windows, demanding entry.
Once upon a time, this attic had been Monique’s sanctuary.
Somewhere she’d hide among the remembrances of days gone by, among cedar chests that smelled like mothballs and old Christmas decorations.
Tonight, it was a cave, and she’d been sent to lick her wounds.
She sucked in a breath and then pushed it out in that slow four-count-out way Dr. Tedrow had shown them. Box breathing.
It wasn’t working. She kicked off her house shoes, worked the socks from her feet, let her toes sink into the shaggy rug beneath her, and tried the breathing thing again, this time adding toe curls to the mix. Her phone pinged with a text message alert from her Baddest Baddies support group chat.
CHICKIE
Have fun on your trip, Mo! We have only one life to live… that we know of so have an adventure!
ELEANOR
Send pictures! We know you’ll have your camera out.
CHICKIE
That’s right! Don’t be stingy with the pictures.
VANESSA
And have a few glasses of champagne for those of us who can’t.
Monique knew Vanessa was joking, but cancer was a fun-sucking hall monitor.
Always lurking and popping up to catch you slipping.
Logic and understanding told her that Dr. Tedrow was doing his best to equip them to not shut down or blow up whenever cancer decided to be extra bitchy.
To show them it was okay to laugh and smile through all of it.
Sometimes, at least for Monique, she had to laugh to keep from crying.
MONIQUE
I haven’t even started packing. Give a girl a break!
It was as if they all had the same thought and posted almost identical directives to get started and send them pics of her wardrobe choices.
MONIQUE
I’ll see what I can do
She stepped into her closet. Too many choices. Too many memories. Monique couldn’t promise any sort of live-action Fashion Plates experience that they all seemed to want to play. But she would entertain them and send pics as soon as Jasmine got back.
First things first. “Where the hell is my suitcase?”
She tugged at the clothes, trying to move them aside. The rod and shelf tumbled down instead.
Another repair for the ever-growing punch list that kept this house standing.
A few weeks ago, her Auntie Deb and her right-hand, Avery, came through from Jersey and shored up what they could.
Justin did his best to stay ahead of the routine stuff on his own while Jasmine was away and Monique too sick from her latest infusion, but an old house needed to be nurtured to age gracefully, not remade.
With a groan, she bent and scooped up an armful of clothes and headed back into her bedroom to do what needed to be done. Each movement became a fierce negotiation with a body that had betrayed her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Keep it moving.
A tap at the door pulled Monique’s attention from the chaos in her closet and the packing she hadn’t started.
“Hey, Mom. Justin said you were looking for me?” Jasmine stepped into the room, all sparkling dark-brown skin and rainbow-hued, tailbone-length goddess locs.
She wore leggings and an oversized Fisk sweatshirt that was nearly to her knees.
Her face, though, was pensive, as if she were walking into a booby-trapped antechamber.
Monique couldn’t blame her.
Nathan had walked out with no address to forward the hurt, embarrassment, and shame that he’d left behind when their suburban dreams went with the market, taking with it the attached garage and two-point-five bathrooms. Monique came back here—back home—with the twins and started over.
Anger and frustration had nowhere to go, and too often found its way to her children, hitting Jasmine first.
“What’s up?” Jasmine asked, leaning against the wall.
Monique walked toward her and pulled her daughter into her arms. She breathed in the now sophisticated baby scent that a mother could always find on her child.
“Mmmm,” Monique hummed, drawing Jasmine tighter.
“There’s my Jazzie-Pooh.” Not nearly satisfied, Monique kissed Jasmine’s forehead before stepping back.