Brother, I'm Dying - Edwidge Danticat [20]
Having run from Tante Denise, Bob was also on the floor pounding his tiny fists against the cold tiles, bawling. His face was covered with some phlegm he had spit up. Answering a final boarding call, my mother hurried away, her tear-soaked face buried in her hands. She couldn’t bear to look back.
We’re All Dying
My mother was right about my plane ride to Miami that July 2004. It was going to be the most lonesome of my life.
After checking in and clearing security, I called my husband from the airport gate.
“I can’t wait to see you both,” he said in his unwaveringly cheerful voice.
Soon after I hung up, I learned that the flight would be delayed five hours. We wouldn’t leave until eight p.m. The fluttering in my stomach, no longer mysterious, continued. It was a presence now, one to which I could assign all kinds of deeds and traits, a little baby sleeping, waking, doing cartwheels.
At that stage of the pregnancy, the baby was most likely an inch long, a tiny tadpole with a yet undeveloped heart and brain and only micro bumps for arms and legs, but he/she was already the only person, besides my dying father, who was constantly on my mind.
I called my father’s cell phone to tell him I was going to be delayed. Perhaps if he wasn’t too far from the airport, he could come back and get me.
He didn’t answer. Was something wrong? Wrong was now the norm. Did something even worse happen? I would ask myself that question each time I called him and the phone wasn’t picked up. Was he in a car crash? Was he dead?
I kept calling the house until my mother answered.
“He just dropped me off,” she said, dragging her words.
“He’s not answering the phone,” I said.
“You know him. He probably forgot to charge it.”
My father was at the car service office when he finally picked up his cell phone.
“I thought you’d left,” he said.
There were times when he was relaxed and well rested that he didn’t sound ill at all. As he grew sicker, I’d have to look for hints in his tone to judge for myself when he wasn’t doing well.
“Should I come and get you?” he asked.
Not wanting him to overextend himself, I said, “I should probably stay in case the plane leaves sooner than expected. I just wanted you to know.”
“Call me again before you take off,” he said.
I had several hours left, so I speed-walked the terminals while I called my brothers to tell them the news. Bob had just left my parents’ house, where he’d been visiting with my mother.
“Mom doesn’t like the way you told them,” he said, confirming my suspicion.
I called my mother again. After all, I reasoned, what if the plane crashed when I finally got on and I lost forever my chance to tell her I was sorry?
“Manman, eskize m, I’m sorry.” Perhaps it was the combined thrill and sorrow stirred up by both the pregnancy and my father’s illness, but I wanted her never to be angry with me again.
Next, I called my brother Karl at work.
“Welcome to my world,” he said. I could almost see him grinning as he shuffled some papers back and forth on his desk. “You’ll never be on time for anything again. And sleeping in? Forget it.”
Those caveats were now a link between us. Oldest sister and baby brother, we could now discuss not just our parents but our kids.
When I called my brother Kelly, he remembered a conversation we’d had when I was a senior in high school, when I’d declared that my greatest dream in life was to be a childless spinster so I could have total freedom to write my books.
“Now the married spinster is pregnant.” He laughed.
Announcing my pregnancy kept me from talking about my father, at least for a while. Walking through the terminal, I called a few friends, people I didn’t want to wait the safe twelve weeks to tell. However I told only two of them the flip side of my news, that my father was dying. One, who knew my father well, became angry with me for accepting the doctor’s prognosis so easily.
“What does the doctor know?” she shouted.
“He did tests,” I said. “And my father knows too.”
“Listen to me,” she interrupted. “Screw