Dance Lest We All Fall Down - Margaret Willson [61]
Zezé laughed. “Listen to what Rita says, Margaret. She knows. And you do too. You listen. That’s a good thing about you; you sit and listen to what people here have to say. You respect our knowledge, words, and ideas. You’ve lived here in the favela a long time. Outsiders don’t do that. That’s why you and Rita make a good team. You’re smart.” She paused. “And you’re women.”
Lula and Jorge laughed. “Watch out,” Jorge said. “I see Danger coming.”
fourteen
life change
I picked up the phone shortly after my arrival back to Seattle to hear the voice of an old friend. “I have some hard news about Jill, Margaret. She has ovarian cancer. But she caught it early. The doctors at first told her there was nothing wrong, that she only had a stomachache, but she knew. So she went from doctor to doctor until finally the fourth one did the right tests. And she knew. She’s at the university hospital. They’re giving her a hysterectomy.”
I sat down. I had known Jill from before I ever went to London, let alone Brazil. I had a flashback of us skiing together only a few months before, of her incredibly smooth telemark turns. She was a dancer on any slope. An image came of Jill belaying me on a rock face, her smile and laughing eyes peeping over the cliff edge, urging my aching limbs and burning fingers to climb on. Jill, the English teacher, as a guest just this year in my Introduction to Anthropology class, laying out in clear and simple terms how my students really could write a term paper, and making them laugh while she did it. Jill, the artist, making her quilts, infusing in the patterns and vibrant color her own understanding of the intuitive confusion and joy that is life. Why Jill?
I sat in the darkening living room a long time. Then I remembered a conversation with Jill from perhaps twenty years earlier. We had been sitting at a bar together after a hike, drinking something mixed.
“My mother died of cancer,” Jill had said. “Ovarian cancer. I wonder, should I have a hysterectomy?”
I remembered, even twenty years later, the color of the wood in the room, the bar lamp light. I hadn’t looked at her. I knew little of cancer. My grandparents had died of cancer, but they had been old—at least from my perspective then. “I don’t know,” I said.
We spent a long minute looking into our drinks.
“My mother was also mad,” Jill said.
“You mean crazy?” I asked.
Jill’s silence answered my question.
Here I felt on firmer ground. My own companionship with depression and insecurity I knew, even then, came partly from genetic makeup and partly from an upbringing in a family that was less than stable.
I looked at Jill and put my arm around her shoulders. “You’re not crazy,” I said. “You are one of the sanest people I know. We all learn from you.”
Jill leaned into my hug and smiled. We raised our glasses to a toast. “To sanity,” I said.
“Except in love,” Jill replied, and we laughed.
As I began work on the nonprofit, I kept thinking of Jill. I visited her at the hospital. She was her delightful, laughing self. Brave beyond my understanding. I didn’t really know what to do, how I could be of help. Her husband was there. I didn’t know how much to come or stay away, what was intrusive, what was supportive. I saw the pain in her eyes even while she laughed.
In the meantime, I enrolled in a tax class. I planned to learn how to file nonprofit papers with the federal government to get IRS tax-exempt status. It was impossibly complicated. I listened to the teacher go over everything step-by-step, then followed her instructions. She said I could give her completed forms before I sent them in, and she would make comments. Yes. Definitely a good plan.
I then had to ask people to be on a board; this was a legal requirement for incorporation. I asked Pat, an ex-union organizer who was a bus driver on the island, to join the board.
“I’d be honored,” he said, revealing confidence in an idea even I found dubious.
I asked Meps, a business consultant who