Eternal (4)

As she crossed the median, the other two lanes, and staggered blindly out into the brush, something froze her feet in their tracks. He was waiting for her under the cover of the brush and trees! Just waiting on her to come to him! Her mind whirled. Why didn’t he grab her in the car? Why hadn’t she seen him run after her? How in the hell did he get in the backseat? She’d checked it herself. A crawling sensation flew upward from her toes and suddenly she felt she had more to fear from the darkness than her car. She spun and faced the Super Sport. Her car! It was rolling forward at an angle that would soon lead it down the ditch. Its lights still illuminated the path ahead and the door was still ajar, lighting the interior. 1

Noticing the steep embankment the car was about to plunge down, and now, wanting more than anything, not to be left stranded here alone in the night, Mirra began to run. She reached in and grabbed the wheel while still running along side the car. She wasn’t ready to get into the seat just yet. The backseat was empty once again. She double checked it twice before getting into the drivers seat. She locked the doors and floored it while ripping the rearview mirror off the windshield. The cameo flew onto the floorboard. The speedometer soared, and for the first time in her life Mirra wished for a cop to pull her over. He would be such a welcome sight. The needle was buried against the knob to reset the odometer, and she looked at her tack. It wasn’t even near the red line. She never took her foot off the gas until she saw the artificial illumination of civilization. 2

The Monte Carlo cruised into the truck stop and parked at the gas pumps. As Mirra filled the tank, she noticed the first rays of dawn emerging to combat the darkness of night. Already, the sky was fading to a hazy gray and the horizon was beginning to take on the hue of fire. Mirra took a deep breath and sighed. Relief flooded over her. For some reason, the dawn brought with it a sense of security, a peace that floated over her, a serenity that washed her body in a warm calmness. She was elated and at the same time relieved. She had never been so happy to witness the birth of a new day.3

Mirra strode directly into the brightly lit convenience store / gift shop / diner’s restroom. She had to pee like a Russian racehorse. The bathroom stunk and that sickeningly overpowering scent of restroom floral bouquet only added to the stench. She couldn’t bring her self to actually sit on the toilet, so she just squatted over it. She made herself touch the water faucet long enough to turn it on and washed her hands. She left the water running while she dried them and used the paper towel to turn it off. She also used it to open the door whose knob had never seen a disinfectant, then she threw it in the trash and walked to the counter. Mirra paid for her gas, a cup of cappuccino, and a fresh pack of Marlboro Lights 100’s. She couldn’t believe she’d smoked so many last night. A whole pack usually lasted her three or four days. Mirra got back in her car and aimed it south.4

An hour and a half later, Mirra pulled into JEM’S parking lot and killed the engine. Two other cars resided in the yellow lined invisible garages. When she walked in, the jingle of the bell alerted Jamie to her presence and she looked up over her customer’s shoulder. A face cracking a smile sprang up and she made a miniscule excuse to the old lady as she ran around the corner and grabbed Mirra in a giant squealing bear hug. Mirra hugged her back tightly. “Girl, where’d you come from?” Jamie asked excitedly, “I ain’t seen you in a coon’s age! Hey, why ain’t you in school today? Are you out for Spring Break or something? God, it’s good to see you!”5

Mirra smiled at her best friend and shook her head. “I’m sick today, can’t you tell?” She and Jamie laughed. Then Mirra grew serious. “I need your professional opinion on something… as well as a good old fashioned talk.”6

“Uh-oh, got men troubles again? That Brad’s a …” Jamie’s voice trailed off and she turned embarrassingly back to her customer. “I’ll talk to you in a minute, Ok, Mirra?”7

“Sure,” Mirra agreed as Jamie walked over to the little old lady to make her apologies for her rudeness. The old woman’s hair was that blue-grey that Mirra’s own grandmother had had. She wondered if she also possessed that sweet powdery smell that her grandma had always smelled of. The memory of that scent wafted in her nostrils, and just for a moment, she smelled her grandma again. She closed her eyes, not wanting to lose it, wanting to savor her memories. How she loved that woman. A smile crept on her lips. She remembered Timmy, her imaginary friend who lived in her grandma’s chimney. Her grandma had helped her name him and they’d had such fun times together. Timmy seemed so real. He even made noises in the chimney when he was playing. Her mother told her it was just chimney sweeps, but she and her grandma knew it was Timmy. Her grandma Loree was the best. They would sit around and put together all her toys that had “some assembly required”, and when all else failed, they would sit together on the floor and her grandma would read the “destructions”. When Mirra was first learning to walk, and would fall down, she’d call for her grandma to pick her up, and her grandma would always say, “I can’t reach you. Come over here and I’ll help you.” So little Mirra would get up, walk over in front of her grandma’s chair, fall down, and stick up her arms for her grandma to help her up.8

Mirra looked at the woman in front of her. No, she wasn’t like her grandma at all. She was too tall; the lines on her face too hard, her face as a whole was too hard. Her grandma had been so soft and so kind, so loving. 9

The way she died was awful. It broke Mirra’s heart. Mirra remembered the first time she realized something was wrong, that her mother hadn’t been lying to her. Her mother told her Loree was sick, but Mirra wouldn’t believe it. Loree was her grandma and her grandparents were invincible. Even if Loree wasn’t her biological grandma, she had been the only grandma she could remember. Loree and her Papa Bill had married just after Mirra’s birth and she was the only grandma she had ever known. Her mother told her Papa was afraid to leave her in the house alone because she might hurt herself or try to cook something and burn the house down or something. So Mirra had stayed inside with Loree while her Mama and Papa went to work in the garden. Dusk was falling, and Mirra at age ten was getting bored. “Loree, you want to paint our fingernails?” she asked. 10

“Sure honey, let’s go get the nail polish,” Loree smiled. They got up off the couch and walked down the hall into her grandparent’s bedroom. The bed was neatly made, as always, with a softly worn handmade quilt for a bedspread. The dresser was directly on the right against the wall. Loree opened a drawer and got out her makeup box. Mirra began to rummage through it to find the right color. She hadn’t noticed her grandmother had taken a step back behind her. Suddenly, her grandma screamed, but it was the kind of scream that terror locks in your throat, only allowing a whisper to emerge. Mirra whirled. A wild terrified look was shooting out of her grandmother’s eyes. “Daddy’s comin’! He’ll whip us! He’ll whip us!” 11

Mirra’s eyes strained to see down the shadowed hall that her grandmother was pointing down. She really expected to see her grandmother’s father storming down the hall with a strap in his hand. Loree was going into hysterics and Mirra was suddenly freezing and shivering and utterly terrified. The man she imagined appeared for an instant, marching down the hall swinging a leather strap. He was the man in an old military suit from a picture kept on the kitchen windowsill. He was menacing. Loree was crying. This snapped Mirra back. Seeing her grandma who she loved so much in a state like this was beyond describing. Suddenly, the roles had changed, and Mirra became the adult, soothing her grandma who thought she was a little child going to be spanked for playing in the make-up. 12

“We won’t paint our fingernails, Loree,” she promised, begging. “We won’t play in the make-up. No one’s coming. It’s OK. It’s alright. We’ll go back in the living room. It’s alright.” Mirra held her grandmother tightly around the waist, as much for her as for her grandmother’s comfort, and they walked slowly back down the shadowed hallway. Mirra still expected to see the dead man in the picture step out in front of them, swinging the leather strap, but he didn’t. 13

That was the beginning of the end. The disease that was eroding her grandmother’s brain was slow, relentless, and merciless. It was because of her grandparents that Mirra decided to become a doctor. She wanted to find a cure for Alzheimer’s and keep other people from hurting and dying undignified like she did.14

At her grandmother’s funeral, Mirra and her Papa were the only two people who didn’t cry. They knew she was better off. There would be no more pain. Loree had always gone to church and she believed deeply in God, so Mirra knew she was where she wanted to be. The only time during the service Mirra almost cried was when she looked at her Papa. He looked so old. Mirra didn’t think she could handle it if he died. He meant the world to her. She took his hand and squeezed it. Yes, Loree was better off now. The disease had eaten her mind first, then her body. Before she died, rigor mortis had already set in, or so it appeared to Mirra. Her body, which couldn’t have weighed seventy pounds sopping wet, had curled into the fetal position and her hands had long since curled into fists so strong that Mirra couldn’t open them. Her fingernails grew into the palms of her hands and dried blood caked there.15

Loree’s son by her first marriage wanted her in a nursing home near him, but her Papa didn’t want to put his wife in there. He was the type of man that married for better or worse, no matter how bad it got. His first wife had died of kidney failure long before Mirra was born, and he had stuck by her until the end. He took care of Loree by himself as long as he could and then sold everything he had to pay for help when it got so bad he had to have it. 16

Loree’s son came one weekend to pick her up to stay the weekend with him. She never came back home. He put her in the nursing home five minutes from his house in Texas. Mirra had been fifteen then. She had driven her grandfather the two hours every Sunday down there to visit Loree. For a while, Loree could recognize them, but after a while, she didn’t know them anymore. She forgot how to talk, but Mirra and her Papa talked to her anyway. She forgot how to walk, so Mirra pushed her wheelchair. She forgot how to eat, so Mirra fed her. Her Papa would have, but his arthritis was so bad, and his hands shook so much that he spilled more than he got in her mouth. Loree forgot how to swallow, so the old folk’s home stuck IV’s in her and squirted food down her throat with a syringe. 17

Even when there was nothing recognizable of Loree anymore except the sallow skin that covered her fragile bones, in the shell of a body that had once been beautiful and healthy, Mirra and her Papa Bill still drove every Sunday to see her. Mirra’s grandfather would regret until the day he died that he hadn’t taken her out of there. 18

The ironic thing was that her son wanted her there to be close to him and he went to see her maybe twenty times in the three years she laid there waiting to die. Loree’s three biological grandchildren were worse. They also lived a few minutes away. All together, they came a total of five times. One of them never came to visit at all. Guess who was howling and crying the loudest at the funeral? Those hypocrites. Only Mirra and her Papa didn’t cry. They’d already done their crying, sitting with her, watching her die slowly. She was better off.19

“Mirra? Mirra?” Jamie’s voice snapped her back to reality, “Mirra, Earth to Mirra. You OK?” The store was empty. The old lady had gone and only Mirra and Jamie remained.20

“Yeah, I’m fine.”21

“You don’t look it,” Jamie observed. “Tell me what’s wrong.”22