The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat

Chapter 11





Six weeks after Big Earl’s funeral, my summer break ended and I returned to my job. I was food services manager at James Whitcomb

Riley Elementary School, which was a fancy way of saying “head lunch lady.” Normally, I enjoyed getting back to work and

starting the new school year. But that fall was a tough one.

James was still adjusting to life without Big Earl being there for him. I often caught him reaching for the phone, only to set it

back down again as a brief shadow of pain traveled across his face. Whenever that happened, I knew who he’d been thinking of

calling. I’d done the same thing for months after losing Mama so suddenly. James’s mother had died relatively young, but she had

wasted away for years and James had learned to live without her long before she passed. Losing a parent, and that’s what Big Earl

had been to James, in the blink of an eye was a new kind of loss for James and it was going to take him some time to work it

through.

Barbara Jean was bad off, too. She tried to put up a good front. She wasn’t hysterical or even teary-eyed, and she looked as

perfectly put together as ever. But it was easy to see that Lester and Big Earl passing right up on top of each other like they’d

done had laid her low. She was living deep in her own thoughts and pulling herself further away from Clarice and me every day.

Clarice had her hands full with Richmond. He was back to his cheating ways with a vengeance. It was like the old days. Richmond

catted around, not caring who knew. People barely acquainted with him and Clarice openly gossiped about it. Clarice pretended not

to notice, but she burned so hot with anger at him some days that I hoped, for both of their sakes, that Richmond was sleeping

with one eye open.

And me. After slacking off for a while, my hot flashes were back big time. More nights than not, the early hours of the day found

me cooling myself in the kitchen and shooting the breeze with Mama, instead of sleeping. I loved Mama’s company, but the lack of

sleep was taking a toll on me. I felt run-down and I looked, as my mother bluntly put it, “like shit on a cracker.”

By the middle of October, I’d had my fill of feeling bad, so I went to my doctor and rattled off a long list of symptoms. I told

him about my hot flashes and my fatigue. I complained that I was getting forgetful and, James claimed, irritable. I wasn’t

willing to tell him the main reason I had decided to see him. I had no desire whatsoever to explain to my doctor that I’d made my

appointment because former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt had been showing an awful lot of interest in me lately. I remembered, all

too well, how she’d orbited around Lester right before he electrocuted himself, and it had me feeling antsy.

At first Mrs. Roosevelt had only visited me along with Mama, but then she started turning up by herself. Some mornings I would

walk into my cramped office off of the cafeteria at Riley Elementary and there she’d be, asleep in one of the rusty metal folding

chairs or stretched out on the floor. Occasionally she’d pop up out of nowhere and lean over my shoulder as I did the food orders

over the phone. I made up my mind to see the doctor after Mrs. Roosevelt greeted me every morning for a solid week, grinning wide

and offering me a swig from her flask. (Mama had been right about Mrs. Roosevelt and the drinking. That woman was at her flask

morning, noon, and night.)

Mrs. Roosevelt and Mama sat in the corner of the examining room during my checkup and during the tests that came afterwards. They

came with me again a week after that first appointment and listened in as my doctor, Dr. Alex Soo, told me that I had non-Hodgkin

’s lymphoma.

Alex was my friend. He was a chubby Korean man, about a year younger than my son Jimmy. When he took over my old doctor’s

practice several years back, I had been his very first patient.

Alex came to town just after my Denise left the house, and as soon as I laid eyes on Alex’s round, smooth face I decided to

mother the hell out of him, whether he wanted it or not. When I found out that he lived alone and had no relatives nearby, I

badgered him into spending the holidays with me and my family. It was an annual tradition now. Sometimes, if Alex wasn’t careful,

he’d slip and call me “Ma.”

Now this kind young man sat twisting his fingers behind a mahogany desk that seemed too large for him. He worked hard at not

looking me in the eye while he rattled off the details of what was happening within my body and what needed to be done to stop it.

The next step, he said, was to get a second opinion. He’d already made an appointment for me with an oncologist at University

Hospital who was “one of the most highly regarded in his field.” He used terms like “five-year survival rate” and “well-

tolerated chemotherapy cycles.” I felt sorry for him. He was trying so hard to remain calm that his voice came out robotic and

full of bottled-up emotion at the same time, like a bad actor playing a soap opera doctor.

After he got done with his speech, he let out a long sigh of relief. The corners of his mouth curled up slightly, like he was

proud of himself for making it over a big hurdle. When he was able to look at me again, he started in offering his most optimistic

prognosis. He said, “Your general level of health is very good. And we know a lot about this kind of cancer.” He went on to say

that I might be lucky. I might be one of those rare people who sailed on through chemotherapy with hardly any side effects.

His words were meant to comfort me, and I appreciated it. But part of my mind had already left the office. In my head, I was

telling my anguished kids not to worry about me. They were adults now and scattered all over the country, but still in need of

parenting. Denise was a young mother, still filled with fear and worry over each stage of her children’s development that defied

the books she had believed would bring order to motherhood. Jimmy and his wife were both hell-bent on getting ahead and would work

themselves to death if I didn’t nag them into taking an occasional vacation. And Eric, he was as quiet as his father, and no one

but me, who had listened over the phone as he cried his heart out over lost love more than once, knew that he felt everything

twice as deep as his brother or sister.

From the moment I told the Supremes I was sick, Clarice would try to take over my life. First she’d want to take charge of my

medical treatment. Then she’d get on my very last nerve by trying to drag me to her church for anointings and such. And Barbara

Jean would just get all quiet and accept that I was as good as dead. Seeing her grieving for me ahead of time would bring back

memories of all she’s lost in her life, and it would depress the hell out of me.

My brother, in spite of being raised by our mother, had grown up and become a man who believed that women were helpless victims of

our emotions and hormones. When he found out I was sick, he would talk to me like I was a child and pester me just like he used to

when we were children.

And James. I thought of the look I used to see on James’s face in that horrible, gray-yellow emergency room light whenever one of

the kids suffered some childhood injury. The smallest pain for them meant despair for him. Whenever I came down with a cold or

flu, he was at my side with a thermometer, medicine, and an expression of agony on his face for the duration. It was like he’d

pooled up all the love and caring his father had denied him and his mother and was determined to shower it onto me and our

children ten times over.

I made up my mind right then that I’d keep this whole thing to myself for as long as I could. There was still an outside chance

that it was all a false alarm, wasn’t there? And, if this chemo was indeed “well-tolerated,” I might be able to tell everyone

about it at my leisure. If I was lucky, in five or six months I could turn to James and my friends one Sunday at the All-You-Can-

Eat and say, “Hey, did I ever tell you all about the time I had cancer?”

When I didn’t say anything for a while. Alex spoke faster. believing he had to provide me with some sort of consolation. But I

wasn’t the one who needed to be consoled. Behind him on the windowsill of his office, Mama sat with both of her hands pressed to

her face. She was crying like I had never seen before.

Mama muttered, “No, no, this can’t be right. It’s too soon.”

Mrs. Roosevelt, who had been lying on the sofa against the wall of Alex’s office, rose and walked over to Mama. She patted Mama

on the back and whispered in her ear, but whatever she said didn’t do the trick. Mama continued to cry. She was crying so loud

now that I could barely hear the doctor.

Finally, forgetting my vow not to talk to the dead in the presence of the living, I said, “It’s all right. Really, it’s all

right. There’s nothing to cry about.”

Alex stopped talking and stared at me for a moment, assuming I was talking to him. He apparently took my words as permission for

him to let go because within seconds he was out of his chair and crouching in front of me. He buried his face in my lap, and I

soon felt his tears soak through my skirt. He said, “I’m so sorry, Ma.” Then he apologized for not being more professional as

he blew his nose into a tissue I pulled from the box on the corner of his desk and handed to him.

I rubbed his back, pleased to be comforting him instead of him comforting me. I bent forward and whispered, “Shh, shh, don’t

cry,” into Alex’s ear. But I said it staring ahead at my mother as she sobbed into Eleanor Roosevelt’s fox stole. “I’m not

afraid. Can’t be, remember? I was born in a sycamore tree.”