Lessons of a Lowcountry Summer Read online

  “Uptown.” She slipped on a pair of sunglasses to ward off the rays of the bright Manhattan sunlight. “My driver will be here soon.” Seconds later, a sleek black car cruised up to the curb.

  William opened the rear door, smiling at Hope after she slid gracefully onto the leather seat. He nodded, closed the door, and stood motionless, watching the car as it moved into the flow of uptown traffic. There was no need to wish Hope luck with the radio show. She had something more precious than luck.

  She was blessed.

  Hope stared up at the ceiling. She did not think she would ever get used to the degradation she felt during an internal examination. Just lying on her back, heels in the stirrups, legs and knees spread, and someone peering into her with a light was tantamount to helplessness. The sound of the doctor removing his latex gloves signaled the end of her ordeal.

  Dr. Booth stood up. Deep grooves furrowed his lined forehead. “As soon as you are dressed, I’ll see you in my office.”

  Why, Hope thought, did the doctor’s statement sound like a pronouncement of doom? Words he had said to her many times before were delivered in a monotone void of emotion. Sitting up, she ripped off the paper gown and retreated to a small dressing room.

  A sixth sense told her that there was something wrong. Within seconds she recalled the letters from women who had written about being diagnosed with ovarian cancer, delivering a stillborn, miscarriages, mastectomies, and so many other women’s health problems. Most times she had to remind them that medical personnel offered healing; clergy, salvation; and mental health professionals, hope.

  And if there was something wrong with her, who would be there to offer her the hope she would need?

  Hope sat at one of a quartet of bistro tables shaded from the sun by a large black-and-white umbrella and took a sip of herbal tea. Her right hand shook slightly as she lowered the china cup to a matching saucer. “I’ve been diagnosed with endometriosis.”

  Dr. Booth had described the origin, symptoms, and treatment options, while she’d sat numbed by the possibility that she might not be able to bear a child. She’d never imagined that she would not have children.

  Hope’s best friend, Lana Martin, a registered nurse turned professional herbalist, went completely still, her hazel eyes widening. “What has he recommended?”

  “He’s increasing the dosage of my hormone therapy. I have to take the Pill every day for the next four months to stop my period. I’m scheduled for a follow-up visit early October. At that time he’ll assess whether I’ll have to undergo surgery to remove the endometrial lesions. The last alternative is a hysterectomy. His other recommendation was to ‘go home and have a baby.’ ”

  Lana shook her head and smiled, shoulder-length reddish dreadlocks moving around her flawless gold-brown face with the motion. She knew Hope’s doctor wanted to suppress her ovulation for an extended period to curtail endometrial tissue growing around her ovaries, colon, bladder, or fallopian tubes.

  “He’s right, you know. I like his advice for you to go home and have a baby. Damn, Hope, you’re thirty-eight years old. What are you waiting for? A change of life baby?”

  “I’d like to get married first, thank you.”

  “What’s up with you and Kendall?”

  Lana mentioning Kendall’s name reminded Hope that he had proposed marriage twelve hours before. She took another sip of the fragrant rose hip tea, peering at her friend over the rim of the cup. “Last night he asked me to marry him.”

  “Hot diggity damn! Of course you told him yes.”

  Hope stared at a trio of Japanese mimosa trees shading the backyard patio and flower garden of the Harlem brownstone. Lana and her physician husband, Jonathan, had bought the abandoned property five years before. They’d renovated the building, installed an elevator, and used the first floor for Jonathan’s private practice, the street level for Lana’s herbal enterprise, and the second and third floor for their living quarters.

  Sighing, she shook her head. “I didn’t give him an answer one way or the other.”

  “Are you crazy? You’ve dated the same man for three years and you can’t give him a simple yes or no?” Lana rolled her eyes. “You’re no different than the people who write to you about not being able to commit.”

  A flicker of annoyance crossed Hope’s features. “It has nothing to do with my not wanting to commit.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I’ve been offered a position with an Atlanta talk radio station. The station’s program manager is coming to New York to meet with me at the end of the month.”

  Lana’s jaw dropped. “Oh, shit! That does change a lot of things.”

  Hope smiled for the first time since leaving her doctor’s office. “You’ve got that right.”

  “Does it mean you would have to relocate?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you going to do with Kendall? And if you accept the position, when would you leave?”

  “If I decide to accept the offer, and if all goes well with my health, then I’ll move in late fall.” It was easier to answer Lana’s second question than the first. She did not know what was going to happen between her and KC.

  “What about Kendall?”

  Hope glared at Lana. She was as tenacious as a dog with a bone. “I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “I suppose we could marry and he or I can take turns commuting between here and Atlanta for the next year. He still has another year before he can opt out his share of his company’s partnership.”

  “I suggest you marry Kendall, accept the station’s offer, then move into one of those fabulous upscale communities with the rest of the bougie black power couples. In that order, of course.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk. You and your husband are the epitome of bourgeoisification. Not only have your home and practices been profiled in Essence but that layout in Architectural Digest was the cherry on the cake. So, back it up, girlfriend, when you talk about bougie black folks.”

  Lana threw back her head and laughed. Sobering, she said, “I have some herbal options for your condition. I’m going to give you printouts of several recipes. They’re premenstrual and postmenstrual roots and herbs. You’re also going to have to change your lifestyle. That means watching what you eat and drink. Limit the amount of coffee and alcohol you drink. Lighten up on red meat. Lowering your intake of animal protein and animal fat can decrease harmful levels of foreign estrogen in your body.”

  “Is there anything else I can do?”

  “Yes. I always tell women with endometriosis who come in to see me to avoid drinking milk, juice, or bottled water that comes in plastic containers. Look for glass bottles instead.”

  “Why not plastic?”

  “Plastics are considered to be endo-disruptors, and it is suspected that the chemical additives in plastic containers can leach into liquids and foods. You don’t have to concern yourself with tampons or sanitary napkins, which are bleached white with chlorine, because you shouldn’t see your period for the next four months. But, if you do have breakthrough bleeding, then make certain you use unbleached, unscented, nondeodorant cotton pads that are available at many health food stores.”

  “How can I thank you, Lana?”

  Reaching across the table, Lana grasped Hope’s hands. “By marrying Kendall and making me godmother to your children.”

  Sitting in the middle of her bed that night, Hope cradled a cordless telephone under her chin. She sighed audibly. Why couldn’t her sister be happy about KC’s proposal? At thirty-eight and thirty-five respectively, Hope and Marissa were too old for sibling rivalry, but Marissa always bragged about being married before Hope. “Have you forgotten that we’ve been seeing each other exclusively for three years? It’s time we commit to a future together.”

  There was a prolonged silence before Marissa spoke. “You’re right. It is time you married and give Mama a few more grandchildren. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, Little Sis,” Hope said, usi
ng her nickname for Marissa. “Don’t tell Mama or Daddy until I make it official.”

  “I won’t. I don’t mean to change the subject, but remember we’re still planning the cookout for Daddy’s retirement.”

  “Have you set the date?”

  “The Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend.”

  “Good.” She was scheduled to meet with the radio program manager two days before.

  “Are you bringing KC?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll add his name to the list.”

  Hope spoke to her sister for another ten minutes, laughing as Marissa gave her an update on her six-year-old twin sons, who apparently had embarked on a mission to make their mother lose her celebrated temper on a regular basis.

  “Last night I told Trey that as soon as school is out I’m taking the weekends off. I don’t intend to shop for food or do laundry. I’m going to leave the house early Saturday morning, and not come back until Sunday evening. After a few weekends of having to forage for food, clean socks and underwear, they’ll get themselves together.”

  “That sounds wild.”

  “I am wild, Big Sis. Thanks to you, I’ve become a pit bull in a skirt with dreams that go beyond being a wife and a mother. I’ve made up my mind to go back to school and get my degree.”

  At that moment Hope wished she could be with Marissa. Her sister had dropped out of college to become a stay-at-home wife and mother.

  “ ‘Give all to love; obey thy heart.’ ”

  Marissa chuckled softly. “Ralph Waldo Emerson. What I truly like is Maya Angelou’s, ‘All God’s children need traveling shoes.’ ”

  “You still know your poets.” Hope could imagine her sister’s dimpled smile.

  “Know and love them. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve decided to get my butt back in school.”

  “We’ll talk about everything when I come for Daddy’s cookout.”

  That said, Hope rang off and replaced the receiver in its cradle. Sinking down to the mattress, she stared up at the ceiling’s plasterwork design. She had decided to accept Kendall’s proposal, become his wife, complete the recommended four months of hormone therapy, and then hopefully become pregnant.

  Three

  Wine comes in at the mouth and love comes in at the eye.

  —William Butler Yeats

  Hope stood at the steel door, cradling a bouquet of flowers under her left arm. She tightened her grip on the decorative shopping bag containing a card and a bottle of champagne. Searching in the pocket of her slacks, she took out a key and inserted it into the lock, turning it until she heard the tumblers click. The door to the expansive loft opened silently, and she went completely still. The smell of bacon lingered in the air.

  She frowned while moving quietly into the entryway. She had come to Kendall’s apartment a day earlier than his scheduled return from Las Vegas to leave the flowers and champagne as pre-celebratory gifts. Her step was determined as she made her way toward the kitchen. Had Kendall returned and neglected to call her?

  She heard his voice, then another voice over the music coming from a radio in the kitchen. Curious, she took half a dozen steps until she stood several feet beyond the arched entrance to the gourmet kitchen.

  Kendall stood with his back to her at the cooking island…with another man. The tall, slender stranger sported a tank top and a pair of spandex biker shorts that clung to his toned buttocks like a second skin. Kendall was butt naked, the stranger’s arm around his trim waist.

  They shifted, facing each other while sharing a smile. The stranger reached down and fondled Kendall, who groaned and rolled his naked hips against the groping hand. Hope took a step backward, unable to pull her gaze away from the erotic coupling.

  Swallowing back the bile rising up in her throat, Hope turned and practically ran across the living room to the door, the rubber soles of her running shoes making tiny squeaking sounds on the wood floor.

  Somehow she found the strength to close the door quietly, and she left as silently as she had come. Tears blurred her vision the instant she reached the sidewalk. Reaching into her shoulder purse, she took out a pair of sunglasses to cover her tear-filled eyes. She walked slowly, placing one foot in front of the other, along the Esplanade, heading toward the Brooklyn Bridge.

  Hope glanced at an elderly couple, sitting on a bench on the Esplanade and staring into each other’s eyes. Everlasting love, she thought. As she neared them, she handed the flowers to the woman and the bag with the champagne to her companion.

  “Here’s a gift to love.” She did not register their shocked expressions as she quickened her pace.

  She walked until she reached the bridge’s pedestrian roadway, then continued onward, walking past City Hall, Chinatown, Little Italy, and Soho to the West Village. Hot, exhausted and hungry, she stopped at an outdoor café and ordered lunch. She thought it odd that she could think of eating when all she wanted to do was scream at the top of her lungs. Scream and cry until she exorcised the sharp pains in her chest.

  After taking a few bites of food, she pulled the cell phone from her purse and called her car service to take her home.

  Hope arrived home and stripped off her clothes. Leaving them on the floor in the bathroom, she filled the bathtub and retrieved a bottle of wine from the kitchen. She climbed into the tub, sat in the hot water, and put the bottle to her mouth and drank deeply.

  The water had cooled by the time she emptied the bottle. The tears came so quickly that she couldn’t stop them. They streamed down her chest, heaving breasts, and into the water. Using her toes, she pulled the lever to empty the tub and sat staring at the water as it swirled down the drain.

  Time ceased to exist for her. She tried to get out of the bathtub and failed. A wave of dizziness hit her. The sensation was similar to the dizzying pull of the ocean tide she had experienced at the age of ten, the year she’d learned to swim. Her grandmother had warned her about going into the water because of a tropical storm off the coast of South Carolina’s Lowcountry. All of the residents on McKinnon Island had stocked up on supplies, then they’d waited to see if they had to evacuate before the storm hit the islands.

  But she was not a ten-year-old curious girl spending her summer on McKinnon Island, ignoring a direct order not to go swimming, but a thirty-eight-year-old psychologist sitting in a bathtub in a Harlem apartment, too intoxicated to get up without falling.

  Once she’d realized the folly of her self-destructive behavior, she laughed. She refused to think about Kendall, his lover, or her fear that Kendall may have infected her with a sexually transmitted disease.

  An hour later she managed to get out of the tub in a drunken stupor and stumble to her bedroom on wobbly knees. She lay facedown across her bed in a haze as the sun shifted its position in the sky, sinking lower, below the horizon. The soft chiming of the telephone on the bedside table and the sound of callers leaving messages on the answering machine went unheard and unanswered as she slept. Then the sun rose in the sky to signal the beginning of a new day, and still she slept on.

  It was more than twenty-four hours after she had walked into Kendall’s apartment that Hope woke and stared up at the ceiling as if she had never seen it before. Suddenly all of it came rushing back—what she had seen, how she had reacted. She closed her eyes when the designs on the ceiling blurred, then she scrambled off the bed and raced to the bathroom to purge her stomach. She was sick, sicker than she had ever been in her life. The smell of toothpaste caused another bout of dry heaves as she brushed her teeth.

  She felt a bit more in control of her reflexes after she’d showered and dressed. As she made her way slowly to her kitchen, the telephone rang, and she decided to let the answering machine pick up the call. After four rings, a familiar male voice came through the speaker.

  “Hey, baby, I just got back.”

  “Liar!” she screamed at the machine.

  “I miss and love you like crazy. Call me, sweetheart, when you get the chance
.”

  “I don’t think so,” she mumbled under her breath. All she wanted to do was eat something to settle her stomach. No, what she needed was comfort food: grits, biscuits, and soft scrambled eggs. What she actually wanted was grits and fried fish like she used to eat on Sunday mornings on McKinnon Island.

  It was the second time within hours she had thought about McKinnon Island, South Carolina. She had spent her childhood summers there in the small, one-story house that her maternal great-grandfather had built with his own hands. Shaded by tall pines, hickories, gums, and oaks, it was surrounded by thick underbrush and stood less than two hundred feet from the Atlantic Ocean. Her grandmother, who knew Hope loved summering on the island more than her sister and two brothers, had willed the house and property to her. It had been more than three years since she had visited the island even though she had had the house renovated and paid an elderly man to inspect it several times a year to make sure it did not fall into disrepair.

  The house and the island were a part of her family’s history and legacy. Her grandmother’s people had been descendants of former slaves from West Africa, who had populated the Sea Islands. They were known as Gullahs. Grandmomma talked funny, but after spending several summers with her, Hope had come to understand the Gullah she spoke. Her mother understood the dialect but refused to speak it, and she forbade Hope from speaking it, too.

  Hope gathered the ingredients for her breakfast. The aroma of grilling beef sausage patties mingled with the smell of freshly ground coffee beans and baking biscuits. She whisked two eggs until they were a fluffy yellow froth and poured them into a skillet minutes after the golden brown biscuits came out of the oven.

  Carrying her gastronomical feast to the table in a corner of the large eat-in kitchen, Hope savored her meal without a care for the amount of calories it contained. Just once, she wanted to let go—to not care what she ate or where she needed to be.

  Despite her intentions, she ate only two of the half dozen biscuits. Before she had become Dr. Hope, she would’ve eaten all six. Something in her head would not permit her to relapse into eating the copious amounts of food that had once pushed her well above the two-hundred-pound mark. The extra weight had compromised her health, and as she neared middle age, maintaining good health had become her number one priority.