Love Me If You Must

44

I beat the chisel into the cement with heavy blows of the hammer. A sledge would have made the job easier, but with no car and no time to lose, my mini-version would have to suffice.

Pea-sized chunks of concrete flew toward my face. I blinked and kept pounding.

I was back. Back in Walled Lake. I scrubbed last night’s supper off a fry pan and looked out the window at white sails bobbing on the water.

The heat of late July left the grass brown and withered. Still Grandma lived on. And so did I. The scholarship money would dry up in another month, and I faced spending eternity at the Foodliner.

“Tish.” Grandma called to me from the bedroom. Her voice sounded weaker lately. “Help me, Tish.”

I turned off the faucet and dried my hands.

“Coming, Gram,” I said. It was almost time for medications, anyway.

In the bedroom, I bent and kissed her forehead. She’d wasted away until she made barely a lump under the blankets.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

Her skin had washed out to a pale gray. “Terrible. I just want to die.”

“I know, Gram. It’s hard.”

“Tishy, give me some more of those pills.” She pointed a crooked finger toward her painkillers on the nightstand.

I put the bottle behind the tissue box. “No, Gram, it says two in the morning and two at night.” The dose had increased with the pain.

“I know, sweetie, but I hurt bad today.”

I rubbed her arm. “I know, Gram. You’ll be alright.”

“No, Tishy. I don’t have much longer. I don’t want to feel this way. Just give me one more.”

My fingers twitched. What could one more hurt? I hated to see her like this. I wished she could just slip away in her sleep instead of suffering on and on.

“Okay. One more. Just this once.” I took out a pill and set it on her tongue. I held a glass of water to her lips and she swallowed the painkiller down.

“You’re a good girl, Tisher. Just like your mama.”

Wow. The nicest thing Grandmother had ever said to me.

“Thanks, Gram.” I fluffed the pillows and smoothed her blanket, sorry that she felt cold even in this heat. Then I went back to my dishes, praying she’d die that night.

The hammer slipped and I hit the back of my thumb.

“Ow.” My voice shattered the stillness of the basement. I looked at my hand. A black blister formed under the skin. I sucked on it, waiting for the sting to go away.

After a minute, I grabbed my hammer and chisel and went back to work, picking away at a crack along the surface.

“Tish,” Grandma called to me from the bedroom. “Help me, Tish.”

“Coming, Gram.” I grabbed the pile of whites from the floor and loaded it in the wash machine. I wiped the stifling humidity of late August from my brow. Five days left before classes started. I hadn’t enrolled again this year. It was goodbye scholarships. Goodbye college degree. Hello life of menial labor.

I dumped in the laundry soap and turned the dial to start the cycle. I didn’t want to go help Gram. I just wanted her to die.

“Tish,” Gram called again.

I went into the bedroom. I fluffed her pillows without a word.

“I’m dying, Tish.”

“I know, Gram.” I swallowed a lump.

“I hurt, Tishy. I want to go home. Give me the rest of those pills.”

I picked up the bottle of painkillers and clenched it in my fist. “You already took your pills this morning, Gram.”

“Be a good girl, Tish. Open the bottle and give it to me.”

“Gram.” My voice came in a whisper.

“Tishy. I’ve lived too long. I hurt too much. Prove you love me and open the bottle.” Her hand shook as she reached toward the pills. Her arm dropped exhausted across her chest.

A tear slid down my cheek. Gram had always been a strong woman. She’d handled everything life threw her way. It killed me to see her lying here so frail, so afraid.

I rolled the prescription bottle between my palms. The pills made a tiny clickity-click inside.

She lifted her head an inch off the pillow. “Open it and help me take the rest.” She fell back, gasping for breath.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Grandma would be out of pain. I could go back to college. All I had to do was open the bottle of pills.

“Your mother would have helped me,” she said.

I stared at her. Gram’s eyes had lost their shine. Her skin was gray and loose. Her once coiffed hair hung in strings around her face. She couldn’t walk, she couldn’t use the bathroom by herself, and she couldn’t eat without help. She couldn’t feel anything but pain.

My mother was a good daughter. She would have been crushed to see Gram this way.

Mom would have twisted the cap and handed Grandma the bottle.

“Tish, don’t leave me like this,” she pleaded.

The cap turned beneath the pressure of my palm. “Here, Gram.”

I set the open bottle in her loose grip.

She fumbled for the drugs. “Put a couple on my tongue, Tishy. Help me.”

My fingers longed to obey. “Gram. Don’t ask me to do that.”

A pill fell out of the bottle and onto her chest. She scratched at her cotton gown with a nail until she could grip the pill between two fingers. She struggled to lift her hand. She set the pill on her tongue.

“Nnnn.” Grandma pointed to her water glass.

I hesitated. One extra pill wouldn’t hurt. I helped hold up her head. She took a sip.

She groped in the bottle for more pills.

“Stop, Gram. One’s enough.”

“Your mother wouldn’t make me work like this. She’d help me.” She shook out three pills at once and managed to get them into her mouth.

My heart wrenched.

Her finger angled toward the water glass. “Nnnn.”

I helped her take a drink. A line of water drizzled down the side of her mouth. I wiped it with a corner of the sheet.

“I’m tired, Tish. Help me with the rest.”

“Grandma.” Tears poured down my cheeks.

“Think of yourself now. Go back to school. Get married. Have children.” Her eyes watered. “Help me finish it.”

My vision became hazy. The prescription bottle in my hand was all I saw.

I tapped out two tablets and set them on my grandmother’s tongue. I held the water glass to her lips as she swallowed the pills down.

A peaceful look came over her face.

I felt a flash of relief, followed immediately by dread.

What had I done?

A minute passed. Grandma’s look of serenity was replaced by one of agony. Her body thrashed as she gasped for air.

“Grandma!” I shook her, screaming her name over and over.

What had I done?

White foam dribbled out the side of her mouth. “Gram. Don’t die, Gram. I’ll get help.”

I ran to the phone on the kitchen wall. I punched in 9-1-1.

The operator answered.

“Hurry. My grandmother is dying. She took the whole bottle of pills.” My stomach heaved as I listened to Grandma wretch in the next room. “Please hurry. I wanted to stop her. Oh, Lord, I gave them to her. I helped her. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” I sobbed into the phone.

The operator said something about staying on the line.

I peeked around the doorframe and watched Grandma. Her legs quivered and her head lolled from side to side.

I covered my mouth in horror. “Grandma, don’t die,” I whispered. “Please don’t die.”

The paramedics arrived and hovered around her for ten minutes or so. I heard the words “massive cardiac arrest.”

They moved her to a stretcher. One man looked up at me from his place at Grandma’s side. He shook his head, then pulled the sheet over Gram’s face.

A sound like a wounded animal formed in my throat and filled the house as the medics carried her body past me and out to a waiting ambulance.

I crouched, sobbing, on the hard concrete of the cistern. I shook my head back and forth and pounded a fist on the ground. “No. No.”

But nothing could change what I’d done. I’d thought I was saving my life, getting out from under a burden. But all I’d done was put my life on hold while I paid the price for my impatience. I recalled the looks of disgust on the faces of the jurors as the prosecution played a segment of the 9-1-1 tape again and again. And no matter how many times and ways my attorney asked the question, I couldn’t deny that I’d set pills on her tongue and held the water glass to her lips.

Yes. I’d killed my grandmother.

The flashlight dimmed. I looked up at the adjacent window. Night had fallen while I’d been digging up the past. The walls of the cistern were barely visible in the fading light.

I squinted at the job in front of me. I’d made a hole in one section about half a cantaloupe in size.

I picked up my hammer and started chiseling at a loose piece.

It was December by the time everything had been decided. Four months of attorneys and questions and courts. Then came the word that felt like a defibrillator against my chest. “Guilty.”

Demonstrators marched outside the courthouse on the day of my sentencing. Posters on long sticks bobbed among the protesters as the cops led me up the marble steps. “Life for a Life,” screamed the death penalty proponents. “Grandma-Killer,” accused the right-to-lifers.

Maybe they’d been right. Maybe my life was worthless. What had it mattered that the judge had said, “Three years,” and slammed down his gavel? I’d given myself a life sentence anyway.

Streaks of dirty white striped my dust-covered fists where tears had fallen. Bloodstained hands. I’d always be guilty of murder. Nothing could make it go away.

Would I ever have the courage to do what Dorothy had suggested? “Get it right with God. Then get on with life,” she’d said.

Brad went to church. I could ask him how to get it right with God. Because more than anything, I wanted to get on with my life.

I wanted to live for my grandmother’s sake, because she couldn’t anymore. Live for my mother’s sake, because she missed so much of life herself. And live for my own sake, because even if the dead couldn’t be brought back to life, I had to believe that the living could.

I gave the hammer a powerful swing. The head crashed against the chisel and tore up a chunk of concrete the size of a potato.

I moved the piece aside. A faint odor of rotten eggs and old tuna fish wafted from the hole I’d made. I jumped away from the smell, knowing in my gut what it must mean. I crawled for the flashlight, skirting the crevice. I shone the weak beam into the gap. Bile rose in my throat at the sight of raw, white knuckle bones protruding from the hole. Remains of flesh covered the far ends of three visible fingers. And on the third was a ring with a large center diamond surrounded by mini stones.

“Rebecca,” I whispered. An electric charge rushed through my body at the sound of her name.