Meant for Me
By Brian Conley
Since I had the house pretty much to myself, I decided to take advantage of the quiet time by working on the day’s crossword puzzle in the local newspaper. Armed with a felt-tip pen (to make me think twice about my answers), my glasses, and a Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus, I was ready to do some mental aerobics to keep this old mind of mine in shape. I folded the paper in my lap and eased into my worn reading chair, determined to finish the puzzle in one sitting. I hadn’t been able to do that in years due to life’s daily distractions, but this day I was hopeful. I had just ushered my grandkids Michael and Destiny into the backyard with the implicit instructions to not set foot inside unless there was an emergency.
“An emergency like if the house was on fire?” five year-old Michael asked.
“Well, don’t run in the house if it’s on fire, but yeah, an emergency like that.”
“So, if outside is on fire, then can we come in?” This was Destiny with that loud voice of hers. She’s four and extremely smart, but I sometimes wonder if some of her questions and statements are from a burgeoning smartass. I all but threw them outside before their onslaught of questions would have incapacitated me with a headache.
Michael’s mother, my youngest daughter, Cora, was out with one of her friends – most likely male, less likely Michael’s father.
Destiny’s mother and my oldest, Clara, blessed with the cherub face of a two year-old, perpetually cursed with the mind of one, was the only other person left inside, bedridden for no other reason than suffering from an acute addiction to television and Rice Krispy Treats. She’s always been quiet, sometimes too quiet.
I sat still for about twenty seconds just to be sure the quiet would last, and then I kicked my feet up on the ottoman and began my puzzle.
1 Across – “lot” – seven spaces.
Just as I was putting on my thinking cap, the door to the backyard slid open with enough force to blow the cap off my head. Destiny
walked inside – arms swinging, feet stomping – and parked herself on her favorite seat in the living room, the ottoman my feet were resting
on. Normally she’d slide back between my legs and rest her head on my stomach, but this time she sat on the edge with her back to me, crossing
her little legs and folding her little arms across her chest. If that ain’t the oldest four year-old…
“Was outside on fire?” I was joking, but she may have thought I was trying to get her to go back outside. She responded to neither interpretation.
“Who’s the love of my life?” I asked.
“I am,” she responded, though tentatively.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
I couldn’t tell by the volume of her voice alone if anything was really wrong with her. She always spoke as if the person she’s talking to is standing across the street instead of right in front of her. But the tears streaming down her round cheeks and pooling into her dimples were unmistakable.
“Okay,” I said, pulling her closer to me. “Tell me what happened.”
“Gumpa,” she started, and I couldn’t keep myself from smiling at her name for me, her first word ever spoken, he failed attempt to call me Grandpa that stuck. I found it too endearing to ever correct.
“It’s not funny,” she said, and I immediately straightened up. “Mikey said that I wasn’t supposed to be born. He said that mama was too stupid to have any babies and that if she wasn’t so fat, she woulda kilt me.”
A cold chill went through my body. I was furious, though not entirely with Michael. He was only repeating what I’m sure he’d heard his mother say. I knew the day would come when I’d have to explain that Santa Claus was a figment of someone’s imagination or, more accurately, me; and that life, though definitely worth living, would always be hard. But I didn’t want to tell her this until she was old enough to carry the burden. Four was far too soon, but I couldn’t wait and let her believe Michael’s version of her life story even though everything he’d said was, in a way, true.
* * *
It was in the middle of the day in the middle of September when we got the call from the hospital. The doctor said it was time, so Clara, Cora and I drove to the medical center so that we could say our final goodbyes to their mother, my wife. Since the beginning of that year, Lillian had begun talking to herself, or at least to someone she believed was there. It broke my heart to watch the love of my life disappear right in front of me. By June, she spoke to no one but herself, and by late August her health had taken such a sudden decline that she had to be hospitalized. The doctors found that her kidneys were failing her and, given her age and the weakening condition of her heart, surgery was out of the question. There was nothing the doctors could do but make her remaining days as comfortable as possible.
So on Lillian’s remaining day, the three of us gathered in her room as she stared at the ceiling, patiently waiting to go to God. Cora sat beside the bed, crying for her mother to take her with her as if we were already at her funeral. Clara was squeezed into a chair staring at the off television, eating her Rice Krispy Treats in blissful ignorance. I just stood to the side, having said everything I thought I had to say to her in my daily visits and nightly prayers. I watched my beautiful wife’s breathing, waiting for the rises and falls of her chest to become just a fall.
“Daddy, my stomach hurt,” Clara said through a mouthful of her sticky snack.
“You need to quit eatin’ that garbage, Piggy,” Clara said over her shoulder.
“Hush, Cora. You need to go potty, Clarabelle?” I asked my twenty-four year-old daughter. She only shook her head, and everything resumed as it had. Then Lillian spoke.
“Baby…baby…baby…”
Cora jumped from her seat and I immediately went to my wife’s side. I held her frail hand, urging her to say more.
“What is it, Love? What are you trying to say?”
“Baby…baby…”
“I’m here, Love.”
“OWWW!!!” came from behind me. I turned around and saw Clara bent over in her chair, holding her belly. Cora rushed to her big sister’s side and rubbed her back.
“Something’s wrong with Clara, Daddy. She just peed on herself.”
I wanted to see about my daughter, but I couldn’t – wouldn’t – leave my wife’s side. “Take her outside and see if a doctor can take a look at her,” I told Cora.
Cora helped Clara out of the room and I turned my attention back to Lillian.
“Baby…” she whispered.
“I’m right here. What do you want to tell me?”
For the first time since she’d been in the hospital, she returned the grip I placed on her hand. With her eyes fixed on the ceiling, she said, “Don’t worry, baby. Someone will take care of you.”
Her chest rose.
Her chest fell.
I closed my wife’s eyes and sat with her for what felt like an hour in tears. I cried for my daughters who lost their mother, for my baby grandson who never got to know his grandmother, and for myself, because even though my wife had gone long before she died, her being alive gave me hope. Now she was gone for good. My sadness, however, would be short-lived.
“Daddy!” Cora burst into the room with tears in her eyes. I immediately thought I had lost my Clara, as well, but then I noticed Cora’s tears were streaming over a wide smile. “You won’t believe this!”
I left Cora with her mother so that she could have a moment while I ran as fast as these old legs could go to the floor where Cora said the doctors had rushed Clara. After the nurses on that floor told me what room she was in, I entered and saw something that buckled my knees. Clara, my quiet, slow, sweet-faced daughter, was holding a beautiful baby. I was completely thrown. My expression, which I though was one of excitement mixed with confusion, must have looked to Clara as anger because she began sobbing.
“I ain’t do nothin’, Daddy. I promise I didn’t.”
“Well, sweetheart, you had to have done something. You just had a baby.”
Clara was so afraid that I was upset that she wouldn’t admit to having sex, much less say who the father was. At the time, though, I didn’t care. I picked this little child up in my arms and looked her over, to make sure she was all right and all there. I was amazed. In the nine months of her pregnancy, Clara was never sick, her diet never changed, and she didn’t take the medicine the baby would need to remain healthy inside of her stomach. And because of how big Clara was, no one even knew the baby was in there. Like it was hiding out, as if she knew what her mother might’ve done if it were found. And when this little girl grabbed a hold of my fingers and, from then on, my heart, I knew she was more then all right and all there. I knew she was special.
* * *
“That’s why I named you Destiny,” I told my now dry-faced granddaughter. “I knew that you were meant for me.”
“How, Gumpa?”
“See, before you came along, I was sad for a long time. Grandma was sick, and her illness left me to take care of her, two grown daughters, and a grandson all by myself. Grandma must’ve known that I’d need you to make me smile again. That’s why she used her last breath to let me know that you were coming to take care of me, to make me happy again. And you did.”
“Did I really, Gumpa?” A light returned to her eyes.
“Who’s the love of my life?”
“I am.” She sat up and threw her arms around me. “You’re the love of my life, too, Gumpa.”
My granddaughter left me to go back outside and play, with the knowledge that she was no one’s mistake. I settled back into my chair to continue my crossword puzzle, but I couldn’t yet concentrate. There were some things I chose to omit from the story. She didn’t need to know the truth, that had Clara known she was pregnant, she would’ve done something dangerous to herself to make sure Lillian and I didn’t know about it. I also didn’t tell her what I believe to be the truth about what happened, only because of the burden it may carry. I don’t believe there was a coincidence between the time my wife began speaking to herself and the birth of my granddaughter. I also don’t believe that my wife was ever talking to herself. I like to think that she was comforting her unborn grandchild, keeping her strong and using her last breath to usher her into the world. When my wife told me not to worry and that someone would take care of me, I think she was actually talking to Destiny, assuring her that I would be there to take care of her.
I believe my granddaughter is destined for great things; she has to be, given the way God decided to bring her to this world. I sometimes imagine her being the one to make the AIDS and cancer cures available to the masses. I see her as the first woman President. But whatever she becomes, whatever she’s meant for, I decided my job would be to nurture whatever she decides she wants to do. I don’t want to pressure her. She’s only four. I’ll just continue to take care of her, and let her figure out her own lot in life when she’s ready.
Hold on.
D-E-S-T-I-N-Y
Destiny is the answer. Destiny is the answer.
I wonder if that means anything…