CHAPTER 1Monique
Monique Moore pressed her knuckles into her right hip and checked the clockagain, watching for the end of this doctor-recommended class that billed itself as a support group. Adjusting her weight in the hard plastic chair couldn’t ease the dull ache radiating from her lower abdomen, a phantom reminder of what was no longer there.
At forty-seven, she knew better than to watch the clock. The past couple of years had proven that time was not her friend and apparently did whatever the hell it wanted in this room.
“So, who wants to start this week’s reinforcements?” Dr. Tedrow began, his too-young-looking face open and eager as he sought a volunteer. “The new year is upon us.” He went on about choices and emotions, and about how resolutions were manufactured pressure. Monique focused on the clock’s second hand. It refused to budge.
“Mo.”Damn.
“You’ve been quiet this week. How will youThrive with Canceras you ring in the new year?”
She kept her eyes on her workbook and the blank spaces that screamed with judgment. All negative space. Nothing would come into focus.
Monique clapped the book shut and looked up. Ten sets of eyes fell on her like an anvil. Attending this group each week was supposed to be her “trying.” Trying for her kids. Trying for her mom. Trying something different.
She hadn’t resigned herself to her mother’s fate, but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t afraid. The doctors had been diligent. Cancer came anyway.
Thriving with Cancer. Pfft.
She’d seen too many Black, brown, and poor women in her community—in her family—navigate these dark and treacherous waters and never emerge on the other side after their concerns were called stress and they’d been sent home to “rest.”
But Jasmine and Justin deserved more than a Doomsday Clock for a mother.
She promised she’d try. That’s why she joined this group.
“Well… my cousin is getting married New Year’s weekend.” Romantic sighs rippled around her. “So I’m going to the wedding.”
“That’s fantastic. There’s nothing like a wedding to inspire hope for the future,” Dr. Tedrow said. “I know you don’t have much family here. Are you traveling?”
Tommie Lane was her slightly older cousin on her father’s side and did nothing small, ordinary, or in half measures. That’s why she would arrive in Puerto Rico tomorrow at the ass-crack of dawn. “It’s their second marriage, so they’re having a destination wedding.”
“How fun,” Chickie said beside her, her veins blue-green beneath tissue-paper skin as her cheeks pulled up into a smile. “You’ll be so gorgeous all dressed up.” She reached out and placed a prematurely aged hand on Monique’s.
Chickie was admirable—twenty-eight and always talking inwhens, neverifs. Her hospice nurse, though, sat behind her like a shadow. Quiet. Sentinel. Ready.
Monique softly squeezed Chickie’s hand, and her chest constricted at the unfairness of it all. Everyone in this room was fighting the same enemy. But some battles were winding down. She tried to shake off the dark thought.
God, why am I so morbid?
No. She wasn’t morbid. She was real. And real took up a lot of space in rooms like this. Sharing one evening a week with people on timelines that were anything but flexible, yet were expected tothrive, put her life in a whole ’nother frame. This wasn’t a misshapen mole to be excised and forgotten. Monique’s insides had been ripped out.
Her body still remembered…
She’d been diagnosed at forty-four with Stage 3 cervical cancer—a beast that required an aggressive response. A full hysterectomy, the doctors had said, was “the best chance to get it all.” And Monique allowed herself to believe she was on the winning side of that fight. Then a new pain nagged, and scans confirmed what she never wanted to say out loud. Relapse. After that, a scorched earth campaign. More infusions, more radiation, more drugs that stole her color—her flavor—and made her world small and gray. The mass shrank, and so did she, until her kids were holding the house up around her and reminding her to rest and eat.
“Where’s the wedding?” Eleanor rasped, tugging at the silk scarf she wore that made her look like a golden-age Hollywood movie star. The scarf wasn’t vanity. It covered the creped and discolored skin along Eleanor’s left jaw and neck where throat cancer had scrawled its autograph.
The wedding. Right. Monique blinked and refocused. “Puerto Rico. A resort in Old San Juan.”
More oohs and sighs wafted over her, blending with murmurs of remembrances of lives that felt so far away.
“We went to Puerto Rico a while back,” Chickie said as her nurse nodded along with a mournful smile. “Before the cystic fibrosis got worse.” Chickie shrugged as if staring down death on the regular was no big deal. “We were all over the island. But my favorite was hiking in the mountains.” A wistful sort of expression made Chickie look like the young woman that she was. “There was a nature preserve with more birds than I’d ever seen in my life.”
An ember of interest pulsed at the mention of a nature preserve. If she could spend her time away from the family, just her and her camera, then maybe this trip would be enjoyable.
“Hiking? How did you manage that?” asked Eleanor. She coughed, a nerve-rattling vibrato. Monique winced and nudged Eleanor’s water closer.
“A group from our synagogue went. I don’t remember how it all came together—” Chickie sucked in a long, wheezing breath, the oxygen tubes as much a part of her body as the nose on her face. “I was only in like seventh grade. My brother came home from college to go with us. He and Dad took turns carrying me when I got tired, and Mom carried everything else.” Her words rattled in her chest like dice. “One of the other parents who chaperoned was on my medical team.” Her breathing calmed as she shrugged again. “After that, I was in the hospital for six months.”