A Kind of Grace (14 page)

I have no idea what Della said after that. All I kept hearing in my ears were the words, internal bleeding, internal bleeding, internal bleeding.

That condition was usually fatal. Ironically, it was Momma who'd told me so. She was terrified of it. When I was in high school, she never let me go to track or basketball practice after having a tooth extracted because she worried that if I started running, internal bleeding might set in. She would come home from work and tell me about patients who started bleeding internally and then died. Now the condition had claimed
her.

Della put my mother's best friend, Joyce, on the phone. Joyce was head nurse in one of the surgical units at St. Mary's Hospital. Momma was a nurse's assistant in the same section on the fourth floor.

I asked her how Momma died. She explained that Momma wasn't quite dead.
Huh … what?
She was on life support, Joyce said—a respirator.

Joyce's voice was sad, but calm. “We're going to get you home right away. Don't worry about the money. Just make a reservation and call me back with the flight information and I'll pay for the ticket.”

I thanked her and hung up. My roommate had heard enough to figure out something was tragically wrong. She walked across the room and put her arm around me. As I cried, I clutched Momma's picture to my chest.

The plane ride was pure torture. It seemed to take forever to get to St. Louis. I couldn't eat or drink anything. Awful thoughts and questions tumbled around inside my head as I stared out the window and wiped away the tears. After hearing my mother was dead, and then being jolted with the information she was still technically alive, I didn't know what to think. Was there any hope of her regaining consciousness? Part of me knew I'd never speak to my mother again. But another part, the little girl who now felt all alone in the world, prayed desperately for it.

Named after Jacqueline Kennedy, I was the first baby girl of the Joyner family. But my grandmother had grander aspirations for me, predicting that someday I would be “the first lady of something.”
COURTESY OF DELLA GRAY

Initially, my parents didn't want me to play basketball because they considered it unfeminine. They changed their minds when they realized how much I enjoyed it and everyone told them how good I was.
PHOTO BY JAMES A. FINELY/FROM THE AUTHOR'S COLLECTION

My mother, Mary, gave birth to me when she was only eighteen. That's the age I was when this photo of us was taken at a reception honoring me and my Lincoln High teammates for winning the 1980 girls' state basketball championship. People often said she and I looked like sisters.
FROM THE AUTHOR'S COLLECTION

I started leaping off my front porch for fun when I was in grammar school. But when I broke the state girls' long jump record in high school, I realized athletics could take me much further than my front porch.
PHOTO BY JAMES A. FINLEY/FROM THE AUTHOR'S COLLECTION

My father, Alfred (standing, third from the left), was always concerned about my safety. But he knew I was in good hands with my high school track coach, Nino Fennoy (standing, second from the left), who turned me into an athlete and stoked my ambitions. Standing beside Mr. Fennoy and my father on the left, at one of our track meets, is assistant coach Charles McDonald. My basketball coach, Ernest Riggins, stands on the right. Seated below them on the left is coach Theodora Ash Smith.
PHOTO BY JAMES A FINLEY/FROM THE AUTHOR'S COLLECTION

My mother did exercises every night to maintain her hourglass figure and was always the picture of health. But she died suddenly during my freshman year in college. When I got the news, I clutched the frame holding this photograph of her as I cried in my dorm room.
FROM THE AUTHOR'S COLLECTION

In addition to refining my basketball skills, UCLA women's basketball coach Billie Moore (pointing) gave me plenty of emotional support after my mother's death.
COURTESY OF THE UCLA ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT

My brother, Al, has always loved the spotlight. When he won the gold medal in the triple jump and I won the silver in the heptathlon at the 1984 Olympics, he basked in the attention.
PHOTO BY JAMES A. FINLEY/FROM THE AUTHOR'S COLLECTION

Over time, Bobby Kersee became my confidant as well as my coach. During a trip to Japan for a track meet in 1982, as a joke I told a woman who was flirting with him that Bobby was my husband. Four years later, it was no joke.
DUOMO PHOTOGRAPHY/FROM THE AUTHOR'S COLLECTION