Waiting to Exhale (32 page)

Onika nodded her head yes. "Now I'm cold, Mama."

"Just a minute," she said. Bernadine ran back into the house, snatched a dirty bath towel from the laundry room, and wrapped it around Onika. "Is that better?"

Onika nodded yes, then leaned her head against the glass. Bernadine locked all four doors and backed out of the driveway so fast she ran over the trash can. She left the trash lying there. About six blocks from the house, she saw the ambulance. She laid on the horn. They made a U-turn, and an attendant got out and ran over to the car. Bernadine told them who she was. They lifted Onika out of the Cherokee, put her in the back of the ambulance, turned their siren on, and headed down the hill. Bernadine followed them. She didn't have any idea what could be wrong with Onika. She lit a cigarette. When Janet Jackson came on the radio, singing "What Have You Done for Me Lately," Bernadine switched it off and said, "Nothing, bitch!"

By the time they got to the hospital emergency entrance, Bernadine was a nervous wreck. She jumped out of the Cherokee before the attendant could get his door open. "Is she going to be all right?" she asked. "What's wrong with my baby?"

"It's okay, ma'am. It's just an ear infection. She'll be okay. We're going to try to get her temperature down. It's up to 104. If you'd like to go on into admissions and sign her in, we'll let you know how she is in a few minutes. Don't worry."

Bernadine answered a trillion questions and signed every piece of paper they handed her. She wanted a cigarette bad, but of course she couldn't smoke in here. She waited fifteen minutes, then went outside and smoked one-along with several of the nurses. She came back in and sat down. Another fifteen minutes went by. She went out and smoked another cigarette. Finally, a nurse came outside, told her that Onika was doing fine and Bernadine could see her now. She put her cigarette out and walked briskly down the corridor, into the emergency room. Onika was lying on a white stretcher. She looked much better than she had earlier. "How you feeling, baby?" Bernadine asked, as she bent down and simultaneously squeezed Onika's hand, stroked her head, and kissed her cheek.

"Good," she said. "Mama, I want to go home now."

A doctor walked up next to Bernadine. "We're glad you called us when you did. Ear infections can be quite serious. People just don't realize it. Once a child's temperature gets up to 105, they can go into convulsions, and it could cause irreparable brain damage."

Bernadine stood up. "But I don't understand how or when this could've happened. When I took her to school this morning, she was fine. Then the nurse called and said she had a temperature of 103.

When I brought her home, it was 99. I checked her forehead every fifteen minutes and took her temperature every half hour. It was steady at 99. The next thing I knew, she was standing in front of me, quivering, like she was freezing."

"They can surface in a matter of minutes. But it looks like we've got it under control now. Tell her what we gave you," he said to Onika.

"A Popsicle."

"A Popsicle?" Bernadine said.

"That's it. Is she allergic to any medications?"

"Not that I know of."

"I'm going to give her a prescription for amoxicillin. Make sure she finishes the entire bottle." He wrote something on a little piece of paper and handed it to Bernadine. "Her throat looks a bit red. There's a little congestion, but for the most part, she's fine. I think it'd be a good idea to keep her home tomorrow," he said.

"That's it?"

"That's it," he said.

"So I can take her home now?"

"Yes, you can," he said.

Bernadine was relieved. But damn, all this drama was solved by a damn Popsicle? She didn't care. The important thing was that her baby was all right. The next question was, how was she going to find somebody to stay home with her sick child all day? Who could she ask that she could trust? She thought for a minute. Geneva, of course.

Bernadine changed her doctor's appointment to the following week. Her doctor was pissed, but what could she do? For the next five days, Bernadine performed miracles. Geneva took care of Onika on Tuesday, and Bernadine decided not to get a baby-sitter for the rest of the week after all. She took the kids to school, went to work, and broke her neck trying to get to the after-school program before six o'clock. She made it. There'd been too many occasions when her kids were the only ones left in that room. She hated to see them sitting there, trying to entertain each other, and the teacher, clearly pissed and anxious to leave, would give Bernadine the evil eye.

After she picked them up, Bernadine brought the kids back t
o t
he office with her. They ate dinner in the conference room: Taco Bell on Wednesday, McDonald's on Thursday, Jack in the Box on Friday, and Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch and dinner on Saturday. The kids did their homework there. When they needed help, Bernadine stopped whatever she was doing. Seven-thirty was the cutoff she had given herself to stop working. When they got home, she somehow managed to watch Onika take her bath, read her a bedtime story, and tried to stay alert while John junior read her one. By ten o'clock, she was whipped. The most she could do at that point was to go to bed herself.

But Bernadine worried at night. She worried about work. What had to get done the next day. She worried about the kids. How was she going to get Onika to ballet and John junior to soccer practice on time. When would she ever have time to take them to a movie, to the damn park, like they used to? Were they hiding their grief about the divorce? Had they come in contact with Kathleen and were they keeping it a secret? She worried whether or not John was going to pay the April mortgage payment. What if he didn't? What was she going to do? She worried about when this settlement business was ever going to be over. Next month or next year? And what was she going to do with the money, whenever she got it and however much it was? She didn't have the energy to start a catering business at this point in her life. She knew she would quit this job. But what would she do then? She also worried about this thing she'd started with Herbert. It was getting out of hand. She worried what would happen if she ended it now. Would she be twice as lonely? Bernadine worried about everything. So much that, lately, she was lucky to get four hours of solid sleep. She often woke up tired. And had to start the whole routine all over again.

Bernadine had just told her doctor all the things that had gone on in her life since the last time she was here, which was two months ago. "I'm running out of steam," she said. "I feel like I've lost my center. I can't concentrate on anything." Bernadine went on to explain how hard it was getting to keep her mind on one thing at a time. When she did, she couldn't focus on it for long. She said she felt anxious all the time. And sad. And she was always tired. She didn't know how much longer she could keep up this pace. Bernadine also told her doctor that she resented the fact that John was living a carefree life, like a goddamn bachelor. He had no fucking responsibilities whatsoever, other than sending her a check and picking the kids up every other weekend. "I'm doing everything," Bernadine said. "And I'm sick of it."

Her doctor understood. It was her job to understand. She was a psychiatrist. "Have the Xanax been helping?"

"Helping me in what way?"

"To relax."

"I don't take them during the day. They slow me down."

"How are you sleeping?"

"Some nights it's hard. I've got too much on my mind, but on those nights, I've taken as many as three. They didn't help. So I stopped taking them."

"Well, how about if I give you a higher dosage?"

"I don't want a higher dosage."

"Would you like something to help you sleep?"

"No," Bernadine said. She didn't want any sleeping pills in the house. Not that she didn't trust herself. She'd read about those things. Presumably, you didn't even dream when you took them. Bernadine had two kids. She couldn't afford to be unconscious.

"Well, I think maybe I should put you on an antidepressant. That'll help you to concentrate and generally make you feel better all around. It'll take at least three to four weeks before they get into your system well enough for you to feel their effect. Why don't I give you a prescription for twelve to start out with, and let's see how your body reacts. We can take it from there."

"Okay," Bernadine said, and didn't ask any questions. She'd heard of antidepressants. Shit, maybe they'd help.

She didn't feel any different after taking the pills for five days. And didn't expect to. On the sixth day, Bernadine woke up with diarrhea and felt nauseous. She thought she'd finally caught that flu that had been going around. On the seventh day, she got out of bed feelin g k ind of funny. She couldn't put her finger on it, but she felt different-spacey. She got the kids up, went to make herself a cup of coffee, as she always did, but didn't have a taste for it. So Bernadine didn't drink it. On her way to drop the kids off at school, the cars looked bigger, brighter; the traffic lights, greener, redder. At work, she was so self-conscious about everything she did, she backtracked over the same figures five times before she accepted the fact that they were accurate. When the phone rang, she jumped. She was sure everybody could tell she was acting weird, so she worked hard to imitate her normal self.

After she picked the kids up, Bernadine came home and started dinner. That's when it dawned on her that she hadn't eaten a thing in two days. She wasn't the least bit hungry now. She made hamburgers and french fries. She tried to eat one. The burger tasted like rubber. Bernadine couldn't understand why.

That night, she read Onika a story, Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp, helped John junior with his math, and went to bed. She wasn't sleepy or tired, so she lay there and waited for sleep. When it finally came, Bernadine dreamed that a witch was throwing her into a kettle of boiling swamp water. She climbed out over the steel rim. But her body had melted. Now she was in quicksand. An alligator was trying to eat her. He bit a chunk out of her thigh. Somehow she made it to a forest, where she was now stuck at the top of a hundred- foot oak tree. When the tree turned into a green monster, she jumped and landed in a clump of cattails. A gnarled hand reached out and grabbed her. Bernadine woke up, terrified. She ran to the bathroom, because it felt as if she had to throw up. But she couldn't.

She tried to go back to sleep, but she kept hearing things. She thought it was a robber, so she hid beneath the covers. Why was it cold under here? She peeked out and, when she didn't see anybody, ran to the closet and got her bathrobe. She thought one of her shoes moved. Maybe it wasn't hers. Maybe the robber was hiding behind her clothes. She slammed the door and locked it, and ran out into the great room. It was scarier out here. When the icemaker dropped some cubes into the tray, Bernadine screamed. The kids ran out of their bedrooms.

"What's wrong, Mama?" John junior asked.

"Nothing. I thought I saw a mouse. It was just dust. You guys go on back to bed."

After they left, Bernadine sat on the couch. Maybe she was burnt out. Maybe she should check herself into someplace where she could chill for a while. She was definitely out of control, and she didn't like this feeling whatsoever. Was she having a nervous breakdown? Was that what this shit was?

Bernadine went back to bed. When she closed her eyes, she pictured herself in a white room in a white bed in a white nightgown. A white nurse in a white uniform was standing over her. "All you need is a month," she said to Bernadine. "And you'll be able to go back to work. This rest will do you a world of good."

The next day was worse. Bernadine was paranoid about everything and everybody. She wanted to talk to Savannah, Gloria, or Robin, but she didn't know what she'd tell them. How could she explain these feelings, get them to understand, when she didn't understand what was happening to her herself?

Bernadine didn't say a single word to the kids on the way to school. At work, she paid extra-close attention to the tiniest of details. Everybody in the office knew she was cracking up, she thought. They were just pretending not to notice. They knew she couldn't handle the pressure, but Bernadine planned to fool them all. She became aware of every single move she made. When she went to the bathroom, she counted her steps. She counted how many squares of tissue it took to wipe herself. She counted the number of puffs it took to finish a cigarette. She counted how many movements it took to get in the car and start it. She counted how many lights she had to pass before she made it to the school.

She was too jittery to conk, so she microwaved a pizza for the kids. She had a glass of water for dinner. Bernadine still wasn't hungry. After last night, she was afraid to read Onika a bedtime story and told her she needed a night off. She tried to help John junior with a math problem, but it was too confusing. She told him not to worry about that one and move on.

She went to bed and prayed for a good night's sleep. She didn't get it. Bernadine dreamed she was under a guillotine. John took an ax and split the rope in two. She saw her head roll across the woode
n p
latform. Bernadine turned over, and she saw herself jumping out of a skyscraper window. She hit the pavement. And died. But she didn't want to hit the pavement, so she went back up to the top floor and jumped again. This time, on the way down, other people were soaring through the air too. Bernadine found herself dodging them. She landed at the drive-up window of McDonald's. She ordered two Happy Meals. The young boy handed her the boxes. She opened one. It was full of dead mice. Bernadine threw them both out the window and drove off.