Chapter 1

J.T. – Ice Cold & Bold

Washington DC, September 1980.

J.T. stared blankly at his shoes as the jury foreman read the verdict to the court, they found him guilty of robbery and voluntary manslaughter. He, and those who knew him, had always suspected that he would end up in prison or dead on the street. He had denied doing this crime so often that at times he almost believed it himself. A gnawing sense of bitterness overcame him when he thought about the injustice of his conviction.

In those rare moments when he did admit to himself that he had actually done it, he certainly didn't feel any remorse. On the contrary, in his mind if anybody was guilty it was the victim. His emotions vacillated between rage and callous indifference. After all, if that stupid old woman had just given up her purse he wouldn't have hit her. Yeah, she was guilty alright, that greedy old b#§ch, one thing's for sure, if he had intended to kill her she wouldn't have had to spend a week in the hospital before she died.

She, like the other people J.T. had killed, were bit players in his personal urban drama. J.T. was proud of his reputation. The image he established for himself was someone who commanded respect. J.T. didn't know who his father was, nor did his mother. She had sold herself for so long to support her drug habit that J.T.'s father was but one of a stream of empty faces she encountered along the way.

When he was seven J.T. had knocked on the neighbor's door because his mama wouldn't wake up. After her funeral he lived with his aunt and her four children. He grew up fast. In his mind cynicism and mistrust were synonymous with wisdom. Unable to gain the respect of a father he would never know, he ruthlessly avenged disrespect -- real and perceived.

He worked at being thought of as bad -- ice cold & bold, that's what a real man has to be. There was indeed a certain amount of hero worship among the neighborhood adolescents who were destined to follow his example. J.T.'s reputation, flashy clothes, ready cash, and steady stream of bitches, made him appear as a star in an otherwise grim universe. No adult actually held J.T. in high regard, the seeming respect he enjoyed was merely deference borne out of fear, but that suited J.T. just fine. In fact, the rush of power he felt when someone feared for his life was an emotional high to which J.T. had grown accustomed.

He had been dealt a difficult hand and had played his cards badly. J.T. liked to think of himself as fearless, and ostensibly that was true. In reality, a bitter rage overshadowed his fear. He was incapable of admitting mistakes or weakness, showing remorse, or engaging in honest self examination – he didn't grasp that his facade of toughness was actually an attempt to mask his underlying weakness and insecurity.

He couldn't overcome his displaced anger and insecurity because he didn't understand their origin. Had he encountered his victim earlier in his life under different circumstances, he might have been among the score of grieving young men with similar backgrounds who attended her funeral.

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Chapter Two

Hurricane Jane

Hattie’s death was a devastating blow. She had left the house that morning so alive and full of expectation. She had been on her way to the travel agent to arrange our trip to Kenya. Even now, I still expect her to come bustling through the door and announce, “Hurricane, I’m home.” Illness provides us with time to prepare, but a sudden and utterly unexpected death is a living nightmare from which it takes months or even years to awaken. The irony of the situation is that Hattie was arranging the trip for me, her dying friend, who might have months, but certainly not years to live.

Since it happened I’ve fallen into the trap of habitually speculating, “If only I had done this, or if only I hadn’t done that.” Knowing that she was on her way to do something for me only adds to my sense of responsibility. During these past few days I simply haven’t been able to let it go, “if only” has become an act of involuntary self-flagellation. Even if I did have the time, right now I can’t imagine ever moving on, yet I can’t allow myself to wallow in my emotions. Mercifully, the urge to write about Hattie and our experiences gives me a sense of purpose and allows me the luxury of not letting go.

Hattie didn’t regain consciousness until four days after the mugging. How very strange it was for me to spend those days next to her hospital bed in helpless silence. Over the past months it had been Hattie who constantly had been there for me, she had been my strength in facing the prospect of my own mortality. Around noon on the fifth day she stirred and briefly opened her eyes, squeezed my hand, and then seemed to fall back into unconsciousness. Immediately, I ran for the nurse and by the time we returned Hattie was clutching the bed rails and trying in vain to lift herself. She was very weak and never really revived, except for a few brief minutes during her sixth and final day in the hospital.

Just after noon that day she awoke and greeted me. She was quite coherent, yet it was all rather surreal and she didn’t seem quite like herself. She emanated an atmosphere of dreamlike serenity, completely at peace with, for want of another word, the universe. Although she appeared entirely rational, it seemed strange that she wouldn’t inquire as to where she was, or what had happened. The room seemed somehow charged, my perceptions were heightened, and I had the sensation that inexplicably time had slowed. Abruptly she turned away from me and in a breathy voice said, “Walter, this is Hurricane Jane”, as if she were conversing with someone else on the other side of her bed.

You see, when Hattie introduced me to someone close to her she always called me her friend, “Hurricane Jane”. She would then laugh and explain that there were fair weather friends, but “Hurricane Jane” could be counted on, no matter what. Although she wasn’t on pain medication, it seemed obvious that she must have been hallucinating. My immediate reaction was to humor her, so I said, “Walter?” She gave me an incredulous look, “Walter, my husband, as if you didn’t know.” I had never even met Walter who had died over forty years ago, long before I met Hattie.

“Oh, I didn’t see him.” Again another dubious stare, “Well Jane, he’s been here the whole time, he’s right under your nose.” It was truly eerie, I knew she was hallucinating, yet she continued to speak rationally with me while carrying on a conversation with empty space. As strange as it may seem, as I regarded her radiant countenance, and literally felt the sense of peace and tranquility in the room, all of a sudden, against my rational disposition, I actually got goose bumps and began to wonder if perhaps he might in fact be there. Instead of simply humoring Hattie, now I wanted to know if I was witnessing some kind of paranormal event, after all, I had questions I wanted answered.

I asked Hattie what Walter was doing there. She turned away from me for an instant, and then looked me squarely in the eyes with absolute sincerity and said, “He’s here to take me home.” These were to be the last words spoken by Hattie. She went to sleep again shortly afterwards and died during the night. I don’t know quite what to make of it, during my years of nursing I had witnessed a few such incidents, but usually there was medication involved and I generally chalked it up to drug induced hallucinations. Yet in my grandmother’s day, when people often died at home in their beds, such tales were not uncommon. No doubt I will find out soon enough.

Only five months earlier my doctor had drawn the curtains on my future. He delivered my prognosis with words which had caused my eardrums to become so taut that I could only hear my own pulse and my doctor's muffled voice. Strangely I noticed innocuous things like the peeling chrome on the arm of my chair, and the dust around the lamp on his desk, but I couldn’t follow what he was saying. Only when he reached across and touched my arm did I begin to register what he was saying and I slowly nodded in a state of silent and bewildered panic. The gist of it was that with an aggressive regime of chemo therapy and radiation I might have eighteen months to live. He asked me if I wanted to call someone to pick me up, but I said I was fine. Instead of taking the bus I walked the twelve blocks home, oblivious of the cold and drizzle, and tried to fathom what he had said. It just couldn’t be true. I replayed the events of the last weeks over and over in my head as I made my way home in a stupor.

When I had first seen him and complained of an ear ache he had prescribed some drops and an antihistamine. After that failed to relieve the pain he prescribed antibiotics which also didn’t work. He told me it was a one in a million chance, but just to be on the safe side he wanted me to undergo some tests so he could rule a few things out. Even before the tests, and without any further medication, the pain had begun to subside, so when I returned to his office I was not prepared for what he had in store for me. He had a very troubled expression and avoided eye contact. After minimal pleasantries he told me rather matter-of-factly that he had some very bad news for me, my tests revealed an inoperable brain tumor. That was the point at which I began to fade.

When I reached home Hattie immediately registered that something was wrong and quickly had the truth out of me. She was having none of it, we’d get a second or third opinion if necessary. There had to be a mistake, and for a brief period I allowed myself to be swept up in her reassuring denial. Hattie accompanied me for the second opinion and listened with me to a very similar scenario, but delivered this time with considerably more compassion and empathy. I asked the doctor to describe the treatment and its effects, and what I might expect without them. In the end I choose to live for perhaps nine months without treatment rather than the possibility of eighteen months with treatment and all that it entailed. Hattie protested vigorously that I had to do everything possible to overcome this, but I reminded her that it couldn’t be overcome.

Hattie eventually accepted my decision and we were determined to make the most of our remaining time together. She delegated her responsibilities, which I’ll describe elsewhere, and promised me that we would experience in nine months what most people experience in nine years. We decided to write down the things I wanted to accomplish and make a plan. We frequently spent the day at the botanical gardens and the evening at the planetarium. We regularly visited the National Zoo and enjoyed watching the glee of young children observing the various animals for the first time. We made regular visits to the various Smithsonian museums and the National Gallery of Art. We listened to the street musicians playing at Du Pont Circle and went to recitals at the local universities. We talked while working our garden and most evenings we sat around an open fire under the stars postulating, reminiscing, and praying. We knew each other’s life story in some detail, but we tried to extract long forgotten memories from each other, and we tried to make sense of it all. In an ideal world, it seemed to me that is the way life would be lived.

We also talked of our remaining dreams, and I felt assured that Hattie would do her utmost to bring them to fruition, as she had done so often in the past. Our friendship had an undeniable synergy. Hattie was a natural born leader who possessed a rare combination of traits. She was extremely self confident, yet humble, a powerful speaker who generally spoke last and least, exceedingly well versed but eager to listen and learn from others, serious but always willing to brighten the day with a laugh and a smile. Hattie also had the talent to motivate others and help them to strive to attain, given a vision and a plan she possessed the uncanny ability to achieve whatever she set out to do.

I can well imagine that somewhere in Hattie’s ancestry there had been an African prince or princess, perhaps captured and sold into slavery in America. The fact that she, like most African Americans, couldn’t trace her African roots was painful and frustrating to her. Alex Haley’s “Roots” had stirred her deeply, the idea of actually encountering one’s ancestors in Africa was a wonderful thought, but it also made the pain even more intense because she knew that in her case it could never be.

From the Africans I’ve met over the years it is difficult to imagine where Hattie’s ancestors might have come from, and of course as she often pointed out herself that America was a great melting pot for Africans too. She was tall and lean with delicate features which seemed to me rather like the people of Ethiopia, but her skin tone was quite dark, somewhere between ebony and dark chocolate, a shade which I noticed most in Central Africans. Hattie liked to think of herself as a Kenyan, and having lived there she was in a considerably better position to judge than I. But she also pointed out that most of the slaves who were brought to South Carolina had been from West, not East, Africa, so it was probable that she descended from West Africans.

In any case, without me Hattie would still have been a leader and a powerful force in other people’s lives, so I don’t want to inflate the importance of my synergistic effect upon her. I, on the other hand, would have simply been a dreamer without Hattie. She said my dreams and ideas were a gift, but maybe that was just her way of motivating me. Thankfully, by being in her orbit I had the chance to see many of my hopes and dreams realized. After learning of my tumor, knowing that Hattie would continue working to realize our plans made my own situation much easier to endure.

Naturally, her death changes everything. Next month we were supposed to leave Washington and fly to Kenya so she could finally introduce me to the people and places which meant so much to her. We had planned to surprise Keysha and William who were there for an exchange program. Hattie was going to take me on a tour of the country by bus, not a tourist coach, but the colorful, crowded, and inexpensive buses used by the Kenyans themselves.

Unknowingly, Hattie, by helping me, lived the last months of her life to the fullest and this gives me great consolation, as does the realization that our separation will be short lived. If it is meant to be, I will be granted the time to recount much of what Hattie shared with me about her life, and some of what we were able to accomplish together. But before I begin to recount her life it seems appropriate to share with you what she taught me about the game of life.

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Continued next week

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(c)"Kiwanja" a work of fiction by Alan Bryson, all rights reserved

Photo & effects by @roused

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