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  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early sixties wasn’t the Jim Crow South, but it was too close for comfort with the Mason Dixon line a mere sixty miles away. There’d been segregation in her neighborhood growing up; there’d been police killings and back in the fifties, when she was just a child, there had even been a few lynchings. It wasn’t as prevalent as it was down South, but it existed nonetheless. Hatred like that still existed, although thankfully today it was rare. You still had the occasional idiot like that Michael Richards asshole who went off on some racist tirade that would then spin everything back thirty years, bringing the awful memories of those days back like it was still happening and she sometimes wondered if all she’d fought for was still worth it. But when she saw her daughter, Tonya, and her son-in-law Gerald and granddaughter Tess, she realized that, yes, her struggle had been worth it.

  Tonya and Gerald lived in a good neighborhood, had good, professional jobs and sent Tess to a good school. They had friends of all races—Black, Latino, Asian, White—and Adelle liked them; they were good kids. She loved the fact that the younger generations had learned something from the struggles of the past. Maybe that was the result of her work.

  Adelle picked up the remote control and turned on the TV. She turned on the news, hoping to get a replay of the ceremony tonight. Tonya told her Gerald was going to tape it and would send her a copy, but Adelle wanted to see if she could catch a glimpse of herself on TV. It’s not everyday one got their fifteen minutes of fame broadcast on CNN!

  Sure enough, the segment on the NAACP awards ceremony was just starting and Adelle sat on the edge of the sofa, watching with a smile on her face. She thought she looked pretty good on TV. Maybe a little too heavy, but photos always made her look that way. And she looked nowhere near as old as she felt. Hell, she was only sixty-seven. By today’s standards, that was young.

  Adelle sighed and stood up. She looked at the award she’d received that evening. She smiled and walked over to pick it up. She held it reverently in her hands, admiring its beauty. Yes, she was proud alright. She’d made a difference. Of that, she was certain.

  She set the award down and headed down the hallway to her bedroom. She was just crossing the room when the headache she’d experienced earlier in the evening came back full force. She stopped in the entryway and blinked several times. Her vision blurred. She reached inside the room and turned on the light.

  The room swam.

  Adelle took a step toward the bed and it felt like she was walking on a boat in a roiling sea. She almost fell over. She reached for the doorway for support. Her stomach lurched in her belly, her headache worsened. What’s going on? she thought as her vision went blurry.

  She waited for it to pass.

  She took a step toward her four-poster bed.

  And fell onto the floor, her right side already numb and not registering the pain as she hit the floor and blacked out.

  * * *

  Tears blurred Tonya Brown’s vision as she raced through the parking lot of Philadelphia Memorial Hospital. She’d received the phone call on her morning commute to work and had almost gotten into an accident getting to the hospital. She hadn’t even called her husband yet; the phone call had come fifteen minutes ago, and what she heard had shattered her.

  Your mother has been admitted to Philadelphia General in critical condition, the voice on the other end of the phone said. It looks like she’s suffered either a heart attack or a stroke.

  That single phone call had sent Tonya racing in the opposite direction, speeding toward Center City. And now, as she entered the hospital lobby, she searched for the directions that would tell her where Intensive Care was.

  “Can I help you?”

  The young African-American nurse behind the check-in counter was looking at Tonya with concern.

  “My mother was just brought here,” Tonya said. “Adelle Smith…they told me she was…”

  “She’s on four,” the nurse said. “Intensive care. I’ll have somebody escort you.” And with that another nurse, a middle-aged White woman, came around the check-in counter and escorted Tonya to the elevator.

  When Tonya reached the room her mother was in she had to hold back the tears.

  Momma was in bed, IVs attached to her, machines monitoring her breathing and heart rate. She looked like she was asleep except for her ashen complexion, which had gone from chocolate to a waxy gray. Tonya approached the side of the bed and looked down at her mother, wanting to cry but knowing she had to be strong.

  A doctor entered the room. He was in his fifties, White, with thinning black hair. He was holding a medical chart.

  “Ms. Smith?” He asked Tonya politely.

  “I’m her daughter, yes,” Tonya said. “How is she? What happened, is she—”

  “Your mother’s suffered a stroke,” the doctor said. “Several, in fact. She underwent a CAT scan very early this morning and it was discerned that the first one was very small. She probably wasn’t aware of it.”

  “When? How?” Tonya was confused and scared. Momma had been fine last night!

  “The first one occurred yesterday afternoon,” the doctor said. “The second one very early that evening, and the third one shortly after she arrived home last night. That was the one that caused her first blackout. When she regained consciousness she was able to crawl to her phone and dial 911. She was experiencing a fourth stroke when rescue units arrived.”

  “Oh my God!” Tonya buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

  The doctor was genuine, caring, sympathetic. He led her gently toward a chair and she sat down. “Your mother suffered what is called an ischemic stroke, when a blockage occurs in the blood vessels supplying blood to the brain. We immediately put her through Acute Stroke Therapy to dissolve the clots.”

  “Will she be okay?”

  “Your mother will live through this, yes. We won’t know what kind of neurological damage might have been done until we run some more tests.”

  A wave of emotion threatened to overwhelm Tonya, but she fought it down. If there was one thing momma taught her, it was to be strong in the face of adversity. Now was not the time to cry.

  She drew herself up, composed herself. “Okay,” she said. She glanced at the clock on the wall; it was eight-thirty. “How long was she unconscious last night?”

  “Approximately three hours,” the doctor said. “Paramedics brought her in just before four this morning.”

  “And it took four hours for you to call me?”

  “When she arrived she came without identification. The police didn’t get that to us until an hour ago.”

  “My God,” Tonya said. Now she was growing angry. “What the hell took them so long? What, did they think they were just packing up another poor black woman in an ambulance and sending her on her way to the hospital so she could die?”

  “I couldn’t guess, Miss. I can’t presume to understand why the police acted the way they did,” the doctor said. “Needless to say, your mother has received the very best treatment since arriving here and our administrators worked diligently with the police to obtain her identity. I’m sorry we didn’t learn who she was until just a little while ago, but I assure you we treated your mother with the same high level of care we strive to maintain for all of our patients.”

  His words sounded as if he were reading from a script. They did nothing to assuage Tonya’s growing concern.

  “I appreciate that,” Tonya said. Yes, she was getting slowly pissed off now. She looked at her mother across the room, who slept on. “What’s her prognosis?”

  “We’ll find out when she regains consciousness,” the doctor said. “From the preliminary CAT scans, we were able to ascertain that there was minimal neurological damage. It’s possible that her speech may be affected.”

  “What about her vision? Her mind?”

  “Again, we won’t know until she comes out of it.”

  “How long will that be?”

  The doctor shrugged. “Later tod
ay, perhaps.”

  Tonya stood up and approached her mother’s bedside. The doctor accompanied her, noted momma’s heart rate and pulse. His tone was so matter-of-fact that Tonya could feel her anger vibrating through her again like a revving engine. She tried to remind herself that she couldn’t expect everyone to be as emotional about her mother’s health as she was. Still, it bothered her that he didn’t at least make eye contact with her when he was talking about her mother’s health. He acted as if she were an annoyance keeping him from more important things.

  “Don’t worry. Your mother is receiving the very best care possible.”

  His back was to her when he spoke, writing notes on her mother’s charts as he checked her vitals. Despite his over-rehearsed words of assurance, his mannerisms and expression were more that of a mechanic checking engine oil than someone with her mother’s life in his hands. It took a great effort for her to dispel the impression that he would have shown greater concern had his patient been White. She didn’t want to start thinking that way. That was how her mother thought and she wasn’t like her mother.

  Adelle Smith was still stuck in the past. She saw racism in every shadow. Tonya considered herself open-minded. She’d even dated a few White men before she’d met her husband. She reached out and took her mother’s hand. Tonya gasped and choked back tears, startled by how cold and delicate it was for such a large, robust woman. The skin was as thin as parchment and she could feel the tiny bones beneath. Her mother had always been such a force of nature that it was heartbreaking to see her look so helpless.

  Tonya dabbed at the corner of her eyes with her coat sleeve and looked back at the doctor for some type of reassurance. He was whistling to himself as he continued filling out the chart.

  Tonya told herself that she should take confidence from the doctor’s lack of alarm. She watched as he opened her mother’s eyelids with his fingers and shined a light on her pupils. They remained fully dilated. The doctor’s expression was impassive.

  It couldn’t be that serious or else he wouldn’t look so nonchalant, she hoped.

  He smiled at her and patted her on her shoulder as he exited the room. Tonya looked back over at her mother, laboring to breathe despite the oxygen tubes in her nose, her complexion turning grayer by the second. She sat down on the edge of the hospital bed still holding her mother’s tiny hand.

  Tonya adjusted her mother’s pillow and bent over and kissed her on the forehead. When the tears finally came they didn’t stop until she fell asleep, curled up beside her mother, listening to her labored breathing.

  Chapter Two

  The Hospice Nurses of Greater Philadelphia was located in the Historic Germantown section of Philadelphia directly adjacent to Wissahickon and Mount Airy. Natsinet had never been to this part of the city before. The houses were old but beautiful. Colonial mansions stood mere blocks from old brick row homes that once housed soldiers from the Revolutionary War. Even the buildings that had been allowed to deteriorate still held the vestiges of their former beauty. Not like the hastily-built cookie-cutter houses covered in aluminum siding they manufactured today. She could not imagine any of them still standing in a hundred years.

  Sugar Maples, River Birch, White Oak and Northern Red Oaks filled with foraging squirrels gathering acorns lined every street, their leaves already turning fire and gold with the season. When she inhaled, Natsinet could smell the leaves and the grass from the freshly cut lawns. It reminded her of the vision she’d had of America before she’d come here. A far cry from the reality she’d discovered.

  The building that housed the Hospice Nurses was an old plantation that now served as a nursing home. It was three stories high with fancy cornices and columns, a combination of Georgian architecture and a sort of Italianette country Palazzo complete with a grand arch doorway. The stone veneer was old and crumbling in places. The front of the building was covered in ivy all the way up to the second floor windows. Natsinet paused a moment to marvel at the beauty of the place.

  It was quiet and even a bit stern and austere owing to its undoubtedly Quaker heritage; still, it had amazing charm. It was sad to her that such a wonderfully charming building had now been converted into a home where the unwanted came to die.

  Natsinet walked up the long driveway to the front porch and rang the doorbell. A woman in an old-fashioned nursing uniform opened the door, white skirt, white stockings, thick heavy-looking white shoes, complete with one of those old nurse’s hats with the black stripe and little wings. The woman looked as old as the building she stood in and just as sturdy. She fit the old plantation as naturally as if she had been installed right along with the oak doors and lead glass windows.

  Her hair was white with streaks of blonde still running through it here and there. Her eyes had deep crow’s feet in the corners that had grown over the years and merged with the rest of the wrinkles and hard lines radiating out like spider webs across her face. A pair of wire rimmed spectacles perched precariously on the end of her nose. She looked impossibly ancient, as if she should have been one of the patients rather than a care-giver. She was surely older than many of those she cared for.

  “Yes, may I help you?”

  Her smile was surprisingly vibrant and friendly. Her eyes smiled with her. Natsinet had not met many friendly people since she’d come to America. Most of the people she’d met in Philadelphia were hostile and guarded at first, as if they were afraid she was going to try to take something from them. Natsinet had learned over the years the knack of getting the distrustful to trust in her, which was difficult since she was not a very warm person herself. She was capable and intelligent, and she’d found that people respected her for that.

  “I saw an ad in the Enquirer that said you were looking for hospice nurses?

  I brought my resume and references.”

  “Oh. Well, come in. Come in.”

  The nurse led Natsinet into the vestibule and then down a long hallway. The floors were all maple hardwood shined to a high gloss. The walls were painted antique white and were accented by ornate hand-carved crown molding and chair railing the same color as the floors. All of the woodwork appeared to be part of the original architecture. Natsinet couldn’t imagine where you would find that kind of craftsmanship in America these days.

  “My name is Doris. I run this place. I’ve worked here for over fifty years. I was about your age when I started here, fresh out of nursing school.”

  “Very pleased to meet you, Doris. My name is Natsinet.”

  She shook Doris’s hand and was surprised by the firmness of the handshake. The old nurse peered over her glasses at Natsinet as she returned the handshake.

  Natsinet was tall and slender like a supermodel. Her eyes were large and almond shaped, almost slanted, and green as emeralds. Her nose was long and narrow, but her lips were full and her hair was the color of wheat though still thick and wooly. Her skin, however, was as white as buttermilk. Natsinet knew that Doris was trying to figure out what nationality she was.

  “That’s an unusual name. What kind of accent is that? I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.”

  “I was born in Eritrea but my mother is American.”

  “Eritrea? You mean Ethiopia? I used to send money to Ethiopia years ago.”

  “No. Not Ethiopia. Different country. My father was Eritrean. He was a physician. He met my mother while she was in the Peace Corp.”

  Natsinet tried to hide the irritation in her voice but she hated when people called her Ethiopian. She knew what most Americans thought of when they imagined Ethiopians; emaciated scarecrows with flies on their faces, starving to death and living in filth. Either that or they lumped them in with American Blacks who were little more than beggars and thieves in Natsinet’s view, barely more than the slaves they descended from. She had grown up among the privileged class. Her father was a respected physician in Eritrea and her mother came from an upper-middle class family in America. She’d been educated in European schools and spoke eight di
fferent languages. She hated being compared to lower-class American Blacks.

  “Your mother was a White woman?”

  The old nurse stared at Natsinet as if trying to solve a complicated puzzle.

  “Yes.”

  “So what do you consider yourself? White or Black?”

  “I consider myself Eritrean.”

  Natsinet tilted her head up and glared at the old nurse, challenging her to disagree.

  “And that’s to say not African American?”

  The old nurse peered over her tiny spectacles, smirking at Natsinet, clearly enjoying the exchange.

  “No. Not African American. I am bi-racial. My mother was White and my father was Eritrean.”

  “Sounds like an African American to me, but you certainly don’t look or talk like any of the ones I know of.”

  “Nor would I ever. There is very little African in what you call an African American. My people were never conquered, never enslaved. My mother is from right here in Philadelphia. Her family lives in Chestnut Hill. Her father was a lawyer and a politician, not a crack dealer or a pimp. I am the descendent of doctors and businessmen, not slaves.”

  There was a pause as Natsinet continued staring down her nose at the old nurse, her brilliant green eyes hard as chips of glass, waiting for a response. She knew she had said too much, but she also knew that when it came to her feelings about African Americans she could often count on a sympathetic ear among elderly Caucasians. They may not be as vocal as she was, but she knew that most of them felt the same as she. Often they were relieved by the fact that she did not consider herself one.