I didn’t answer his calls or respond to his texts and around Christmas he gave up trying. What would I say to him? The idea of that boy seeing me hairless with all the side effects of chemo would ruin those special memories of the summer we had together. So, I preserved them yet in return lost him. Everything soon became all about surviving each day. Beating the darkness of the cancer that ravaged my physical body. In the end, I won.
Yes, I have beaten cancer. However, since my mother lost her father to cancer, my mother continues to hover over me. She can’t allow me to live normally although I’ve been cancer free for almost four years now. Dad said to “be understanding.” My mother was terrified when I was first diagnosed. She cried a lot back then and held me. I often wonder if I fought so hard to beat it because I didn’t want my momma to hurt. I couldn’t stand the idea of how she’d suffer if she lost a child.
Now here I was at twenty-two, still living at home taking photos of the oldest of my three younger brothers Cruz. Snapping photos of him with his date to the prom. Living through watching him was something I was accustomed to. Although I was ready for that to change. I was glad my brothers had normal lives and I’d been able to experience the normalcy I lost by observing them. Cruz had done all the things I hadn’t been able to do during my bout with leukemia.
Watching my momma and daddy, especially momma, being parents to healthy kids was nice and I loved to see it. The boys gave up a lot during those years that my sickness owned our family. They had to stay with my parents’ closest friends, Willow and Marcus Hardy. Mom and dad had lived with me, at the Children’s Hospital in Atlanta.
Cord was now sixteen. Our parents had missed his tenth birthday because I was going through chemo that day. Clay had turned eight that very same year and they’d also been absent for that. I was lucky the boys weren’t bitter. The leukemia didn’t only rob my teenage years, but it also stole many of their memories. Memories my parents should’ve been a part of. Instead, the boys made me cards, sent me boxes filled with magazines and books, along with cookies they made with Willow.
Finally, as a family, we’d come into balance. We were mostly normal now. As I took the last photo of Cruz and watched momma kiss his cheek, I could smile and know everything was okay. I was here to see my brothers grow. My life wasn’t cut short like I’d feared. I was given a second chance. I’d missed a lot and it was time I stopped missing. Momma didn’t need to hover anymore. I was healthy and I was an adult. I’d stayed home to keep her happy. Now it was time for me to live the life I should have been living. The one I had held off on for my momma’s sake. I knew dad would understand. He’d be sad but he’d get it. However actually telling them I was moving out wasn’t going to be easy.
“Drive careful,” dad called to Cruz. He was taking Dad’s new blacked out Jeep and dad really loved that Jeep. This was one of the many ways my parents tried to make it up to the boys. They knew they’d missed a lot of their life because of me. So, they tried to make what they weren’t missing extra special.
“Have fun! Text me photos!” my mother yelled to them as they left. As if Cruz would be taking pictures and texting them to his mother. I tried not to smile, but failed, the idea was funny to me.
“Mom, he won’t be taking any pics.” Cord broke it to her with a roll of his eyes before momma turned around and grinned. “I know. I said it to Christina. She will. She’ll be glad to.”
Christina was his date and girlfriend. They’d been together for about three months. This was a record for him. My brother went through girls like crazy. Christina he called his “girlfriend.” This was a first for Cruz.
Hadley Stone was his long running torch. She was a year older than Cruz and the daughter of a rock star, who happened to be friends with my parents. Jax Stone had been a major teen idol back when my dad was in college. He was now a rock legend, though he married one woman, and stayed with her all these years. They raised two daughters together, their stability making him popular, because usually it was the other way around.
Hadley, however, was different. She had been sheltered because of Jax’s fame and she wasn’t very social. Every time we had a get together with my parents’ group of friends Cruz would constantly flirt with Hadley. It was comical and a little sad. She wasn’t interested in the least.
Cruz typically got any girl he wanted. He looked just like dad at that age. Momma said he was the spitting image of daddy. But Hadley wasn’t impressed. It was good for him I guess. Cruz had an ego Hadley kept in check. He needed that to keep him grounded.
“I’m going to the movies with Hendrix.” Cord headed for the old blue Ford truck that he shared with Cruz on a schedule.
“I thought y’all had been banned from the theatre,” momma reminded him.
Cord glanced back over his shoulder. “Not the one in Mobile. Just Sea Breeze.”
“Don’t get into trouble,” dad said, in his stern and fatherly voice.
Hendrix Drake and Cord couldn’t go anywhere and not get into trouble.
“Good luck with that,” I replied.
Momma looked at me concerned. “Those Drake boys are a mess.”
I laughed, in my opinion, that’s the pot calling the kettle black. People said the same about the York boys. Momma’s boys were as bad as the Drake’s. It’s why my best friend Eli Hardy and I have been referring to the Drake’s and my brothers as “the terrible six,” since shortly after their births.