James Frey - The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

After my classes and before I’d get Mercedes and go home, I’d go see my momma. They had moved her to some place where people watched her and tried to make sure she was comfortable and she lied in a bed and her body was just wasting away. She was hurting real bad. Her body eating itself. Eating all its organs and eating all its bones. Cancer everywhere and no way to do a thing about it. There wasn’t ever a thing to do about it. Most days I was strong and I’d hold her hand. Some days I’d just sit by her bed and cry. They’d just be giving her more and more drugs. Drugs that make her someone she wasn’t, make her something not even a person. Just some flesh lying there breathing. You ever sat by the bed of someone dying you know what it’s like. There ain’t nothing you can do. You just sit there feeling pain like nothing else on earth. You sit there feeling helpless and empty. When they awake, every second you sit with them you know that they gonna die soon. Every word you say got this weight on it ’cause you know there ain’t gonna be many more words. Everyone comes into the room do their best to be happy and seem cheery. To be talking about shit that ain’t got nothing to do with death. But it’s always there. The sickness. The death. The fact there ain’t nothing to do about it. The fact that they won’t be no more. That they gonna go in the ground and rot. And that you gonna go on living. And you can say whatever you want and tell them you love them and do everything in the world to make their passing easier, but it don’t change. They feel the pain. And the only way to stop the pain is load up on so many drugs that you a vegetable, or die. And in the meantime, everyone that loves you just feels the pain. The worst pain you can know.

Momma was getting worse and worse, but not dying. Just being in pain. The doctors wasn’t even around anymore. Just nurses and people doing their best to have her be comfortable. She started telling me she wanted to die. Every day she tell me she don’t want to go on, that it hurt too much, that she ready. I tell her she gonna be okay, that she got to keep fighting, but she tell me she don’t want to fight no more. That her whole life been a fight. Growing up in a shack in a broke shitty country was a fight, coming to America thinking her life would be better was a fight, being in New York and realizing that nothing gonna be better, that the American Dream only for people with the right skin and the right accent was a fight. That raising two kids without no husband or man and without no money or family or help while she cleaned the houses of people who seemed to be getting everything real easy was a fight, that watching those kids drift and watching her dreams for them die was a fight. That getting cancer and not being able to afford to do anything about it was a fight. It was all a fight, from the moment she came screaming outta her momma ’til she ended up where she ended up, in some rundown place with cockroaches and rats and crackheads outside and gunshots every night, what they call a peaceful place where they send poor people to die. She was done. She didn’t want it no more. I cried, wailed, sobbed, begged her, told her I didn’t want her to go. She smiled and said she loved me. And then they gave her more drugs and she passed out.

When I went home I was doing terrible. I couldn’t stop crying. Mercedes come over to me, say it’s okay, Momma, it’s okay. And it make me cry harder ’cause I wish I could tell my beautiful little three-year-old girl that I love so much and that I want to have whatever she want in the world and that I would die for that it ain’t okay, that the world is fucked up, that pain and suffering everywhere, that people hurt each other and hate each other and kill each other for no good reason, that we live and then we die and when we die that’s it, we gone, just fucking gone. I wish I could tell her that she would be okay. That she gonna have a great life, but I know I’d be a liar. She gonna grow up, get hurt, and someone gonna break her heart and she ain’t probably gonna have what she want in life and she gonna get treated like dirt and she gonna bust her ass alone and then she gonna die. There ain’t no beauty in that, there ain’t nothing but pain. So I cried harder. For Momma and me and her and everyone else in the world that ain’t got and never gonna. I cried and I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t gonna be okay.

Ben came in and saw me and asked me what was wrong. I couldn’t even be talking for a long time. Just cried. And he put his arms around me. I wanted some of whatever he did to other people to make their pain go away. I waited for him to make me free. He didn’t whisper nothing in my ear. Didn’t put my face in his hands and stare at me. Didn’t talk. He just held me and had Mercedes come over and he put his arms around both of us. And he just hold the both of us. And I didn’t stop crying for a long time. And then I did. And Ben ask me what’s wrong and I tell him and I start crying again. Momma’s in pain and she’s dying and there ain’t nothing to fucking do. She don’t want to be living no more, say she ready to go, that she love life but she in too much pain. And I got to sit there with her knowing it, and feeling it, and hurting so much it make me want to die, and there ain’t nothing to fucking do.

Ben waited for me to stop crying again. He looked into my eyes for a real long time, then spoke.

You would die for her?

Momma?

Yes.

Yeah.

You love her that much?

Yeah, her or for Mercedes. I would die for them.

And you know that without doubt or hesitation.

Yes.

He smiled. He took my hand and he standed up and he took Mercedes in her room and he put on her best dress and her best shoes and he make her hair pretty with some ribbons and barrettes. He tell me to get dressed in my best clothes so I go to our room and I put on the nicest I got, a dress I bought when I was first starting working at the club and was thinking that maybe church every Sunday would make me feel better. It was before I learned that crack was stronger than God. At least that God they be praying to on the cross.

We left the project and went to the place where they had Momma. She was awake when we went into her room, lying there, and we could hear her moaning as we came down the hallway to her. Ben stood aside and let us into the room first. Momma had her blanket pulled down so we could see how thin she was, how there wasn’t nothing left of her, just skin hanging off her bones. Mercedes went running over to the side of the bed, saying Abuela, Abuela. Momma lifted her hand just a little bit, put it right on her head, said hello. I went over to kiss Momma and she try to touch my head but she couldn’t be lifting her hand enough. I ask her how she doing and she shake her head. Mercedes give her a kiss and she try to smile but she couldn’t really even be doing it, so sick she couldn’t even be smiling at her granddaughter. I told her Ben was there, the white boy used to be our neighbor. Ben step behind me so she can see him. She look at him long time, like she trying to recognize him, and I’m thinking it’s probably being hard for her ’cause he looking so different. I see her looking real close, and he just staring at her, right into her eyes, just staring. She smiled and say real soft I know who that is, thank you for bringing him, Mariaangeles. I ask her what she talking about and she try to smile again, and do it a little better. Ben put his hand on my shoulder and ask me real soft if I’m ready and I look at him and ask for what and he say to say goodbye . I look at Momma and she still trying to be smiling at me all skin and bones just lying there in pain and dying. Dying too slow. Dying without no dignity or peace. Dying misery and shit in a bed that’s held way too many other people who died in it. Every time I looked at that bed I was thinking about how many people died in it, and how my momma was just another one.