Not Fair

“Logan? Logan, wake up, please. Momma’s sick again,” his little sister, Beth, whispers shakily in his ear. He pries his eyes open and sees her standing by his bed, tears spilling out of her big blue eyes deep as the ocean and her wispy blonde hair a mess around her head. She’s shivering in her Barbie nightgown, her little bare feet curled on the cold, hardwood floor of his room.

He glances at the clock that reads 3:32 a.m. Beth has school in the morning. She shouldn’t be awake. He sits up and gets out of bed, gently taking her petite hand. She continues to sniffle; seeing and hearing their mother sick has always frightened her. It frightens him, too, but Beth is just a little girl. She should be worrying about eight-year-old things like what page she’s going to color in her coloring book tomorrow at school, or whether she should bring an apple or an orange for a snack. He, her nineteen-year-old brother, is much more capable of handling their sick mother than little Beth. Leading her back to the pink-walled room, he helps Beth up into bed and tucks the blankets in around her, pressing his lips to her forehead. As he turns to leave, he hears the little girl whisper, “Logan?”

He turns with a sigh and goes back over to sit on the edge of her bed. “What’s up, sweetie pie?” he questions softly, running his hand over her head.

“Will Momma be okay?” she asks, water welling up in her eyes again.

His throat tightens. She’s a little girl. It’s not fair. None of this is fair. “Momma will be all right,” he confirms, his voice hoarse. “She’s just not feeling well again tonight. I’ll go try to make her feel better, all right?”

“Daddy shouldn’t have left,” she murmurs quietly.

He swallows thickly. “Daddy had to leave, sweet pea. You know that. He had to go visit Grandma Baker, make sure she’s all right, too. Remember? Daddy didn’t wanna leave.” The sleepy girl doesn’t say anything. “I’ve gotta go check on Momma, all right? Sleep now, Beth. You’ve got school.” He kisses her forehead one final time and leaves the lightly lit room, briefly stopping by her windows to close the blinds on the light of the moon shining through, and shuts the door quietly behind him.

As he walks down the hallway, he can hear the sound of the water splashing around the toilet from her sickness intruding the porcelain bowl. He reaches the bathroom and nudges the door open with his foot, seeing his mother hanging desperately onto the edge of the toilet seat. His stocky frame passes the threshold of the room, and he catches a glance of himself in the mirror, dark circles around the same color eyes he shares with Beth and sleep wrinkles pressed into his face. He briefly rubs at his scalp, the short brown hairs on his head chafing against his large hand, before leaning down onto his knees and placing a hand on his mother’s spiny back.

She startles, glancing at him with wide, bloodshot green eyes before relaxing her frighteningly thin body once she sees that it’s him. “Oh, Logan. Go to bed, sweetie. You don’t have to be here. I’m just not feeling well is all.”

He scoffs. “Momma, I’m not going anywhere,” he informs her sharply, and she doesn’t argue. He rubs his hand against her back as she continues to be sick into the toilet. After a brief period of time, she finally slumps over onto his shoulder. Careful not to disturb her, he reaches over to flush the toilet.

They are both quiet for a moment. Then he tells her, his voice thick, “Chemo isn’t doing you any good, Momma.”

She doesn’t say anything. A traitorous tear rolls down his cheek, and it falls unnoticed onto his mother’s bald head. “Momma, nothing’s working,” he says again. “Nothing’s working for you.”

She responds this time. “Baby, I know you’re scared. But we’ve just gotta believe that God will get us through it. We got another check in the mail today, too. More oil money. We have the resources to make this better, and it will get better, Logan. We have to keep believing--” Her voice catches, and suddenly she’s surging up and hanging off the toilet again, water splashing.

He swallows multiple times, trying to get the lump out of his throat, and reaches out to continue to rub his mother’s back once again. His mind goes to the image of this month’s check for nearly four thousand dollars, and his neck burns. It’s not fair.

It’s not fair because they have oil money, and they’ve been using the oil money, and it hasn’t made a damn bit of difference. The oil money paid for his mother’s chemotherapy that doesn’t even work every time they try it, and it paid for the surgery that his mother underwent to get out the cancer, and it paid for the radiation therapy that didn’t take it away, and it’s been paying for every pill and drug the doctors have been making her cram down her throat since they started this nightmare three years ago.

It’s not fair, because no amount of money in the world is going to take away his mother’s cancer.

***

His father is back in town.

Staring with wide eyes at his ceiling, Logan heard him come home around three a.m. last night. Thoughts of sickness and school and little girls who are growing up too fast were gnawing at his brain, and he heard his father’s boots stomping on the ground like thunder in the sky, unsettling the calm silence that surrounded the house.

His father is back, and that’s a good thing because now Logan can focus on his schoolwork, and his mother always gets so upset when he focuses less on his schoolwork and more on her. Today should be a good day because he can go to school and stay at school and not have to drive back between classes to check if his mother is still doing all right.

But today is also a bad day because when he woke up this morning there were streaks of water slithering down his window like the tears that fell down Beth’s face four nights ago. The sky was dark when it was supposed to be sunny, and thunder was rumbling throughout the sky.

Logan sits in his English 110 class and stares with furrowed eyebrows out the blurred window, thinking of his mother and how every time it rains her whole body aches because of her joints, and that’s not fair because that’s just one more thing to cause her pain.

It’s not fair.

Logan is trying to listen to the instructor. He thinks she’s talking about something to do with a pig’s head, or maybe someone named Piggy. He’s not sure. He really should pay attention to what she is saying. She pulled him aside late last week with pity written across her face telling him that he needs to turn in his work or else he’ll fail the class. He thinks she knows about his mother’s cancer. The news of his grade bothers him because school used to be so easy for him. He was a favorite in every class he walked into before his mother developed cancer, but he’s just too distracted now. His schooling can wait, though, because he can go to school for the rest of his life if he wants to, but his mother has an expiration date.

His phone lights up where it’s sitting on the corner of his desk. It’s his father calling, and his father doesn’t usually call, especially during school, and Logan’s heart feels as if it’s leaping up into his throat. His body is nearly frozen by the irrational fear that floods through him. He doesn’t even know if anything is wrong. He doesn’t know a thing. He blinks out of the fear that locked his muscles up after the call goes to voicemail and quietly excuses himself from the classroom, the eyes of the students and teacher following him out.

He calls back his father, and his limbs go numb. He can’t feel anything.

***

He doesn’t remember getting in his car or driving to Beth’s school to pick her up. He doesn’t really recall signing his name on the sign out sheet. He does remember, though, the receptionist’s asking when Beth will get back to school because Logan doesn’t know. He doesn’t know.

Beth is scared. He can see that. It is written in her eyes and in her body’s jerky movements. Her face is as white as the dress his mother wore on her wedding day, but Logan can’t find the courage in himself to tell her it’s all right, because it isn’t. He can’t speak, and his heart still seems to be stuck in his throat.

He doesn’t remember the drive to the hospital, but he does remember the way his sister’s whole body seizes up when she sees the building, the way her cry rips through her body and hangs in the air like a stale smell.

He remembers the way his muscles tense up when he smells the antibacterial stench of the hospital. He remembers holding his sister’s hand as they walk briskly towards the room the nurse directs him to. He’s not sure how he is walking because the fear feels like molasses in his veins. But he is walking, and they walk right into that room where his mother lies on that bed, and Logan surely has never seen her look so pale, has never seen her look so fragile. He remembers the way Beth runs to the bed and collapses in her mother’s arms, remembers the way his father yells at her to get off his mother, “You’re hurting her,” and his mother’s gentle and quiet shushing, calm as the tide of the ocean.

He doesn’t remember how long the four of them sit in that room, and he doesn’t recall what words came out of the doctor’s mouth, but he does remember the doctor’s grim face and his father’s reaction to the words. He remembers watching his father’s large body crumple in on itself, and he remembers the way his little sister sticks her fingers hard in her ears, squeezing her eyes shut tight.

He doesn’t remember what time it is when the screen shows the flat line, but he remembers hearing the buzzing that didn’t cease. “She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead,” the flat line says.

***

The funeral is paid for by the checks that his family keeps getting in the mail. As he watches his mother’s body being lowered into the ground, he thinks with sick humor that his family is burning through that money almost as fast as the oil they’re being paid for is. He tells his father later, but his father doesn’t think his son’s observation is funny.

His grades are going up now. He throws himself into his schoolwork because whenever he finishes an English essay or gets the right answer on a particularly hard algebra question, he thinks he feels his mother smiling down at him from the heavens.

Beth isn’t doing very well because she’s a little girl, and she lost her mother when she was eight years old, and her mother was her best friend. But she will be okay because eight-year-olds adapt well, and she will grow up and be a successful and smart and driven young woman and she will have good memories of her mother, and Logan will be damned if anything other than that happens.

His father is away often. Days go by without seeing him, and every time he comes around his black hair is longer and his beard is more unruly than before. Logan makes Beth her breakfast and supper, and sends a brown plastic bag with an apple and a sandwich to school with her. He helps her with her homework, and on nights when his father does stumble in the front door, the liquor reeking off him so strong that Logan can taste it on his tongue, he shields Beth’s body with his own and doesn’t move until his father disappears into his bedroom.

His mother is still here. He can’t see her, but he can feel her. He calls out to her sometimes when he’s walking down a trail by his house, the path worn down from years of playing tag and scavenger hunting with his sister, his “Momma?” hanging in the air. He always waits a few seconds to hear her voice or feel her hand stroke his head and feels a bit foolish, but then the wind grows a bit stronger, and the sun shines a bit brighter, and he can smile because she is there. She will always be there.