While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.

*****

“It was the summer my living mother sat unknowingly on the doorstep of a sudden vanishing.”
———Hanif Abdurraquib
——--A Little Devil in America

Mother was adamant that she didn’t mind dying. She’d never fully commited to being on this heavy earth in the first place. So after the lump in her breast turned ten, I wondered why she fought death as fiercely as a toddler fought sleep.

The last day she she set foot in the living room, her spirit group came over for a final visit. The women she’d meditated with sat at her feet in solemn communion. I knew she’d die after they left.

She didn’t.

I heard her on the phone. It was a stream of conscious soliloquy, wrapping up the loose ends of a long friendship. She seemed to seek permission for her leavetaking. I knew she’d die after she hung up.

She didn’t.

Dad took her for a last drive into the foothills. They struggled into the starry California night. Dad teary, her shuffling with one hand gripped around his arm. I knew she’d die while they were out there.

She didn’t.

She fought on until her weakened body finally took down her will. She’d been waiting for an estranged loved one to come through our front door … waiting for them to appear at her bedside … waiting for them to forgive her.

They didn’t.

Rose Marie and I were sophomores together. She was scary-smart and well-informed. (Hell we were all smart. Before Affirmative Action, Pomona kept us out because we were black, not because we were stupid.) Like me, Rose was a high yellow girl, about my height, Afro about as wild as mine. I remember she was knock-kneed and pigeon toed, a combination that caused her to galumph through the dorm like a colt taking its first steps.

She spoke … well, shrieked … in a high-pitched register. I can hear it now as if she were standing next to me. (I wish you were standing here, Rose, I miss you.) She spouted history, philosophy, and gossip like she was delivering a lecture. A very loud lecture. Her thoughts barreled into one another, too fast to find their balance, too slow to get out of the way. Explanatory phrases careened to a premature halt. Maniacal laughter showed up, when words went missing.

She was provocative, stomped up and down the dorm hallway, twirling her underpants over her head. I didn’t have the impression she sought attention. I had the impression she was declaring her independence from common standards of decorum. She would never fit in, so fuck it. I loved her for that.

I would never fit in, either, but I could never say fuck it.

We, her friends—if you could call our relationship that—wrestled her back into her room, before the dorm authorities could snatch her. We stood guard until daylight. We had to go to class and hoped her demons had exhausted her enough to keep her out of trouble.

She wasn’t scared of anything, or maybe she was, underneath her bravado. What did I know? Indeed, she’d be the first to tell you, I did not know. “Darlin’ you have no idea—,” She informed me once or three times. No idea about her life. No idea about life in general, because I was … I try to pull up her words. Innocent? Naïve? Sheltered?

She was right. When she spoke the truth about me, delivering the information without a hint of judgment, I recognized myself. She spoke me into existence. I loved her for that.

She said I’d be shocked if I knew how she lived when she disappeared from campus for days at a time. She implied that she belonged to a pimp and made no secret she was taking some illegal drug or another.
When she returned after a disappearance, she’d sneak back in after curfew, through the window of a friend who lived on the first floor.

Only three or four of us were close to Rose, in proximity anyway, if not emotionally. She was hard to take, alright, but didn’t direct her crazy at anybody. Neither did she seek out companionship. I don’t remember Rose at rest. I don’t remember having a conversation with her. You didn’t converse with a nonstop screech. You could only listen and then hear that screech involuntarily, after you tired of paying attention. She was simply part of our little group, part of me. She was a lost soul. I loved her for that.

I was a lost soul, too, but couldn’t scream for help.

We—four black girls and a white boy with a van—drove Rose to a hospital in L. A. We corraled her into the van, where she held forth for the forty-five minute trip, and we kept ducking her demonstrative arms. On the way, a crow slammed into the windshield. We took it as a bad omen.

The woman at the admissions desk looked at us with a bored expression, as in what’s-your-story-on-this-typical-night-in-the-E.R. After all, none of us were bleeding. We’re afraid our roommate will end up getting hurt on the street. She hasn’t slept forever. Or eaten. Can we check her in? No we don’t know what she’s taken. No we don’t know what’s wrong with her.

We only knew the pain of watching a loved one spiral into chaos. The hospital wouldn’t admit Rose, because we weren’t responsible parties. None of us were her family, and all of us were under age.

I don’t know where we took her after that, don’t know where she took herself. She didn’t make it to senior year.

Today, there’s a lump in my throat named Rose Marie.

While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.

“You could hear in her voice her house was paid off.”

———Shannon Sanders

——--Company

Excited to showcase her city’s reputation for fine cuisine, my Chicago pal led me through the Magnificent Mile restaurant’s carved oaken doors. Carpeted steps led down to the dining room. I tripped on the bottom stair. Blazing white linens put me on alert. Deep inside my purse, my credit card squealed.

A tuxedo-clad server glided over. He set gold embossed menus in front ot us. “What can I bring you to drink?”

I opened the menu, which listed no prices. “I just want water, thanks.”

“We have … Perrier … ?”

I didn’t know water had a first name.

“San Pellegrino …?”

Was this Perrier’s cousin? I shifted my attention from the menu to his face.

He raised an eyebrow.. “Evian …?”

I raised an eyebrow.

He gazed at the door. “Poland Spring…?”

I waited.

He sighed. “And …” He looked down his long thin nose at me. He pooched his lips. “Tap.”

I pooched back. “Tap,” I said.