Hummin': Touch of Faith by Joy Williams
It's cold. There's a breeze in the closed room coming from the air conditioner that's been running for more than an hour. Despite the chilly temperature, I am sweating. I can feel beads of sweat forming on my nose, forehead and back. I sit on the edge of the sofa, not wanting to get too close.
She sits across me, her floral blouse clinging onto her frail body. She has lost so much weight since I last saw her. My heart aches. What could be bothering her now? Did I really want to know? Maybe if I listen, I can help her carry the burden.
Her recently separated son, who has three kids with his ex-wife, she says, is moving in with a single mom with three kids. He took no heed of the advice she lavished on him. He just wouldn't listen to her pleas not to leave his family. He turned a blind eye to the tears that flowed down her sagging cheeks. He left.
She talks about her three grandchildren with such fondness I can almost see pink fluff forming in thin air. I ask her how often she gets to see them. She shrugs sadly, saying their mother did not like the children sleeping over with grandma too often. For a minute, my heart is filled with hatred towards her for depriving this sweet old woman of the very things that make her truly happy. But then I realized...she must be afraid her children might leave her too.
There is a silent pause. She gestures for me to take a drink from the glass of juice she had the maid brought in. I gulp down the sweet liquid, but something remained lodged in my throat, making it hard to speak, or even breathe.
I point out her immense weight loss, asking if she has been taking care of herself. She explains she hasn't been getting much sleep for a couple of weeks. A one or two hour nap was all her body could manage to do, without her mind calling her back to the merciless cruelty of reality.
Then, as if surrendering to defeat, she bows her head and I could hear her stifled whimpering, her sobs growing stronger by the second, racking her whole body. I cross the distance between us in two, quick strides and envelop her in the warmest embrace I could give.
Wiping her tears with tissue, she begins apologizing profusely for crying in front of me, but I will not hear of it. She cannot always be stoic, a firm, unmoving rock to which everyone anchored upon. It is too much of a Herculean task for one person alone. I let her cry some more, her tears seeping through the deep yellow of my blouse. I hold her, reassuring her of my presence and in those brief moments, sharing her pain.
I raise my hand only to discover my own cheeks are wet with tears.
But I cry not because he left his family for another one. I cry not for the children who would suffer from their father's abandonment. I cry not for the wife who now has to play two roles in three young lives. I cry not out of pity, nor embarrassment.
I cry, because I hold in my arms the strongest woman I know.
And she's broken.
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