A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (95)
You know your lights are going out when folks start bringing you home-cooked meals, she thought.
In lieu of meaningful physical activity, Della beat off boredom by doing small-scale things, like dusting her Lladró figurines. Combining tea leaves to concoct new flavors. This morning, she wore a new Fashion Fair lipstick she’d read about in her Essence magazine subscription (Naaz had helped her paint it on with a lip brush). Della was determined to live as vibrant a life as she could until her last breath. Even if on some days, the most she could do was swipe on a dazzling lipstick.
Naaz had moved in to provide around-the-clock care, and her only job was to help Della feel as comfortable as possible in her final weeks or months or whatever. The “whatever” was the worst part. Della just wished she had a say, some control. It seemed undignified, sitting around waiting for death to claim you. It seemed passive, meek. And she loathed not being in control. Everything else was okay. She wasn’t really in much pain, so she didn’t want to depend on the morphine. She just felt exhausted.
When the doctors told her that she needed around-the-clock palliative care, her one request was knowing exactly where her pills were, and how many of them she was supposed to take and when. This dying business was infantilizing enough as it was; she didn’t want to be at the mercy of Naaz for her pain management. She was a lovely girl, but sweet fancy Moses, sometimes her relentless cheeriness was like a screen door slamming in the wind.
Suyin had stopped by to make her a batch of terrible corn bread, which she pretended to adore. Last week, Della and Su had amicably ended their romance as they soared over Manhattan in an hourly rental helicopter she’d chartered (bucket list item number four completed!). Their breakup was both picturesque and unavoidable. Della was too tired to go on dates, and sometimes even too weak to sit up on the couch and watch their baking shows. But they maintained their friendship. Su loved to laugh and tell stories, and Della soaked it up. The days were so long now—she welcomed the company.
She needed Ricki’s company, too. But until today, she couldn’t face her. She hated that she’d iced Ricki out for days, but if she’d learned anything in her ninety-six years, it was that taking action before one was ready was unwise. When Ricki spun that yarn about Ezra, Felice, and the curse, she’d written it off as pure delirium. Clearly, Ricki had fallen hard for an unhinged man who’d sucked her into his fantasies. Wasn’t that what she’d always said her family experienced with her? Perhaps Ricki was as nutty as her family had always alleged.
But Della knew that wasn’t true. Ricki had flights of fancy, to be sure, but she was sane, sensible, reasonable. And she was serious about being taken seriously, in life and in business. No person so red hot on being seen as capable would come up with a story so ludicrous. And yet it was ludicrous, of course. It was.
It isn’t, thought Della. You know you always heard whispers about Mama. How many schoolyard scrapes did you win, fighting the daughters of ladies who’d grown up with her?
Unholy conjure woman, they’d said. Loose morals. Born with a caul, hot from hell. Heard tell she put the roots on my mama, for letting her beau walk her to Broussard’s Dry Goods. Hexed my aunt for laughing at her burlap dress. Laid with any fella who paid her mind. Spent more time playin’ than prayin’. Be careful who you take a shine to, Della—might be your brother.
Whenever Della came home with scraped knees after defending Mama in another tussle, she’d beg Nana for the truth. But she would refuse to confirm or deny. Nana barely spoke two words about her gone-too-soon daughter. Instead, she’d thread her old rosary through her fingers, solemnly praying over the beads. Della always wondered what she was praying for. Felice’s soul? Della’s? Her own? Or maybe she was simply grieving.
As she grew into a teenager, Della tried to see it from her grandmother’s perspective. Nana was religious in the extreme, and the only man she’d ever loved had abandoned her before marriage, leaving their daughter a bastard. And when Felice grew up to be “fast”—and, by all accounts, a witch, no less—she ran off to pursue Harlem’s devilish delights, leaving behind a baby daughter. Yet another bastard baby for Nana to raise. Another failure in the eyes of the Lord. And then Felice’s suicide. The ultimate failure.
The Fabienne women were wired to be sad. Nana got the blues, the kind that kept her in bed for weeks at a time. Sounded like Felice was the same way. Made sense, because Della was, too. And the blues took forever to abate. Della was familiar with how… hopeless it felt to live in fear of your own emotions. Flattened by their strength.
Whatever emotional ailment she and Nana had, it sounded like Felice had it worse. But instead of sticking it out, she’d abandoned her daughter, left her alone to defend Felice’s honor and reckon for her alleged sins. The weight of Felice’s reputation was stifling, and because of it, Della’s childhood was miserable. And she wasn’t just angry about it. She hated Felice for it. It was a grudge she carried around with her every day.
Yes, Ricki’s story about Ezra’s curse was unreasonable. Crazy talk. But the truth was, Della had always felt that there was something explosive about Felice. The suspicion that those schoolyard rumors were true lurked in her mind: unproven but powerful. It was in Nana’s absolute refusal to discuss her daughter; the small-town stories turned into myths that outlived her mother’s short life; the mystery surrounding her suicide.