This Time It Will Be All Right

Numbers and Trees II, #2 Judd. Acrylic, ink, pencil on Masonite and plexiglass. 121 × 100.3 × 13 cm. ©1987 Charles Gaines.

Image courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

This space, this spot under the three-unit thirty-degree window with decorative grilles, carefully crafted twin casements on each side and a protruding midsection, is where I will be found after I die. I have surveyed other areas in this one bedroom apartment, but this spot seems perfect. My head will be nestled under the window, and my feet—slightly angling right towards the poisonwood door standing two steps away from the bay window—will taciturnly welcome the first entrant like a concierge gently egging on guests with a slight tilt of the head. It is the perfect place to lie so that the smell of me will reach both passers-by and my landlord or neighbours soon enough. I have laid my last rent on the table and postdated a cheque for my energy bill. The kitchen floor and cabinets are as clean as I could get them to be. I have left non-perishable food items on the floor around the window for the last days, turned out the leftovers, and folded the towels in wait for the cleanup team that will come dispose of my possessions.

This morning I began to prepare my burial clothes. It ought to have been a priority; in fact, it was among the top items on my list. But no one can appreciate how long life’s laundry list becomes when the end is near. My time has been taken up by other things, those types of things you grudge through but must do, like dealing with bankers on the phone, haggling over discrepancies in your social security benefits, telling off nosy nurses: Like swatting flies dancing around the wooden rims of my palm-wine calabash and slapping at the mosquitoes that licked my thighs under the Udin tree in my father’s compound in Benin. My burial clothes should reflect my cultural heritage, a decent outfit that would articulate something different but true about me to each person who meets me after I’m gone: A cover for my head, like my people’s customary red ukperu, to tell of my sanguine disposition; swanky shoes with a metal toe cap that match the traditional rubicund wrapper that I’ll wrap around my body to show my proclivity for things upmarket acquired at snipped prices; I hope, too, that my taste for robust deals tells not of a garish appetite for flamboyance but of measured prudence through life’s journey. I’ll not forget the beads my mother sent last Christmas; they are, as my people like them, of a hue gliding from amber to tawny. I will wear them around my neck and on my wrists so that they announce my royalty. Those who come for me must know that I have a royal essence, like every one of my people, even when we are waifs.

Time passes by slowly. The arms of the clock seem to move like an overfed bug. But I can’t complain. I, too, am slow, burdened as I am by the weight of my situation. Dr. Alphonso now says I might be gone within the next month or so given the size of the tumour. But all that, I told him, is speculation, the kind of guesswork that led me from the cold, detached bed in the hospital to my parlour here in this old apartment building in downtown Toronto. You tell yourself—force yourself to hear—some painful truths. To remain in the hospital hearing the same refrain, “Is someone coming to see you today, hon?” would be silly. The loneliness, silence, and dispassionate efficiency of the nurses are almost as painful as the hearth in my head.

But I didn’t just pack up and leave the hospital without thinking it through. As soon as I heard Dr. Alphonso’s diagnosis, the first thing I did was invite...