Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

“Why isn’t he calling back?!”

Something about frantic words coming out of a tiny child’s mouth has always bothered me but there was no time for worry, I was definitely dying and what would worry do?

“I have no idea, sissy… probably on a call or something. I feel okay so we can just wait a little longer,” I said though I was sure I was on my way to the cemetery we had gone to last year with my school. Can you imagine taking 4th graders on a jaunt to the local boneyard and calling it a fieldtrip? It was a sprawling place though, sort of a spectacle. I mean this place was TOO nice. Cemetery like that one’ll have people throwing themselves off cliffs left and right just to get in.

The tour guide was the very first goth person I had ever seen. She seemed to be really into her job of scaring children. She told us this long story about when our town was founded it was actually called “Twickenham, Alabama,” which I do remember thinking sounded a lot more bad-ass than “Huntsville.” Twickenham conjured images of great British knights fighting for the King along the river Thames! Meanwhile, the name Huntsville made me want ketchup.

I can’t remember the story in detail, just the joke at the end. That’s right, this goth gal told jokes. It’s fuzzy but it seems like there were lovers in the story and the lady lover died too soon and was buried in this huge, beautiful mausoleum. Entombed before us in this monument to her timeless beauty. The guide tells my class to walk up to the doors of the huge stone tomb and press our faces up to it so that we can hear. About half of us looked at her like we didn’t hear what she said before hesitantly walking to the door, seeming to fear this was a trap. Exactly one of us, Omer, heard what she said clearly and was not going up to that thing no matter what. That means that the rest of us did what kids do, wait to be unleashed. Once she gave them the green light to touch something their mom’s would never let them touch, they had their faces to that door listening with all their might. Well… we. I figured they hadn’t heard the part about how there was a dead person inside that monument so I was in that first group of people, stalking slowly towards that door as if I was sure it was about to turn into a giant cobra and rightfully bite my head off for disrespecting our fallen Twickenhamians.

The guide says “Okay, now if you listen with your heart AND your ears she will tell you her last words.” An audible gasp was heard all around. “When she was dying her love asked her what she regretted during her life and her answer was ‘NOTHING’.” That was it, I hurried to the door, I simply needed to hear this woman “yolo-ing” from beyond the veil. And we listened, for about five whole ass minutes, until we noticed the tour guide snickering with our teacher and we knew we had gotten got. Everyone but Omer, anyway. He didn’t see a green light, he saw a STOP sign. His mama raised him right.

Someone in the group of urgency said something along the lines of “what’s the big idea!?” With which the goth replied, “I told the truth, she said nothing!” The only one who laughed was Omer. The rest of us were giving each other that “you didn’t know, either!” look of shame. You know, the one we start conditioning ourselves to flash from the first time we fart in a room we didn’t know we couldn’t fart in and embarrass our parents to last week in Sunday school when I asked if we could actually be considered vampires for drinking the blood of Christ.

“It’s been too long, Coco…I paged him a bunch of times... we gotta call 911… remember we are supposed to if someone is bleeding!” I was sure she was right but my instinct was to calm her down. I had mixed feelings about calling 911, mostly because I had watched the show and I know they are going to ask me what’s wrong. “Uhhh… well… can you just show up? Bring women….” probably wasn’t going to cut it. They would at least want to know why I was bleeding and I surely didn’t know, I just wanted to wait on Dad to call back. I saw an episode where this lady had been gored by one of her husbands prized bulls. He calls 911 shouting frantically (yet clearly) "y'all gotta get here fast, one of my bulls got my wife!!" I feel that covers it. If the bull "got her" y'all best be hurrin up but this 911 operator, obviously being paid by the word for her job says, "Remain calm, I need you to tell me exactly what happened, Sir."

“Maybe I should go get Ms. Pat. She helps me all the time!” Ms. Pat drove Brittany to school on the days my dad was at the fire department. My school was close enough to walk to so I didn’t know her very well. Still, I knew this wasn’t a good option. At least the strangers on ambulances had medical training. All I knew about Ms. Pat was that her house was full of expired food and smelled like cats... but there were no cats.

“Let’s just wait 5 more minutes, if I was dying I wouldn’t be talking to you right?” She stopped talking but her face was not convincing. “Hey look, “The Simpsons” is on… what dad doesn’t know won’t hurt him, huh?” I said in attempts to distract her. We weren’t allowed to watch that show but I think that’s only about my dad not appreciating it. We definitely were allowed to watch “Beavis and Butthead” and later on in life “South Park.” Back in the days when you only had one TV in the house equipped with cable, I can imagine you had to be creative in order to combat two incessant little girls and watch what you wanted to sometimes. He was never much of a censor, my fave movie when I was 2 was “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” so I gotta believe that one was a preference issue. I’m sure I would be a different girl were he to have never created his preferences into rules. For example, he hated having his feet touched so now I am the kind of person that would rather spend the day driving through hell in a car full of clown-faced spiders than having a drive through the countryside with a bare foot touching my bare skin.

When the phone rang it didn’t even get to sound it’s full alarm before she answered it. “Daddy?” Her face in the pauses while he talked always told me what he was saying. This face said she had been misunderstood and she wasn’t about to stand for it, “Well it IS an emergency!” Her next face said “well if you’d just listen I’d tell you.” “...but Da.. Dad! Daddy…. Coco’s dying!” This time I heard him shout “What!? What happened?” Then she paused. Not knowing what to tell him. I hated to think “Well, SHIT me either!” but I had. I took the phone from her and mumbled “hey dad” while he was simultaneously demanding an explanation. “I don’t know, I didn’t hurt myself, I mean… my stomach kinda hurt earlier today and now I am bleeding a lot.” His frustration shriveled a bit as he asked me an awful question. If Brittany were to have been gauging my facial expressions also, this one said “I just woke up from a nightmare” so she came closer to try to hear what dad was saying. I had no choice, it was either tell my dad, who loved me, or tell a team of strangers on “Rescue 911” because I would surely end up on that show if I had to call them- what was happening to me was beyond outrageous. So I answered him with the words my mama taught me. “..uhhhm… well… it’s really gross daddy but, from my ‘tu-tu’ and it’s been happening since I got home from school!” I shouted that last part all in one breath. Brittany got wide-eyed and covered her mouth like I just said I killed Jesus.

That didn’t help the long pause my dad took before he said “uuuuggggh… go get in the bathtub, everything’s fine. I’m gonna have your grandma call you right back” and hung up.

“Lordy, honey, how old are you now?” was the first thing grandma said after the greeting.

“Almost 11.” When you’re a kid you are never your age, you are always on your way to the next age, growing up is the funnest thing to look forward to. “Well, aren't you just like me?” she queried, though it sounded like a proud statement.

“This is the first step to becoming a woman, you know? Someone probably would have told you all about this if you weren’t sa’young, most girls don’t become women till a little later on.” I wondered if I was supposed to feel special, and if I was going to have to start paying bills like my dad said I would when I grew up. What if I woke up tomorrow morning and my dad was like "Soooo yeahhhh, about that rent?" I only made 5 dollars a week allowance and… good Lord my allowance, was THAT going to stop now?! Well this journey isn’t worth it, I started to think... and then never stopped.

“Purdy soon you’ll be getting phone calls from little boys and asking your dad to let you go out on dates.” That part sounded exciting.

“Daddy’ll bring you home some products in the morning that will sit still better than toilet paper but that’ll work for now, okay honey? You know I love you so much? Sorry you were scared but it’s no big deal. It is and it isn’t. You’ll see. Call me if you have any questions.”

I had soooo many questions, and honestly, a couple of arguments. But instead I said “Okay, gram. Love you too and I will.” No sense in starting arguments with my 6ft tall, no bullshit, Texan grandmother. She spent her entire career working in a mental institution in the days before you weren't allowed to abuse them anymore. No doubt she'd have taken a charge at any patient and probably that raging bull that “got” that man’s wife. Kind of like another like pistol starter I would be dealing with for the rest of my life. I didn’t even push the “off” button on the cordless phone before Brittany, who had been sitting on the toilet seat lid waiting impatiently to hear all about the mysterious disease I was dying from, shouts “what’d she say!”

I hated to tell her it was only the same thing that would kill her someday too, woman-hood.