The Darkness of Matter

The Darkness of Matter?

Five percent of the universe. That is all we see. It is all the matter we know. All the rest is dark. Dark energy. Dark matter.

Science has long intrigued me. In the small square of light that was my seventh-grade science class at Lincoln Jr. High in Lackawanna, NY, I wanted to peer into darkness. Into the unknown. My partner in scientific nebiness was J.J., a mixed Native American and white boy, small and sprightly who had an overbite; he liked to laugh, and he made me laugh. He and I would pester our science teacher with questions that we had contemplated in the school cafeteria where we ate free lunch. After feasting on standards like grilled cheese, meatloaf, baked chicken, square pizza, chocolate milk and soggy paper cups of fruit cocktail, we would rush up the stairs breathless before class began and ask, “What would happen to us if the sun blinked out of existence?” “What if our solar system is just one big atom?” “Is there life on other planets?”?

Back in 1971, he was our Google. Our Siri. He was our North Star, who never made us feel odd for our geekiness.

We wanted to know. More. Worlds and words and wisdom that stretched beyond the tight streets, the housing projects, the humble houses and choking smoke of the steel mill in our hometown.

There was comfort in knowing then. In thinking that science had all the answers. That it could explain and make sense of this world and every world that hid in the darkness of the sky.?

It wasn’t until I started writing professionally and needed time away from the world of fiction while I was creating it, that I started reading more about science. I loved nothing better than taking an hour out of the day, or bringing along a book on a business trip so I could read about quantum physics, Einstein’s thought experiments, quarks, string theory and multiple dimensions, Schr?dinger's cat, the Many Worlds Interpretation, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. In recent years I have been catching up on the multiverse, simulated universe theory, dark matter and dark energy. In trying to understand a world that science is revealing, I feel I am a prisoner sitting among the shadows in Plato’s "The Allegory of the Cave." The reality of existence far exceeds my ability to grasp it, even after being told. Nearly 100 years ago, the scientist J.B.S. Haldane stated, “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” And he was right.

Even in our ordinary world, in our ordinary lives there are those moments that we think we know, and then there are those that leave us lost in the darkness of the matter.

*

After my older sister Janice died suddenly in July in 2009, seven of us siblings had gathered in the family room of her youngest daughter’s and husband’s house in Maryland. Another brother was not in good enough health to join us. Her memorial service was the same day as that for Michael Jackson. July 7, 2009. A Tuesday. She died July 1, just eight days shy of her 54th birthday, and her death came as a shock.

Many of my eight siblings and I had just gathered in Baltimore at a sister’s house for a weekend cookout at the end of June to do what our late mother had instilled in us to do—join together in joy. She would say, “Too many families only see each other at funerals.”

That weekend, the construction of summer weather had already begun, the density of heat pushing through thickening rhododendron and hydrangeas, the weight of humidity, cumulonimbus clouds growing like dreams, filling the blueness of the skies in our restless minds. We spent most of our time inside sharing our mother’s recipes, barbecue chicken and ribs, potato salad, macaroni and cheese, greens, lemon meringue pie, and pound cake.

Janice, in a beautiful floral dress, was so happy, so lovely that weekend, so lively. She had pancreatitis, so her diet was limited.

The summer before, the pancreatitis had flared up so badly, Janice was put on a feeding tube. I packed up my daughter, six at the time, and we drove from Pittsburgh and spent a month with her in rural NC. It was a quiet and peaceful month. Sitting on the porch with her and her dog. Watching Venus and Serena play Wimbledon. And talking. My daughter enjoyed coloring and drawing with her.

Janice was still on the feeding tube when we had the cookout, but she ate with us. She seldom ate meat, but she ate everything we did that weekend. Including a rib, which one of her daughter’s playfully tried to wrest from her.

“Ma,” I don’t want you to get sick.”

My sister said, “Leave me alone. I’m grown,” and she laughed. In our sister’s split-level ranch, she flitted between floors, spending time with us siblings, her children and grandchildren and the nieces and nephews.

In the local galaxy of our family, the young children, cousins, too excited to eat, spun wildly through the day, sweaty, drawn toward one another, capturing one another into orbits of whispers sweetened with the scent of bubble gum and secrets to be shared before the day dissolved into darkness.????

On the day of the memorial service, I was comforted with the last living memories of Janice. The service was held in front of a small, windowless auditorium of an unadorned Kingdom Hall where she was a member. It reminded me of lecture halls in college. Janice had decided that she wanted her body donated to science, so a picture of her was on display atop a table in front. I had always loved that picture. She was dressed in a simple black sweater, her full head of hair loosely curled.?

Along with my family were her brothers and sisters from the Hall. I knew few of them. My siblings and I, with the exception of another sister, were not Jehovah Witnesses. We grew up in St. Mark’s, the tiny and sedate AME Zion church in our tiny hometown. Her ex-husband, who grew up on the row in the projects just behind us, had brought her into this faith after they were married. Though he tried to get me to join when my sisters and I would visit them in Maryland when we were in our early teens, I was not interested. I know there are those who mock Jehovah Witnesses, who hate them. As a teen, in all honesty, I found their teachings to be too controlling, joyless, and above all else, boring. I wanted a life that did not align with what I heard my brother-in-law proselytized.

Janice’s service was simple and short and generic. An elder of the congregation, a man I had never met, dressed in a dark suit, spoke with all the passion of a TA giving a freshman lecture. What stood out in the service was his informing us that our dear sister was merely sleep. I did not know how to truly process that concept, but since my sister had died in her sleep, maybe it would make sense, at least to her, to wake up after what seemed like a night’s sleep and be at the end of time where she would live in paradise on earth. As we filed out of the hall, I was looking forward to the family gathering at Janice’s youngest daughter’s and husband’s home.

As we sat together in the family room sharing the repast, we watched Michael Jackson’s memorial service being held in the Staples Center in Los Angeles. It was a funeral, a concert, a celebration, a worldwide cultural event.

My four sisters and I had grown up loving the Jackson Five. I was 10 when the Jackson 5 sang “I Want You Back” live on The Ed Sullivan Show. And I may have lost my mind just a little. They wore fringed vets, patterned shirts, scarves around their necks. Jermaine and Jackie had perfect afros. Marlon and Tito donned apple jacks. Michael, a Fedora. They were so cute. Their dance steps so tight. So right. Tito played guitar, Jemaine the bass. The brothers’ harmonies resonated in the shadows of our living room. They were emerging stars, revealing a new world of color and light. A new reality. We were instant fans, witnessing the start of their journey.

As I watched the end of Michael’s journey at the memorial service, I could not help but think that no matter how big the Staples Center was, no matter how many millions of albums they sold, no matter the fame, how many years had passed, or what may have passed between them, or come between them, I was watching brothers gathered to honor their brother. As the gospel choir sang, “Soon and very soon, we are going to see the king,” the brothers, in black suits, wheeled in the golden coffin covered in red roses and placed it on a white platform awash in white light. My throat tightened.

One of the most emotional moments for me, though, was the appearance of Jennifer Hudson, a month away from delivering her child. Eight months earlier her mother, brother and nephew were murdered, and yet she was there. Walking onto the stage, she wore a white dress. Backed by the gospel choir, she sang, Michael’s “Say You’ll Be There.” Early in the song. after delivering the lines: “Carry me like you were my brother. Love me like a mother. Will you be there?” The camera zoomed in for a closeup as she looked up. This is something she did several times more times, but she powered through, carrying us “there.”

A voice over of Michael ended the song as images of stars moving through space were shown, with Michael asking, “In our darkest hour, in my deep despair, will you still care? Will you be there?”

We watched on, and as the memorial was winding down, Janice’s son came and sat among us. The children, many of whom had been there for the June gathering, were playing in the basement. Her son somberly told us he wanted to share something with us. Janice had indeed died in her sleep, but she had died at her own hand purposely overdosing on prescription medication. He had made copies of her suicide note, neatly folded them and handed them to us in spotless white envelopes. He began crying, and so did we. “I wanted to tell ya’ll.”

While we wept, we did not wail. Janice suffered from bipolar disorder for years, just as our father had. He had killed himself, shot himself (see my article, “Wee the Fishes”). Janice had attempted to kill herself before. Several times. She had been hospitalized. Put on medication. Gone into therapy. But the weight of it all, on this earth and in the heavens, in the darkness of a long night had been too much for her to bear. And the words, before that moment, were too much for her son to say out loud to us over the phone. He needed us to be there. In that room.

Our brother Michael took the news the hardest. He and Janice were a year apart. Tearfully, he said, “If it were not for Janice, I would be dead.” This was true. She had come to visit our mother who was living in Pittsburgh, and Michael lived with her. I lived across town. He had been feeling rundown, exhausted, but Michael was the type who would press on and go to work. Janice would not accept his excuse that he just needed to rest. She insisted that he was going to the hospital, and she took him. As it turned out, Michael was suffering from full kidney failure and was put on dialysis. While he was hospitalized, Janice had a flareup of her pancreatitis and was admitted to the same hospital. Our oldest sister, stopping by the hospital on her way home from work, found Michael slumped in his bed. He had had a stroke which none of the staff was aware of. She was there. Just as our mother has raised us to be for one another.

*

Janice. It is so hard to sum up, to express in words what she has been to me. Over the years, I have been asked about the character of Addy Walker. How did I come to her personality. Of course, she is fictional, but that toughness Addy is based on Janice. She was so proud of my success. Once when I was on a book tour and had an appearance in DC, she met my early flight and took me to Sholl's Cafeteria for breakfast. I was more tired than hungry, and I was comforted being with Janice. Later that day, she came to the event. ?That meant the world to me. Four years older than me, she was at that sweet distance where she was both tender and tough.?

In my early years of elementary school, Janice took me and brought me home. It was a neighborhood school with no free lunch or even a cafeteria, so all the students came home for lunch. I attended afternoon kindergarten, and one bitterly cold day, I was walking with her and my sister who is a year older. About a block from the school, I slipped on a frozen puddle, a pothole hidden by snow. The ice gave way, and I was pitched in, hands down, into filthy, icy water and then fell on my behind.? My woolen snow suit and mittens were soaked. Janice pulled me out, and I immediately started wailing. “Take me home!”

“No,” she insisted, “I’m taking you to school. You’re going to be alright.”

I was freezing and I cried every step of the way, begging her to take me home, but Janice took me firmly by the hand and led me directly to my kindergarten teacher. She and the teacher guided me into the class bathroom and stripped off my clothes, including my wet panties. Janice stayed with me while the teacher found a pair of snow pants for me to wear. Janice helped me dress, and I felt ashamed because I didn’t have on any underwear and the pants were scratchy. The teacher dismissed Janice to go to her class, and she washed my underwear and dress, spot cleaned my snow suit and mittens and put them all on the huge radiator to dry.?

I spent most of the afternoon not interested in class, but worried about my clothes. If they would be dry by dismissal time. To my relief, they were, and they were toasty warm. Before the class was dismissed. Janice was there. At my classroom door like she was every day, and as we walked back home, I clung fiercely to one of her strong hands.

*

In our apartment in the projects, we lived in such tight spaces, had so little when we were younger, that we shared beds. Us five girls having four beds, rotated sleeping partners. Head to toe. Back-to-back. Belly-to-belly. I felt protected when I shared a bed with Janice. When our father would sometimes rage in the night, caught up in a cycle of his illness that he took out on us, I would cling to her. I would shake and I would cry in her arms while our father would shout, curse, call my mother and us every vile name he could think of. He would threaten to kick us out. Into the cold. “Ya’ll all gonna be sleeping on orange crates!” he would bellow.

For some reason, I still remember that one line that he said over the years. I could see us, seven kids at home at that point in time, being turned into the cold with our mother. Into the underbelly of the night. I saw us in an alley and no blankets under a starless sky. It was just us. The wind, and the hard slats of the crates keeping us out of the snow. Jance tried to assure me it would not happen. He was just talking. As much as I wanted to believe her, I didn’t. For anyone who grew up with a mentally ill parent, who lived in an impoverished family, especially back in the 1960’s and 70’s, there was a duel fear. The fear of staying, and the fear of leaving. Where would did you go? Where was the there???

*

There were those moments where Janice clearly saw me as a pesky baby sister. The Christmas eve when I was eight, she woke up and saw me sitting in the bed right by her side. She asked what I was doing. I quietly told her, “I’m waiting up for Santa Claus.”

Equally as quiet, but bluntly she told me, “There is no Santa Claus. Go to sleep.”

I did not believe her and told her so. She persisted.

?“Malcolm (We called our father by his first name.) buys our toys, so lay down.”

I did not lay down. I cried until I was too tired to sit up. I lay down beside Janice but turned away from her. The next morning, like every Christmas morning I could remember, my siblings and I thundered downstairs before sunrise and found that Santa had come. In all of his brokenness, in all of the privation, Malcolm, I am sure under the stewardship of Mama, had squirreled away enough money to make Christmas happen. As I enjoyed playing with my new Barbie, my crayons and coloring books, and a new toy tea set, I felt saddened. I did not know, did not understand how our father was our Santa.

*

???? Despite our circumstances, or maybe because of them, Janice was the first person I knew who produced art. She drew wonderfully, mostly cartoon characters. No matter how hard I tried, I could not emulate her talent. It was a mystery to me that she could start with blank paper and make a world of characters appear. She became interested in photography and in high school she took an art class and produced an entire portfolio. She also knitted and crocheted. She sewed, like our mother. I wanted her to onto college like three of our older siblings had, but she married right out of high school.

*

While she was still in high school, Janice had nearly died one summer. Our mother had said that no matter what childhood diseases came into our house, Janice always had the worst case of them--measles, whopping cough, mumps. The summer she fell ill, it seemed like it was another episode of her catching the worst of something. What we did not know. None of us were sick. Just Janice, complaining of a bad headache and that her neck hurt. While us younger children went out to play, she laid in the bed we shared. Curtains drawn. A day went by. The next day she was still in bed, still suffering a pain that aspirin could not stop. My mother sent me to Ted’s, the corner store to get that early afternoon to buy a stronger pain killer. For some reason, an icy fear crept into me. A sense of urgency. Heading to the store, I ran fast, faster, faster. When I got home, and went to our bedroom, Janice was moaning and did not want to take the medicine. I felt tears welling up in me. I had never seen her this sick. By early evening, our oldest sister had stopped by to visit with her husband. He had a car and insisted that Janice needed to go to the hospital. He lifted Janice, who was limp in his arms and he and my sister took her and my parents to a Buffalo hospital. The tears I had been holding back, I could not hold anymore.?

My brother Michael, two other sisters and I waited. I tried to convince myself that Janice could not be that sick, though I knew in my heart she was. I didn’t want to think she could die, but I did think it, and I cried more.

Hours later we heard the front door open. We rushed downstairs. There were my parents. Without Janice. The feeling of being turned into a pillar of ice overtook me, but our mother was a pillar too, one of flesh and blood. She reassured us that Janice was alright but had to stay in the hospital. Her response, her quiet and calm reserve returned me to life. Janice had meningitis. There were other children who had it that summer in Buffalo. They had not all survived it.

Malcom went upstairs, and I asked, “Why are you back home if she is so sick?”

“Child,” my mother explained, “Your father got kicked out of the hospital.” Janice had to get a spinal tap, and my father was too afraid for her to undergo the procedure. Frankly, he did not trust doctors.

He had been married before, and his daughter, a teenager from that marriage, died of a seizure while under medical care. Her name was Carol. I don't know where his mind was that night in that hospital with Janice, was it with Carol, with Janice, or spinning madly through the rings of Saturn. He agreed to the spinal tap, and from what Mama said, they could hear Janice screaming down the hall. That was when Malcom began screaming, cursing and had to be escorted out. I found myself again in a moment where I wondered who that man who was upstairs over my head fully was.

Though Mama was the one who took on the daily care of us, in summers when we fell down and got scraped up, Malcolm would administer mercurochrome or iodine to our wounds. ?He did not yell, which I always thought he would, but gently admonished us about running. It was why we fell. It was why we got hurt.

I went to bed that night without Janice beside me still wondering if she would really return, would she be well, would she still be my sister.? She came home a few days later, tired, weak, but able to walk in under her own power

*

The suicide note from Janice opened up a brief glimpse into the darkness of her world. ??Part of what she wrote in her florid cursive was, “The depression was more than I could deal with. I have been suicidal for months and was just looking for an opportunity.”

*

For as much as I wanted science to provide certainty when I was young, I have grown to accept uncertainty.? Up until now, I have held the truth of my sister’s death as a secret.

When a family member dies by suicide, I feel so many of us, including myself, do not speak the word aloud, especially if it is linked with a history of mental illness. Perhaps it is just me, but I feel that in the African American community there is still a kind of stigma, a taboo attached to the word suicide, so we do not say the word. We instead close our mouths and choose to imprison ourselves in a cave. Backlit and full of shadows. We face forward, risking losing the memories of our loved ones to darkness. That 95% of the matter that we do not know. ?Maybe we feel we are protecting them in our silence, with an unspoken word, but maybe we are protecting ourselves because to say it is to look back. To feel the pain over again. To go back into places where voices howled in the night and cold winds blew. But in that night. In that discomfort are the arms. The breath. The beauty. The lifetime of love we shared with them. The light of their lives. We owe it to ourselves to turn around. To see them. To be there.