Cancer Season

WHERE IS my daughter?

I need her to come and say goodbye.

Cancer isn’t the only thing eating me alive.

My son-in-law John is standing next to me, as are my granddaughters Chandra and Kendra, but where on earth is Cheryl? She should be here, but I don’t see her. My sight is quickly failing me.

My name is Anne Marie Braxton, nee Jones. I was born on June 26, 1950, in the town of Montrose. I grew up fearing my Heavenly Father and my earthly father, which is right and proper. I also feared my husband, George, until the day I didn’t. That’s what I’m here to talk about. I know – another deathbed confession, made in the hope of getting the sinner into heaven. That’s not what I deserve, but I wasn’t thinking about the hereafter on the day I killed the man I married.

Yes, he hit me. We called it “home correction.” Yes, he cheated on me. We called it “straying.” We beat around the bush for twenty-five years, never saying what we meant, implying the worst. Our battles were fierce, but our reconciliations were even more so. We clung to each other like two drowning people, knowing that if either one of us let go, our lives would be over. So we went about our business, a farmer and his wife, keeping our minds on our work and our noses to the grindstone. Very rarely did we look up and look at each other, seeing who we truly were.

We raised Cheryl as best we could. We spanked her when she misbehaved and praised her when she did something worth praising. She was a good girl for the most part, but, Lord, we had to push her hard. Before she was born, we decided she was destined for more than a farm when she grew up. That meant homework before TV, good grades, and most of all, good deportment. It helped her land a husband, and she couldn’t have found a better man than John. He gave her identical twins that would be the envy of any other grandmother. Something’s wrong, though.

I can see it on their faces. They look devastated, but almost too much. We’re close, but not too close. We’ve always been frightened of each other’s feelings. So why the extra consternation?

“Grandma Anne,” one of them says, reaching for my hand. I take it. “I’m so sorry.”

For what? Me having Stage IV lung cancer? Me dying? “It’s all a part of life, honey.”

“No,” says the other twin. “You shouldn’t be suffering like this.”

I beg to differ, but I’m running out of time.

“Girls, and John, there’s something I need to tell you – Can you turn that blasted TV off?”

The news cycle is on repeat, showing some handsome young man, a local TikTok influencer and bodybuilder, in critical condition. Not so long ago, I could see every bulge of every one of his muscles. Now he’s growing dimmer. Everything is fading, and I need to keep talking.

“I k – k – !” I break into a coughing fit.

John helps me sit up a little, and I hack up a big black wad of gunk.

Yes, I smoked. Almost everybody did in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Cigarettes were advertised everywhere, even on TV: “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.” Back then, I believed it, though I came to like Virginia Slims. Doctors said cigs were good for you. Oh, what fools we all were!

“What were you going to say, Grandma?” asks one of the girls.

I clear my throat one more time, then speak clearly: “I killed my husband, George.”

John’s eyes widen. “No, you didn’t. He got sick and died suddenly in 1998. Remember? The girls weren’t even born yet. It wasn’t your fault. You’re not thinking straight.”

“I’m thinking straighter than I have in my whole life, Johnny boy,” I snap. “Let me go on. Where the hell is Cheryl? She needs to hear this, too.”

“She’s coming,” one of the twins says. “You’ll see her soon.”

“Whatever you say next,” says John, “we’re going to have trouble believing it.”

“Believe what you will, but I have to get this off my chest. After so many of his affairs and beatings, and after twenty-five years of hell, I wanted out. I NEEDED out. I could have divorced George – in 1998, there was no shame in that – and I indeed brought it up. He responded by thrashing me with a belt and throwing me against the kitchen wall. I blacked out. When I came to, I knew his life had to end. So I spiced his bowl of vegetable soup with Prague powder, also known as curing salt, and he ate it all. Down to the last drop.”

“What’s curing salt?” The twin holding my hand – Kendra? – grips it tighter.

“It’s used in certain meats, like bacon and ham,” John says quickly, “but this is a misunderstanding. You may very well have put that in his soup, but by mistake, and not in that big a dose.”

“Wrong and wrong.” I stretch my lips wide in a grin, and my son-in-law steps back. “I know you want to think the best of me, especially now that I’m dying, but it’s the truth. George and I hardly told each other the truth in our whole married life, and it ended in murder. That’s its name.”

“No.” John is shaking. “It can’t be.”

“I remember like it was yesterday. In 1998, on June 26, I decided to give myself a birthday present. George forgot, like always. The morning started out like usual. I cooked breakfast, oatmeal for me and fried eggs and bacon for him. That man never did monitor his cholesterol. After we finished, I cleaned up, and George went to watch TV. You know what set me off? The straw that broke the camel’s back? His fart. A loud, rancid fart that I could even smell in the kitchen. God, the stink! I thought of yelling at him. Then I thought, ‘What good would that do? He’s been passing gas into his favorite recliner for a quarter century, and nothing’s going to stop him now.’ Unless I did.”

“That was when you thought of putting the Prague powder in his soup?”

“No, not right then. I only thought of killing him. The method didn’t occur to me until I was fixing lunch. Nowadays, they dye curing salt pink to distinguish it from table salt, but I knew George wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. They taste the same once they dissolve. I had a container of Prague powder under the sink, where I kept all the other poisons marked with a skull and crossbones.” I clear my throat and grip my granddaughter’s hand even more fiercely. She flinches.

“‘What’s for lunch?’ George yelled when noontime came. ‘I’m starving.’

“’Vegetable beef soup,’ I replied.

“‘Make it good, Annie. Make it good. Real salty.’”

“Oof,” the twin says. “So that was what inspired you.”

“Yes indeed. I hated it when he called me Annie, too, like I was a little girl. I’d show him. I’d give him the best damn soup he ever ate, and the last. He never suspected a thing. It was the perfect crime. No one would think the sudden onset of my husband’s lightheadedness and dizziness had anything to do with my homemade concoction.”

I smile even wider than before. Chandra – or Kendra – lets go of my hand.

“He said he had to lie down. I let him, as always, knowing he wouldn’t wake up. When I went upstairs to check on him, he was dead. His skin and lips were blue. I called 911, and I didn’t have to pretend I was distraught. I’d actually done him in, and then I couldn’t face what I’d done.”

“So why didn’t you confess?” John’s tone is clipped and angry. “Why didn’t you tell the police?”

“You think I wanted to spend the rest of my life in prison for something that should have earned me a medal? Oh, no. I’d put the Prague powder away long before the paramedics came, so I didn’t have to worry about some snoopy-drawers wondering what that can was on the kitchen counter. They said he died of things called ‘cyanosis’ and ‘hypoxia,’ meaning his blue skin and low oxygen, but I told the EMTs that he must have suffocated in his sleep. He didn’t have a CPAP machine.”

“So they believed you,” says my son-in-law, breathing heavy and staring at me so hard I can feel it. “They didn’t do an autopsy or anything, did they? You’re crazy, Anne. You’re a murderer.”

“Yes, but I’m also a survivor. It would have come down to him or me in the end.”

“How could you?” The twin nearest me is sobbing. “Why didn’t you just leave the bastard?”

“Kendra!” cries John. “Language, please.”

“I had nowhere else to go – no money, no family that would take me in. Plus, I had Cheryl. Even after she’d grown up and left, I stuck by George. I felt I had to – ‘stand by your man’ and all that. I knew he’d end me if I tried to run. So I struck when I could, little missy. You don’t know what it is to suffer too much yet. You haven’t seen enough of the world. You’ve never been married, for better or worse, and what’s more, you’ve never killed anyone. So you don’t know.”

“Yes I do, Grandma Anne,” says Kendra. “Yes, I do.”

A hot bolt of fear courses through me like electricity. “W-what do you mean?”

She leans in close. “We…killed…Mom.”

“Kendra, what are you doing?” Chandra cries. “Don’t say anything else. Just shut up.”

“You think you know about hell? Mom put us through our own, and Dad enabled her. All the yelling. All the lectures. All the competition for attention throughout our lives. There can only be one winner in our family. That’s what we learned growing up. Well, we’ve had enough. We almost killed each other in a knife fight, until we realized who the real enemy was.”

Kendra bites her lower lip hard and trembles, her hands curled into fists.

What’s she trying so hard not to say?

“You killed Cheryl?” I can’t stop tears from pouring down my cheeks. “When and how, girls?”

“About an hour ago. We held her down and slit her throat. This wasn’t planned. It was all on the spur of the moment, and we’re so sorry.”

“You’re l-lying.”

“That’s right,” says John. “You’re both lying. There’s no way you could have done such a thing.”

“WAKE UP, Dad!” Chandra approaches her father and almost slaps him. “We’re not little anymore. We’re two girls looking for a way out of this toxic family, and this was the easiest one.”

John screams. I mean SCREAMS, like a wounded lion, and falls to his knees.

I’m ebbing away. This has to end now. “Do you know what my daddy used to tell me? ‘Evil skips a generation, Annie. You’re a bad seed.’ I’d cried and refused to believe it, up until the day I offed George. Now I’m one hundred percent convinced. Grandma and granddaughters, killers all.”

I hear John sobbing to beat the band.

“Oh, buck up, will you? I told Cheryl not to marry anyone without a spine. Yes, you’re a wonderful man, but you have no backbone. She HAD to take charge if you wouldn’t. She – ” Another fit of coughing seizes me. “She’s dead now, isn’t she? Looks like I’ll see you all in hell.”

I close my eyes. I’m getting cold. No one is holding my hand now, and that’s how I need it to be.

I don’t deserve mercy. None of us do, but at least John can change before it’s too late.

No matter what the stars say, it’s Cancer season for me, and I’ve lost my battle with the Crab.

Credit: Tenet