The easiest thing to do would be to pretend like there had been no discovery in the shower, no phone call to Dr. Franklin and no Monday. Camilla was good at pretending things away.

But she found this situation to be a bit more challenging. The lump was a daily nuisance and the word Monday mocked her from her wall and desk calendars. Only the phone call could be dismissed as fantasy.

The week inched by and Camilla busied herself with work, giving her best advice on lazy husbands, wayward children and vindictive girlfriends.

The letter that had asked her if she was Camilla Rose from one hundred and forty second avenue, she destroyed in the paper shredder – and a minute later when she looked at the spaghetti thin strips splayed at the bottom of the bin, she pretended that it was bank correspondence offering her yet another low interest, high credit, charge card.

The days eek by until Monday is upon her and she finds herself sitting in the waiting room, dressed in a Gap t-shirt and denim Capri's, studying the copper polish on her toenails, coaxing her mind to think of pleasantries; sunflowers, white roses, and the first time she and Poe kissed. That last thought had surprised her and her head snapped up as if she had blurted the thought out loud.

“Camilla Boston?”

Her name is called and some of the other women, who wait, glance at her pedicured feet, they watch the swing in her hips and think they hear Duke Ellington's Take the A- Train , while their eyes travel up her leg and scale her curved hip, finally coming to rest in her waistline and they “humph” to themselves and straighten their backs, while making a mental note about their toes and wondering where their walking music have gone off too.

The room is made up of sterile whites and sanitary steel grays.

Camilla tries to shut out the cold gel the technician swathed across her breast, but that was hard, the technicians gloved hand, the squeeze bottle of thick white gel, the woman's smile and her rest-assured manner, did nothing for Camilla's nerves. She could feel her buttocks clapping together, her knees beginning to quake and the sound of her teeth chattering away in her mouth.

Poe came to mind again and the childhood nights on the patio with her cousins, all of them lying on their backs staring up at the moon, mouths crammed tight with Oreos', fireflies blinking in pickle jars.

“I know it's cold. It'll be just a moment. You'll see, you blink your eye and it'll be all over with.” The technician said and lifted one of Camilla's heavy breasts and set it on top of the metal shelf. She handled her breast expertly, delicately, but Camilla still felt like a piece of meat. “It'll pinch.” The technician said before she walked over to the control panel and pressed the button.

The top shelf came down and squashed Camilla's left breast. She felt tears stinging at the corner of her eyes. Velma had pinched her many times. Camilla knew what a pinch felt like, this was something else.

“That wasn't so bad, was it?” The technician said and readied Camilla's right breast.

Later, for the sonogram, Camilla lies on the table in a dark room while technician number two rolled the sensor across her left breast and then the right. It was the same procedure she'd had done when she was pregnant with Zola. But this time she wasn't watching the screen for a hand, a foot, and sweet lips sucking happily on a thumb.

This time she strained to see the mass. And sure enough, there it was.

***

Doctor Franklin chewed on his bottom lip as he examined the x-rays. He scratched at his chin and made a sound in his throat before giving his full attention to Camilla.

“Well Camilla, it seems as though, there is something here. In both breasts. Something small.” He said and used his thumb and forefinger to imitate just how small. “But to be sure, we should take a biopsy. Just a precautionary measure. Nothing to be concerned about.”

Camilla nodded her head and heard her mother-in-law in her mind; Milk duct. Cyst.

But then the question came.

“Camilla let me ask you this, do you have a history of cancer in your family?”

What family?

Camilla was a phoenix who rose from the rubble, a ghost who appeared out of the blue.

Dr. Franklin was a family friend and had been present and smiling at the engagement party. He had heard the story of how she and Bryant came to be a couple and when he looked around and saw that he knew practically everybody there, he swirled the ice around in his crystal glass filled with Wild Turkey and asked, “Where are your people Camilla?”

A hush seemed to descend on them and Babette gave Dr. Franklin a tight smile, hooked him by his elbow and guided him back toward the bar. “Come Cedric, I think your drink needs tipping off.”

Whatever Babette told him seemed to be satisfying because he never broached the subject again although Camilla had the feeling that despite Babette's words he wanted to ask her even as he slouched in the sixth row of the glass cathedral.

She saw him, Dr. Franklin, wheezing beneath the sixty extra pounds he'd piled on after his hip surgery, mopping his forehead with a blue handkerchief and twisting his head this way and that in order to try to get the best view he could from behind Odessa Harris and her empire state building high hat that had a brim as wide as wings, ruining the view for Dr. Franklin and guest's ten rows deep.

She had the feeling he wanted to ask her right then in front of God and Bryant's family and friends and her heart had beat extra fast when the minister got to the, “Does anyone have any objections why this man and this woman should…..”

He knew her story. Not the real one of course. No one knew the truth.

Now Camilla suspected that the question he posed was just another way at getting at the truth.

She blinked at him, hoping the very gesture would erase his question and take with it the memory of those people and that house pressed into the corner of Foch Boulevard and one hundred and forty second avenue. That house, white washed and trimmed in gray, with a black-shingled roof that pointed and then sloped.

Four bedrooms and rickety staircase that climbed past the stained glass window that had been broken a number of times over the years, but never replaced, just patched with masking tape and the thin sheets of plastic that her grandmother, Velma, saved whenever she picked up some article of clothing from the dry cleaner.

Living room, dining room and good-sized kitchen that led out to a small porch and then down to the backyard.

That house sprouted children, seemed to grow grown folks; aunts that came to visit for a spell, the ones that dropped consonants from their words, cussed when they felt like it, talked while chewing, made no apologies for who they were, goddamn it they had made it through - through the wilds of Africa, slavery, emancipation, segregation and the thirty-two hour bus ride here!

They called it as they saw it and referred to most every body as baby - sucked marrow from chicken bones, licked their fingers clean after a meal, scratched where it itched no matter who was watching, laughed open-mouthed and passed out kisses and hard candy just because some little one was so damn cute.

The Uncles, necks scented with Old Spice or Aqua Velva, they chew tobacco, some roll their own cigarettes. Coffee in the morning and whiskey afternoon through evening. Always sipping on something and uttering “Jesus” at least three times a day.

Morning time, their eyes still crusted with sleep and breath rank as they slide, slip and ease their way across the sheets and press themselves into their still sleeping spouses, dicks hard and poking, hands tugging and pulling until the women stop slapping and the “uh-uh.” and “Git now!” turns into silky moans and legs part and the women flower right there on the sheets.

Afternoon time and the men are uttering it again; walking down the street, tossing dice against a brick wall or talking shit in the barbershop all the time watching the young things bounce by. Mini skirts, platform shoes. All to die for. “Jesus,” the men whisper and rub the inside of their thighs.

Later in the evening, kids put down for the night, a game of spades, tonk or dominoes going on at the dining room table; the women close by, seated at the elbows of their men or milling about in the kitchen, whispering, giggling, brushing crumbs off of the counter, pulling back the shade to check on the night sky. The men, one eye on the game and the other on the women, are suddenly struck speechless. Toothpicks roll across pink tongues, hearts beat soundless through the blessed moment of silence.

The men know that black women are women at the very least; magical at their zenith and biblical at the core; being with a black woman was as sacred as dousing oneself in holy water.

That house, square windowed eyes, dark cousins for pupils watching the citified people with wonder and in the late summer of 1952 Camilla Rose was not even a notion; Maggie Rose held center stage in that house, even though her sister Velma Rose, still hated her and had only recently stopped wishing her dead.

--From Camilla's Roses , Bernice McFadden. (c) December 2004, Bernice McFadden used by permission.