Sixty-eight-year-old Della Ballad has a bad heart, but she still has a healthy outlook on life. She's been suffering with heart disease for the last seven years; she has no intention of letting it beat her. Della plans to fight has hard as she can. But heart disease isn't the only battle taking place. Since childhood, Della's daughter, Margaret, and Della's niece, Darlene Winston, have been fighting for Della's love. The illness has only made the situation worse. Their rivalry has permeated the Ballad family, and Della's greatest fear is that it will destroy them when she dies. Both Margaret and Darlene will have to abide by the directives in Della's last will and testament, a will the women believe will finally confirm whom Della loved more. Della's Deed examines the complex relationships found in a family structure and shows how resentment and jealousy can break a family apart, only to find common threads in reuniting for the better.
Della's Deed
By Denis GrayiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 Denis Gray
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4759-0158-0Chapter One
Della Ballad had beautiful hair.
But today her hair was braided in two long, tightly knotted pigtails that ended at the beginning of each shoulder blade. Ordinarily, Della Ballad's beautiful gray hair would be the talk of most strangers, what would be on the tips of their tongues. But it was best her hair was fixed in a tightly coiled pigtail. It had stayed this way for the past five days of her eight-day stay at St. Bartholomew Hospital because it made for easy maintenance. But Della Ballad's smile still sweetened your day no matter the look of her hair. She was a sixty-eight-year-old woman, a big-bodied, generous black woman who had a bad heart but still had a healthy outlook on living, who was going to fight her heart disease tooth and nail to her grave. She was going to fight as hard as any battle she'd ever fought before, certainly, for as long as there was still fight left in her. And if you asked her, she'd say she had plenty of that.
Della Ballad was looking at ten bottles of pills on a rolling table out of reach to her. Those pills were under the strict supervision of Nurse Susie Myers, her daytime nurse, the only person who could dispense them to her. There was a bottle of pills for this ailment and a bottle of pills for that ailment—the lyric went on and on—and they all looked so significant and proud the way they lined up on the right side of the rolling table, much like a squadron of small plastic soldiers ready to do battle, as if they would save her, would shield her from death no matter the odds stacked against her, as if their reliability, efficacy capabilities should never be challenged or called into question. Della Ballad laughed at their seeming brazenness, but she respected those pills since they were a part of her fight, her daily battle to live.
She'd been afflicted by heart disease for the past seven years of her life. Heart disease was on her mother's side of the family, not her father's. Her mother had died from heart disease, and several aunts and uncles had too. There was a precise pattern here, clear and obvious: her heart disease was hereditary. She'd never considered diet. She loved cooking and cooking in quantity like so many black women of her age and time. She'd never thought about medical science, not any of that stuff—what was there to think about when you have a lifestyle, culturally, that, if changed, wouldn't really be living at all? And she had lived and been productive. Della Ballad had lived a full, active life. There were family and friends and a lot of good times. Of course there were bad times too and things that were more middle-of-the-road.
She survived Frank Ballad. She was a widow. He died five years ago. If he were alive, he'd nurse her back to good health—that she was sure of. She had only loving memories of him. He was the most loving man. The man of her dreams, as they say, and she "nailed him" as she'd often tell others. For with Frank Ballad's name came a medallion with much reputation. In his heyday, he'd broken many a young lady's heart in Myles Day City before courting Della Ballad.
He was a tall, handsome man. Being a barber, a lot of folk in Myles Day City said they never saw a hair on Frank Ballad's head out of place—at least it's what folk in Myles Day City were rumored to say. But it's how he was thought of—straight-backed, decent, kind, dignified, a man who meant a lot to a lot of people who knew him over the years.
Today, in ten minutes' time, Dr. Joseph Ives, Della's doctor, was going to visit her hospital room to talk to her. They were to have a bedside chat—and Dr. Ives was always on time. He was white and tall and handsome but not as tall and handsome as Frank Ballad, although just as good and decent and kind. He'd been Frank Ballad's physician. Dr. Ives meant a lot to the Ballad family. He was a part of the Ballad family's most intimate and personal history. Della Ballad wanted out of St. Bartholomew Hospital in the worst sort of way, and she was hoping today would be the day that Dr. Ives would hand her that wish, her walking papers, free her from St. Bart's.
Della Ballad did not like hospitals, had no liking at all for them.
Well, the news from Dr. Ives was not the news Della Ballad had hoped for: she was doing well, quite well, Dr. Ives said, but not well enough for her to be released from St. Bartholomew, for him to give her a ticket out. In a way, in her heart, she knew this before this morning's consultation. For she was well aware of her physical capacities, and she wasn't there yet. It wasn't there yet. She just hadn't convinced herself enough, for even at her age she could be impatient, impetuous, ambitious—but in her heart, she knew.
She and Dr. Ives had a good lively talk, and they had a lot of laughs (something Della Ballad loved doing). He looked at his watch, being a man married to time, and said, "By the way, Mrs. Ballad, I have a new pill for you this morning to take." And with it came explanation and the pill's function and how often the pill must be taken. And then he left, and she was left with yet another pill to take. Pill number eleven. So Nurse Susie Myers lined the new plastic bottle up with the old bottles on the rolling table for future dispensation.
She'd laughed to herself after Dr. Ives and Nurse Myers left the room, for the new bottle already looked important, had assumed the same proud rigid posture as had all the others. And all Della could do at the time was laugh at the sight of the eleven bottles on top the table and then remind herself that Frank was up to seven bottles of pills before he died.
Della felt her pigtail with her fingers and pulled down on it like a bell ringer and then, with her right hand, did the same with the other knotted pigtail. This made her feel joyful, think of her mother, Blanche Dawson, who'd warn her not to come home from school with one pigtail unbraided, a mess, or else ...
Della was thinking a lot of her mother today, a lot about things they did together when she was young. Her mind had been traveling back through a maze of time, way back like it'd memorized every second of it with sharper, heightened recall—could tell you all about it like it'd happened just yesterday. But to ask her what happened two weeks ago would pose her great difficulty. Her mind just couldn't do that. But fifty-five years ago, now that was a horse of a different color—much, much easier for her.
It was near noon, and suddenly, she felt tired. This was how her days went. Every morning she woke at six o'clock, and then she was tired at noon. Her pill-taking had a time schedule to it, of course. Everything was calculated, mapped out. She could doze off now and then during the course of the day, but between eating and pill-taking, she really couldn't tie on a real good nap, so she didn't really try. She'd just close her eyes now and then try to catch herself before her head and her shoulders slumped too much and she swore she heard herself snore, much to her regret and embarrassment.
It wasn't pill-popping time yet. Ummm ... she felt relaxed. As idle as the sun, Della thought. Her eyes were shut, and she could count stars if there was a census report due on God's desk, she further thought. But don't doze off now, Della. Don't doze off. Don't you dare go and embarrass yourself, Della Ballad. You don't want anyone in St. Bartholomew to think you're old! That you fall asleep at the drop of a hat, before the day has had a chance to warm up good....
