Upon the descending moon, crimson in color and capricious in nature, I clutched my gris-gris in my shaking grasp. The scent of jimsonweed, sulfur, and honey caressed my fat nose, followed by the rot of my black cat's corpse. I remember receiving him as a kitten for my hundredth birthday from my daughter, a nurse at the time. Poor Gregory; he lived a good, long life.
The opposite wall of my bedroom is covered top to bottom with newspaper clippings from my journeys. The yellow newsprint peeled where they overlapped, browning glue revealing underneath. Printed on them in bold text was a menagerie of headlines in different languages, reading "408 Dead in Casablanca, Morocco; New Virus?" "Bad Luck Spreads to Busan, South Korea" "Pandemic Attacks Anaheim, California; 372 Die in Sleep" and other similar titles. They always served to remind me of my favorite prayers, to recite them every night so there is never a day I forget. After all of those years, I could recite the entire Koran if need be if it meant sustaining my life as I knew it.
The moon dipped below the skyline of the old Willis Tower, long overgrown with a new forest, casting beams of red light over my window. That seemed to be all I could encounter when I went outside my walls. My childhood, my town, the entirety of Chicago, was all buried under layers and layers of dirt and foliage. If I went outside and dug into the earth with a shovel, I would hit the edge of a concrete tower within an hour. But the fresh venison that were attracted by the tall conifers for shade made the change worthwhile.
Turning away from the sunset, I glanced down at my gris-gris sitting in the sags of my old palm. The bronze amulet was given to me by my mother, who was given to her by her mother, and so on with the promise of prosperity. "Keep this safe," I remember her saying to me the day before she was shot in the back and left to bleed out on the pavement. "Protect this with your life and you'll be able to ask for anything. The spirits will always guide you to your goal."
Her mistake was that she had debts to pay after handing the amulet to me. When I die, my debts will already be paid.
My gray hair dragged on the floor behind me, long, oily coils occasionally littering the floor where they fell from my balding scalp. I tried to read some of the articles with the remnants of light that remained, squinting with effort as the milky cataracts on my eyes blinded me. It was almost comical how I remembered almost every word on that newsprint, and yet couldn't read of my triumphs, only recalling them from memory every so often. Reading the paper is so different from recalling memories. Reading was an activity committed in solitude. Remembering something made one want to share said memory with someone else, especially if the memory brought a sense of pride.
There was nobody else to talk to. Not anymore.
When I was a little girl, I wondered what made a life worth living. My father filled me with all sorts of ideas of what made an individual's life special. "You can become a doctor," he shrugged, finishing his dinner of beans and chicken. "You can cure cancer. Or you can become an astronomer and discover new planets so when Earth loses all of its resources, we can move to another planet."
"But that'll take a long time, dad," I protested, tucking my legs under me as I sat at the dinner table, my math notebook under me and a pen in hand. I felt the weight of my twin braids resting on my narrow shoulders, having styled them myself after ten minutes of wrangling my kinky hair. "I mean, I guess I could, but that would be a lot of work."
He gave me a smile, warm and proud. The crows feet at the edge of his eyes crinkled with age, his laugh lines deep. "Nothing's impossible for my baby girl."
It became evident that to make a statement, to make a big accomplishment that made life worth living, I needed time. Time came with a long life. So I asked myself what made a long life. Centuries ago, living just 50 years was considered a long time. But when my parents were alive, 50 years wasn't even average. Living 100 years was a long time, and was considered a long life. But if everyone suddenly started to live to be 100, then that would be an average life.
Maybe if I brought down the average life expectancy, there would be a better change of me living long enough to make my life worthwhile. This was my dogma.
Throughout my many years, I have held onto my gris-gris. I said my prayers. I ate well and stayed active. But I knew my life would come to an inevitable end with only so much success as dreams of curing cancer became more and more distant.
In the end, I did outlive them all. I had a very, very long life. And in this life, I was filled with success, with satisfaction. There would be no more cancer if there was nobody to have it. And I lived long enough to embrace its effects. I have achieved the unthinkable. And this has made my life worth living.
