My mother was born with one kidney when most of us are born with two. This sole organ singlehandedly cleansed her system, until it, too, shut down—deciding that providing full functioning for her body was too much to bear. By her twenties, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were devoted to hospital visits. She spent four hours in a reclining chair, where she covered her torso and legs with a warm woven blanket to prepare for dialysis. When I was a child, I sat beside her and watched a machine pull blood, bright and crimsoned, from her bulging fistula, into a tube and through a filter to be purified. Then, I marveled as the tubes pushed clean blood back into her body.
After the procedure, my mother rested. Having blood removed, refreshed, and replenished was an exhausting life-saving affair. Oftentimes, my father and I microwaved meals from the day before when my mother had been energized enough to prepare dinner. Twelve hours of treatment and several hours laying in repose under a comforter was my mother’s weekly life. However, she never cursed God. She would say, “If my great-grandmother could lay ties on the railroad, then I can do this.”
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My knowledge of slavery swirls around as a mishmash of film scenes and pages of slave narratives: Cinque and Douglass have educated me. Black American history is either bare brown feet marched violently toward the Middle Passage or a blur of white southerners snarling under shade trees and hats. It is rows of bloodstained cotton fields and stories of Black women birthing babies in tall grasslands, then toiling for their master’s gain before offspring could suckle their first nipple. I’ve tried to imagine my mother’s great-grandmother, who bore firsthand witness to tragedies or survived unknown terrors. I’ve attempted to understand her experience outside of big-screen renditions.
But it is difficult.
Historical documents detail the men who built railroads. The business of developing a train system began in the Northeast, then ventured South. In southern states, slaves were forced to assemble tracks. Enslaved Black women were not exempt from such labor; however, they are largely absent from historical accounts. But my family holds a different truth. My mother’s great-grandmother was one of many enslaved Black people to construct colonizers’ visions of wealth. Though there are no lengthy tales, I see my mother’s great-grandmother walking with a group of Black men in denim overalls and long-sleeved crumpled shirts, an overseer in front, two on the side, and one at the rear. They are led to fulfill the railroad company’s capitalistic dreams—a train system will connect disconnected territories.
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When she was thirty-five, my mother received a kidney transplant, which required her to remain for weeks at a hospital in Madison, Wisconsin, 147 miles away from my father and me, far away from our Chicago home. Weeks later, she returned a changed version of herself. Her five-foot-three frame, once slender and petite, grew rotund, fluffy, awkward. Her double chin an outward side effect of prednisone, a prescription intended to suppress her immune system, a pill designed to send a signal to her body that her new kidneys were safe. Her hair, once lush and curly, grew thin and sparse, her scalp showed between loose strands. Her skin, once the vibrant shade of a small piece of square caramel, grew to be a dull, dark brown, a sign that her new organs were not properly removing waste.
As a pre-teen, my mother’s new physicality jarred me. But as an adult woman, who has hurdled through several gendered rites of passage, my heart mourns for the self-image she must have lost, especially in a culture, where women contort themselves to fit in. Even if she wanted to, there was no leeway to bend, and I suspect trading beauty for life must have been difficult. But my mother never complained. I heard her voice echo if my great-grandmother could lay ties on the railroad, then I can do this.
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Internet images of railroad workers are plentiful. White men are called Gandy dancers; They pose proudly in overalls, staring at the camera, with the bravado of paid workers keenly aware of their role in their country’s rich history. They are referred to as a “fine-looking bunch.” Photos of Black railroad workers look similar, except there is no positive caption; there is a white man standing front and center, his presence and purpose clear—to oversee slaves who are the backdrop of a country’s dark history. Enslaved Black women were ordered to work the railroad, just as men, but photos are sparse. My mother’s great-grandmother is a faceless character in this historical scene. Oral tradition is our family’s proof of where she and we fit into the country’s narrative.
So, I imagine her biceps, swollen from shoveling crushed rocks into a rickety wheelbarrow under the Mississippi sun’s rays, readying them to be laid on the foundation to create a ballast. I imagine fatigue crawling into the crevices of her joints, weakening her spine each time she bent over to release more stones. I imagine her using the back of her hand to swipe sweat that framed her hairline and crept down her jaws, mud smudged across her cheeks. I imagine the rail tongs she used to lift one side of an eight-foot iron tie, another slave holding the other, then both using concerted effort to place the two-hundred-pound weight parallel to the one that preceded it, repeating this process until the sun faded into a deep orange, the sky into a light purple. I imagine her feeling weak, but unable to appear as such, for fear of retaliation. I imagine the dust gathering in her throat and her stealing glances, quick and furtive, at railroad owners, turned slaveowners as they drink from tin cups of water, their privilege dripping down their beards, off their chins, and into a small pool of dirt near their feet.
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By the time my mother was thirty-seven, her kidney transplant had failed. Her recovery in Madison shorter, the effects longer. She returned wearing loose polyester maternity pants to not only mask her protruding belly, but also to hide the colostomy bag that hung from her side. She resumed dialysis treatments three times a week. Like carefully constructed railways, red blood looped through clear tubes and created a pathway toward vitality.
She pressed on.
On Sundays, she introduced bible verses to teenaged boys and girls and recounted stories about the love of Jesus. She arranged an excursion to the South for our family, where we rode rollercoasters and met Mickey Mouse. She held office with a branch of the National Kidney Foundation and organized fundraisers, in hopes that future patients with nonfunctioning kidneys wouldn’t have to suffer. When she could, she worked part-time to generate income, but in a way that would not ruin her disability checks. She raised me. And in the in-between spaces of struggling to live, she whispered, If my great-grandmother could lay ties on the railroad, then I can do this.
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My mother’s great-grandmother died young, leaving her oldest son to care for and raise his four siblings. No one knew the cause of her sudden death, just the outcome, which her children blamed on white doctors who mistreated Black patients. Centuries ago, no one knew railroad work was a toxic environment. Today, it is common knowledge that hours of chemical inhalation can lead to Parkinson’s disease, an illness that is widespread for those who work on railways. Parkinson’s does not lead to death, but it can lead to infections, for which there were no antibiotics nearly two-hundred years ago. I imagine this was a factor of my mother’s great-grandmother’s death, especially as a disenfranchised enslaved Black woman.
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My mother died when she was forty-one, leaving my father and I to flounder in her absence. A single word was written on a short line on her death certificate: sepsis. For twenty-four hours, her body tried to fight off an infection. A second line revealed the underlying cause: gastrointestinal bleeding. She’d experienced complications with her digestive tract, proving the medical system can only do so much once a body is weak, tired, defenseless.
Like train tracks, my mother’s and her great-grandmother’s lives ran parallel and eventually merged; both requiring physical strength; both requiring fortitude; and both leaving legacies for their descendants to cling to. For when I lost my mother, I began to replace an invisible ancestor’s unknown narrative with my mother’s story and observable resilience. I began to say, if my mother could demonstrate the fullness of life with a chronic illness, then certainly, I could battle anything hurled at me.
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