My grandmother is getting old. No, scratch that. My grandmother is old. Even after the stroke and the cataracts and...and everything. It never quite occurred to me. The rest of the family say she's gotten skinny. Frail looking. I remember her eating a slice of buttered toast and a cup of milky tea for breakfast, then go run one half of a farm with no more help than it takes to say "Do this" and immediately follow up with "You're doing it wrong! I'll do it!". I was convinced she was simply fueled my cruelty and spite. Why else would she disturb or saturday morning cartoons by forcing us to help with the laundry?
Who needs laundry anyway?
But last week she fell. She'd already had a stroke leaving one of her sides paralyzed. It affected her mind as well, the stroke. She has long, long periods of confusion. Not one of her children is called by the name that corresponds with their faces. Though, I think there's simply a mis-correlation of what she knows and what she feels at work. My dad, for instance, has been taking care of her. He's now the man that's almost always there. The one that relaxes with her out on the front porch on evenings, watching the vehicles go by, listening to the sound of the breeze and the summer flies. And so, she calls him Albert. Not after her son, I don't think. But after her late husband. And I am the stranger. The burly one that she knows, but hardly ever sees. The one with the beard and mustache now, when she's none me as a small, skinny, fair faced boy all my life. I'm also the dark one. 'The Black one' as she used to call me. And I'm either Johnny or Henry, who are first cousins to my uncles and Aunts, the offspring of my grandfather's brother.
"When's Johnny coming?" She said to my dad as he cleaned up her ear with the corner of a rag dipped in Hydrogen peroxide. Only she said it in Spanish, just as she'd always insisted on speaking for as long as I'd known her. "Cuando Johnny vas a venir?" My dad, as is the custom, replied in english, pointing to me. "He's right there. See? See Johnny there?" I tried to take the look of worry out of my eyes. I tried to make my face calm, passive. I even tried to smile a little. Her eyes touched on mine for barely a second before she looked at the space just above my right shouider.
"Adonde?" She asked weakly.
"Right there." My father pointed, and he reached over to squeeze my arm. For a long moment she stared at the space above my shoulder.
"No lo veo." She said simply, and gave up looking. She looked sad. When I came in she barely looked up at me, or at my aunt. She'd stopped bleeding from her cut ear and my dad was holding a bit of crushed ice wrapped in a dishtowel to it. There was a bruise on her forhead as well, not swolen but clearly blue. When he pulled the ice away I could see that she had been bleeding, the evidence was in her hair and on her clothes. It wasn't a lot of blood, but it was too much for a little old lady, which I suddenly realized is what she was.
She looked so sad too. She had her head propped up in her palm and her eyes closed while everyone rushed about. She didn't seem too happy about the whole incident at all. My dad mentioned that she didn't want to call anyone. I got the distinct feeling that it was more about embarrassment than anything else. My dad and aunt had a brief arguement. Well, it was hardly anything like an argument compared to the words that get exchanged on my mom's side of the family, but their tones were harsh. They talked about 'proofing' the house. How did she fall? Where did she fall? How did she get outside in the first place. What was she doing out there? Why was she left unsupervised? And with each condescending question and retort I saw my grandmother grow smaller and smaller. More frail. More old. And it wasn't just my imagination either.
My aunt hurried into the kitchen and started boiling water and smashing cloves of garlic and other herbs which she would later mix in a small bowl. A naturally antiseptic wash, with which she later cleaned up the rest of Mama. My dad took the opportunity to show me the rest of his work. In truth, it wasn't so much his digression as it was mine. Or, maybe it was both of us really. I'd been staring at a jar on the table. A wooden box, really. Round, with a series of ringed bevels all the way to the bottom. If it weren't for the differences in grain I'd have thought someone had carved it out of a single piece of wood. Just a nice shape, purely for aesthetics. But then he showed me, with a bit of a turn and a pull, that it opened and had a wide space inside. A sort of groved locked box. It was nice enough, I suppose. Clever. But I felt the urge to sort of show it up, as if it was the most clever thing I'd ever seen. That only encouraged him. I don't regret it, mind you, because he took me to see his other creations. His jewelry, mostly. Wooden earings and the most beautiful wooden bangles I'd ever seen. They were purple heart, he told me. And He'd aparantly started with the out layers, resulting in a few pieces that were speckled yellow and blue, and culminating with other pieces that were luxiuriously dark and polished to a shine. They were beautiful. Honestly beautiful. And without any special adorations or designs. He'd simply polished them down to their natural, beatiful state.
I wanted them all in that moment. For Merri. I'd like to adort her arms with them all the way up to her shoulders. I'd let her glow compete with their glow, so the world would know that she's even more lovely than these. The loveliest thing nature's ever made.
By the time we got back from our digression Mama was eating, though grudgingly so. My aunt was smearing spoonfulls of beans onto tortias, along with some cream cheese, and feeding it to her. She ate. She fixed her face into a scowl of disgust, and stared at every morsel pensively before she took a bite, but she chewed, and swallowed, and ate her fill. And occasionally she stared at me. Not at the space above my right shoulder, mind you. Me.
My aunt said something condescending and ridiculous. Something like "Mama, you musn't go outside again." Mama just glared at her out of the corner of her eye. And she stared at me.
"Have you eaten?" My dad asked. I hadn't. I'd been on my way out to meet my cousin at a game when they'd called to tell me she'd fallen. "There's food in the kitchen." he said. "Help yourself, you know where everything is." I didn't know where anything was. I'd known when I was a child, maybe. When everything was slightly above my head and I'd have to climb on somthng, or reach for a long pot spoon so I could reach for something else. I'd know where everything was when I washed the dishes and hat to put everything somewhere. I hunted for a plate. A knife and a fork. A cup. I wound up with a plastic children's plate that had been placed too close the stove at one time. Alladin's face and body had been melted into a black and brown swirl. I also wound up with a spoon instead of a knife and fork. "Que estas comiendo?" My grandmother asked me. I suddenly felt unsure, as if I'd invaded her space and had somehow deigned that, after countless months of not seeing her I could come into her home, dip into her pot, push my feet under her table and eat. And i also felt the fear of disrespect. Disrespect for my grandmother by not answering. "Beans and tortilla." I replied. She looked at me with a wry smile on her face, as if she'd caught the distinct scent of a bullshitter. "Te gustas los frijoles?" She asked. I nodded my head yes, and remembered a dozen smacks in the back of my head, with my grandmother shouting in broken english 'What if I was blind?" and I quickly found my voice. "Yes Mama" I said before even taking my first bite. The beans were cold. Saltless. The tortillas warm but dry. I tried not to let my displeasure show on my face. Mama grinned at me.
I think that was the point when I truly realized it. She wasn't as much sad or senile as she was lonely. And old. But perhaps the two go hand in hand. When she came out of her fuge, when the pain of her fall and the embarrassment of so much fuss subsided, she seemed to realize that she was surrounded by her family. I looked behind me, over the my right shoulder. There was a small shelf on the wall that had always been there ever since I was a child. It was crowded with medication bottles and knick knacks, things she'd sewn and put together. Decorations that were once vibrant and delicate creations, and had now yellowed with dust and time. "Porque no puedes venir?" I heard her say. My dad took up the charge of the question. He followed her gaze to my turned head and said "Because he's eating. Let him finish eating." But in that moment I understood her. And I understood that she was speaking from a place of plain lucidity. And my heart sank. "Porque no puedes venir?" She repeated. I still don't have an answer.
Eventually, she continued like that, speaking in the present. Speaking to me. Not Johnny or whatever ghost of the past hung over my right shoulder. My dad started talking about Meghan. How he met her at an artisans fair. How she seemed to really like that camera of hers. My grandmother interrupted, as is her right as matriarch, telling us that she needed a picture of me. No, of us. "The two of you." She said in english, which I still think requires quite a bit of effort for her. "Just like that." I realized then that we were, perhaps, an image of the past. Of my dad and his dad, sitting at the table and chatting. Two men wearing the same smile. The same forehead and brows. The same nose. The same blood. My aunt was still trying to squeeze an oath from her. "Say 'I will not go outside'." she ordered. Mama looked at her askance for a second, as if reminding her sixty-something year old daughter to whom she was speaking. "Say it, Mama." she persisted. "Say 'I will not go outside." Mama raised her one working hand in a motion of annoyance, but was too weak to swat with it. "Yes mommy!" She declared in frustration and turned back to me. "Tu madre sabes que tu estas aqui?" I told her she probably didn't. "Estan en Belize?" she asked. I told her no, she'd gone to New York. Mama nodded her head, and immediately set out to feed me. She told me there were plaintains hanging in the kitchen. That I should take some. There was soursop Ice in the freezer. Have some before you go. She told me that I missed out on the cashews and the tambran, and the golden plums and breadfruit.
And then she said good night.
My aunt took her into the bedroom and got her changed. She took a warm washcloth to wipe the blood from her hair and neck, and got her out of h er bloody camisole and into something clean and warm. When she was done getting Mama ready she came out and we started packing up to go. By the time we were out of the door my grandmother had wheeled herself out of the bedroom using a broom as an oar. The exact same method that got her out of the house and falling out of her wheelchair in the first place. But she was smiling. Sort of. It was a mischievous smirk really, as she waved something in her good hand calling out 'Vayan a su casa!"
And that's the memory I have now. A smirking, joking, little old lady.
