novembre ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- i almost took one of her sweatsuits to sleep in but didn't. in the car driving home, mom said, "i didn't write in my journal for the last three months of her life. it was just too... much for me." the car shook slightly as she took the turn onto the street i grew up on. she steadied the wheel and brought a hand absentmindedly to her mouth, and began to chew on a finger. so that's where i inherited that nervous habit. "you should write about it now," i suggested. she nodded slightly, keeping her eyes on the road. we were almost home from running errands, which is something we tend to do together whenever i visit. but now our errand included a stop to grandma's dusty mobile home, unused since thanksgiving when she fell and lived the last month and a half of her life in hospitals. she never really regained consciousness past early december; mom says she'd nod slightly and squeeze a hand holding hers, but she never opened her eyes again. the last time i saw my grandmother awake was about nine months ago, just a short visit over a weekend, and i had promised to come back for my birthday and thanksgiving (so close together) but it turned out i couldn't. i didn't know that she would fall on my birthday (thanks to the painkillers for the severe shingles covering her body) and break more bones. she was in a lot of pain. and i was in oakland. over christmas, she was silent, and sleeping, and we couldn't touch her because of the shingles. but that trailer park and its manicured shrubbery. the pastel sixties double-wides. and my grandma's trailer, fading in the sun, growth overgrown. there on the side by the driveway was the divot from her bumper when she lost her eyesight suddenly while driving. she ended up blacking out and driving into the neighbor's pantry next door. inside it was musty. i expected sensory overload; i expected her smell to permeate everything but it was like we were visiting her house while she was on vacation. mom's nerves sent feelers out and i retreated to the other side of the doublewide, into grandma's bedroom. i found two jewlery boxes filled with rotting costume jewlery (she made sure, earlier last summer, to give us the real silver and gold pieces. wolfe and i each were given gaudy rings from the fifties). i stacked the boxes in my lap and sat on the bed. deep inside the red enamel box my grandpa brought her back from japan --sometime in the sixties i think-- i found my mother and uncle's baby bracelets. i will mail joe his baby bracelet, even though he hasn't spoken to grandma in over six years. i wonder if he will keep it. how do you shut off your mother like that? not just any mother, but this one? my mom bustled into the room and explained that we'd get the furniture out sometime in august. i am taking most of the living room stuff, and will probably have to rent storage space for it for a while. she dug through the bathroom and came out with soaps, nail polishes and hand mirrors, offering each to me in fast succession. i said no to most of it but held onto a cheap silver-plated hand mirror, which i stuck into one of her wastebaskets. why did i want her wastebaskets? stamped metal painted gold victorian figures on each side. the jewlery boxes and hand mirror rested inside, along with a framed portrait of my mother when she was a senior in high school, her hair in a kind of a bubble flip. the other photographs we would go through later. in her closet i touched everything lightly. her black boots, threadbare sweatsuits, linen blazers and members only jackets. i was looking for her, and i found a pair of blue keds she'd never really worn, but kept all this time. i was looking for her so i sat back on the bed and slipped them on. i would wear them to work, riding my bike through downtown oakland. they would air out and smell like feet and sweat instead of dust and something unnamed. into the wastebasket. mom pressed the nail polishes onto me again, and i looked into their box. revlon reds, all congealed and spoiled. grandma was fastidious about her nails; she kept her hands nicely manicured all her life. i glanced down at my hands, holding this box of unusable things. the cuticles were dry and bitten, just like my mother's. where did mom inherit this trait? where did grandma go? it feels so odd to come away with these things. it feels so odd to know that she only really exists in our memories now, not in these things, and not in real life. but it makes sense to me now. 5:47 pm - 05.28.06 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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