What I Remember Most

by Cathy Lamb

  I was given their birth names by Dale: Lilly Maybelle Whitney and Liam Marcus O’Malley.

  Lilly. Liam. And I had a lily bracelet and have painted lilies my whole life. I must have heard her name.

  Lilly and Liam’s families were notified.

  My grandparents, Lilly’s parents, arrived on a private plane with their two private nurses. They did not bother to call.

  He was wearing a dapper blue suit. He was on oxygen and moved slowly. She was wearing a tailored pink suit, bone-colored heels, a diamond necklace, and a bracelet with lilies. The lily bracelet was exactly like mine.

  When my grandma saw me, she passed out.

  Kade caught her.

  My grandpa attended to his wife, then hugged me close, crying and crying . . . and crying.

  My grandparents’ names are Elizabeth Maybelle and Peter Whitney. They own department stores. I have shopped in their stores many times, but only for a sale and with coupons, as they are rather spendy.

  I can see my own face in my grandma’s.

  I have, however, my grandpa’s nose and his bright green eyes. My lily bracelet was not from a dime store. The green stones are emeralds. The purple ones are amethysts. The stones I thought were fake crystals are diamonds. The pinks are pink topazes. The reds are rubies. The gold is gold. That’s why it never faded. “One for Elizabeth, one for Lilly,” my grandpa cried. “And now, for Grenady.” He kissed my hand, regal gentleman.

  They brought photos of my mother, at all ages, and five photos of my father, which we pored over. They often cried. I heard about my mother as a baby, as a curious toddler, as a girl, a teenager. I could not hear enough. I wanted to know it all. Not surprisingly, my mother loved art.

  “She had the wandering, curious, adventurous soul of an artist,” my grandpa said. “She was immensely talented. You inherited that, dear.”

  They told me the story of my parents, and both took the blame, the guilt. My grandpa spoke first, but then became so upset, the nurse had to adjust his oxygen and give him a pill.

  The basic story is so old, so familiar, it’s a cliché. Only this time, two people lost their lives because of it.

  My parents met in Central Park in New York City. My grandparents did not like my father. He was poor. He had only a high school degree. He worked on the docks. He played guitar in a band. He lived with his father, a tough, hard-drinking man who worked on the docks, too. My father’s mother had died of leukemia when he was seven.

  My mother, however, had been accepted to a private women’s college. She was a daughter of privilege, wealth, and excellent schooling. My father was not good enough for my mother. My grandma cried when she said this. “I was so wrong, Grenady. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

  My grandpa said, “I am the man. This was my mistake. My responsibility. The pain I have caused! The pain!” He burst into tears. Kade comforted him, man to man. “This tragedy. Inexcusable.”

  My grandparents forbid my mother from seeing him. My mother snuck away from school and parties to meet my father. When my mother was eighteen, they took off together. She called my grandma and told her what she was doing.

  My grandparents sent out the bloodhounds, so to speak, but no one could find their daughter or Liam. It sounds like they travelled with the wind. They had me when my mother was nineteen. They changed their names, unofficially, so there was no record of Lilly Maybelle Whitney and Liam Marcus O’Malley. There is no record of a marriage, and there is no record of my being born in a hospital, so who knows where the grand event took place.

  “Your grandpa and I became close to your dad’s father when your parents disappeared,” my grandma said, her hands clenched tight over a tissue. “Liam had been estranged from his father because he drank all the time. As soon as Liam left, Gene stopped drinking. Said he needed to be sober to find his son. Missing the children, not knowing what happened, has almost killed all of us. All these years I didn’t know what happened to my daughter, to Liam. Had I been more loving, more open, they never would have left, never would have been killed. This is all my fault.”

  “It is mine!” my grandpa called out through his oxygen. “Mine.”

  Ironically, neither my grandpa nor my grandma had come from money, they told me. They started the stores after they were married. My grandma was the fourth of eight children born to poor farmers in Arkansas, who came to America from Wales. As a child she spent hours in her mother’s kitchen, in a farmhouse, wringing chickens’ necks for dinner, slaughtering hogs, feeding pigs, shooting deer so the family wouldn’t starve, and sewing and darning. She became a secretary.

  My grandpa worked in the salt mines, then ended up in the Korean War. He was one of nine kids. His ancestors hailed from England. They worked as servants in the kitchen for the king.

  The two met and married and started a used clothing store, which morphed into the Whitney department stores.

  “We came from nothing, Grenady,” she said. “Nothing. All we knew how to do was work. When you grow up poor, you never forget it, and it guides your life.”

  “I know,” I said.

  When they found out I had been in foster care, both nurses were called in to help. I thought we were going to have to take my grandparents to the hospital, they were so upset.

  “We will thank the Hutchinsons, the Lees, and Daneesha Houston,” my grandpa announced.

  Their apologies were heartfelt, endless.

  Later, with my grandparents in the Wild West Bed and Breakfast in town, their nurses in an adjoining room, Kade took my hand.

  “Looks like you have a grandma and two grandpas who love you more than the Earth.”

  “It does look like that.” It was heartbreaking.

  Would my parents, as they aged and matured, have gone back to see their families?

  Of course. Absolutely. They were only twenty-five when they died. They would have forgiven, forgotten. A grandchild would have brought the families together again.

  They never made it, their lives destroyed. So young, so much younger than me now.

  Many lives were ruined.

  But here we were. We had now.

  My grandparents met Rozlyn and Cleo.

  We all made my great-grandmother’s recipe for apple pie together. “It was your mother’s favorite, Grenady.”

  My grandpa asked Rozlyn about her health, as Rozlyn was wearing a head scarf.

  Rozlyn told them. “I’ve got a tumor in my head that was not invited, and if I could I’d shoot it out myself.”

  My grandpa made one call.

  They flew Rozlyn out the next day on their private plane to the hospital in New York that was doing the experimental surgery that Rozlyn’s insurance company had denied paying for. Leonard went with her. As her boyfriend (who did not mind an occasional hot flash during sex, and also thought she looked like a “seductive Buddha” with her bald head) he was proving to be outstanding.

  They did the experimental surgery on Rozlyn.

  My grandparents paid for it.

  I hoped. I hoped for life. Rozlyn’s life.

  My grandparents and their two nurses stayed in Rozlyn’s house and took care of Cleo while Rozlyn was gone. They adored her and her blue fairy wings, her hats with antennae, and her spaceship helmet. They loved how Liddy followed her around like a dog.

  They watched me finish the canvas with the magnifying glass. I used black plastic that Kade found for me to form the magnifying glass, then I took out the outlines of the dark trees and the leaning lighthouse. They didn’t belong anymore.

  Studying the photos of my mother as a girl, I made the girl look exactly like her, with a cheeky grin on her face, the daisy crown on her head. The red, crocheted shawl rising from her left hand and the Big Dipper from her right were done, but I put a sunrise in the background, pinks, oranges, yellows.

  I painted lilies flying off my mother’s dress, as if by magic, the lilies spinning through the air and landing around the edges of the magnifying glass, as if caught on a wind stream.
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  My grandparents loved it. It was my grandma who gave my mother the red, crocheted shawl; she had made it herself. I gave the collage to them. They were overcome.

  Leonard called us. The experimental surgery had not worked.

  That night I wrapped myself in Rozlyn’s quilt with the woman in a skimpy blue dress sitting in a huge martini glass, her legs spilling over the side. I leaned against the red barn and cried my eyes out for her, for Cleo, for me.

  Liddy neighed.

  Three days after my grandparents arrived, my granddad Gene and my great-aunts came to visit us, too.

  I cannot even imagine his grief. He and my dad fought all the time because of his drunken rages, then my dad ran off. Gene feared that his son had been killed, but he had never known. He blamed himself.

  He’s a broken, gentle, humble man, and he is dear to me, kind and loving, as if to make up for what he did to my dad.

  My great-aunts, Margaret and Jenny, cried all over me the first time we met. They are loud, emotional, and outspoken. They like blue eye shadow, purses as big as suitcases, and dresses with birds.

  They told me that losing Liam “damn near killed Gene, slammed his heart against his rib cage again and again. We cannot believe he’s still alive, no, we cannot! Damn near killed us, too! We’re so happy we could sing, so we will. You sing with us!”

  Margaret and Jenny later sang Broadway show tunes at The Spirited Owl to multiple standing ovations. They were former nightclub singers and still had it, by God, they did. My great-aunts told me that blue eye shadow would bring out the green of my eyes.

  I had a photo of my father when he was about seventeen. I painted it on a canvas and gave it to Gene. He cried and cried, old and shaky, and held the canvas on his lap, rocking back and forth. His sisters, surprisingly, grew quiet, their devastation heavy.

  Then they sang, “Hallelujah.” It was, without a doubt, one of the most emotional moments of my whole life.

  Poor Kade. “Hallelujah” did his soft heart in, and he cried with Gene.

  Gene met Eudora. I think he likes her. I think she may like him. She said, “As long as he doesn’t cramp my travels, I might consider him.” She had loved her trip to Antarctica. Thailand was up next. I asked Gene what he thought of Thailand. “If Eudora invites me, it’s a yes.”

  He found her stories of being a spy for the United States fascinating, as I did. She even showed us some special “mementos,” from her spy days, and letters from the CIA. Who would have guessed a spy during the Cold War would end up in Pineridge, Oregon?

  My grandma has become the mother I never had. She started nagging at me, over the phone one day, about how she felt I worked too much, didn’t sleep enough, and inquired about what I’d eaten that day. When she found out I had a pop and chocolate chip cookies for lunch, she told me exactly what she thought of that.

  I felt a rush of emotions all at once. You don’t know how much you need a mother nagging over you until you don’t have it.

  The next day, a basket of “natural, organic” foods arrived in a crate.

  She’s like that.

  I love my name now. My mother loved Shirley Temples, my grandma told me, which has to be why they named me Grenadine. My granddad Gene told me that he drank Scotch. That has to be why my middle name is Scotch. My parents were living wild and free, hence our last name, and my mother’s name, Freedom. And Bear, for my father? He looked like a cuddly bear. Grenadine Scotch Wild. I get it.

  The Hutchinsons came to visit me. The whole huge family, about sixty of them. Noisy. Feisty. Opinionated. They arrived in their pickups and shot off their guns to announce their arrival. They set up their tents and trailers on Kade’s property.

  “Fry me a pig, there’s our Grenadine!”

  “Well, now, shoot, Grenadine!” Rose’s stepbrother Zeke said. “It’s so good to see you, it done make my heart leap.”

  My grandparents had given me a gift card for Hugh and Rose Hutchinson to the Whitney department stores. They were touched by the gesture and said no gift was needed, as I was their “pink rabbit foot princess . . . their shooter . . . their raccoon-wearing daughter.”

  They did express some concern that if they used it, the government would know exactly what they bought and could use it against them, but I told them not to worry about that.

  I insisted they take it, and after some arguing they asked if Whitneys sold guns. No? Not even huntin’ guns? Ammo? No? Tractors? What about ATVs? They would like an ATV!

  We had a loud, noisy, feisty time. Hugh and Rose told me they had not sold pot in years. “Good golly God, at least not much. Only to hunting buddies,” Hugh told me. “Or fishing buddies.”

  “Not much at all,” Rose agreed. “Only to my sisters and half sisters and cousins, but not Hilly. I still can’t stand that prissy peacock.”

  She hugged me. “We still feel bad about that, down to our souls. When you left, we felt like rabbits flattened under a steamroller. We cried every day like sad, swinging cats. You’re my soul daughter. By shots and by fire, when you turned eighteen, that was the best day in our lives! The damn tootin’ best! Isn’t that right, Hugh?”

  Hugh shot off his gun in reply and declared, “Hell, yeah. Got my raccoon daughter back then.”

  It had been one of the best days for me, too, as they were out of jail and came back into my life and stayed there. I visited them, they visited me. We called and e-mailed, after the Hutchinsons finally agreed to get e-mail and did not believe it was a government attempt to spy on them and their guns.

  “We always knew you were innocent, sweet daughter, mine,” Hugh said. “Damn government. Can’t trust ’em. And I wish Covey was down in a swamp. I know a good swamp for that son of a bitch.”

  “Let’s shoot some cans and see what Grenadine’s got in her back pocket nowadays,” Rose’s half brother Squirrel told me. I grabbed my .38 special and shot five out of six cans right off a log.

  “Daaaang, girl. You still got it.”

  We spit tobacco. We put a pig on a spit. Hugh’s cousin twice removed, Shirley Girl, said, “I’m hungry as a bull on charge. You hungry, too, Grenadine?”

  We practiced shooting with bows and arrows. Hugh’s nephew, Timmy Hutchinson, an ex-con who had given me my .38 many years ago and who had found Christ the last ten years declared, “Oh, my shoutin’ spittin’ Lord, Grenadine, you can still shoot. Hallelujah and praise the Lord!”

  We smashed beer cans against our foreheads, and Hugh’s sister, Dallas, said, “There. Now I’m not stuck in a beer bottle,” and she later told me that my ass was “still as tight as a whiskey drum,” and I thanked her. She handed me some chew.

  When it grew colder that night, Rose said, “Why, it’s colder than a cow’s tit in December.”

  And when Rose’s nephew Charlie Jr. didn’t get up quick enough to get her another helping of potato salad, she hollered at him, “You got a moose up your butt? Get it out and get moving, Charlie!”

  Kade won at poker. Rose’s brother Tinker was miffed at that and told Kade, “Don’t ya ever get too big for your britches or someone’s gonna bust your britches wide open and then they’ll find out you got a butt like everybody else. Nothing special about it.” But he came back later and apologized for what he said.

  Kade made Rose and Hugh an oversized rocking chair. He carved To The Hutchinsons, Love, Grenadine on the headrest. Those two gun-totin’, pot-growin’, bad-mouth-swearin’, government-hating, loving and kind people cried their eyes out and so did the rest of the loud and feisty Hutchinsons. Then they took turns rocking in it by themselves, with another person, with two other people, and with me.

  People talk about “white trash.” I was called “white trash,” and “white trash foster kid,” more times than I can count. I had heard others call the Hutchinsons white trash.

  I hate that term. Always have. Being poor and white does not make you white trash. Trash comes from the heart. Covey was trash. Bucky was trash. Many of our rich “friends” were trash.


  The Hutchinsons are not white trash. They were, and are, pure, shiny gold, the kind that never dims. I love them. When I arrived at their double-wide trailer, beaten down and defeated, they put me up right again and, as Rose said, “Loved you silly.” They saved me.

  Beatrice and her husband, Larry, came to visit, too, after the Hutchinsons. She rolled up in her new Mercedes, her diamond bracelets shining. She did not let go of me for five minutes.

  Beatrice had wanted me to live with her forever. I moved out when I was twenty-one, when she married Larry. I bought my little green house for $120,000, $100,000 of which was Mr. Lee’s money. I had been waitressing full time, working at the same restaurant I had in high school, but also selling my art at Saturday Market, at art shows, and to more and more private clients.

  Beatrice’s husband, Larry Schneider, was also an artist, but he understood the business side of selling art, too. He was gentle and sweet, like Beatrice, and he helped launch my career.

  I kept waitressing until I was twenty-five because I was tremendously insecure about money, and saving money, and never being poor again, but I finally quit when Beatrice and Larry pointed out I was working about seventy hours a week and made far more money on my art than waitressing. My health at that point was unraveling, too. It was time to become a full-time artist.

  While Larry went fishing with Kade one day, Beatrice and I painted a picture of Mr. Lee in my apartment. We used fabric to make his bow tie, added a line of rocks around the frame because he loved nature, and put a gold hoop earring in his left ear. “I miss him every day,” Beatrice said.

  “Me too.”

  Kade made Beatrice and Larry an oversized rocking chair, too. He carved Beatrice, Mr. Lee, Larry, Grenadine across the top. When Beatrice cries hard she snorts and snuffles, poor woman. Larry hugged me tight and whimpered, “Our girl, our girl!”

  I know that the reason I didn’t come out of foster care addicted to drugs, pregnant, prostituted, or incarcerated was because of love. The love of my parents for my first six formative years and the love of the Hutchinsons and the Lees. The care and steadiness of my case worker, Daneesha Houston, and how she came out of retirement to help me when I had sunk into foster care hell may well have saved my life. The interest and kindness of teachers and principals made all the difference.