by Byrne, Leigh
In half an hour, we were at Grandma’s. As the station wagon pulled up her bumpy, gravel driveway, I marveled at all the flowers in full bloom in her front yard. There were pink petunias in a circular bed around a dogwood tree, and three side-by-side symmetrical islands of red geraniums, one with a birdbath in the center. Red and white peonies lined the stone pathway leading to the front porch, and roses of every color climbed trellises close to the house. I rolled down the car window and stuck my face out, breathing in the fragrant air.
Daddy parked the car, and together we made our way to Grandma Storm’s front door. He carried the paper bag with my clothes in it in one hand, and pulled me along behind him with the other. We took a shortcut, hurrying across a patch of dewy grass between the house and the driveway, and my feet slid around on my rubber flip-flops as I struggled to keep up with him.
The door to Grandma’s house was open, as it always was to family, and we went right inside without even knocking.
The furniture in her living room was grand and large scale, and out of proportion with her tiny, cottage-like home. That’s because she’d once lived in a big plantation house, but it had been all but destroyed by fire in the early 1900s. The living room furniture, including a baby grand piano, was practically all she had been able to salvage.
When the tragedy struck, Grandma refused to leave what was left of her home, and the flower garden that had taken her years to perfect. She and my grandfather a successful lawyer, decided to rebuild on the same property, and as much as they possibly could, put everything back the way it had been before the fire.
That was their intention, but before they could get started, the Great Depression closed in, and my grandfather became ill, dying in his fifties of complications from diabetes. Without his income to finance the project, Grandma had to settle for much less. The garage, which was the only part of the house spared by the fire, was sectioned off into two parts to become the den and kitchen of the new house. The living and dining rooms, and two bedrooms, were added on to complete it.
Daddy’s older sister, Macy, was seated at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. She had recently divorced her husband and moved in with Grandma Storm until she got back on her feet. When we entered the room, she peered up over her bifocals and smiled pleased to see we had arrived.
We found Grandma busy at the stove making breakfast. Even at the early hour, she was already dressed in a bright blue floral smock, and her hair was neatly pinned up in a twisted bun. As soon as she heard us come in, she stopped what she was doing and wiped her hands on the dish towel draped across her shoulder. “Come here!” she said, spreading her arms wide and thrusting them high into the air.
I ran to her and hugged her around the hips, pushing my face into her soft, warm belly. She smelled like a mixture of bacon and the lingering scent of soap from her morning bath.
“Did you bring a dress for church in the morning?” she asked.
I looked to Daddy for the answer.
“She doesn’t have a dress suitable for church, Mom,” he said in an apologetic tone.
Grandma patted me on my back. “That’s alright,” she said. “We’ll just have to go shopping and get you one tonight, won’t we?”
The kitchen table was set for four. Four large Blue Willow plates were waiting to be filled with bacon, grits, and eggs made to order. Four blue, cut-glass goblets were filled with orange juice. Beside each plate was a second smaller plate with two pieces of buttered toast sliced in half diagonally, and to the right of the toast, a pink grapefruit half in a bowl.
Grandma made our eggs, and we sat to eat right away. I gobbled down two fried eggs, two pieces of toast with apple jelly, three slices of bacon, and a heaping pile of buttery grits. I even ate my grapefruit, which I didn’t know I liked. It tasted good with sugar sprinkled on top.
Daddy inhaled his breakfast too, and then told Grandma he had to get home to mow the grass. He got up from the table, bent down and gave me a hug and a kiss, and then made a quick exit.
I panicked and followed him to the door, and watched from a window as he backed the station wagon out of the drive and disappeared down the road.
Later in the day, after going through my bag of clothes and discovering I hadn’t brought much of anything with me, Aunt Macy drove me to JC Penney to shop for an outfit for me to wear to church on Sunday.
She helped me select a pale yellow dress with white pin dots. To go with the dress, we picked out white ankle socks, trimmed in lace, and glossy black patent leather shoes. “This will get you started,” Aunt Macy said. “I have some fabric remnants at home, and next week I’ll get my sewing machine out and whip you up a few more church dresses and maybe some shorts for you to play in.”
All the shopping made us hungry. On the way back home, we stopped at Shoney’s Restaurant to grab a bite to eat. Aunt Macy was shocked when I wolfed down two hamburgers and an order of fries. She laughed at me when I would, from time to time, stop eating and squeal with delight. I couldn’t help it; I was that happy.
Sunday we attended the morning service at the Trinity Presbyterian Church, located a few blocks from Grandma’s house. When we got close to the entrance to the church, I looked up at the towering steeple with its soaring cross piercing the sky, and was instantly aware that I was a part of something huge, something important. Once we were inside, I became mesmerized by all the different colors in the stained-glass windows surrounding me.
Grandma and Aunt Macy were not fanatics about religion, but they were firm in their belief of God, and their faith was an often-silent, but ever-present, part of their lives.
Aunt Macy read the Bible every night before she went to bed, and sometimes in the morning before she left for work. I asked her once why it was taking her so long to finish it, and she told me she would never be finished with the Bible, because as soon as she reached the last page, she planned to go right back to the first one and start all over again. “I have read it three times already, from cover to cover,” she said. “And every time I’ve learned something new.”
It was Grandma who first introduced me to God. I took comfort when she told me a powerful, all-knowing being was watching over me, and that he had control over everything, even Mama. It gave me hope my situation at home might change for the better.
She also taught me how to pray. She told me to remember to say grace before each meal, and to offer my thanks to God and Jesus at night before I went to sleep. She urged me not to let a single day pass without thanking him for all his wonderful blessings, and asking him to forgive me for anything bad I might have done during the day. “He will always be there for you, to get you through the hard times. All you have to do is ask for his help,” she said. “He has a plan for each and every one of us on earth, and all things, both bad, and good, happen for a reason.”
Hearing this made me wonder what my special purpose was in life, and the reason for all the terrible things happening to me at home.
During the day, while Aunt Macy was at work. I was content to play by myself while Grandma watched soap operas and puttered around the house. My favorite game was “secretary.” I invented it to emulate Aunt Macy at her job. I dressed up in her clothes and even found an old typewriter on which I pretended to type important work documents.
Other days I went outside and made dandelion necklaces or mud pies. For a special treat, when it was extra hot, Grandma got a large washtub from the shed and filled it with water and soapsuds for me to play in. Sometimes she would spray me with the garden hose. I played all day until the sun went down, and at night I caught fireflies and put them in Mason jars, until Grandma made me come inside.
On the weekends we often went to Centennial Park for a picnic, where I fed the ducks, or to the Parthenon to look at the Greek statues, or to the theater to see the latest Disney movie. At home we played croquet and badminton in the huge yard that had once been a tennis court. Other times we went to put fresh flowers on my grandfather’s grave. Grandma was downhearted
and reserved on those days.
She liked to talk about her life before the fire when money was plentiful, and she and my grandfather hosted elaborate dinner parties. She reminisced about the old days with a lilt in her voice and glitter in her eyes.
Because she had also lived during the Depression, she talked about those days too. But whenever she told me about how her life was then, her voice took on a somber tone. It was during this deprived period that she first began to save everything that could possibly be of any use at a later date. Her kitchen drawers were stuffed with rubber bands and neatly folded sheets of crumpled tin foil. The cabinets were crammed full of empty butter tubs that toppled out on your head when you opened the doors.
My life at Grandma’s house was the opposite of the one I knew at home. I ate anything I wanted, anytime I was hungry. I went to the bathroom whenever I needed to. I wore ribbons in my hair and took bubble baths. Grandma and Aunt Macy bought me clothes and toys. They lavished me with love and affection, and I was the center of their life.
When I was there, I was not ugly. In fact, they were forever going on and on about how cute I was to everybody they knew. They dressed me up and took countless pictures, posing me in front of the flowers in Grandma’s garden, at the park feeding the ducks, and sitting on the piano. All this made me question what Mama had said about the way I looked. I spent hours in front of the mirror analyzing every curve of my face, and examining all the pictures Grandma and Aunt Macy had taken of me, wondering how it could be they saw something completely different than Mama.
Grandma had a burgundy leather photo album, where she kept all the pictures she had taken of her grandkids. She got it out, pulled from it a photograph, and handed it to me. “That’s you, sweetie, when you were about four months old,” she said, pointing to a pale, smidgen of a creature with a puff of cottony hair.
I stared at it long and hard. “Grandma, do you think I’m ugly?”
“Heavens, no!” she said. “You’re beautiful, you’ve always been beautiful.” She took my face into her hands, squeezing my cheeks together till my mouth puckered, and gave me a firm kiss on the top of the head. “Now quit talking nonsense.”
I didn’t know how much Grandma and Aunt Macy knew about my situation at home. They never brought up Mama to me, and they were careful to avoid the subject of her accident. But I suspected they discussed these things when I was not around, because they often spoke in low voices that stopped promptly whenever I entered the room.
They never said anything to me about the bruises all over my body, or the scars that peppered my hairline. But once, when Grandma was helping me with my bath, tears welled in her eyes. “Honey, you barely have enough hair to cover your head,” she said, and I detected a faint sob in her voice.
It didn’t occur to me to tell her or Aunt Macy about the horrible things Mama had said and done to me. I didn’t think much about it while I was there, or worry over what awaited me when I returned home. I was too full of joy, wallowing in a world filled with love, a place where I was welcome and cherished, to be bothered by what lay ahead.
Unlike my life at home, my days at Grandma’s house were predictable. I knew I could count on certain things: big breakfasts in the morning, hugs every day, and church on Sunday. The front door was always open to family and friends, and the pantry was stocked with good food for them to eat. A fresh pitcher of Grandma’s special fruit tea was always in the refrigerator, along with one of two desserts, peach cobbler or lemon pound cake, and once a week a pot of homemade vegetable soup could be found simmering on the stove.
This predictability also included a set daily pattern created by Grandma that she and Aunt Macy affectionately referred to as their “routine.” Each morning, without exception, the routine began with a good bowel movement. Grandma encouraged me to do the same, as she was convinced a person had to be “regular” to be healthy. So, the first thing every morning, I sat on the toilet and strained and strained, until my eyeballs bulged, and the blood vessels swelled in my neck, with no results.
I wanted to be a part of the “routine” too, but it was impossible for me to have a movement every day, because I was accustomed to holding my bowels until Mama gave me permission to use the toilet. She always went to the bathroom with me too, so it was hard to produce anything while she was standing right there watching.
I told Grandma about my problem, and she helped me out by giving me a tablespoon of castor oil, chased with orange juice to mask the taste. After a few doses and a lot of patience, soon I was as regular as Monday morning.
I loved the routine, and everything else about my new life, and I positively idolized my Grandma Storm. She wore dresses and pearls, even if she didn’t have anywhere to go, and she always found the time in the mornings to pin her hair into an elegant bun, or to sweep it up with two tortoiseshell combs. On Sundays, when she dressed for church, she put on lacy white gloves that buttoned at the wrist, and brightly colored hats with mesh veils in the front, some of them with rhinestone pins or feathers. She put on perfume when she went out too, favoring floral scents like jasmine or Lily of The Valley.
She wasn’t pretty in a delicate way like Mama, but handsome, with chiseled cheekbones and deep-set eyes. She was tall for a woman born during her time, but she wasn’t awkward in her height, and she didn’t slump like some tall people do. She carried herself with confident grace.
Wherever Grandma was, there was music. She hummed or whistled as she cooked and worked her garden, and a song was always waiting at her piano ready for my request. She played strictly by ear, the music magically flowing from her fingertips.
Wherever she was, love presided. She was not one to openly display affection, except for a hug here and there, but her love had a gentle constancy I could feel. I knew it was there, as surely as I knew the crystal dish on her cocktail table in the living room was full of cream-filled chocolate drops and candied orange slices.
18
In July I celebrated my ninth birthday. Like every other year, I had my favorite German chocolate cake, only this time Grandma Storm baked it instead of Mama.
After we finished our cake and ice cream, I followed Grandma outside to walk the grounds around her house and tend to her flowers. I liked to help her water them and pluck off the dead buds, stooping every now and then to pull a weed.
Almost as much as she loved her flowers, she loved the birds, all of them, from the loud, aggressive blue jay to the shy sparrow. She had brought a sack filled with crackers and bread crumbs that we scattered out on the lawn for them to eat. They filled the trees around the house, squawking loudly, waiting to be fed.
While we were pulling some weeds, we heard a weak chirping coming from the azalea bushes. Grandma got a stick and separated the limbs, probing for the source of the sound. Suddenly, out fell a small grayish ball.
“It’s a baby robin,” she said.
What had fallen out of the bushes didn’t look anything like a robin. It had pink, almost transparent skin, with blue veins showing through, and patches of gray fuzz on its head and randomly on its body. But I figured Grandma was right because she knew her birds.
“How did it get here?” I asked.
“Poor thing must have fallen from a tree,” she said. She pointed overhead to a high branch. “See, there’s the nest full of the rest of the baby robins.”
“What should we do?” I asked.
“Let it be,” she said. “I’m sure the mother will come looking for it when she realizes it’s missing.”
I didn’t want to leave the baby bird alone, but I did because Grandma told me to. I sat on the front porch and watched, waiting for the mother to come and retrieve it.
After a few minutes, I saw the mother robin fly to the nest of baby birds that Grandma had pointed out. I knew it was her because she had a dull red breast, and Grandma had told me the female robin was a duller color than the male. She was carrying a fat earthworm in her mouth to feed her babies. They gobbled it down, and she flew away aga
in. After a while she brought back another worm, dropping it into the open beaks of the babies.
I could hear the baby bird that had fallen from the nest chirping desperately from the ground, trying to get her attention, but she made no attempt to fly down and feed it.
Angry at the mother bird for her negligence, I barreled into the house to tell Grandma.
“Give her time,” she said. “She’ll come for the baby eventually.”
“How will she get it back up to the nest?” I asked.
“Now, that I don’t know, but I’m sure she’ll find a way.”
I went outside and sat on the porch again. A half hour passed. The baby’s chirping got louder, and more desperate, but still the mother bird didn’t come for it or try to feed it. I went into the house once more to give Grandma a report.
“What if she knows the baby’s gone, and she doesn’t care?” I asked. “What if the mother pushed it out because she doesn’t want it anymore?”
“That’s nonsense. It’s her baby, of course she wants it.”
All of a sudden, we heard loud squawking coming from the backyard. Grandma ran outside to see what was going on, and I was right on her heels. When we got out there, we discovered the baby bird had wandered into the middle of the yard, and a blue jay was attacking it. While we stood there, two more birds swooped down and took a turn pecking at the baby.
“Grandma, they’re killing it! We’ve got to do something!”
She took off her house slipper and fanned it in the air, chasing after the blue jays. “Shoo! Get out of here!” she hollered. I followed close behind her, waving my arms like a whirligig.
When the blue jays had all flown off, I picked up the baby bird and cradled it in my hands.
“You may as well keep it,” said Grandma. “Your scent is on it. The mother bird won’t come for it for sure now.”
