Age nine.
The brick bungalow off Narragansett Avenue
on Chicago’s west side
a treeless street, houses clustered
one after the other in neat blocks
where my grandparents lived
in a little shoebox of a house
for decades, since Grandpa returned from the war.
For weeks Grandpa lay in his sick bed, a stocky man
built like a barrel, with square, black glasses and thick features
deeply tanned skin that seemed to be always sweating.
Before his illness, he would scoop me up with hard, muscular hugs
and say my name with warm nasal vowels in a teasing tone
and swat my bottom playfully.
A man who had worked half a century with his hands,
weekends filled with baseball and nights with billiards or bowling,
who stormed the beaches at Normandy, never spoke of the war,
went out dancing in his youth, swinging to trumpets, trombones,
sipped coffee and ate buttered toast
while reading the paper on the greasy kitchen table,
drank, smoked, played cards with his friends
in basements and bowling alleys.
On Saturdays, I played in the narrow, low-ceilinged room
which could just fit an orange upholstered couch and television,
lit by a single small window.
I liked to spin myself dizzy in the padded swivel chair
where I put up my legs, scuffing the white wall with socked feet,
pushing myself in circles like a merry-go-round.
When my mother had to work late
I slept the night in the corner bedroom,
lulled to sleep with the wafting scent of soup
boiling on the stove,
tucked in cool sheets by Grandma,
shuffling back and forth in dusty slippers.
My grandmother lived in the kitchen,
always emerging with flour-lined hands.
On a tray, she would carry me
a grilled ham and cheese sandwich
that sweated in the center of a white porcelain plate
where I lay sprawled on the carpet watching cartoons.
Stealthily, I sometimes rifled through her jewelry box
with the forbidden thrill of searching for treasure –
chunky necklaces and green rhinestone earrings
laid out on her bedspread, categorized by color.
Scooting down the stairs to the cold basement,
I rolled colored balls back and forth on Grandpa’s pool table
next to his makeshift bar with the neon sign
by the laundry room where Grandma strung up her nightgowns
on sagging lines clipped with wooden clothespins
Or lingered in the postage-stamp backyard
bordered by a chain link fence
where in summer I rode my wobbly bike in the alley
or played with the plastic bat and whiffle ball
that I hit, again and again, into the neighbor’s yard
guarded by the black barking dog
each time, asking Grandpa to fetch it for me.
That morning in February
outside, the bright shock of cold
made the slippery ice glitter
on the sidewalk’s cracked pavement
where women skidded in heels
and frosted, jagged air stung
protruding noses and gloveless fingers.
Entering the house, the air felt heavy—
pungent with the smell of damp carpet,
of chalky medicine and perspiration
and a body nearing death.
Grandpa’s closet was crowded
with plaid shirts, leather belts
he could no longer wear,
the room shrunken with bulky
brass-buckled wooden dressers,
boxes of tissues, stacks of towels.
The house was thick with people—
my mother and father, uncle and aunt,
Grandma with her canes and swollen legs,
nurses streaming in and out the back door
letting in biting gusts of wintry air.
That morning I peeked into the bedroom
where my grandfather lay motionless,
heaped with woolen blankets,
no longer able to move his arms,
the eerie sound of his heaving breaths
mingling with the respirator’s electric hum,
his eyes flickering open and closed again—
something significant was happening.
As I played in the TV room
I remember thinking that I should be sad
but I couldn’t help feeling light, elated
caressed by shards of sunlight
that streamed through the small window,
pleased with my toys, with the stories in my head
as I bounced a rubber ball off the corner wall,
only disturbed sometimes
by the hushed murmuring of voices.
I knew something was wrong
when my mother’s face appeared
in the door frame, strangely shriveled.
At first I thought she was laughing.
Uncle Tom told me the news
through strange, high pitched sobs—
the first time I heard a grown man cry.
I snatched my picture book
and joined Grandpa’s motionless body on the bed.
I read to him, my side brushing up against his limp arm
as I progressed through my chapter
about ponies or cats.
I didn’t understand
that it would be the last time I would see his body
before it was stiff and waxy with chemicals in the casket,
that this was the end of my childhood weekends
spent snugly in this little house,
on this humble street,
embraced by the warmth of my grandparents.
A few days later:
the stinging winter morning of the funeral
when they lowered the casket into the frozen ground,
the sharp sun glistening off car windshields
and the white puffs of breath
exhaling from blanched mouths and chapped cheeks.
My grandmother and elderly aunts—
smelling sharply of rose petal perfume
with their tight, grey permanents—
steadied each other, held each other’s arms,
wept noiselessly.
The morning felt starched and formal—
the echoes of organ pipes and hymns in my ear,
neighbor ladies in hats and black nylon stockings,
distracted by the static buzz of my hair
as I tugged at my lace-collared dress
underneath a puffy winter jacket.
All of us gathered around the rectangular hole in the earth
clumped densely so we could feel each other’s breath,
my mother clutching my shoulders from behind,
gripping them so forcefully
that she was hurting me, her face red and strained.
Knowing it was not the time to protest,
I bore the pain quietly
and held myself stiff as the priest neared
with his flat, droning words of sheep, pastures,
and the heavenly father.
The strangeness of it:
how the ones we love
end up buried in the earth
but continue to live on
in our minds.
I didn’t then, but I wonder now
if Grandpa carried the memory
of his own long-dead grandparents
with him that morning
into the frozen soil
of his own grave.
