Missing person
23 April 2008 12:01 PM Categories: Childhood
hangover
The paneling tacked up against drywall, the damp concrete slab with its thin covering of plywood and carpet. The mildew, the cigarette smoke, the asthma attacks. Hollywood Beach, Christmas 1980.
In this photograph, from left to right: Jim, the unemployed soon-to-be stepfather, who spent his days lifting weights in the Upper Room; my grandfather, demanding, handicapped as the result of an industrial fire, who kept his candy in a cabinet by his porn; and me, a little freak 11-year-old who dragged a Ouija board everywhere and had séance parties, all in the hope of contacting my dead grandmother.
Mom was behind the camera. She commuted two hours round trip to work and came home every night to a hungry, demanding household. Once the plates were cleared, the complaints were served: the meal was too simple or too complicated. Had she gone too far this time, or held too much back? I listened and hated them, wanted to defend her honor. But I just sat there instead. This was not a happy time.
My grandmother collapsed suddenly one February afternoon in 1979. We were in the kitchen putting groceries away when she started breathing heavily. Unable to speak, she motioned in the direction of the sleeping cat on the kitchen chair. I was helpless. Finally she removed the cat herself, sat down, and closed her eyes. I called 9-1-1. The same volunteer fire department that whisked me off to Christiana Hospital six years later took her limp form away. They didn't tell me she was dead, but I knew.
The grief we were all smothering after her death came up in unpredictable ways. Just when we thought we had stamped it out, had ripped up the roots and crushed the last toxic leaf, we would discover another dank tendril wrapped around the front doorknob or emerging from the drain in the kitchen sink. It would not be denied. The only photographic evidence I have of her from my lifetime is a picture of the two of us. I'm playing on the floor, looking off at some distraction, away from the camera. She is a disembodied hand holding a cigarette.
It's been almost thirty years and I still miss her.