Grand-Anna
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I saw the thin line running over
the length of her thin thigh. “I want to hear how it happened,” I said.
She nodded and put a finger to her
chin. Then she smiled and said, “Yes, I think I can tell you.”
I stood and waited. I let the damp
towel drop from my fading pink hands, but Grand-Anna stayed quiet.
“Auntie, can I get you anything?” I
said. I wondered if she had forgotten where she left off – she could do that as
easily as misplacing her house keys.
“I’m alright,” she said. “Perhaps
another roll.”
“I know where mom keeps them,” I
said. I opened the lower cabinets and crawled down there.
“Vicky?” Grand-Anna said. She
always called me Vicky. Mom tried to get her to stop, but the name was
hardwired into her.
“I’m getting you toilet tissue,” I
said.
“I don’t need any.” I stopped
fumbling around and stared up at her. Her reading glasses were perched on her
poofy hair style. The light filtered through the window and lit her head, like
a picture of golden youth from the hairline up.
She said slowly, “I think I’d like
to tell you, but I’m not sure where to start – I don’t know what words to lead
with.”
I sat on my ankles and turned to
face her. “Try as close as you can to it.”
Her dark and wrinkled elbows rested
on her knees. She cupped her face between her hands after pondering the
details. “I guess I was tired,” she said. “It was too early in the morning for
the sun, but bright enough with the moon despite a light mist.” She glanced up
at me. “I’m not sure where to begin.”
“What were you doing in the car?” I
asked her.
“What I usually did when I drove: I
was putting on a tape. My car was old enough to have a cassette player.” She
shook her head at the sudden light shining from my comprehending eyes. “But I
had a decent mechanic friend who practiced on my car – I’d just had tired
replaced, hoses replaced, lights looked at, engine cleaned, and an oil change.
Oh, and my brakes were replaced the year before.”
She had misunderstood me. I
rephrased for her, enough so she did not think that I thought she was slow.
“Where were you going so early? The beach?”
“Oh, no.” Wrinkles on her tan
forehead furrowed. “I had just come up from there. My seat was layered with
towels so that I wouldn’t get the seat all wet and gritty before I got to
school.”
“Makes sense,” I said. A certain
level of preparedness was a family trait – also, a habit of stating the
obvious. “You still had on your bathing suit.”
“Every day I drove from the beach
to school, where I changed in the locker rooms. I was a lifeguard and a teacher
then.”
“Yes,” I said. It would not do to
push her.
She put a hand to her head as she
stared vacantly at the shower. I stayed quiet while she navigated her history
for the ends, hoping that she would not get snagged in one of the knots. Her
request for toilet tissue weighed on my mind, so I clambered below the sink to
get a couple of rolls.
She surprised me by saying, “Leave
it be, it can wait. My story can’t.”
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