...Grand-Anna

Grand-Anna

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I pulled myself up and turned so that my back reflected in the wide mirror. Grand-Anna readjusted her seat, never removing her eyes from mine. My hands gripped the edge of the counter as I placed my weight on them.

“The mist hid the danger. Even if it hadn’t been misting, the darkness of that early hour could have been fatal.” Her eyes left me as she said this. Internally, I breathed relief. My eyes freely wandered over her poofy hair to the window, where the tree drooped and the trunk was lined with creases and carvings, some natural and some from us kids.

As if to contrast my view with that morning’s she said, “At least I had my headlights on; although what good that did I don’t know.”

She had stopped. I studied the bad words Matthew had carved into the magnolia. I did not dare to look at my auntie as she fumbled for the correct idea. “Yes, I do. I was observing the safety laws. I liked to think that as a lifeguard that was one of the best things I could do – making things safe – for other people, as well as for myself.

A stray sigh from her lips brought her to my undivided attention. “Other people don’t feel that way, though,” she said.

“Not always.”

“At your age you would be surprised,” she said sagaciously.

Curiosity pressed me to ask, “Then what?”

“Then what?” she echoed. “I would have seen him if he had bothered with his lights. He wasn’t drunk, he wasn’t swerving, but he wasn’t safe.”

“Was the car going too fast?” I tried to leave the distinction of which vehicle open so that she could answer as well as she was able.

“I don’t think – I don’t know.” Perhaps I had pushed a little too hard. Grand-Anna recovered and said, “No. I was getting to school but I woke up in the county hospital.” She nodded to herself, as if that answered that.

Once, Mom had caught us kids looking over a picture we had tracked down for weeks. We had only seen our auntie’s name and the skid marks dropping off a cliff into the jagged water before her hand came down on the piece of history that to us kids was distant, but to our mother must have called back the doubts and fears that had warred in her at one point.  Mom had held a crumpled letter in her obscuring hand. She had said, “Thank God there were no casualties,” while I was only trying to peek at the faded wrecksite between her smooth nails.

A burst of movement under the window quickly gained my attention. “How are you feeling?” I asked my auntie.

“Tired. My bones ache. My joints crack something awful. I’m not made like I use to be.” She grasped her Chicken Soup for the Soul reader. I looked down at the rug and fluffed up the trampled parts with my feet.

“Vicky?” she said.

I looked up. She had opened her reader, where a filled-out bingo card marked her place. I ignored the other, more permanent marks in her deeply toasted legs and face. “What is it?” I asked.

“I’m running out of tissue. Could you be a dear and get some for me?”

“I’d be happy to.” I bent down, grabbed the toilet tissue, and promptly handed it to her.

Absorbed in her book, my auntie reached for the roll. But she said thank you, even though she was not looking.

I thought I had given her what she wanted. But she said, without letting me go, “Can you tell your brother and sisters that I am not their grandmother?”

My breath hissed out in one of the words my family never said. “I’ll tell them,” I said, and turned and hurried out of there.