GRANDMA by Deborah Gordon-Brown

I was never comfortable in my Aunt Esther's house. It was a ranch house somewhere in Queens, in some fairly new series of tract homes built for families who required several bedrooms, a basement, enough of a backyard to feel like property and enough of a front yard to allow its owners to decorate it in a way that would differentiate it from the others. I remember plastic flowers on the front lawn near the door but that could have been Esther's house or another. What I experienced each time we went there was a sense of being lost in a land of sameness, a sense that didn't leave me even inside the house.

Grandma had moved to the house with Aunt Esther and her husband Eddie. She had asked my mother if we would buy a house to share but my mother had said "No". I knew only because on the day we all trooped out to see the land on which Esther & Eddies house was to be built, Grandma and I walked away from the group. We walked toward one of those wire fences through which one can see but clearly speaks of borders and boundaries. We stood at the fence. I think I curled my fingers around the wire, cold in the March air, the trees beyond it still winter bare, although had we looked I'm sure we could have seen the faint color of buds.

We weren't really looking though. We were quiet. Then I heard my unusually silent Grandma sigh, a deep sigh unedited for the 11 year old at her side. I remember looking up at her then taking her hand. "You mustn't tell", she started softly, not looking at me, seeing probably nothing. Her eyes looked clouded. I moved slightly so that I too stared off again through the fence, also unseeing.

We had a special relationship Grandma and I. It wasn't that we had secrets, but that we could share thoughts that others might consider impolite, so Grandma's asking me not to tell wasn't shocking. What was shocking was the depth of the place it came from, not memory or a story but from a place of monumental importance. The moment was truly frightening.

I remember her coat, a nubby gray wool and her scarf. I remember the damp cold and leaning closer to her, wanting to make whatever it was that was troubling her go away. "I don't want this," she said quietly. "I asked your mother. She said 'no'. Your mother is proud, too proud, but she is who she is. She is honest. I hoped that your mother and father would buy a house in which I would have an apartment. I would give them the money. Your father thought it would be a good idea but Evelyn [that's my mother] wasn't ready. I don't want to live like a guest, like a child."

There were other words, there had to be, and I'm probably not truly remembering the exact words that buried themselves in my heart. Like the cold of the March day my grandmother, whose house was always warm and full of heavy furniture that would last forever, was becoming a piece of something else in someone else's house, and helpless, helpless the way I was with my family. Everything in my house was careful and loving but the real heat of life was tucked away. I didn't know about Esther and Eddie. I wasn't comfortable with them so when my Grandmother spoke, her head turned away from anything familiar, I knew more than I could know: We were both lost in a way and we loved each other, trusted each other.

I remember feeling ashamed of my mother, angry with her, although we never spoke of that time in our lives until years into my adulthood.

We visited Esther and Eddie and Grandma in that house in Queens, not a lot, but certainly a number of times. Susan, my cousin, a year older than I and Esther and Eddie's daughter, insisted we play together as did her parents. I just wanted to visit Grandma who would shoo me away to be with Susan. When I snuck a moment to ask why, why couldn't we just be, Grandma taught me about what one does in another person's house, you don't make them angry. You try to live in a way that is comfortable for them. They wanted me to play with Susan. It would be good for Susan. We would get to talk. And we did, we did talk sometimes on the phone, but that's not the same of course.

And then we went to the house in a very solemn mode one day, my parents quiet in the car on the way up. Grandma was very sick. My parents were going to see her. But when we got there, when we got in the house, the house that was all sameness and like all the other houses except that my Grandma was in one of its rooms, I wasn't allowed to see Grandma. I asked. I was told she was too tired.

I remember the emptiness then, the cold air, the hushed voices, the fake antique furniture and Susan's self importance. She held a secret she finally whispered to me, "Grandma is dying" she said, her voice full of her special secret knowledge.

And then it was too much. I begged to see my Grandmother, then I wept, then totally uncharacteristically I threw myself against a wall protesting until they had to let me in, couldn't keep the noise away. I had to promise I would stay "just for a minute" but I didn't. Sometimes you just have to lie.

My grandmother's eyes were open when I came in and she smiled. She was frail without energy but when I sat on her bed and put my hand next to her she took my hand in hers, her fingers cool, her embrace warm. "Debbie, Debbie", she said. I bent toward her and she reached to touch my face. Of course I told her I loved her. How could I not have. I was bursting with love. I hugged her and I asked what was wrong because, no matter what anyone else said, she would tell me the truth. We talked a little bit, about her illness, about me. And the she asked if she could tell me something. I nodded, of course she could, and we were alone again. We were safe. "I'm dying, Debbie," she said, "and I am afraid."

My heart rose to fill the space between us. "What are you afraid of?" I asked, worried. "Of dying", my grandmother said, her blue/gray eyes so deep, "Of death." And my heart opened even more. I didn't want to see my grandmother suffering, frightened. "Please, Grandma, you don't have to be afraid," I assured her with everything I knew. "Lots of people have died, Grandma. It can't be that bad if everyone does it." That seemed so logical to me, so full of truth that what I said next seemed equally possible, "I will stay with you, Grandma. I will hold your hand and you can travel with me. I know you won't be alone." It was an easy promise to make. I would be with my Grandma as she had been with me. I was unafraid.

They tried to get me out of her room but they couldn't until Grandma fell asleep and even then, when they forced me to leave, I begged for a few more minutes. When the door was shut again I pulled a ribbon off my braid and tucked it into her loosely opened hand, gently closing her fingers over it so she would know, if she woke up, that I hadn't really left. I would never leave her. She would know that and be comforted.