Resurrections
Walking through our
vestibule you‘d swear the Wicked Witch of the West met her dismembering doom
via a fallen couch. Grandma's artificial leg leaned against the living room
wall wearing its black shoe, stocking, and rubber garter. Grandma's “good” leg
lay flat on the floor, sticking out from behind the couch. Her
cigarette-singed: "Who came in?" was a relief.
“Put it on my chair. I
have to burn the old one in the ashtray first.” I obeyed. Grandma cursed,
behind my back, behind the upholstery. “Hand me those studs.”
Holidays called for
sprucing up the house, but those puny studs didn't stand a chance against my
brother's furniture abuse. Masked explicatives behind the couch made it clear
the studs gave Grandma trouble.
“Why are you doing
that today Grandma?”
Her leg shifted.
"You can't expect me to sew on the Sabbath." The unfinished Easter
dresses for my sister and me must’ve been on her mind. "We don‘t use
needles on Sunday in respect for Christ being pierced." Grandma's point
confused me when she added, "Hand me that ball peen hammer.”
The left corner of the
old couch's headrest didn't flap when I leaned on it to hand her the tool.
“How'dya fix the wing tip?” I inspected her handiwork.
“I reinforced it with
nails and pulled the material taut over it.”
She pretended not to be proud. She didn’t even curse.
“The couch looks nice,
Grandma.” Uncle John, no relation, had found the material in the trash outside
a warehouse. Its color clashed even worse than the original fabric. Scraps of
it on the floor tripped my mind back to the dresses. “Where's Mommy?”
“In the kitchen.”
I moved fast, hoping
Grandma wouldn't need something else before I was far enough away to
"not" hear her.
“Mommy, where'd
Grandma get the stuff for our Easter dresses?” Sweet onions scented Mom‘s long
hands, even when she wasn’t mixing ground meat.
She tilted her head to
fix her glasses with the back of her wrist. Sunlight from the kitchen window
made her ring glimmer. I tried to remember if, lying in his coffin, Dad had
worn his wedding band.
Fatigue filtered
through Mom’s answer. “Grandma took apart those curtains we had upstairs.”
Mom didn't understand
how bad it was. “You only have to wear them for a little while. Grandma worked
hard on them.” As a kid, I didn’t know how to plead my case further.
I dreaded the
humiliation. The dresses not only itched and burned. Those sheer pink recycled
curtains barely veiled our slips. Mrs. Watson would whisper the word
'fiberglass' as we sat on either side of her waiting to say our Bible verses on
the church basement’s stage. Grandma pounded another stud into the furniture. I
cringed.
A week later I sat on
the revamped couch as Uncle John snapped a picture, finalizing my anguish. My
sister was the first to bolt upstairs and strip the abusive pink night terror
from her body. We flung the things into the bottom of our closet in exchange
for the salvation of sweat pants and t-shirts. Back downstairs, we indulged in
candy eggs and animals, renewed. The holiday endured for chocolate, love of
others and maybe real dresses next year.
