Dawn Byrne

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.

“It's me, Grandma.” The Easter palm I held waved as I swiveled on my heel towards a painting on the wall behind me.

“Sunday school over already?”

“Yep. I got your palm. Can I put it behind Great-Aunt Eliza‘s picture?” Great-Aunt Eliza died as a child. She sat for eternity in a rocker wearing a fancy dress behind the oval frame’s bubbled glass.

“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.”

I scanned the debris on the floor: pieces of material, a ballpeen hammer, scissors, carpet tacks, Grandma's pocketbook, cigarettes, nails and a clear-topped box of heavy duty gold studs. The man at the hardware store said they‘d work if Grandma tacked the material on first.

“Here they are Grandma.” I handed them in the direction of the live leg. Her hand popped out from behind the Early American furniture she resurrected, took the plastic box, and was gone.

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.”

“They're itchy.” I couldn’t complain to Grandma. “Liz and me tried them on when Grandma pinned them up yesterday. My legs are all red.” The torturous material never fazed the tough skin on Grandma's hands and forearms as she created those deceiving delights.

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.

I didn’t mind hoisting a collapsed baby coach, a baby, diaper bag and purse on and off buses, up to and down from elevated platforms, and in and out of trolley cars. I folded a week’s worth of dirty laundry for three to fit in a shopping cart, and hauled the load uphill to our local laundry mat. Losing my post-pregnancy baby fat while getting chores done at the same time exhilarated me.

Clean clothes folded and back in their drawers and closets, I returned to the shopping center up the hill to food shop. Steadying a huge box of Pampers atop the jam-packed cart of survival supplies for the coming week, I always arriving home with no broken eggs.

I put many miles on my sturdy Graco coach. With our daughter along for the ride, I walked to local shops to buy other essentials, and to my mom’s house for visits. If an odometer spun on that blue buggy, it would’ve turned over.

Then we moved from the city. Almost overnight, I got a driver’s license, drove over a bridge that opened for large boats to pass, and up the boulevard. That same city looked different from behind a wheel than from a bus seat, where I had safely witnessed accidents and an arrest through the bus’s deluxe-sized windows.

I was a married mother, worked full-time and cared for our home. So why did I shirk from the responsibilities of driving? Driving’s a must for busy mothers and makes life easier. Right?

Not in 1988 when operating a green 1970 Chevy Nova. The thing crapped out on me in parking lots, on the bridge, just over the bridge and starting out from any Point A. Each time, after a push from another driver, including the police once, or some magic my husband did underneath it, I chugged on.

While driving to my second shift job, most vehicles headed in the opposite direction, on their way home from day shifts. Traffic was even lighter when I left work, driving home through sleeping neighborhoods. These lucky facts lessened my odds of being in someone’s way and backing up traffic when the testy Nova broke down.

I didn’t believe that the cost of insurance and the upkeep of an automobile was money well spent. Maybe if we could’ve afforded a car that wasn’t almost as old as I was, I’d have felt differently. But for our child to escape the mire of the same city schools I crawled out of, we had to move to an area with limited public transit. I guessed those late shifters without cars swam across the river, and under the bridge that was closed to foot traffic at night, to get home.

My confidence as a driver budded a few weeks after my latest incident. Would I actually experience transporting myself to work and home each night without fear of a breakdown? I started to feel empowered inside the fading green Chevy with its stinky fumes.

Until a cloud hissed in front of me from under the hood. I was near the turn off for the bridge. If I could only get over it, I’d at least be in my new home state for damage assessment.

The few cars that passed me, waved and pointed. But I didn’t stop. Not in the middle of the boulevard!

The white smoke thickened and my visibility dropped. I missed the tricky left turn to the bridge and kept going, afraid to stop in case the car wouldn’t start again. I finally found a gas station and pulled into it. Somehow I had exited the boulevard and was in an unfamiliar neighborhood. I couldn’t call my husband to come get me because our 4-year-old daughter was asleep. He’d have to wake her and bring her with him.

Making sure my official-looking badge was still clipped to my blouse, I approached the gas station hut on its island surrounded by pumps, and asked if they had a phone. The attendant didn’t speak English, but pointed to my left.

I scanned the gray, empty, non-residential streets. A public phone hung inside its extended, tri-sided frame across the intersection. Adrenaline still at high pumping power, I power walked to the pay phone.

The dial tone in my ear answered my rushed prayer. I noted the cross streets as I punched in Mom’s number that I had memorized as a child. She was sending my brother to save me. I got back in my car that had stopped streaming smoke and locked myself in as Mom had instructed.

A man knocked on my window a minute later. I lowered the window half an inch to hear what he asked.

“What’s wrong with the car?”

I willed my voice not to shake but sound as official as my badge appeared. “I don’t know. It was smoking. My brother’s on his way.”

He ducked under the hood and then came back to the window. “A hose is cracked. I can clamp it so you can get home.”

My spider senses tingled as he scanned the inside of my car through the window. His too sweet smile and prowling eyes lingered seconds on me. He clearly didn’t work at the station because he hadn’t come from the hut or pumps.

“That’s okay. My brother’ll be here soon,” I said, and wound up the window, staring straight ahead at my open hood.

I thought he'd left, but he reappeared and stared working on my car.

I cracked the window again and said, “I don’t want you to get hurt working under there. It might still be hot.”

He came back to my window and said, “It’s fixed. I clamped it.”

“Oh, thank you.” Could he really have repaired my car? “I’m sorry I don’t have any money to pay you for your help.”

“Well.” He grinned and again his eyes swaggered to the interior of my car. “That’s okay.”

He walked away. Time tick inside me as I breathed; one, two, three minutes maybe.

Movement reflected in my side view mirror. That same man led a group of men. I heard their course language as they headed towards me.

I hoped the man in the hut wasn’t a friend of theirs and would call the police if needed.

You may have guessed that my lone cavalry arrived. My brother screeched into the station. I became hysterical, not improving the situation in which my brother was now involved. He shut the Nova’s hood and I followed him to the bridge.

“Yes, he’s home now, honey. Are you alright?” Mom asked when I called her from my side of the bridge. We continued to chat until we both had settled our nerves, then said good-night.

My husband was impressed the next day with the stranger’s handiwork. But he told me not to advertise my disability next time by keeping the hood opened while waiting for assistance. I entertained the thought that the man who helped was a good Samaritan. But in my husband’s strained face staring back at me, I knew the stranger probably fixed the car because he and his friends didn’t have one, or they wouldn’t have walked to the station. This is where my story ends, and I thank God and brother.

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featured Slider

Juliette Writers' Group

Juliette Writers' Group Meeting

This was great. Click for updated meeting.

Join published writer, Dawn Byrne, as she leads the group in discussing: Humorous Writing

April 19 @ 7:30 pm

Barnes & Nobles

1311 Nixon Dr.

Moorestown, NJ 08057

All welcome!

﻿

Resurrections

Juliette Writers' Group

Gremlin Amore

Juliette Writers' Group Meeting

Not So New Nova

About Me

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Search This Blog

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