On Grandma's Porch Read online

  “We love you, Daddy.” The thought ran neatly across my mind, like the digital ticker tape at the bottom of a TV screen, an update on the situation.

  I love you, too, he replied, close by once more. The sadness will pass, just like it should. You’ll forget, and twenty years from now I’ll just be a dusty old picture on the mantel. I want you to forget. Being alive means you always have to be forgetting things that hurt.

  “I don’t want to forget,” I pleaded. “I see you everywhere. Aren’t you just outside, working in your shop?”

  I’m here as long as you need me. And when you don’t need me, I’ll be gone. My mind went quiet. The books stopped sending Memories. I curled my hand into a fist and thumped a shelf.

  “Are you okay?” Gwen asked, behind me. She was a good sister and she had to make sure.

  “Hell, no.”

  “Me, neither.”

  I almost asked if Daddy had spoken to her, too. But I didn’t. What each person draws from their memories is personal. The voice of the spirit sings one song at a time.

  That night I told Tim to go home without me. Gwen and I crept into bed on either side of Mama. The three of us held hands. I ticked off one of many firsts—tomorrow would be the first Saturday without Daddy. Next month would be the first Thanksgiving. And in December we’d endure the first Christmas.

  The next morning I woke up with tears on my face and stumbled back to the closet in our old bedroom, alerted by a dream to something long forgotten. Patty Sue. A thorough perusal of dusty corners and sealed boxes turned up no sign. Gwen recalled nothing of the vintage cloth doll that had been given to me by Daddy. She had belonged to his mother. Patty Sue had been at least fifty years old when I got her.

  Mama simply shook her head and went outside to the concrete porch, to rock and grieve in the morning light. The search for Patty Sue became obsessively important to me. I tore into lopsided boxes, explored the attic and searched plastic bags filled with rags stored in Daddy’s workshop. Finally, I had to admit defeat. Patty Sue, like my childhood, was gone.

  I sat under an oak in the front yard, leaning against its trunk. I was still dressed in my pajamas and robe. Golden oak leaves drifted down with every rustle of wind. “Gone,” I said tearfully.

  Look in the old trunk in the barn loft, Daddy whispered.

  I hurried down a graveled garden path. The barn, gray and friendly, looked warm in the autumn sunshine. I stood for a second in the central hallway, watching the light shift through open slats in the walls. I looked at the empty stalls, forlorn.

  We hadn’t owned horses since Gwen and I left for college. Maybe I’ll buy myself a horse, I thought.

  My bare feet felt good on the bottom rung of the creaky loft ladder. The loft was empty of hay, cluttered with old trunks and ancient boxes and dusty farm gear. A light push-plow hung from a rafter, its slender wheel making a shadow-hoop on the wooden floor. The top of a moldy wooden trunk squeaked as I pried it up. A musky odor floated out—the scent of nature at work. Microbes and bacteria reclaim us and everything we love, eventually. But not yet. I brushed away cobwebs. My heart sank. I saw a few yellowed boxes. I’d expected Patty Sue to be sitting there, looking up at me, waiting.

  The enormous silliness of my behavior began to worry me, seriously. Grown woman, hearing voices, looking frantically through old boxes covered in dust and death and cobwebs. One by one the boxes opened under my fingers. They were filled with old Mason jars.

  When only one box was left, I sat down on the loft floor with it in my lap. I stared at the box bitterly.

  Daddy’s voice was only in my imagination. He hadn’t been with me over the past few days, and never would be, again. My grief had simply cranked out a few harmless delusions.

  I thumped the last, unopened box with a fist, expecting the rattle of more jars. Instead, my fist pressed down on a soft form. With a yelp of delight, I threw the box lid aside. Patty Sue came out of hibernation with a merry grin and only a little sadness in her faded, hand-sewn eyes.

  I held her and cried.

  Daddy was there, not speaking, but warm and nearby, watching. And then I felt him melting away, leaving me with Patty Sue for comfort. He had been alive in the flesh, and he was still alive in spirit. Just like the child inside me. Just like Patty Sue, who had survived. Always waiting to be heard, again, as needed, waiting to be remembered and loved, a vivid memory etched in a daughter’s mind.

  I would never stop talking to him.

  And I knew he would always be there, listening.

  More Baby Boomer Memories of Growing Up Southern

  Games we played during car trips—

  “I spy with my little eye.”

  The states-on-the-license-tags game

  How we carried candy, toys and other treasures—

  Before the Container Store, the treasure box of choice was the cigar box!

  What people did for vacation before airfare was cheap and Disney came to Orlando—

  Panama City, Florida! The Redneck Rivera. Remember the bandstand?

  How people dressed before Grandma discovered polyester—

  Does anybody remember when you wore your Sunday best to go to the movies?

  And AFTER Grandma discovered double-knit, remember how she never smelled quite the same? Or was that just my grandma?

  Vicks VapoRub and other amazing cure-alls—

  I know a lady who cut a big square out of the tail of her nightgown so she could iron it good and hot and slap it down on the Watkins-green-salve-swathed chest of her child. She couldn’t find another scrap of flannel in the house.

  What cars were like before seatbelts, airbags and talking maps—

  I used to be able to look through a hole in the floorboard of my mom and dad’s 1950-something Chevy station wagon at the yellow lines going by.

  Drive-in movies—

  Getting lost on the way back from the concession stand or the bathroom was frightening for a little kid!

  Window fans but no air conditioning—

  Remember when the old folks had chairs under a shade tree and sat outside until the bugs started to bite?

  Shocking, sinful entertainments: Elvis, the Beatles, and Barbara Eden’s exposed belly-button—

  My father thought the Smothers Brothers were terribly subversive. But he never changed the channel! Remember how racy the jokes on Laugh-in were?

  —Susan Goggins, The Wart Witch

  Grandma’s Cupboards

  by Susan Sipal

  High on the ridge above the farm

  I think of my people that have gone on

  Like a tree that grows in the mountain ground

  The storms of life have cut them down

  But the new wood springs from the roots underground

  Gone, gonna rise again

  —Si Kahn, North Carolina songwriter

  Along about the time I was a senior in college, and knew all there was to know about Life, and was so much smarter than my upbringing, my granddaddy was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer for several weeks, leaving Grandma to stay at their ancient farmhouse alone.

  Now, don’t get me wrong, Grandma was as feisty as any ornery farmwife could get. In fact she’d won blue ribbons at the state fair for her mulish ways. At least that’s what Granddaddy muttered, in his age-raspy voice, when she nagged him for tracking red Warren County mud into the house once again. Point being, I’m sure Grandma could probably have managed fine on her own, even with diabetes.

  But most of Granddaddy’s illness fell over winter break and I wanted to be there, with them, with Grandma. I preferred being at Grandma’s farm with the turmoil in my life above anywhere else at the time. Even with Granddaddy sick, still, there was a sort of welcome . . . of peace, less stress, less activity, more simple.

 
I needed time to sort things out in my life. Where was I going after graduation? More school? A job? Plus there was this guy I liked, and I didn’t know how he felt about me. It was confusing. And he was going to be out of state over Christmas, so I wouldn’t see him anyhow. May as well hide out, I mean help out, at Grandma’s and be of some use. Especially as she didn’t drive and would have to depend on neighbors to carry her to the hospital every day.

  See, Grandma ran over a piglet as a teenager, and ever since refused to get behind the wheel. In a small community like Arcola, however, this was never a big deal. She walked many places she wanted to go, like nearby neighbors, or off to Harvey’s—the small country grocery and gas-stop down the road—and church. Usually, however, Granddaddy, one of her children or neighbors (half of them kin as well), were willing and able to carry her whenever she needed to venture further away from what we grandkids called Plumb-Nelly—plumb in the country and nelly out of this world. Like her weekly go-to-town Fridays to the “big” town of Warrenton—to the bank, hairdresser, and Piggly Wiggly.

  But I’m venturing off the story, way too easy to do when you get into that Plumb-Nelly mind-frame. Anyhow, as I mentioned, the hospital was thirty-five miles away, in the next county, as Warrenton had been too poor for too long to currently have a hospital. Grandma, of course, needed to go every day to be with Granddaddy. So I acted as chauffeur and did whatever I could to take care of her, especially as Granddaddy’s condition weakened, and she became more upset and sickened with worry.

  Then, Grandma started doing something she’d never done in her whole life, at least not that Mama or I could remember. She slept late. Late for her being around 7:30. For a working farmer, though, that was sinful. For some reason, I seemed to reverse time sense with Grandma and awoke with the crowing of the rooster. This left me a good hour of free time in which I devised a special project.

  Cleaning out Grandma’s cupboards.

  If you’ve ever known anyone who lived through the Great Depression, you’ll nod your head and mutter, “Yep, yeah, yes-sirree,” under your breath at what I’m about to say. Grandma’s cupboards were crammed full of every single piece of aluminum foil, bread bag, twist tie, paper bag, plastic wrap, broken mugs, chipped glassware, and other miscellaneous debris hoarded amid her sixty-plus years of marriage. Aside from the pure junk, her cabinets cached a collection of mismatched china, that ugly jade Fire King (which Martha Stewart somehow thought pretty enough to reissue), green and pink Depression glass pieces in various patterns, and every collectible glass piece ever pulled out of an old box of oatmeal or soapsuds.

  She’d never thrown nothing away. Never knew when it might come in handy again. Especially when she’d been a dirt farmer all her life and knew what it meant to go without.

  But I was going to clean it up. I knew better. Those cupboards hid cockroaches and disease, as well as the trash. Surely Grandma would feel a lot better with clean, organized cabinets, and would never miss all that junk.

  One morning I awoke to the sound of little mice feet pattering overhead in the attic, the pinkish light of dawn peeking through the shades, and Grandma snoring on the other side of the bedroom. I slept in the combination bedroom/family room with Grandma as it was the only one we heated at night. With Granddaddy in the hospital it had become my job to toss another log in the stove when it got low, and keep the cast-iron kettle on top filled with water.

  Trying my hardest not to wake Grandma, I eased myself up by the nearby stairwell, the sofa-bed protesting with a give-away creak. Grandma snuffled lightly in her blackened iron-post bed, but kept on sleeping. I grabbed my bedroom shoes and crept across the freezing wood plank floor, cracking the door to the dining room.

  Which squeaked loudly in the silent house.

  I’d have to remember to oil it.

  Crossing my arms against the cold, I hurried to the kitchen, less afraid of noise with the bedroom door now shut behind me.

  But where to start?

  Heat, obviously.

  Watching my breath float in front of my face, I searched for matches to light the knee-high gas furnace, which as a child Grandma’d let me use as a stove to cook oatmeal. It would take awhile for the furnace to heat up, even in this small a kitchen, so I pulled back the faded-pink pantry curtain, pushed aside a hanging country ham, and snatched one of Grandma’s threadbare cardigans off a nail-hook, buttoning it to my throat.

  Knowing movement would generate heat as well, I opened one of the smaller cupboards and gazed with amazement at the chaos within. A deep breath of pent-up air escaped my pursed lips. I could handle this. I could.

  But where to start?

  The job was immense. There was no way I could clean all this mess out. This was only one cupboard, and Grandma had one, two, three, four . . . eleven of them.

  Still, even if I only did one, it would help. And the lure . . . besides helping Grandma clean up, something she wasn’t quite as adept at since gaining the age of eighty-two, was the thrill of discovering what treasures might hide beneath that life-long collection.

  I’d developed a passion for Depression glass and antique country collectibles. Just the type of thing Grandma had scattered about, using as food bowls for the cat, slop jars for the chickens, paperweights, or pen-and-small-item holders.

  Newly determined, I pushed up my sleeves, positioned one of the sturdier ladder-back, wicker-seat chairs, and climbed to the top cabinet.

  The first thing I drew out was a crushed mass of aluminum foil, toast crumbs falling out of the folded corners. Grandma washed and reused these. She’d probably saved enough to fill a major recycling bin.

  I crumpled a makeshift ball and scored a wastebasket two-pointer.

  I felt no compunction about trashing the endless supply of used bread bags, carefully rolled up Glad-wrap, and bits of ribbon and string, but as the meatier contents of the cabinet emerged, I doubted what to do with the odds and ends—stoppers minus bottles, lids without bottoms, and broken-off pieces of china. This stuff might have a missing part somewhere.

  Maybe I should clean the cabinets out, but make piles of things that weren’t obvious trash, and have Grandma sort through it.

  So, the kitchen warming up nicely and having prepared a pot of Luzianne part-chicory coffee to percolate on the stove, I set about covering the small kitchen table in organized piles of possible junk (the pure junk scoring points in the trashcan), parts to be repaired, and keepers to be cleaned. Of course, I’d had to first organize some of the mess already stored on that table—all the Upper Room Daily Devotionals, small bank calendars dating back twenty years or more, and the white transistor radio that still wheezed out the morning weather—all of which anchored down three layers of plastic tablecloth.

  I’d just washed out the last section of one large cabinet when Grandma’s slow shuffle crossed the dining wood-plank floor, and the kitchen door screeched open.

  A pause of astonishment.

  “Susan.”

  “Good morning, Grandma,” I said as innocently as I could pretend.

  “What are you doing?”

  Her hair beneath her net was squished on one side, looking whiter in the morning sun now streaming through the window, making her appear older, frailer. She’d mentioned a visit to Warrenton soon for another dye-rinse.

  “I was just cleaning your cabinets out a bit.”

  “I won’t be able to find nothing.”

  “Aww, come on, Grandma. It’s not that bad.” I grasped her thinning arm and tugged her to the one empty ladder-back chair I’d reserved for her. “Here, sit and help me sort through this.”

  “You best not have thrown my stuff out.” Her chin squared, and the usual glint flickered back in her eyes. “I need it.”

  “Now, Grandma, I haven’t thrown anything away that didn’t need ditching. All I’ve done is clean up a bit, and I’ll put
everything back where you tell me. Without all that trash in the way, you’ll be able to find things better.”

  I held up a glass chicken nesting on a basket, its tail broken off. “Is this something you need to keep?”

  “Goodness gracious.” Grandma reached for the busted keepsake. “I’d wondered where that old hen got to.” She turned it over in her hands, studying it carefully, her fingernail that needed trimming digging out a bit of dirt from underneath the bird’s wing. “You know, I won this along with a blue-ribbon for some blue eggs. That was a rough year. We lost a cow and the pig to the swine flu. I got creative with egg dishes. Found Clarence and the kids liked the boiled ones better if they came out of a pretty shell.” She chuckled.

  “Right.” I carefully took the prized hen from her and placed it on the newly cleared shelf over the sink. I’d loved finding and eating those blue eggs as a child myself.

  On to the next. “What about this?” I asked, passing her a plastic bag stuffed with scraps of faded material.

  Grandma snorted. “I ought to get Sophie to finish that up for me,” she said, referring to her younger sister, aged only eighty years. “I ain’t never been much of one for sewing. That’s a quilt I started when your Mama got married.”

  Which happened twenty-six years ago. “So, it can be dumped, then?”

  “Now, now. Don’t be in such an all-fired-out rush.” She opened the bag and drew out several of the squared-off pieces of stitched cloth. “You know what this here came off of?”

  I shook my head, though she wasn’t even looking in my direction, her gaze firmly focused on the pile of rags in her lap, caressing a slip of rose satin.

  “I wore this dress to your Uncle Junior’s wedding.” She picked up a piece of flowered muslin. “And this was your mother’s dress when she was baptized and confirmed.”

  She passed the bag back to me. “Put that over by the Frigidaire on top of that pile of egg cartons. Sophie’ll be by to dinner after church on Sunday. Don’t you let me forget to give this to her along with some eggs, ya hear?”