Grave digging

My nanny.

I know that when Bapa died everybody treated her like property. Her own kids. Dividing up the things and packing them up - away.

There are plenty of pictures of all the women gathered round the table with brown coffee mugs. In most of them all you see of my sister and me is the backs of our shiny hair half-covered by thick Marlboro smoke. My own mother can't tell which one of us is which because of the way the sun bleached my sister's dark hair strawberry. We colored with waxy crayons from the Big Boy at that table. Poked toothpicks into potatoes while they bragged about their money troubles, the floosies next door.

I know that she birthed five babies.
But I only knew two aunts and one uncle.
That baby didn't have a name, I don't think.

I know that she lied to say she was fourteen just so she could marry my bapa. And that she never could read. I know that Bapa's daddy was such a son-o'-bitch nobody bothered to investigate when he was found shot dead in a ditch. And that they all lived in a tent until my mom's little sister was born.

I wrote a Thanksgiving poem that rhymed so well she made me read it every year before we began.

We used to sit on her carpet and watch the ants circle the crumbs, carry them off. I hated it. I felt embarrassed to have a nanny and bapa like that - ants on their living room floor. The sunlight so hot through the picture window. And all she ever talked about to us kids was the squirrels stealing the bird seed. All we wanted to do was go up to the attic and look at Bapa's dirty picture books. She'd slap our arms when she'd catch us on the stairs. We loved her, I think. Sometimes she'd hug us good and hard.

I know that love was terror to her. I think I knew it even so young, lined up with all my cousins, our chosen switches in hand, waiting to get a lickin'. I know I can be as cold as her - as my mom - when I love enough to get scared about it. I know I'm glad Claire won't know her. I know I feel guilty about my gladness.

She had an endless supply of mason jars. Some with handles, even, for drinking sweetened ice tea. She pinched the tomato bugs in half with her bare fingers. She threatened to fire us up if we snapped her lillies. The bottom of her meat freezer was stained brownish-red from cow blood. When she made cocoa gravy she'd let us peel the hardened film off the top.

I know one day she said something about me being like my bapa in a whisper to my mother as I ate my chili. When I looked up, they were watching me, smirking. I don't know for sure, but I think it might've been about the way I hold my face too close to my plate. I've always been self-concious about it since. She told my sister once that she was the only grandkid who looked like the Indians we was. And I know my sister's been self-concious about that too.

She told me another time that I shouldn't talk too much about the good things happening to me. My britches not fitting anymore. And since then I've always sort of thought I needed a man who could just keep me nice and quiet. Give me reason to not talk too much.

I know that, even still, when the women gather together we channel her way of talking. (Even, now, writing about her.) Calling the kids "little whippers" and leaving off the ends of words. Even me. But especially my mom. And I see the way the men look at us - like it's a worthless tribute. A wasted last-ditch effort for her kisses. I think it's just a way to say we all held those switches.

After she lost my bapa she just let them run her house down. And she refused my mother's sanity - her unconditional love. I was never really surprised about how easily I hated her after that. I think I probably always did - a little bit anyways. I think I might have always known about the way she raised my mother. How her fear would eventually allow them all to box my Bapa's memory up - away.

Once when my bapa was sick she had to drive my sister and me someplace. We were just kids. We buckled ourselves in the back and she went and sat in the passenger seat. We sat awkwardly silent for a bit until she jumped up, embarrassed, and went around to the driver's side. We were nervous as hell that ride. We giggled about it later to my dad.

My sister wouldn't go to her funeral. I only went so I could place my hand on my mother's back as she cried over the casket. Nobody else really spoke to my mom that day. They all had the little bit of money my bapa had saved in their bank accounts by then. They had it even before she was gone herself. They resented my mother for not wanting some too. They resented her for not taking his things away to sell right in front of my nanny. For not nodding along while they took her house from her. For not playing along for dirt. They hated that if Nanny and Bapa were really together again above he was yelling, "Earlene, you gone an' messed up with Elaine. She always was the only one who never asked for nothin' but love. Nothin' but love and you turned her out the door."

I know that my Bapa was good.

Sometimes when I watch a movie or read a novel about children who've had something bad happen I get a weird feeling for her. It's almost like I miss her. It's almost like forgiveness. But I don't know exactly what for. Just for her fear, I guess. For her ignorance. For that cold part of my mother. My sister. Me.

She never came to my wedding. We got a response in the mail with something scribbled in on the will attend line. My mom and I thought it might have been her - trying to write her name, afraid to ask one of them for help. I wonder sometimes if she put on one of the few nice dresses she had and tried to fix her hair up all by herself. If she sat on the edge of her bed with her black patten-leather purse in her lap - her matching shoes - in the back room of my aunt's house. If she sat in her own pride all night while her good daughter's baby grew up. I wonder sometimes if my mother wouldn't have cried in the same way over her casket if she would have just come to that church.

I know my mom didn't belong to her the way the others did. I know that I must not have belonged to her hardly at all, then. It's a hard thing to sort out. I felt so much love from her and I felt so much distance. And I blame her easily for the detachment inside of my mother - and my mother for mine. And I feel this forgiveness, but I'm not sure for what exactly. For her fear of losing? For living life best she knew? It's been so easy to blame her and then just put her away.

It seems I've taken her out now. Over ten years have passed and I've taken her out to cry for. For what exactly, I'm not sure.

I know that there is a photo of her with my cousin on his prom night in one of my boxes. There is a genuine tenderness in her face. A sincere warmth and comfort. When I look at it I easily remember what the soft fuzz of her face felt like against my cheek. Her bedroom. The rumpled towel that hid her cigarette box in the bathroom. How she fried us catfish in her trailor in Florida. The chintzy christmas ornaments she bought for us from the Avon catalog. The way she loved us so much it turned into terror.