Lilacs in Holland
The first thing, the worst thing, that always hits me walking in is the smell: soiled diapers and industrial strength Lysol. I always take a deep breath in front of the double doors at the entry, a vain attempt to keep from drowning on the perfume of geriatric daycare. The foyer is empty on Sunday afternoons in winter but Preacher Davis hasn't been gone long; the residents are all sitting around the lobby that adjoins the dining area. Dinner will be served shortly and as soon as it is dark everyone can go to bed.
I pass familiar faces I remember from previous visits. There is one woman who is so shrunken she is folded almost double, her century-old body returning to its embryonic form. She has a special wheelchair, child-sized, so she won't fall out. Her hair is so wispy I could almost count the white strands held back in a single gold bobby pin. She is clutching a Cabbage Patch doll, crooning lullabies in its vinyl ears through the yarn ponytails. Next to her is a woman I secretly call Old Yeller, a crone with yellow hair who wails to the walls about going home. After a few minutes her muttered curses fade from my conscious awareness like the smell.
My grandmother is on the far side by the window. She is content to view the gardens all day, every day, without imagining an audience or using a doll for company. I pull a chair over beside her.
"Hello Grandma," I whisper, kissing her cheek.
She looks at me and rewards me with a smile. "I've just been admiring the garden."
My eyes follow hers. Except for an evergreen, the view is December-dead. We sit like that for several minutes. Then she notices me again.
"Well, hello there. I've just been admiring the garden."
I smile back. I brought her a banana and I get it out of my purse while the minimal Sunday staff is busy elsewhere. Grandma is a diabetic; she cannot have any outside food without the express permission of someone from the medical staff. I give her the banana. When she is finished I'll put the peeling in the Ziploc baggie I brought. There is so little I can do for her.
"Thank you. I love bananas. Did I ever tell you about the first time I ate a banana?"
I shake my head. I want to hear the story again.
"I was a grown woman with children. We were in town that day, a Saturday, and the train had just come in and Old Man Van Derhozen was standing out on the porch of his grocery store hollering, said it was first come first served and they only cost a nickel. Everett said I could not try one, on account of what if I didn't like it and we already spent the nickel, and I said I would eat it anyway but I had to try one of those funny-looking things so he bought it." She grinned at me. I could see my real grandma for a few seconds.
"We ended up buying three of them that day, and if I'd had enough nickels I'd have bought them all. 'Course I only ate the one, and Brat and Louise shared one, and Everett had a bite of theirs and had to have him one and we all loved bananas after that, but nobody loved them like I did. Even after Van Derhozen's store changed hands and got electricity and bananas started being common and costing only a penny, I still loved them. The new never did wear off for me."
Her head droops, chin resting against her chest wall while she naps, as if telling her anecdote exhausted her. I look at her while she can't mind the intrusion, measuring her against the other residents. Her shoulders are receding, but she is 94 and sits straighter than anyone else in this place. Her breasts have thinned out and stretch down across her body, the effort to mold them into a proper undergarment beyond the minimum-wage aides who dress her every day. I am almost scared to touch her. Her arms look like onionskin paper and I am afraid the layers of her dermis will separate in my hands.
I rub her neck while she naps, working the knotted muscle loose beneath the wrinkles. The only smooth skin on her body is her earlobes. The size of quarters, they are flattened from over sixty years of wearing screw-type ear bobs. Even after eight years in this place, her hands still stray upwards to check her jewelry several times a day, and each time there is a blank look on her face for a few moments until she remembers she isn't wearing any.
I nudge her when dinner is served. I am careful to keep my eyes on my grandmother or over her shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. It takes a half hour for five aides to feed everyone on the south side. The woman with the doll is fed pabulum with something that looks like a large eyedropper, a turkey baster perhaps. My grandmother's plate has boiled eggs loosely chopped and mixed with salad dressing for sandwich filling. A tossed salad. She can't eat all of it even though she's wearing her dentures. Her jaw muscles have gone slack this past year, slurring her speech and ability to chew. She spits the tomatoes out and gives them to me. I hold them in my hand. They are spongy and warm.
I wheel her to her room, in the far west wing. Going down the hall is like entering the tunnel of an etymological time machine. The name of each resident is posted on each door, along with her picture. Jessie Mae, Olive, Hattie, Josephine, Lilly, Aggie, Mary, and Gwendolyn. We stop in front of my grandmother's door. Ida Frances the plaque reads. Inside the room the walls are covered with a hodgepodge of black-and-white photographs, a clock with a dead battery, and a calendar from 1991. A wallpaper border next to the ceiling glares with cheerful tulips in pink and purple hues. Too soon the aides come and put my grandmother to bed. Barely soon enough I escape. The air outside the building is icy, expanding my lungs like helium in Mylar balloons.
The following week I arrive early. Grandma has pneumonia. When I walk in I pass a man carrying a small wheelchair away, and a little girl following him has a doll in her arms. I ask a woman wearing a mauve smock who confirms my suspicions.
I enter my grandmother's room. The bed has rails and I let one side down to sit by her just as I do on my daughter's toddler bed every night when I read her a bedtime story. The memory of watching her eyelids dancing while she dreams fortifies me. She has finally outgrown her potty chair, much smaller than the one across from my grandmother's bed. I listen to her lungs' wet work.
After a while, she opens her eyes. I crank the bed so she can sit up. Her mood is so gay. She points to the wallpaper tulips next to the ceiling.
"Aren't they beautiful?"
I agree, mouthing the words over the lump in my throat, knowing my response only registers with her eyes anyway.
"We had a gardener come in here this morning and plant every one of those flowers. Took him almost till lunch time."
"He did a great job," I whisper.
Her eyes wander around. "Is that your monkey over there on the wall?"
She points to the dusty calendar that has a picture of a collie.
"Yes, that's my monkey," I answer.
Her happiness slips for a moment. Her eyes petition mine. "I want to go home. I miss my sisters and my momma."
There is no home anymore. No sisters or mother. Not even Aunt Louise or Uncle Brat. My mother, me, my girls. That's the only legacy left. A tear slips down my cheek unheeded. My grandmother wipes it away.
"You were always such a sensitive girl. Maybe that's why you were my favorite." Her eyes meet mine and for the first time since I was pregnant I feel the connection, not just between her and her memories, but with my life too. I have been a stranger so long.
The moment breaks apart like the bubbles in my daughter's bath. Grandma looks at the flowers on the wall again.
"We had an artist come in here yesterday and paint everyone of those flowers. I had to help him move the ladder every time he got so far over his arms didn't reach. Took nearly the whole day."
"It was worth it." I mime the words.
"I always wanted to go see the lilacs blooming in Holland. Old man Van Derhozen used to talk about it. That's why he sold the store. Said he had one spring left and he was by God going to be planted in Dutch soil. I think that's my idea of heaven, lilacs as far as the eyes can see."
Her chin comes down, pulling her eyelids closed at the same time. I hold her hand and watch her sleep, my job, my joy, what I spend my time doing with grandmother and girls. My breath is almost as labored as hers. After I finish crying I use her little sink to wash my face.
The radio is singing "A Long December" on the way home. My daughter Carly meets me at the door. "Great Grandma sent you a banana," I tell her, taking it from my purse.
"Carkey loves nana," she says with her mouth full.
This year she and her sister will be old enough to help me plant tulips.
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