Old woman sleeping, 2000, construction
by Ron Mueck at Wikimedia Commons.
Nanny,
my father’s
mother, was a simple country woman with less than four years of
schooling, who was unable to write much more than a squiggly line
representing her signature. Because of that, Nanny was looked down
upon by my mother and my mother’s side of the family, and I’ll
always remember my mother spraying the house with disinfectant as
soon as Nanny left, Nanny’s husband, by the way, was
Pappap—whom you may read about in Big Chief Stinky Feet. “Nanny
has an assy smell,” my mother told us kids. “She doesn’t
bathe, you know, “And that’s why she smells so bad.”
My sister and I, of course, never noticed if grandma smelled bad or
not as we climbed into her Mt. Rushmore lap and rested our heads
against her sagging breasts. Afterwards, our mother would give us a
long hot scalding bath to remove the Nanny smell, but the humiliation
and the scrubbing were worth the fun of sitting in Nanny’s lap,
so we never complained.
Nanny
was one of twelve children and raised five children, losing Jane
Marie when she was three months old and her son Grover when he was
forty-two. Nanny recovered, but her children—alive or
dead—remained a vital, vibrant part of her until the day she
died.
Pappap
was an
abusive alcoholic, who beat Nanny every Saturday night whether she
needed it or not. He was the man of the house, and he felt it his
duty, as sick as that sounds today because back in the early 20th
Century, that was part of many men’s core beliefs! To Pappap,
Nanny represented nothing more than his personal servant, a vehicle
to deliver his babies and satisfy his sexual appetites. So, Nanny,
our beloved grandmother, served as her husband’s beast of
burden and his baby-making machine willingly accepting his weekly
bashings.
In
her final
incontinent years, my grandma lived with my dad in his apartment
barely five miles from my house, so I had the opportunity to visit
both of them frequently. It was at this point in her fading days that
Nanny shared her childhood memories with my dad and me!
“You
know,”
my grandma said, “your grandfather was the bestest man in the
whole world. He always treated me like I was his special honey pie
from the very first time we met, way back in 1908.”
“Honey
pie!”
I thought, as my mind raced back to the images of the grandparents I
remembered as a child. I saw the black and blue marks, the chipped
teeth, the cuts, the bruises, and the shot gun holes through the
walls and ceiling. I knew Pappap had savagely punched, kicked,
slapped and beaten Nanny night after night for their forty-eight
years of marriage. I also knew he had fallen down dead drunk and
puked all over the carpets, leaving his vomit for his loving wife to
clean up. I knew Pappap used nothing but vile and demeaning words to
describe my grandmother. I pictured him as the epitome of the
ubiquitous abusive husband.
Slowly
I realized
that time had mellowed Nanny’s memory of those harsh days. The
same memory that makes us forget the evils of our Andy Jackson,
Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and Spiro Ted Agnew makes us forget
the evils of those much closer to us. Perhaps our souls are already
supersaturated with the hated consuming our world today. . . or
perhaps it’s just an easier way for us all to purge the anger
from our souls.
“Land
o’
gracious,” Nanny said, “your grandfather was the bestest
man I ever did know.”
“How
was that,
Nanny?” I asked as innocently as possible.
“Well,
your
grandfather would always bring me pretty things, you know—like
flowers and all—and he always treated me like a queen, exactly
like a husband should treat his wife.”
Nanny
was from the
old school—the very old school—that believed it was one
hundred per cent proper to beat, kick and denigrate one’s
property-wife twenty-four hours a day. “Keep ‘em barefoot
in the summer and pregnant in the winter,” must have been my
granddaddy’s motto.
Obviously,
time had
dimmed Nanny’s memory of my grandfather and in subsequent
conversations, barely weeks before she died, I wondered if all her
bad memories had dimmed, as well.
But
if Nanny made a
major mistake by believing Poppy never abused her, my major mistake
was in not holding detailed conversations with her during the last
few weeks of her life. God knew I had the opportunity! But for some
strange reason—interference from my dad and his girlfriend,
inability to articulate the proper questions, desire to ignore the
premise that my grandmother was losing her mind—call it what
you may, I didn’t pursue the matter as much as I should have.
Let
me as an
82-year-old explain. Nanny, at age 83, was in her osteoporosis years,
in those bone-disintegrating days when her mind was in a race with
her body to see which could disintegrate the fastest. All her life—or
at least all the time I could remember her in my 50-odd years—Nanny
had enjoyed excellent health. But now, within the last year, she had
had her gall bladder removed, diabetes diagnosed and she had suffered
a mild heart attack.
To
make matters
worse, Nanny’s mind, which had always been clear, albeit slow
by today’s standards—was clearly in another place,
because she had spent most of her waking hours for the past several
weeks, talking to her sisters. Unfortunately, her sisters were long
since dead!
“They’re
tugging at her,” my dad said.
“Tugging
at
her?” I asked.
“Yep,
tugging
her out of here to go there.”
“Oh,”
I
said.
So
for those last
weeks before her death, my grandmother had running conversations with
her five dead sisters as my dad and I watched. All of Nanny’s
sisters lived into their 60’s and 70’s and all Nanny’s
brothers lived into their 70’s and 80’s. I hoped at the
time that with such longevity in my family, I’d have nothing to
worry about until I reached my eighties.
“Nanny,”
I asked, “who do you talk to the most?”
“Oh,
Bessie
and Frances,” she said without blinking an eye.
And
have you talked
to Catherine much?”
“No,
just a
little.”
“I
think I
figured it out,” I whispered to my dad. “Bessie and
Frances died recently.”
“Yep,
Bessie
die in May and Frances died last August.”
“And
Aunt
Catherine died about ten years ago?”
“Right,
but
what’s your point, son?”
“My
point is
that Nanny is primarily talking to those who may still be lingering,
to those who just died. Helen died twenty years ago and she hasn’t
said a word to Nanny. Catherine died ten years ago and she just talks
a little bit. The two who talk the most, died most recently.”
“I
still don’t
get your point, son.”
“Their
spirits
may still be lingering and they may be lonely. If Nanny’s
dying, maybe she can see them. Maybe they need each other!”
“Then,
they
would be tugging her, son, just like I said.”
“Yes,
Dad,”
I said, “tugging her.”
Unfortunately,
Nanny’s mind faltered more and more each day—at least by
my standards. Most of the time, she sat in my dad’s overstuffed
black leather recliner in front of my dad’s wide screen TV.
Often, we all sang his World War Two Air Force song Dad had taught
us—“Off we go into the wild blue yonder, climbing high
into the sky.”
Every
so often,
Nanny drifted off when she went somewhere to talk
to her dead
sisters. When she woke up, she’d tell us what Mary or Frances
had just said. Each time Nanny returned to us, she was more at peace
and it became more and more obvious that her autumnal days were
approaching the permanent cold of winter.
I
began to question
her more about her early life, wondering where and how she had
acquired the strength to put up with my grandfather—wondering
how she had learned to survive as a Nineteenth Century woman as we
neared the end of the Twentieth but most importantly, I wondered if
I’d be as strong when my time came.
My
ultimate but
unasked questions should have been, “What made you strong
enough to withstand my grandfather’s abuse? How did you cope
with so many of your siblings and your two children? What stresses
and strains gave you the stamina to live so long?” But, of
course, I didn’t ask any meaningful questions. I danced around
them by skirting the issues, and that was—although the kindest
sweetest thing a boy could do for his grandmother, has always left me
wondering if I could have delved just a tad more.
Day
after day in
that dreary October, Nanny, my dad and I sat in my dad’s living
room, singing yet one more of my dad’s favorite songs::
Little
man you’re
crying,
I
know why you’re
blue,
Someone
stole your
kiddy car away,
Better
go to sleep
now,
Little
boy, you’ve
had a busy day.
I
had no idea why
this was our family song. All I know is that my dad used to drive me
crazy by singing it to me and my sister on long car trips. I hoped he
had driven Nanny crazy with it as well—even though she joined
us in our merry round of music.
“Let’s
sing again,” my dad said as he started up with the Army Air
Force song: “Off we go into the wild blue yonder, climbing high
into the sky—”
Even
though my dad’s
rich baritone was a pleasure to listen to, his repertoire consisted
of just these two songs although Nanny loved them both. After all, my
dad was the oldest and had survived the Second World War—making
him the favorite—just as I was her favorite grandson. Indeed,
it was a joyous time for my grandmother, on that dark dismal October
day as we talked, ate our steak sandwiches, munched our BBQ flavored
potato chips, drank our diet Pepsis and sang.
Nanny’s
mind drifted off again shortly after we stopped singing. I guessed
she had gone off somewhere to talk to her sisters. I could only think
about the Jewish custom of Shiva, when the spirits of the dead wander
the earth before sailing forth into the unknown. I wondered if Mary
and Frances were somehow stuck here. I wondered if they were waiting
for Nanny or even perhaps if Mary and Frances were coming to collect
her soul. Perhaps they were numerous figures in white—of our
dead relatives—waiting for us all on the other side of the
tunnel.
I
didn’t keep
a running tab on their conversations, but I learned that Bessie and
Nanny talked daily about almost everything.
“What
was it
like growing up with five sisters and six brothers?” I asked
one day.
“Crowded,”
Nanny giggled. “There wasn’t no indoor toilet, and we
only had three bedrooms, so the boys, they all slept together and us
girls slept together, too.”
Nanny’s
mind
drifted off again. When she came back, I asked, “Where were
you, Nanny? Were you talking to your sisters again?”
“Yep,
they
reminded me about Jimmy. He’d come downstairs stripped
stark-naked on cold freezing mornings, carrying his clothes in his
hands. Then he’d warm each piece in front of the fire before
getting dressed.” Nanny giggled, wondering if Jimmy still
warmed his clothes in front of a fire.
“Jimmy
passed
away nearly ten years ago,” I reminded her and crossed myself
as I thought of Jimmy performing that same ritual in front of the
Lord on the other side.
“Mary
says
everything is so nice where she is now and that Mamma’s there
and everyone misses me and they all want me to be with them.”
“Where
exactly
are they?”
“Together,”
Nanny sighed. “They’re happy and together and it’s
pleasant and nobody’s sad,” she said.
“Is
God
there?” I asked. “Do you talk to the angels?”
“I
don’t
know about no angels,” Nanny giggled. “All I know is I
talk to my sisters and they tell me they want me to be with them.”
“Are
they
nearby?” I asked.
“No,”
she said, “they come and go. They were just here, but they
left. They kept telling me to hurry.”
“And
did you
tell them you’re going to be with them soon?”
“I
told them I
want to go, but I don’t know how to get there,” Nanny
replied uneasily.
I
eased up for a
moment. Things were getting far too heavy for me to handle so I
started singing the Army Air Force song and Dad and Nanny quickly
joined in.
Nanny
disappeared
again, shortly afterwards and my dad and I talked quietly waiting for
her to come back.
“Have
you talked to your mother and father?” I asked when Nanny
awoke.
“
No,
I ain’t
seen ‘em, but Mary tells me they’re waiting for me.”
“And
what
about your brothers? Have you talked to them?”
“No.”
I
was dumbstruck
again. Why hadn’t Nanny talked with her brothers? Five of them
were dead, yet she was only talking to her dead sisters. It seemed to
substantiate my theory that the two who died most recently were
giving Nanny the greatest tug. Then again, perhaps girls were just
closer to their sisters than they were to their brothers.
The
fact that
Nanny’s mother had died at the age of eighty-three (Nanny’s
age, at the moment) and that her mother had died, been resuscitated,
lost part of her mind, lived for several years with Nanny and
ultimately died in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital—Washington’s
only government-sponsored mental facility at the time, and
coincidentally, the place where John Hinckley Jr. has been
incarcerated since he shot Reagan) had little to do with Nanny’s
state of mind—unless it was the fact that both Nanny and her
mother had entirely different remembrances of Jimmy. Nanny remembered
Jimmy with fondness and love. Her mother, my great-grandmother, after
being brought back to life, couldn’t even remember Jimmy’s
name.
*****
“Can
you name
all twelve of your children? great-grandma,” we children used
to ask her when she stayed at my grandma’s house.
Great-grandmother
would rattle off the names of eleven of her children, “Patrick,
Mark, Ally, Catherine, Rose (my grandmother), Richard, Bessie, Mary,
Helen, Frances and Ralph,” she’d say proudly.
“But
great-grandma,” we’d all scream, “you forgot
Jimmy.”
“Oh,
yes—and—Jimmy,” great-grandma would reply with a
sigh.
We’d
let three
or four minutes pass before bugging our great-grandma again.
“Great-grandmother,” we’d ask, “can you name
all twelve of your children?”
Again,
she’d
race through the list. Again she’d omit Jimmy’s name, and
again we’d all fall on the floor rolling in laughter.
Nanny
was convinced
that her mother lost her mind when she died on the operating table.
“Part of mamma’s mind died when they brought her back to
life,” Nanny would tell us kids. “When you die, the
doctors should let you go. But when they brought mamma back, the part
of her mind that remembered Jimmy died.” Of course, all us
grandchildren agreed and prayed that the part of our minds that
remembered our brothers and sisters would stay with us until the day
we died.
It
was the doctor’s
fault that great-grandmother had lost her mind. Nanny, dad and I were
all convinced of that—and no one in our family wanted that to
happen to my grandmother. “When you’re dead, you’re
dead,” was our family motto and no matter what happened, we’d
never let Nanny end up playing the Jimmy game.
“Land
o’
gracious, I don’t want that to happen to me,” Nanny said
on countless occasions. “When I die, bury me, don’t bring
me back to life. Don’t make me play them ‘Jimmy games’,
like you done played with mamma.”
I
wondered if Nanny
was upset with me for prodding her so much about talking to her
sisters just as Nanny disappeared for a few moments, obviously in
deep conversation with someone who hadn’t revealed himself to
my dad and me. “Do you miss them a lot?” I asked, when
she returned.
“Yes,”
Nanny signed. “They keep reminding me how nice it is and that
they want me to be with them.”
“Are
you going
soon?” I asked, knowing as soon as the words had left my lips
that I shouldn’t have asked.
“Soon,”
she replied, “soon.”
I
took her hand and
we both stared off in space for a few minutes, she with her memories
and me with mine. I wondered for a moment if Nanny thought about how
happy her mother was, now that she could see Jimmy and remember his
name.
It
seemed that part
of Nanny’s brain was dying now—or at least it seemed that
part of her brain was being usurped by her constant conversations
with her sisters. It was getting more and more difficult for my dad
or me to get through to her. My questions, more often than not, went
totally unanswered. And I wondered what she kept saying to Frances
and Mary.
“What
else do
you talk about, Nanny?” I asked on one of those days when she
was able to make the journey from here to there and back again and
still retain her coherency. I knew I was running out of time, so my
questions were much more insidious than they seemed. I was fifty and
my concerns were twofold: Had Nanny actually lost her mind, and if
she had, would I be in any danger of losing mine? In other words, did
senility run in families?
Nanny
came back for
a few moments.
“What
were you
talking about?” I asked.
“We
talked
about how much fun we had at home on Emory Street,” Nanny
replied. “We talked about the parties and the boys we met and
the things we done.”
“What
kinds of
things did you do?” I asked, not expecting the answer I was
about to receive.
“Oh,
I dated,”
Nanny replied. “I dated a lot!”
“When
did you
start seeing boys?” I asked
“When
I was
eleven. By the time I was twelve, I’d go out with two or three
different boys each night. One boy would pick me up at my house, take
me down to the drug store and buy me a soda, we’d sit and talk
and then we’d walk home together, holding hands and kissing.
When I got home, another boy would call and take me to the movies.
We’d neck and—land o’ gracious—I don’t
even think I saw half the movies the boys took me to. Then the boy
would bring me home and we’d kiss on the porch for a while and
I’d come in. After a while, real late at night, I’d sneak
out the window, climb down the trellis and meet another boy and we’d
kiss and neck until it was almost light.”
Good
God, I thought
this was my grandmother! Kissing and necking at the age of twelve and
telling these stories to her grandson as if it was a normal rite of
passage. I was no prude, but even I didn’t have that kind of
experience. My grandmother was born in 1894, at the end of the
Victorian Era, which made me wonder if I’d missed something
when I studied history. Were all boys and girls as sexually active as
my grandmother and was that the secret of her strength and stability?
Was Nanny a kind and loving person because of these experiences or
was she just born that way? Nanny’s mind faded again as she
spent less time with me and my dad, but when she came back, she
answered my questions with even more vivid images of her past.
What
on earth was
she telling her sisters now, I thought, as she slipped deeper and
deeper into her own blissful world. I knew her stories were getting
very personal, but something urged me to keep on asking. It was
almost like I was back with my great-grandmother and asking,
“Grandma, can you name all twelve of your children?” I
knew it was wrong to question Nanny questions like that, but for some
inexplicable reason I was unable to stop.
“What
else do
you talk about with your sisters?” I asked.
“Well,
it
depends,” Nanny said. “Sometimes we all talk about our
husbands. You know your grandfather was so good to me; my only regret
was that we never celebrated our Golden Anniversary like all the rest
of my sisters.”
“You
were
together forty-eight years,” I said, “that’s a long
time,”
“Yes,
but
fifty would have been better,” Nanny said.
“Did
you talk
about anything else just now?” I asked.
“Yes,
we
talked about the good times we had at the beach house. Me and your
grandpa used to play gin rummy half the night, you know. And he beat
me every time—until the night he died. That was the onliest
night he ever let me keep score. After he died, I went through his
scorecards and discovered he added wrong. I should of won a lot of
them games!”
Nanny
slipped away
again.
“Who
were you
talking to just now?” I asked as soon as my grandmother
returned to reality.
“Mary
just
left,” Nanny said, “we were talking about the clothes we
used to make and fight over when we was girls. She reminded me of the
pink satin material mamma done give us. She had to work three
weekends to pay for it—and me and Mary—well, we done
promised we’d make two pretty dresses out of it and take care
of them. But Mary and me, we got in a big fight and I took the
material over to Aunt Edna’s house and made the prettiest dress
you ever did seen, so I could impress Bill, your granddaddy. Mary got
mad and didn’t talk to me for a whole month, because she wanted
to make her own. And my dress, well it was fit for a princess to wear
to a real fancy party, but I wasn’t invited to no real fancy
parties,” Nanny giggled and we joined in, “so the dress
just sat in the closet until one day mamma, she came in and took it
all apart and made clothes for the new baby. Mary and I screamed and
carried on for days and days, about how unfair mamma was, but today,
Mary and me just laughed. I wish we would of done that way back
then.”
“Did
Pappap
ever see the dress?” I asked.
“Nope,
he
never seen it, but he always said I was the most beautifulest woman
his eyes ever did see. He said that right from the first time I done
seen him and he kept on saying it ‘til the day he died.”
“Pappap
was
the goodest man in the whole world,” Nanny said, “land o’
gracious, I was just sorry we never did celebrate our fiftieth.
“Yes,
that’s
a shame, but what else do you talk about?”
“We
talked
about games we used to play—with jump ropes and hoops and we
talked about the first horse wagon we rode in. It was 1897, I had
just turned three and I was scared at first, but when Bessie and Mary
jumped right in, I climbed in, too. Then we drove around the block.
It was the most exciting thing I ever did do.”
“What
else?”
I urged.
“Well,
yesterday me and Frances talked about the animals.”
“What
animals?” I asked.
“All
the
animals!” Nanny said incredulously. “Animals was
everywhere!” There was horses and donkeys and ponies pulling
the carts and streetcars and carriages and then there were the
markets with the live chickens and ducks. Mamma used to take us girls
to the market with her every day when we was little. We’d buy a
chicken, take it home, wring its neck and us girls would pull out its
feathers. Later, Mamma used the feathers to stuff pillows and beds.”
“Was
that a
fun time, grandma?” I asked.
Nanny
didn’t
say a word, but the twinkle in her eye told me everything I needed to
know.
*****
Nanny
died at 6:30
a.m. the following day—in Dad’s arms. And although Dad
and I didn’t find out about it until late the next day, Ralph,
Nanny’s baby brother who lived in New Orleans, died fifteen
minutes before Nanny.
“I
can almost
imagine Uncle Ralph giving one last tug when he passed over,”
Dad said.
“Yes,”
I said, “I bet Uncle Ralph gave Nanny one last tug on his way
to the other side.”
