I am standing on the fuzzy peach bath mat in an oversize matching towel, dripping. She is vigorously rubbing me dry after a bath while I stand there, still, quiet, watching her serious face as she concentrates, letting my eyes drift to the orange counter top, the peach-colored embroidery on the shower curtain, the plastic swan on the toilet tank. When she has finished, she leaves the room for a minute, and I wrap the towel close to my body, the clean and soapy scent of Zest awakening my nostrils.
My grandma returns, bringing with her a pale pink nightgown (what used to be one of her blouses) which she kept in the linen closet, next to the other peach towels, in a special bag to protect it from dust. This was my nightgown: mid-thigh, soft cotton, butterfly-embroidered neckline. She has me hold up my arms while she slips it over my head, drapes it over my body like air. She opens the top drawer beneath the sink and pulls out a boar bristle brush, runs it through my hair. I’ve never liked the brush because it only catches small sections and strands at a time, never strong enough to sweep through the full thickness of my hair–although later in life I will come to appreciate the value in this type of hair brush, the boar bristles distributing the hair’s natural oils. My grandma must have known this, working patiently with the brush to pull my strands straight and shiny. She had forgiven me, and I know this now as I knew it then, watching our faces in the mirror as she ran the brush through my hair, the nightgown breathing comfortably against my body.
When I was very young, my grandma gave me a doll. Her name was Linda, and she used to be my mother’s. She even had her own tiny boar-bristle brush, but her hair was awful, cut so short in brittle blond curls on her head that the brush only snagged it, or made it look worse. But I liked her anyway–the vacant blue eyes rolling back in her head, the movable plastic limbs with dented toes–and occasionally, I brushed her hair, the way my grandma carefully brushed my own. Linda had numerous knitted dresses and booties that my grandma had made, and I carried all of them, along with her brush, bottle, and hand mirror, in a portable beige trunk. Linda also had a cradle, which my grandpa had hand-cut, sanded, assembled, and painted white. It rocked smoothly and quietly; it had sheets and hand-painted flowers and oddly-placed stickers I’d pressed to the front and back. The cradle, Linda, and her trunk used to reside in the guest room at the end of the hall, which was often termed “my” room, given that guests were so few and far between, and that I often spent time in there with Linda, on the floor next to the bed and a simple bookshelf.
After a few years, however, Linda moved out of the guest room, which became populated with slippers, a closet full of shirts and slacks, and a bottle of Tums on the nightstand, the dark blue lid and chalky whiteness stark against the dim light. After that, the door at the end of the hallway was usually closed, a mirror reflecting what was outside, as if the room no longer existed. Now, it was my grandpa’s room.
I never asked them about it–why they stopped sleeping in the same bed, the same room. During the day, they were just as pleasant toward one another, no different than I had ever known them to be. Whatever love they had, subtle as it was, didn’t seem to change. They just simply drifted apart, as if it was a natural move, like two planets orbiting in different rotations, two creatures that had evolved from one lifestyle to the next. It never seemed easy to explain; not something I could find in the living room encyclopedias, like I could the evolution of man or the properties of Saturn. I knew only that love was a complicated thing, that it linked people together even when it pulled them apart; that it meant more than what we express in words.
I sleep next to my grandma in what is now her bed, pressing my hand into the memory foam pillow, watching the imprint fade in the moonlight. Linda lies in her cradle in the closet, the sliding door open so I can see her resting beneath the hanging shirts and dresses. On the dresser is a plastic container with a powder puff, and pink, baby powder-scented dust. In the morning I will ask to test it on my skin, and like always my grandma will let me, smiling–the way she always lets me look through the jewelry box on her nightstand, no matter how often I’ve seen the unused pearls and cocktail rings and gaudy clip-on earrings that look made for lonely women.
Her jewelry never leaves the box, and so I keep looking through it and trying it on, wanting to know more. But I never ask to borrow or keep it, knowing somehow that these things should be left alone. And anyway, she has given me enough.
