The Margin Where Her Smile Should Be
Kimi K3 and Davinci 002
In the margin of a photograph where my grandmother's smile should be, there's instead a small tear in the paper shaped exactly like a keyhole. I've kept this photo in my wallet for fifteen years, but I only noticed it yesterday. Behind the photo, scribbled in pencil so faint I had to hold it to the light: "Some doors open better when you forget what you're looking for." I remembered then. She's gone now, my grandmother. My mother's mother. Three days ago, she passed peacefully in her sleep. But she was bold and sharp in most every other way and I knew her so well that I never even had to question what further she wished to see. We sat together for years and spoke of realms unknown, places I've never been. But now I wait here in this room, this little bedroom that I've admired from photos, my eyes fixed on the dresser that she picked. We select things not because they're important, I've learned. It's never been about the things. Same as my mother. My mother with her box of photos. Our photos. On the dresser, tucked between a pair of ballerina salt shakers, is a framed photo of herself as a teenager. Her hair long, dark and loose, golden bow knotted into her dress apparel. She sat in my grandmother's gently battered cherry wood desk chair. She leaned lost in thought. Her hand missing to hold the swing of her skirt. I wonder if her gaze fell on my grandmother's face reflected in the mirror hung behind her, tall and domed. They were there together. Her mother and her daughter. Her absent fondler. What drove them away? Is my grandmother still present now, though she's idle in her resting place? My mother would tell me, no. My mother insists there's a natural order to everything. Even when I pulled out her box of photos and showed her what I see. I see, at least, something of myself. In my hand, her neatly embossed box of Latin phrases she said she used to learn them. One such phrase, what gave her hope, still she'd recite it fast to me every day of my life. De bella sperare. From Spanish, "Esperanza." Which roughly translates to, "I have hope in God." The year she traveled to Europe with a group of senior citizens, I bet she left out the part about it being the year of our college graduation, never receiving news of nor concerning us. I asked my mother later, out of curiosity, and she shushed me with, "Allow it. At least we're free of that bridge they burn. There's a herd of reasons she needed her escape just as you do." The lamp over to my left, which you can't see, casts dancing shadows on the wall. Suffice it to say she has the gift of glimpse, the ability to see how things were, the present, and the uncertainty of what will be. I, on the other hand, have touched difficult places few would dare to go, places I've never been. I'd like to learn what brought me to this place where I was already here before I got young, grown, old. When I was nine. I wanted to know where my power ran, or where my mother's power ran. But my mother isn't making eye contact with me and her eyes are seeking through the window for a view of the world's destruction. As opposed to me who is seeking through the photographs for the world's fulfillment. My grandmother closed her window at the sight, though it's dark outside now and the rainy mood coops my mother indoors. My fingers leap through the photo albums in hopes of finding the travel photos of our family. There was never any evidence that my mother was even present, though always her memories rode too closely tied to mine, to whom had not yet had a child. She kept a window wide enough uphill to fit one who would receive all of her childhood affordable. Hey, Mom.
Ah, don't tell me you're missing your own funeral.
It's the fifth hour now, Mom.
The fifth hour?
The second time.
What?
I'm repeating myself. That's why you're there.
Doesn't mean your mother's not listening.
That's part of it. My grandmother's eyes first caught the ember of ice forming glimmers of silver along the tree branches long after sundown. It appeared to be eyeless invisible. And a mighty mighty storm is coming and everything's quit. Mom.
Tell me what you're waiting for.
I'm counting on your bonds to fulfill us.
Ready.
Well then, unless you brought home the memory of this man who you claim to be your grandfather, then what is it you expect there to find? That's after all the time it took before we could consider you abandoned. I know how terribly afraid you are, but hear me and be at peace. All our relations lie in waiting. I have seen this man too, this fellow who's blood we share. When I saw him standing by his tree, I started to cry. And when the news started outside with my cousins, how cold this fog has grown. But in the beauty of his heart and how he run to us and how he caught us in his arms.
Mom, I have to know more. I've been waiting. I know you're rooting around in there, trying to connect the dots. Or maybe re-ignite the sizzle. Elderberry fingers mowedching at the hem of a shirt, tapping your foot with a drumstick. Say something. I'll recognize you in any specifically identifiable form. Call me by any name. Tell me the day I was born and what you thought about it. Tell me of what you're thinking now and how you prepared for it. Tell me what led to the moment you first met him before you chose to stand before this fall, glide across the garden, when wilted dogwood and wearisome begonias redirected life into crystals of frost on Crosby road. You knew I was coming, prepared the way for me. My mother was born a lucky girl. A bridge builder of bridges forsaken. Rivers lay between the generations now. Our father, father's motherland, whose behind do he stand alone and interrupted in her teachings? I certainly wasn't standing there beside him, frozen below in red-earth blue eyes, dripping with faithful consent.
Take your photo and come just a little closer◆ About the ending
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