American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [79]
Grandpa Doc seemed big as an Inca fort, larger than any gringo soltero I had ever known. He whopped Papi on the shoulder, welcomed back Vicki and George, and then swooped me up, past all six feet of him, so that I could take a close look at his face. His chin was square as a shovel, his cheeks ruddy. His head gave off the irresistible scent of whiskey and tobacco. His breath was sweet as molasses. I instantly liked the man.
He helped Papi organize our luggage and then walked us down Cedar Street to the Ferguson Building, a mausoleum of red brick and white stone, where he insisted on installing us in an apartment of our own.
The Ferguson was where he and Grandma Lo lived during the week. The building took up a whole city block and housed a dry-goods store and grocery downstairs, apartments and offices above. We clattered up the metal stairs to the second floor, marched through the cavernous hallway, and passed brass plaques that proclaimed a spectrum of pursuits from large-elk taxidermy to the appraisal of rare stones. Eventually we reached a door marked Number Six, James Bayard Clapp, Dental Surgeon, and Grandpa Doc ushered us into the rooms we would call home for the next four days.
It had been only three years since Mother had seen her mother, but clearly Grandma Lo’s health had slipped away in that time. Mother was tense, nervous, pacing the floor as my grandfather told her what she would see. Lo hadn’t eaten in weeks, he said. Was in constant and excruciating pain. She floated in and out of consciousness. Was dying for sure. Grandma Lo had had the care of two of Mother’s three sisters, he said—women whose names I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard before—but they had gone now, back to their families: down the road, or somewhere in Nebraska.
Grandma Lo, it turned out, was in the next room. Mother hurried in alone and the rest of us prepared for a long vigil. George and I slumped on the floor, too tired to talk. Vicki, who had come to know Grandpa Doc on her last trip, nestled into his lap and took his large hand. Papi settled down with a National Geographic. At first our silence was punctuated only by the grim cadence of a clock. But before long, we heard Mother’s moans—muffled and desolate, as if something were wringing her heart. Papi stood sharply and went out into the corridor for a smoke.
One by one, we were waved in to see Grandma Lo. When I first met her, she was lying on her side, facing the wall, her soft white hair matted against the back of her head. I could hear wheezing, as light and regular as an ailing child’s.
“Mother?” my mother whispered, and my grandmother’s mottled fingers fluttered up like flags in wind—up and then down again—but her wrist never left her hip.
“I have my littlest here,” Mother said gently, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. “You’ve never met her.” She nudged me. “Go on up, Mareezie, give her a kiss. Let her see your face.”
I came up to the narrow bed, and my grandmother’s head rotated slightly so that her face shone with light from the ceiling. Her profile was waxy and yellow, her forehead grooved with pain. She opened her eyes and I could see how pale they were, how preternaturally blue. Then, quickly, she squeezed them shut. “Pretty little thing,” she said, although I was sure she hadn’t seen me. “Such a sweet face.”
“Go on,” my mother urged me, and I leaned down and pressed my lips against her cheek. She was cold as a gila, even though an electric coil heater hummed and sputtered at the foot of the bed.
I had heard of death, felt human bones in my hands, picked teeth out of skulls. I’d watched Flavio drown drunken turkeys upside down for our dinners. I had seen people wail and screech in funeral processions down the narrow streets of Paramonga. But I had never felt such proximity to death.
I waited there, one hand on the chenille bedspread, my nostrils twitching like a rabbit’s against the acrid smell, but my grandmother did not move, and