American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [91]
Dawn brought one more thing. The news of Grandma Lo’s death.
I’D SEEN A photograph of Abuelita’s dead sister. I’d come upon it in her family albums, pasted in between portraits of my be-whiskered ancestors in their starched collars and fancy top hats. Her little sister had been laid out in white lace on her funeral bier with garlands of roses cascading about her, a cluster of lilies in her hair. In the photo, her white shoes point like a dancer’s, her arms lie peacefully across her chest, her curls are combed down on her brow, her eyes stare out, wide open. My Great-Grandfather Cisneros stands behind the body, and, above his black cravat, his face is long and gaunt. His eyes seem to be sliding down his cheeks like stones in a mountain huayco. His oldest daughter, my grandmother, stands beside him in a veil of black lace. Her eyes are dry but haunted. Although she is seven, her little face appears even smaller than her sister’s. Her sister cannot be two.
I had seen this. I had seen funeral biers of the poor go by in Peruvian streets, the women wailing and staggering after, their heads draped in black cloth. I had seen men of society file into a church alone, their wives too delicate to see an inert body—for all the fragrant blossoms tucked in around it. But I had never seen a cadaver stretched out, serene, staring up into the ether.
Grandma Lo’s body was set out for family viewing at Frank Wooten’s Funeral Home, three days after it expired at the Rawlins Hospital. “I’m taking the children there,” Mother said, sitting in front of her mirror, pinning a hat to her head.
“You’re what?” I heard Papi say. “You can’t be serious. Funerals are not for children. You’re going to make them sick. Twist their minds for life.”
Mother turned, her head tilted down like a bull’s, one hand jabbing a long hat pin in the direction of her brain. “Jorge, I’m taking them with me. You want to talk about twisting? Let’s talk about your borrachera. Your stinko night out on the town.”
A truck rumbled down Buffalo Street, speeding its way out of Rawlins. My parents stared at each other and then Papi started again. “We’re talking about the dead here,” he said. “Where I come from you wouldn’t dream of taking a child to see one. Children are too impressionable. Even grown women don’t go.”
“Well, where I come from you learn to look death in the eye,” said my mother. “They might as well learn it right now. It’s an important lesson.”
The mortuary was on the outskirts of town. It was a clapboard house, dove gray and windowless, with no greenery save a struggling azalea in a clay pot by the stoop. “Clam-Hand” Wooten, the undertaker, lived on the right, behind two thick white pillars and a fusty porch. On the left, where the viewing parlor led into the embalming lab, was Grandma Lo.
She had died on the morning of Mother’s Day. Clam-Hand had slid her into his refrigerator and gone off to Laramie. Three full days crawled by before we could trudge up the steps to view his rendition of my grandmother.
The Wooten parlor was set up like a schoolroom. There were four rows of wooden chairs behind a raised platform. Twenty-four chairs in all. The room’s ceiling was low, its walls hung with blue wallpaper, fleur-de-lis against yellowy cream. The carpet was dingy, worried by prairie grit, thinned by the boots of the bereaved.
Mr. Wooten’s pocked face met us at the door. He was wringing his hands in dismay. His fingers were long, cool as fish when he slipped them around our wrists and into our palms. “On Mother’s Day, of all things,” he whispered. “Terribly sorry.” A wan smile coiled across his face and was gone.
Mother pushed past him into the parlor. There were candles set out on a table and a body behind them, under glass. The lady was dressed in flowered cotton, her hands folded neatly over her still heart. A white satin sheet covered her legs. I saw no more than that at first. A quick