The Granny and the Child

In the musty, musky cool
In the blue-gray half-dark
Of sanctuary, asylum
From northwest winds
That were the wrath of God-
But on hell-hot August days
Sanctuary became larder, pantry
With row upon shining row
Of greens and reds and ochers
Of beans and okra
Tomatoes and corn-
The only cool place in their world-
Sanctuary of another sort.

Daddy-long-legs kibbled
Across the mealy floor
And cow-hide bottomed chairs
Creaked and sighed.
Coal oil mixed with damp
And all mixed in a child's nose
With an old crone's
Powder, sweat, and snuff.
And unnameable things
As animal as a dog's damp pelt
When he buried his face in it.

Trunk.
Holding a few faded memories
Of a ragged courtship
And a rugged marriage:
Sweet memories soured by
"that's my husband, Mr. Smith's first wife."
Memories captured in images
Pressed within the shiny hard-shelled album
Its stiff, foxy pages coming loose
In the damp.
Fading sepia faces with eyes
That never faded in their button-blackness
That never blinked or smiled:
Dour stern men
With tired, severe women
Buttoned to the tops of throats
On hell-hot days.
Mouths razor slits dividing faces in half.
Black button eyes
That still burn into the mind
After half a century.
Women standing, always standing
Men sitting upright and stiff
In cow-hide bottomed chairs
(Giving rise to ribald jokes
Whispered under whiskey breath.)

"Your great-grand-daddy..."
"Mr. Smith" (always Mr. Smith)
"J.C. Smith"
"John Calvin Smith"
"Some called him 'Black John'
But I never cared for that."
"1857 to 1936"
"Gone, but not forgotten."
History, family, belonging, blood.

The hide of the chair bottom
With red Hereford hair
Still clinging to parts not sat on-
"My husband, Mr. Smith,
Went to feed that creature
On a cold, frosty morning in March.
The thing, being stroppy
In its hunger and its cold
Turned its bad-morning-mood
On its owner...
Pinned him to the cow-lot floor
Until with prodigious
Swearings and cursings
To raw for female ears
Fought off the wild beast of Ephesus
With a feed-scoop shovel,
And covered with red clay and cow shit
Went promptly into the Big House
For his .41 Colt's revolver.
And, returning to the beast-
Now feeling better for its morning romp-
Without compunction or doubt,
Shot the creature dead
With one brass cartridge
Its deadly nose pewter-colored.
Turning away from the blue-gray smoke
That filled the air with an acrid taste
He called to his hired men
Staring with saucer-eyes from their perch
On the corral fence,
'Butcher the son-of-a-bitch
And bottom my storm cellar chairs
With his hide!'"

I, the child, with the old woman
Sat in those chairs
Tugging at their remaining hair
Marveling at their feel and smell
Touched now forever with the wonder of their Story
Dangling legs from its hairy ledge.

***

Old woman singing.
Spidery voice
Wispy, haunty airs
"Barbary Allen"
"Old 97"
"In the Sweet By and By"
Old and forgotten
Like the songs
Old and ignored
In the daily routine
The endless drudgery of
"the Place."
Old woman:
"Granny"
"Granny Eller"
"Granny Smith"
With the small boy,
Motherless boy
Also ignored
In the sweat and grunts
Of the daily work.
Companions:
In songs, stories, smells,
And nasty words.
Once she unbuttoned her cotton bodice
From the throat down
Pulled her withered breast
Out for him to see, to touch.
He remembers
Its cracked-frosted-persimmon-wrinkledness
Her talcum powder filling its wrinkles
Transforming it into a strange, fascinating
Confection
Like a snow-ball cookie
From a brown paper bag.
Our secret.
Shared twice
And then, abruptly stopped
As the demand became regular and insistent.

***

The child, as children do,
Saw more, understood better
Than grownups would allow.
She lay songless,
Toothless
On a morning when not even a crow
Cawed.
She lay speechless
Rendering grown, stern men
Speechless.
Men cried.
Men, who had often said,
"Don't cry," to the child,
Cried with the embarrassing abandon
Of weeping men.

The funeral men came
In their shiny, black car
And carried her out of the Big House
Under a candle-wick cover
With blue satin letter
Advertising their trade
And soliciting the same.
Letters that followed the contours
Of the slight, withered form under them,
Letters that were an ill-mannered
Waste of money and effort
To those whose mother and granny
They mocked in royal colors.
No royalty here.
Calico and wool
And funny, dark stockings
Rolled to the bottoms of her knees.
Clothed in a royalty
She would had sniffed at with contempt
Not merely to the top of the throat
But over the head.
"Why over her head?" the child had asked
And received no answer.
Out of the house
They rolled her
Into the unforgiving cold
(a cold that froze the ground to stone
so that the funeral had to be postponed
until equipment could be brought in).
Gone.
Finally gone.
Gone, finally.
Final.
"Gone, but not forgotten."

***

The cold, hollow church house
Loud with even the smallest sounds
Pine planking on floors and walls
Varnished and shining.
A Methodist church.
Plain- but not so plain
As the Campbellite one-
A picture of "Our Savior" in front
Looking sad and sweet
For the occasion.
So she ended in the Methodist church,
She, who by degrees of examination, had been
A Baptist.
A Campbellite.
A Pentecostal
And a Baptist again.
Then a follower of the Wesleys
And their hymnal,
For she loved singing most.

The reedy singing.
The weedy sermon.
My father
Young and strong
And smelling of Old Spice
Lifted me over the coffin's edge
To see the child's companion.
All I remember
Is the black mustache
On the wrinkled, upper lip.
She had no smell at all,
Nothing I could identify as her
But the fragrance of carnations was strong.

Then, into the cruel cold
To the iron-hard burying ground.
"Mount Zion."
With its gaping red wound in the earth
Beside the monolith covered with letters
He could read,
But not the words,
Except for "Smith"
Which was his name, too.
The blue-gray stone topped-
Where snow had been brushed away-
With two hands clasped
(which he could read)
"Friends."

My Papa with snow-white head down
Snow against snow
White against white
Weeping again for his Mama.
"Now I am not the only motherless child."
And with a child's selfish abandon
And aloofness from all pain
Not its own
I began to run and play
Among the tombstones
Sticking my tongue to
Their frozen surfaces
Till its own surface was raw and unfeeling.
I played among the dead
Until an old woman dressed like
A big, shining crow
Caught me by the coat collar
And told me in a shrill hiss
That the dead are troubled
By the living
Walking on their graves.

***

And then home
To the Big House.
To the smell of fried chicken
And cakes and pies.
To laughter and
Whispered conversations.
To unusual displays of affection.
The fire turning
The andirons cherry red-
Irons forged in Black John's forge
From wagon tires
By one of his hired men-
Heating the room
Almost to the back edges
And far corners.

With stomachs full
And the exhaustion of
So much emotion spent
The child is forgotten again
For a time.
Left to himself
Seeking his friend
He goes to the back room.
Her room.
As so many times before.
Nothing touched.
Nothing moved.
Nothing changed,
Out of respect for the dead.
These things could wait for another day.

Whispering for her
In the blue-gray dusk.
Calling for her in the cold
That turned his breath into a blue delight
Of smoke or steam
His child's brain
Grasping, but losing.
Catching, but dropping
The fact of her absence.
When, at last,
He sees the cavity left by
Her rigid body in the feather bed
Only days before-
The concavity covered now
With sagging quilts.
"Granny?"
"Granny?" he whispers.
Peering under the covers
He sees that she is not here.
But, smelling her again-
Her hair,
Her snuff,
Her sweat and lavender-
He climbs into the cold space
Carved out days before
By her suffering,
And, then, by her dying,
And pulling the heavy quilts
To the top of his throat
Falls asleep
In the presence
Of all that is left of her.