Marilyn Horan
Word Count: 847
July
7, 1998
Sitting in my mother’s house,
having put down the Combat—large and small. So many emotions:
--Love
the smell of the upstairs as I walk up to the second floor—warm, slightly
flowery, sunny, smelling of summer.
--Toy
room—small drawing on wall I did during one of my long teenage talks—a box of
oatmeal and a glass—the remembered feeling that I could draw—never borne out by
reality.
--As
I write this at the small dining room table it is covered with a crocheted
tablecloth—uncomfortable to write on, but a small sign of gentility, of
freshness, of cleanliness that keeps what I consider a roach infested, rattrap
from being a total dirt-floor hovel.
--All
the tubes of ointments, salves without tops—a family trait of carelessness, of
false rushing to get to where? But
wherever it was, was always too late.
--Cannot
see too well—eyes filled with tears.
So much has gone on here.
--Baby
roaches crawling on the counter.
Remember when we covered the cabinets with contact paper—Arlene’s
idea—and the tiny roaches crawled out from the screw holes when we unscrewed
them.
--Medicine
cabinet—got to be 50 years old—corroded—small plastic jar of Boric Acid, small
Old Spice shaving can, eye wash cups.
I’m surprised there is no Avon Perfumed Deodorant that my mother
condescended to buy but without an atomizer, so that I poured the deodorant
onto my armpits and it sometimes ran down between the lips of my vulva burning
like a bastard.
Everywhere I look is a memory:
--The
Corning ware coffeepot that I think I gave to my mother.
--Towels
I gave her after my first marriage dissolved; old gold carpet that I ripped up
from my old apartment, now covering her bedroom floor; dish towels, now more
grease than cotton.
--Signs
of sickness everywhere. Anyone who
kids herself that life is sweet is mistaken. Piss pots on a stand, walkers, Mineral Ice, colostomy gags,
a prosthetic breast, Aunt Helen’s arm pump used to reduce the swelling in her
huge arm from lymphedema, the result of a radical mastectomy.
--The
lumpy and repulsive stuccoed ceiling in the living room with the shiny,
asbestos covered waste pipe going through the room. My brother Bob at 6’4” having to duck and doing so
automatically as he went up or down the steps.
--Uncle
Alfie—his big truck parked outside—sitting with us on what was it? Monday nights? Watching “What’s My Line” and “Truth or
Consequences.” My mother pushing
dinner on him and his responding, “No, I already ate, I tell ya.” I never realized how much he meant to
my mother until he died. Uncle
Alfie bought me a transistor radio when I was 11 and it was the most wonderful
thing I owned. He bought my mother
Melmacware—pink roses on a white background—her favorite combination.
--In
her bedroom I prayed to my mother to give me a sign because I felt so bad that
she had been so unhappy. I don’t
know if she gave me a sign, but the pleasant smell when I was expecting stink
was a beautiful experience. If
it’s you, thanks, Ma.
--Aunt
Helen’s summer strap chair that she used all the time outside in the
aerie. There are pictures of her
on the kitchen table from 1968 sitting on that chair on Verona Street in Red
Hook, the Point, the Hook. I
wonder if in 1968 she knew she would live another 30 years.
--The
television set—“Jeopardy” and “The Ed Sullivan Show” the nightly news, of
course, and a show that links me with my father: “All in the Family.”
He enjoyed it and I did too.
--The
sixties: free love and abortion
and Vietnam; leather hats, hip huggers, and exposed navels; hot pants and
pantyhose!
--Grandpa
planted a plum, or was it an apple tree, in the backyard. Mother was so proud and protective of
it. Maybe there was a time she
wanted to please her father, and did not passionately hate him.
--Daddy’s
furnace room. Tools, at least to
my mind, of every sort. I loved to
see him working on a project. His
throwing tools when angry and cursing violently to my amusement. We all have volatile tempers in my
family. His sign in the furnace
room: “You can’t iron with a
broken plug. Pick cord off floor!”
symbolized his “difference” from us—slobs who “slopped up” the kitchen after he
cleaned it. He wanted order, tried
to create it but was up against an emotional and physical slob—my mom. Sorry, Ma, but that’s how it was.
--Mom’s
underwear drawer. What a
collection of stretched out, useless stuff. Yet even she had a better self-image than Aunt Helen who
stuffed tissues into her bra and had wrinkled little bumps, uneven, of course,
on her horribly sunken chest.
--The
two rose vases. Always there,
never filled with flowers, but who needed them when the vases themselves were
so beautiful?
--
Where are the pictures of the beautiful dark-haired woman playing the piano to
an admiring audience of one man? I
always thought they were paintings of my mother and charming father before they
had kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment