The thing about dropping a glass on my tile kitchen floor is the glass literally EXPLODES, sending shards and chunks skittering and scattering into every nook and corner that the glass can get into.
The glass was Tara ’s, a smoky, purple colored Coca Cola glass. It was a favorite of Clint’s also and I had just picked it up out of the living room. I have a terrible habit of walking around, picking up glasses and dumping them and putting them into the dishwasher…before the person drinking them is actually done. “MOM!!” I’ll hear. “Where’s my cup??” and I would smile sweetly and say “ummm….I thought you were done…” and my son or daughter would grumpily fix another glass of tea and announce that this cup was to stay HERE and NOBODY dump it out that means YOU mom.
It was one of those things, breaking the Coca Cola glass…that I couldn’t re-enact for Clint. It seemed as though one second it was on the counter and I was thinking and humming and singing and I reached for it and it simply LEAPT off the counter and hung there, midair, as I scrabbled at it helplessly and watch it hit the ground. I have learned to squinch my eyes up tight, as once, a piece of glass hit me delicately above my eyebrow when I had knocked a glass lid onto my lethal tile floor. I also just freeze in place and don’t move, the glass sliding all around my feet and dusting my shins with sparkle. I’m usually barefoot or have flimsy flip flops on and have to traverse tiptoe to get to the broom and shop vac.
Clint was watching Gunsmoke when I broke the glass and he got up and got some shoes on and yelled at me kindly for not having decent shoes on. “Good Lord, woman, you’re gonna cut your feet to PIECES.” he’ll say and toss some shoes toward me.
I swept and he fetched the shop vac out of the garage and I had a pretty good pile going when he came in. He got the dust pan and using the little broom that came with it, swept it into the dust pan. It clinked and jangled, that sound of broken glass. He then walked toward the trash can to dump it straight in.
I feel I must interject here, dear reader. Sometimes, when I want to make a point, my tone of my voice comes out sharper than I intend it to be. Let me just say, I wanted to make a point.
“NO!” I yelled at Clint. “DON’T THROW GLASS DIRECTLY INTO THE TRASH BAG!!! PUT IT IN A PAPER SACK FIRST!!”
Clint frowned at me and muttered and…went and got a paper sack. When he came back, I explained in a newer, softer tone, that glass would poke thru the plastic and cut whoever picked the bag up and God forbid they whack the bag up against themselves as they yanked it up from the trash can and the jagged, razor sharp piece of glass stab them where ever it hit. He placed the shards into the paper sack, carefully rolled it down and placed it into the trashbag and went to watch the rest of his show.
I thought about broken glass, about something being whole and good and then, in one fell swoop, broken and dangerous and deadly and no good except to cut an unsuspecting child’s foot open. I got a wet paper towel and swiped it across the tile floor, wiping up tiny bits of glass that the shop vac and broom missed. The paper towel sparkled darkly in my hand.
I thought about being with my Granny Viv, in her kitchen. I was about 8. She was making pie and let me help roll the crust out on the table. She used the last of the shortening and threw the empty container into the trash. I was angry at the container of shortening, it showed pictures of pie and cookies on the outer wrapping, but on the inside was just white, greasy, tasteless glop. I told Granny that to me, that was lying and she laughed at me a tiny bit and agreed.
The trash was full, so she grabbed the ties on either side and yanked the bag up and out of the trash can. I didn’t notice it hitting her shin, but it must have. She never said anything, or acted like anything was wrong and she put a new trash bag in and we got on with our pie making. In a minute, I looked on the floor and saw dark, red splotches and splashes. I noticed some of them were shaped like a foot and I tracked them with my eyes and my trail ended at Granny, her back turned toward me as she washed dishes at the sink.
“Granny?” I said. “What’s that?” and she turned and looked down where my finger pointed. She lifted her pants leg and we noticed her slip-on shoe was filled with blood. She pulled her pants leg higher, and there it was, a deep, crescent shaped wound…blood seeped out steadily and poured into her sock. She grabbed a chair and sat down, trying to figure out how this happened. I jumped up and grabbed a clean tea towel out of the cabinet and wet it in the cool water from the faucet and held it to the puncture.
We still couldn’t fathom how she got cut and I trailed and tracked the blood across the floor, finding the furthest point in front of the trash bag. Then I saw it, a vicious, gleaming piece of glass, it’s pointed edge red with blood. It was curved and seemed to be the bottom of a Mason jar.
I pointed it out and showed her. She surmised that when the bag hit her, the glass had cut her. A crescent shaped hole in her pant leg, sharply cut, edged with red confirmed our suspicions.
I got another rag and started wiping up the blood off the floor. By this time, the bleeding had slowed and Granny just sat while I cleaned her leg. I looked down at the pile of dirty, bloody rags.
Someone…Granny never named a suspect….had broken a glass in her kitchen and, rather than let her take care of it or put it in a paper bag or old can….had just thrown the broken glass into the trash bag.
I noticed as I stared at the pile of dirty rags on the floor that I didn’t feel well. I sat down hard by Granny and noticed I felt hot and weirdly nauseous. I took a sip of my tea, sweet and lukewarm, one lone ice cube floating at the top. It made me feel better and I drank the rest.
Granny and I took the entire sack of trash and carefully put it into an old cardboard box once used to incubate baby chicks still in their shells with a lamp and 40 watt incandescent bulb. The chicks had hatched and moved on, but the box was still in the kitchen being used as a cat bed.
Years later, when I told Granny I was going to nursing school, she didn’t seem to be the least bit surprised. “I knew that day I got cut in the kitchen and you hopped up and cleaned up the blood that you’d make a fine nurse.”
When I sang at church, she’d say “I knew you’d be a good singer, you come from good singers and you cain’t help it. It’s in your blood!”
When I told her that I was leaving the nursing profession to be a Poultry Princess, she said “I knew you’d make a fine chicken farmer, the way you used to follow the chickens around when you were little and catch bugs for them and want to pet the baby chicks.”
I have a feeling now that if I told Granny that I wanted to write a book about my life and things I think and feel, she’d say “ I knew you’d be an author someday, the way you would prattle and make up stories and entertain yourself.”
I also think if I told her I wanted to write about HER and biscuits and gardens and catalpa worms, she’d suggest a nice medical mystery for me to write.
That’s the job of Grannies, I think. To tell grandchildren that they are wonderful and smart and talented and they can do anything they set their mind to.
Trevor and Tara had my Granny, too. They would visit with her and laugh and talk. Even after she had surgery for her brain aneuryism and lost her ability to swallow very well and her voice changed to a hoarse whisper. She couldn’t sing after that or eat much. She had a feeding tube that ran directly into her stomach. She hated it and told me if she ever got it out, we better never put it back.
The last time I saw Granny at her home was the third of July. I had called my Aunt Debbie to see if the Preston family was getting together for Independence Day and she told me Granny had fallen and they really needed someone to go look at her. I took Tara and we drove all the way out to the mountains. Granny was lying on the couch, moaning. Her breath gurgled. Oh dear God, I thought. Debbie told me how she fell and that they took her to the ER and was sent home. Her ribs were broken. Debbie and I barely got her loaded into the back of Debbie’s vehicle. She was admitted. I sat with her the next day, she drifted in and out of consciousness. When she awoke she looked at me. “What day is it?” I told her it was the fourth of July and she smiled. “Why aren’t you shooting fireworks with your family?” she asked softly. “I hate fireworks, Granny.” I said.
She looked at me and said “I’m ready to go. I’m ready to go see my mama and my family and y’all will be FINE here without me. You’ll miss me, but you’ll get over it. Let me go when it’s time. Promise you’ll let me go.”
I told her we would.
And we did, we let her go and we didn’t let the doctor put in the feeding tube even though he looked me in the face and accused us of letting her starve to death. I have never forgotten this doctor, this rude, hateful man that Sunday morning. My aunt Debbie was in the hospital room with me. We had sat quietly and visited and patted Granny and suctioned her and helped the nurses turn her. Debbie took in a hurt, sharp gasp of air when he said that. I smiled (well, really, no, that’s not true. I bared my teeth, it wasn’t actually a smile. Sometimes, dear reader, they are thisclose to each other) and said “no, we don’t want her to starve to death. She wants to go, she told us so, and said she never EVER wanted a feeding tube again. There’s worse things than dying, there’s laying bedridden in a nursing home getting bedsores. We love her enough to do this for her.”
I cried on the way home from the hospital that night, cried about letting her starve to death, hearing those words echo in my head. My aunt Debbie took me aside later and told me she was glad I was there, knowing I (in my sweetest meanness) stand up to that hateful small town doctor.
She only lasted a few days after that, her breathing slowing and stopping, slowing and stopping.
I wanted to lift the covers and look for that crescent scar on her leg, run my fingers over and think about broken glass.
I never did. I didn’t want to bother her or infringe upon her privacy. Was it still there? that crescent shape, where the blood poured out? When she used to tell me singing was in my blood, was it THAT blood? that poured out on that kitchen floor so long ago? Washing the red smears off my hands, finishing the pie crust with her, her leg bandaged by now. Telling her to sit, let me help, wanting to finish the dishes, her refusal to me, telling me she was fine.
“Always put broken glass in a paper sack or an old coffee can with a lid, or even wrap it in newspaper.” she said that day as I swiped around the floor, smearing and smudging and cleaning up her blood.
And that, dear reader, is what I thought about…looking down at that wet paper towel, glistening and sparking with smoky, purple broken shards.
These words, these stories, these songs.
They are in my blood.
I must let them go.
But I must not let them cut or injure.
I must wrap them carefully, couch them in something tougher so they don’t cut through.
I carefully rolled the paper towel inward and threw it into the trash on top of the paper sack.
Sometimes…dear reader…things sparkle because they have broken, sharp edges.
No comments:
Post a Comment