Cussing Without Vowels

            It is funny how writers often spin stories from a common thread.  For example, I have written many stories about my mother, so it seemed natural that I would examine her relationship with her own mother eventually as a means of gaining understanding.   The story I posted a few days ago, A Sudden Willingness to Sleep, contained a reference to a story my grandmother used to tell me about how abusive my father was to my mother.  Needless to say, this made a huge impact on me.  I had never met the man who was supposedly my father, and my mother would not talk about him, so all I had to layer my emotions onto was an image supplied to me by my grandmother.  And considering that she only related dramatic, violent tales, it is no wonder that a handful of my stories and poems have grown out of those images.  At this point in my life, I can honestly say that I don't dwell on that history, but it does make for an interesting turning point in a story from time to time.  Note:  As I have previously mentioned, the man reflected upon in these stories is evidently not my father, so my recollection of these second hand facts has evolved yet again.  I am currently working on a piece about what it feels like to suddenly not know who my father is after 50 years of thinking I had the facts straight.

Sometimes inspiration can come from everyday things.  I wrote a poem a while back inspired by a historical marker sign near my grandparent's house.  And the short piece below came about after hearing my grandmother swear.

CUSSING WITHOUT VOWELS

            I’ve always been good at pretending.  I have come to think of it as a genetic trait handed down by the women in my family, sort of like diabetes or colorblindness, and almost as uncontrollable.  My mother was so good at pretending, she eventually lost track of her own personality, and my grandmother had so many versions of her own personal history, I don’t know how she kept all of the complicated, interwoven stories straight.  In the end I guess… well, I guess she sort of unraveled over time. 

For several years we had accused her (only behind her back, of course) of pretending to be forgetful or crazy when it suited her purposes.  But this time I knew Nanny was gone when she looked me in the eye.  The veneer of convenient memory lapses and sympathy provoking confusions had finally cracked wide open leaving her exposed all the way to the brainstem.  The angry part of my mind muttered, “Serves her right.  She never should have pretended to lose her mind years ago, never should have played that role.”

            But then, Nanny had always been good at acting out her part.  I remember when I was about ten and spending the summer with her and Pappy, the pastor from their small community church stopped by their house on a “visitation,” just to let my grandparents know how much they had been missed at church.  I was a little surprised because they almost never went to church, but as I nonchalantly eavesdropped on their conversation, I came to understand that the reason she offered for them not attending services regularly was the critical condition of my grandmother’s back.  She was supposedly in such continuous pain that she could not possibly sit on one of those pews.  As though to underline this statement, at one point during the visit, Nanny tried feebly to get out of her chair to make a minor adjustment of the nearby Venetian blinds.  Then with a tremble and a sigh of resignation, she expressed her sincere appreciation when Brother Avery automatically and most eagerly took care of the small task for her. 

Of course, everyone knew that she had been hurt on the job at Montgomery Ward’s some 40 odd years ago.  The story was practically local folklore.  And though she was very brave about it all, she had just never been the same after her surgery.  What everyone did not know, however, was that her injury came and went quite dramatically and unpredictably.  Perhaps I guess the preacher thought I was the one who had hauled the feather-stuffed mattresses and pillows out onto the front porch that morning for their semi-annual airing out.  And I guess he thought I was the one who had grown and picked the bushel of purple hull peas we were shelling that morning.

Why, I could almost believe it myself.  My grandfather couldn’t have done it; he left home every weekday morning before sunrise to work in the rose fields until just before dinnertime.  People probably thought it was very kind of me to spend so much time each summer helping out the way I did. 

The truth was no one could really help Nanny with anything.  She insisted on doing everything herself just so she could complain about it later.  She was indisputably the queen of complaining and I have often thought she lived for misery.  For example, I knew instinctively that she would be put off by the preacher’s visit.  Even though he told her he could see himself to the door, she insisted on hauling her frail form from her green chenille rocker to let him out.  After all, she had to get up anyway to latch the screen door when he left.  Even if I had done it, she would have had to get up and check it to make sure I did it right, because you never knew who might be traipsing about the countryside.  I had heard countless tales of “scallywags" who could show up suddenly and menacingly at the door.  And I was always amazed that they were so easily repelled by such a flimsy security system as an almost threadbare screen door.  So I wasn’t surprised that the split second that preacher’s car door closed, she cut loose. 

“I don’t know who that…that…pup thinks he is…checking up on me that way!  It’s almost as though he thinks he’s going to catch me doing something I should be ashamed of!” 

And for the rest of the day, she was down in her back, barely able to do her regular chores.  So I picked up the slack, the best I could, until she was somewhat recovered.  It really was very kind of me to spend so much time each summer helping her out the way I did…

Over the years I suspected it was pretty hard for Nanny to keep up with all of her fictions.  She was understandably confused from time to time when it came to keeping her stories straight, especially after Pappy died and she didn’t have anyone to rehash the day’s irritations to each evening.  Sometimes we suspected her of making up tales to get attention.  Like the countless times she claimed she had to haul out her shotgun in the middle of the night because a stranger was prowling around outside.  She never actually had to fire it because the “varmints” were effectively scared off when she warned them she was armed.  Of course, she didn’t just come right out and tell them.  She would yell into the other part of the house, warnings like, “Russell, be careful with that gun!”

But her stories were often so outrageous, it was as though she was just trying to entertain us.  She meant no harm, and she didn’t seem truly out of touch with reality.  I guess that’s why none of us were alarmed when her “spells” became more frequent and her stories more farfetched. 

For a while, we embraced her growing lunacy as if it were the favorite grandchild or long lost niece who was just there for a short visit.  We tried to look on it as though it were an extreme form of flexibility that would help her survive her eventual move to the nearby Chandler Nursing Home.  For a while, she was even a dark source of amusement for us as we gathered together to compare anecdotes.  We could laugh about it because we knew things weren’t as bad as she pretended they were.  I mean… the bottom doesn’t just fall out like that.  Does it?  Leaving a body empty?

And some of her high jinks were so transparent!  The way she could remember that I hadn’t come to visit her last Wednesday.  And the way she would sometimes pretend to forget that I have three children.  The way she could remember to have chest pains if she thought she had forgotten to take her medicine.  Or the way she would forget to put on her clothes, but only when my mother was there to dependably remedy her nakedness.

Some days when I visited her, she seemed more lucid, and almost frantically determined to relive snippets of history as though she had to transfer memories to me before she permanently lost her ability to store them.  Somewhat passively, I would listen, not realizing that whether I welcomed them or not, her memories were becoming my own. 

I remember the way she taught me to cuss without vowels, as if by omitting those little round sounds and running the rest all together, she made rough language somehow less offensive.  I remember the family myths she would tell about how the piss ant got its name, and about how much my grandfather loved her.  And secret family recipes for simple things like teacakes, dill pickles, wilted greens and chicken and dumplings.

I remember the way she laughed until she cried when she told me about the time Aunt Bessa Lee and Uncle Arkus tried to run off with her favorite milk-glass candy dish, only to find a chicken snake in the cupboard!  “It scared the sh-t out of them!”

I remember tall tales about my grandfather’s family, naturally a step or two below hers on the social ladder, and how they were always taking advantage of her good nature in one way or another.  I remember taller tales about the almost unbelievable tragedies that had befallen her.  After all, “not everyone has had her back broken and lived to tell about it,” and tell about it …and tell about it …

I recall even wilder stories about how she saved my life from that “sm btch” who was my father.  About how she rocked me all night when I had the croup and because I wanted only her and cried for only her.  And I heard about how my mother wore a turtleneck sweater in the middle of the summer to cover the fingerprints my father had left on her neck.  And about how she went into premature labor that same year on a wet day in late October and gave birth to my older brother who lived only three days.

            My darker self says that life is often not what we want.  Like being born, it isn’t a matter of choice.  And with some of us, our retrospective selves try repeatedly to wish the whole thing away, or failing that, to somehow revise it.  I guess that’s what Nanny had been doing all those years, trying to make up a life that pleased her, one that allowed her to go on one more day.

Once when I was staying at her house, I saw an old photograph, floating free, as though it had escaped for a while from the brittle brown pages of its heirloom album.  The frozen image of a young woman peered out, almost vibrating with intensity. She had serious eyes, thick dark hair emblazoned by a streak of premature snowy white, a plain dark dress, and black shoes two sizes too big for her small feet.  She looked like she was on the verge of living the next story of her life, as though she had been only momentarily captured and that her energy was barely contained by the white space of the picture’s frame. 

I’m not even sure if the girl was Nanny.  But I like to pretend it was.