my grandma sold her leather armchair last week. i don’t live in new jersey anymore so no one told me that it was leaving until it left, until i came home for the holiday and there was just a wide gaping hole in the corner of the living room like an open wound, bleeding and raw.
i am seven years old dangling my legs off the kitchen counter and she is teaching me how to make chicken noodle soup. my favorite part is adding in the cubes of chicken stock because i can plop them into the roiling pot and watch them melt apart. the kitchen smells sweet as a memory and my grandfather is dozing in a leather armchair in the living room. his foot is broken. i bring him medicine and he pays me two dollars, conspiratorial smiles, eyes bright, don’t tell mom. i’ll tell her anyway and he’ll laugh and say you’re a great nurse but you ain’t a secret-keeper and this will begin my long career of never knowing how to shut up.
but right now i am seven with two dollars in my pocket and now i can almost afford the calendar that i’ve been eyeing at the card shop on route 23! and i’m watching the chicken stock dissolve in the greedy throes of the soup like a sandcastle washed away by a rip current. and i’m thinking that sometimes it must be good to give yourself away as long as it makes the soup happy…
when i was seven i crouched behind the armchair to hide from monsters in a dream
the sunday before i move away, i am trying to ignore the searing heat of extraction, each goodbye guilty and dizzy and liberating. grandma folds me into her arms and cries, face blotchy, eyes wet, do you remember when you promised you’d stay here always? i hate that she says that because i don’t remember. i only remember wanting to leave.
it is late august and the cicadas are singing, the sun blazing wild. i wave to my grandma as i walk out of her door and down the front steps, dig my nails into my palms till they turn purple, and then stare at the sun, burning away the afterimages.
wordgirl airs every tuesday on pbs at four o’clock! my first grade class gets out at 3:20 so we’ve got forty minutes to get to my grandparents’ apartment. normally grandma waits for me at pickup, but sometimes my grandpa comes instead, once his foot heals and he can drive again. i don’t always know what to say to him in the car so i talk about the weather. usually i say wow, it’s so nice out, even if it isn’t.
at four on the dot i’m nestled in the armchair with a paper plate full of pretzels, licking the salt off each one before i eat it, pbs on the tv and the room awash in a sepia haze, fading sunlight slanting in slivers on the carpet. secretly hoping that my dad is late to pick me up again.
grandma is making me a crumb cake on the day i come back home, the same cake i asked her to make for every birthday once upon a time. her house is drenched in the candied smell of brown sugar, sweet like a memory.
an italian waltz wafts into the living room from the kitchen, one of the only cds left that can still play on the old boombox, which waits on the counter covered in dust under the weight of time. while the cake is in the oven, grandma stands with me in the living room. for some reason neither of us turns on the light, i half expect my grandpa to walk in, frown slightly, flick on the light switch, and tease, why’s it so dark? what, are the cats ’avin’ kittens? even though no one really knew what that expression meant or if it even was an expression at all.
light leaks in through the kitchen doorway and grandma is asking about school, telling me she misses me and sunday dinners haven’t been the same since you left! her voice is so high and bright and strung thin and it catches like a baited line, breaking my heart a little.
when she leaves the living room to check on the cake, i drop criss-crossed onto the living room floor. there’s nowhere else to sit.
i am seven years old dangling my legs off the kitchen counter and i am waiting for the soup to be done so i can taste-test it. there’s a sign hung up with twine on the cabinet that reads, made with love. grandma tells me that she put her heart in our chicken noodle soup, that i could slurp up her aorta like a noodle, that she let the ventricles bleed out in the pot like cubes of chicken stock. that’s when i figured out that you become easier to love once you become willing to ruin yourself. ruining yourself would mean staying here forever because you promised it when you were seven. which you won’t do. eleven years down the line you will not put your heart in the soup in the way you were taught, the way that would make you dissolve, the way that might make you a better person or at least a martyr.
but now i am seven and wordgirl will be on soon! and maybe THIS will be the day that my dad is late to pick me up and i can live in this apartment for just a bit longer. grandma and grandpa and i can turn that leather armchair into a blanket fort and hide there, just us and pbs and pretzels, at least until the sun sets all the way.
today, though, my grandfather is hogging the armchair, dozing with his head back and mouth open and broken foot propped on a pillow. i smile slightly and sit on the floor next to him with my paper plate of pretzels. it’s no matter if i can’t have the chair today. it’ll still be here next week, and so will he, and so will i.
Sole Magazine