“Look at Gramma’s big girl!”
I couldn’t remember seeing this grandmother before, except in photographs. In one, she gives me a bath in a stainless steel sink. In another, I’m in a drooping diaper, supported by the crook of her arm, and we are both smiling like we cannot believe our good luck. Grandma Prince met us at the airport with laughter that pinged like thin crystal. She was an unopened Christmas gift, glittering like lemon tin foil in her Crimplene trouser suit. The golden flecks in her Totes rain scarf complimented her champagne colored hair. Wrapped in a cloud of mint and Wind Song, my cheeks, which were now smeared with the same shade of beige pearl as her fingernails, were locked between her palms.
Aunt Maddie is my mother’s half sister. She looked like a whole sister to me, even though she is much closer to me in age than she is to my mother. Twelve years and two fathers separated the sisters. I moved into Aunt Maddie’s yellow bedroom and fell comfortably at home. Against Maddie’s orders, I took her prized Baby Beans outside to play. As predicted, the doll’s yellow jumpsuit turned a dingy shade of gray.
“Look, Mother!” Maddie whined to Grandma.
“Oh, stop your fussing!” Grandma didn’t think twelve-year-olds should care if their dolls got dirty.
Grandma Prince bought me a Baby Beans of my own, but I still preferred Maddie’s and took her outside as often as I could. I didn’t really like dolls, you see. One afternoon, Grandma took us to The May Company. Aunt Maddie and Grandma Prince walked hand-in-hand. Dizzy with power, I galloped around the parking lot for the second time, flapping my arms like a winged horse, forcing their hands apart in order to claim my preferred side of my grandmother’s body. Maddie howled and shoved me out of the way. I held on tight to Grandma’s hand and danced just beyond Maddie’s reach.
“Mother, make her stop!”
“Oh, Maddie, she’s littler than you.” Grandma was clearly disappointed in Maddie, but she smiled down on me. Grandma shook her free hand at her daughter who was now skulking along behind us. When Maddie reached for Grandma’s free hand, I dashed around again and snatched it for myself. Five year olds in California could do whatever they wanted to do.
Before I’d chosen her, my mother supervised my every move, disinfected my playthings, worried about worms. If I was dirty, my clothes were changed, my face was washed, and my hair was combed, barretted, and then combed and barretted again. Now, I was allowed to pry snails from the silvery trails that circled my grandmother’s Queen Palm as I played in the front yard alone. Now, I didn’t need to wear lace trimmed socks; instead, I ran barefoot as I pleased.
“Put your shoes on,” my mother warned absently, “you’re going to step on a bee.”
I ran, laughing, out the front door. What did she possibly know? She wasn’t serious enough to chase me down the street as she would have before I chose her. When I did, indeed, step on a bee, Maureen laid me out on the couch and plucked the stinger from my toe while I screamed and clung to Maddie’s hand.
“Squeeze as hard as you want,” Maddie said.
On weekends, Grandma and my mother took turns at the mirror. Maddie and I drifted in and out of the bathroom watching as the two women applied careful layers of blue eye shadow, curled black lashes with silver tongs, and blotted their lips on white squares of toilet tissue.
“I’m not babysitting her again!” Maddie stormed into the kitchen with my mother close behind.
I retreated to the couch and pretended to watch The Brady Bunch.
