Ugly

I’m drifting, staring at a wall covered with vibrant butterflies, cars, and flowers. Uninspired hands made these paintings, sprinkling glitzy glitter randomly on the page. A certain butterfly doesn’t stand out, not even with the arts and craft’s feathers pushing beyond the physical limitations of the paper. The feathers, glue-sticked onto page, cant hide how painfully unimaginative the butterfly is. They can’t hide the two-dimensional simplicity of the butterfly. Butterflies don’t even have feathers. The butterfly that doesn’t stand out is blue, sometimes electric blue. The strokes peter out, fading as they get farther and farther from the full opaque energetic blue. At the end of the stroke, the once bright blue is thin, cracked, strained, pushed far beyond the time in which the paintbrush should have conceded defeat and returned to the source of its color. The blue stroke ignores this, attempting to extend its individual legacy. Yet despite their denial the stroke inevitably dies, it dies ugly, blurry, revealing an illusion of a spectrum between life and death. The blue stroke dies without pride, pitiful in its contrast to the strong color it once was, pitiful in its denial that the inevitable has happened and the stroke must die. And the stroke trembles and shakes when it feels the end, seeing the fight was a fruitless one, shaking, blurry, obscuring that one clean moment of clarity.

I keep drifting, seeing bright evidence of children everywhere. Songbooks, crayons, and books on shelves. I’m wearing shorts, red shorts from my high school. Every other step I see BERKELEY in gold on my left thigh. I had felt athletic, and tan walking around Santa Cruz earlier that day, bouncing around by myself, hoping that behind all those girl’s big sunglasses she was watching me. And I’m still bouncing, feeling energy, youth, beaches, I even have a football. Then my eyes are forced open. And I see eyes everywhere. Following me, no sunglasses, but this isn’t a playful once over. These eyes are hungry, unembarrassed. I guess I’m in a nursing home, retirement home, old people home. The eyes are bright, and contrast disturbingly with the rest of her old dying body. Her skin is clear. I see deep purples, blues and reds underneath the skin. White hair, no eyebrows, lips are indefinite lines. And she’s watching me, trying to sap the color from the dark skin I was so proud of, trying to cover up her insides with my pigment. My jaunty step shortens, I quickly develop a limp, but it’s slow with a limp, and I feel those eyes, vacuums, stripping me of my youth. I know was watching me all the way down the hall, unembarrassed just staring. My limp heals quickly, and I power walk. My feet brush against the wall-to-wall carpeting I don’t hear that brush. I love that brush, I hear it when I stroll in motel hallways. My pace is fast, insultingly fast, I blow by an old man with a tennis-ball tipped walker, mocking him. Mocking his process, mocking his countless hours of torture with my walk that youth has lent me.  I don’t care. And I’m through the door that hides my Grandma. “Hey hey, happy mothers day” my uncle’s full voice fills the room, it’s rich coming from somewhere deep almost singing, not pretty, just genuine. He laughs from that deep place too, for no reason really, and hugs me.

I’m grinning. My dad and my mom do, for a second, out of some social reflex learned long ago, but their smiles snap back quickly into lines of agitation and anticipation of my uncle’s energy. I see it, they see it, even my brother sees it. They’re all nervous. So am I. All of us want to sit around in Grandma’s room. In private, contained. Talking about nothing, talking just to talk. Grandma will ask me “what have you been doing? Anything exciting?” her voice low and old. I’ll look at my mom, and stall.

“I dunno, what have I been doing mom?” And I’ll have had a recital, or done well in a fencing tournament, or gone on a trip, or have a nice girlfriend. And my Grandma will nod, her energetic blue eyes perfectly attentive, but if you look an extra second you see a terrible blankness behind that deceiving, flashing, blue. The blankness reveals a sad abyss of communication between us. And her reactions aren’t perfect, she can’t hear well. She’ll nod and smile, but not always when you want her to. And it kills me. Grandma’s good, almost perfect, impressive even considering her auditory difficulties, but her nod is just a tiny bit off, the smile during a universally mundane pointless detail. And I know she’s guessing. Guessing when to fulfill the petty social reminders that tell a speaker “I’m listening.” She learned how to look like the listener you want her to be.

 Even with her slight issues with timing I still almost believe that Grandma understands, that she’s visualizing every detail my mom describes of our road trip to Montana.  But I remember Grandma’s compliant, “I can’t hear you.” She said it three times almost accusatory, irritated that my mom cannot hop the terrible abyss into my grandma’s comprehension. My mom tries to jump, revving the engine of her voice, seeking traction. I listen each time she hits the gas, but I know her voice. It’s ungrounded, bottomless, a subtle soprano. No matter how loud she is, there’s no bass, and the shrill notes, too thin, don’t have my uncle’s strength. My mom knows this too, yet she tries, reluctantly pushing her voice to an unnatural volume. It’s too light for Grandma, but I cringe at its useless volume, its purposeless pain.

One time I bought some white and red basketball shoes with my mom. I had seen a shoe store on Shattuck called The Spot. In my third grade mind the name was enough, The Spot had to be the place to go for shoes. I don’t remember buying the shoes, but a couple days later my new Nike basketball shoes weren’t living up to the expectations I had from The Spot. The stitching was coming undone. I showed my mom and we made our second trip in a week to The Spot. She was trying to return them. The man at the cash register wasn’t complying. And my mom’s voice got loud, not yelling, just conspicuous. It killed me. Her voice, feathers, brushing a drum, no force, the man stands and doesn’t beat the drum. He’s young and black, working at The Spot, a place I realized wasn’t created with white middle aged women thought of as a potential customer. He speaks carelessly, insolently, unmoved. And I’m embarrassed as hell. I don’t care about the shoes. I don’t care that yes, the store is responsible and my mom is in it. I’m a traitor. I just listen to her voice, half hiding behind black warm up pants. I just want to give up and leave so I don’t hear her fruitless cry to see the manager. I’m a traitor cause I can’t deal with the expressionless cashier. I can’t deal with his thoughts. Who the fuck is this dumbass white lady? Fuck this bitch. I make it up, just a manifestation of thought based on my fears. I need my mom to leave, her shrill voice making me cringe. I can hear the indifferent cashier complaining to his friends about work, complaining about this white lady. I pass out, the feathers moving faster and faster, beating the drum with more and more force, airy brushes.

We want to stay inside. Cringing. Uncle Rob won’t let us. “Let’s go on a walk you guys, come-on lets go.” Boom. Silence. In the silence I feel instinctual doubt and repression. Rob ignores, or is unaware of, the opposition from a silent majority.

“What about Char? How’s she gonna come?” I silently support my dad’s question. I want to stay, inside and hidden.

“I’ll just plop her in the wheelchair Dick, I’ve done it before.” My dad used to go by Dick. I’ve only ever heard Uncle Rob and Grandma call him that. Grandma watches.

“Where would we go?” I approve of these practical questions. Eventually this maniac, attempting to force us from our dark embarrassing hole, will slip up; his reckless energy subconsciously assures us of gaping flaws in his plot.

“We’ll go to the lighthouse it’s not far, I’ve done it before, it’s Mothers Day for chrissake, come-on Dick, lets go you guys, hey mom you wanna get outside for a little bit ” His dramatic inflections of voice tug at my buried guilt. The same guilt I often felt with a close friend. He doesn’t have the same social inhibitions I have. On a crowded sweaty bus, he’ll start singing, clapping, tapping his feet, and rocking back and forth, ignorant of the disbelieving stares shot his way. I’ll sit there and betray him. I even know the song. I showed him Moonlight Mile, showed him those nine seconds of Mick Jagger’s soul.  I know the words better than he does. I fucking love that song. But I just sit and laugh, maybe covering my face, maybe jabbing an elbow into his ribcage, painfully aware of the staring eyes. The eyes don’t even know what to think of this kid apparently unaware he’s on a bus full of people. I betray him, telling him to stop, feeling the guilt of my betrayal, guilt that my voice is not proud with his.

 I pretend that those words don’t send shivers down my back every time I hear them, pretend those nine seconds don’t send me into daydreams of letting my soul bleed on stage, crying fans finding truth in my voice. And I forget my lies quickly and, a traitor, get off the bus with my forgiving friend. 

He bends down, “Lets go mom, we’re going to the lighthouse”

“Oh okay.” I get no sense of Grandma’s preferences with her response, she’s rolling with it better than we are though.

“Come-on Dick could you help me with her?” The brothers gently lift their mother out of her old blue chair. The three move as a clumsy unit.  It’s awkward and ugly, and honest. My uncle laughs and my dad laughs and Grandma is in her blue bathrobe in her blue wheelchair. She looks at me dubiously, that a laughing maniac is leading this treacherous expedition into a different world. Grandma can’t trick me this time either. I know she’s happy. She loves this attention, the adventure. She loves that this day will not mush into all the days she has spent in her own head. Days that were spent watching black text flick across the bottom of the TV screen, eyes glued to the screen, ears shut, reading silent proclamations of love, death, revenge, power, hope. Mothers Day was Grandma’s. It was sad and beautiful. I felt her pride as my Uncle’s rich laugh filled the Lobby. We walked, my dad, a big brother, a boy who’s father died on his birthday, my mom skinny, shy and beautiful, my little brother oblivious and creative. I felt Grandma almost puff out her chest as we passed a sitting room, full of white hair and jealous eyes. And I bounced, athletic, tan, young, full, showing those eyes what Grandma had.

We moved slow. Uncle Rob stopped at a large window, which evidently he had passed many times before. It was a tattoo parlor, and in the window there was a paper maché woman. She was a pirate, scantily clad, quickly painted, and proportioned beyond possibility, even in the most optimistic view of the female body. Uncle Rob proudly stopped our caravan, “That’s my girlfriend.” I grin. My brother giggles. My dad makes a crude comment more likely to be made by one of my peers. We keep moving. Rob doesn’t see the lip of the sidewalk and hits it at an eager pace. Grandma jerks forward and Rob laughs loudly at his mistake, still laughing asking “you alright mom?” My dad moves quickly and takes one wheel, I grab the other. I’m embarrassed, people are moving around us, watching a loud man laugh, and an old lady get lifted, heavily, awkwardly. . Grandma is white in the sun. Pale. Her hair is thin. She looks unnatural in the light. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen her outside.

The sidewalk slopes upward. No hesitation. Rob starts running, bent low behind the wheel chair, pushing his mother against gravity and nature. The wheelchair, pushed beyond its capabilities, wobbles. It tilts onto one wheel, Rob throws his weight towards the wheel spinning in the air and it smacks down hard making Grandma jump. He yells “I’ve gotcha mom don’t worry.” People step off the sidewalk, laughing, friendly. I follow my uncle, embarrassed by his honesty.

My uncle waits, laughing, ignoring everyone except Grandma. My dad is concerned. My mom tells my brother and I that Uncle Rob takes it a little too far sometimes. And we move. Disjointed, and I’m behind all of them. Watching death. And a beauty I’m ashamed of. It’s sad and small, the world shrunk down to something so pure that I wonder why anything else exists. My mom buys a present for my birthday, and slips it to Grandma. One year I saw mom do it, slipping Grandma my present, and I realized my Grandma never knows what she hands me every year until I unwrap it.  She held the present out, proud, vibrant blue eyes, and there’s a card. It’s colorful, innocent, ignorantly upbeat. And Grandma signed it. One word. Grandma. Cursive, small, insignificant. Every letter shakes and wobbles. It’s so sad and beautiful and no one will ever see it.