When a girl visits her grandparents’ house in
the summer, a girl walks through the kitchen
and opens the pantry: stacks of dog food
beside bags of Fritos beside stacks of bean
dip awaiting the red-and-white swirl of
ketchup and mayonnaise, 2-liter plastic
bottles of Diet Coke standing at attention on
the unswept tiles. A girl unscrews the red cap,
takes a sip as the bubbles rise and spit.
A girl’s grandmother calls her a fish
even though a girl cannot open her eyes
underwater. A girl doesn’t like to dive
because a girl cannot wear goggles when she
dives, and a girl doesn’t like going into
anything blind. To graduate from high
school, a girl must pass the swim test, and to
pass the swim test, a girl must tread water for
two minutes (easy), complete two laps
without goggles (doable), and dive once
(terrifying). One by one the other girls tip
over the edge. A girl cringes when the other
girls laugh at the splash she makes. A girl
never dives again.
One afternoon at the water park, it starts to
rain. No lightning yet, but the visitors gather
their damp towels and flip-flop like clipped
seagulls toward the exit. Alone in the wave
pool, a girl swims in the shallows, floats on
pure, windblown waves, blinks as the
raindrops kiss her shiny face.
A girl doesn’t remember her first period.
In muggy July, a girl jumps feet-first into the
pool across the street and becomes a
mermaid: legs a long glittering fin, frizzy
curls a chic auburn flow, arms powerful,
sleek, until a girl surfaces in the shallow end,
grasping the wall beside the sun-faded figure
perpetually smacking its bald head on the
bottom of the NO DIVING stamp. A girl’s
hair sings in the chilly green water.
A girl draws a bath by herself for the first
time. The water is hot on a girl’s fingertips,
but isn’t it supposed to be steaming? A girl
eases her toes balls heels ankles, into the
heat, calves thighs buttocks, so slowly, lower
back stomach legs completely submerged. A
girl is sweating now, the hot liquid almost
painful. When a girl vaults out of the tub, her
legs are pink. A girl stands naked before the
fogged mirror, breathing heavily. A girl has
never enjoyed eating lobster.
A girl goes to summer camp for the first time.
A girl wakes up during the first night and
needs to pee. In the dark cabin, a girl cannot
find the bathroom. A girl does not remember
the names of her counselors and cannot bring
herself to wake them up. A girl stands in the
middle of the cabin, uncertain and
whimpering. Warm liquid flows down a girl’s
legs. By morning the puddle is invisible. As
the other girls dress and laugh, a girl listens
for their names.
A girl is bathed by a girl’s mother, scalp
scrubbed, a girl’s head bent over her crossed
legs. A girl’s mother piles the wet-dark hair
on top of a girl’s head and squeezes it with
both hands. Cool soapy water trickles down a
girl’s back. A girl’s mother tells a girl to look
up again. Almost done.
A girl plays with a plastic water doll in the
bath. A girl washes the swirl of her hard-
plastic baby hair, pops open the plastic cork
in her back, holds her under, lets the water
glug into her smooth chest, pushes the cork
home to keep it all in, her tummy swishing
with lukewarm bubbles.
When a girl begins her period, it’s late, the
window in the bathroom a small square of
moist velvety darkness. A girl’s mother
doesn’t keep pads in the house, so a girl’s
mother offers a girl paper towels, or little
sister’s diaper. Just for the night.
A girl buys a pair of white Keds for a summer
trip. On the plane, a girl orders a Coca Cola.
A girl’s cup slips from her hand, upends on
her left shoe, carbonated syrup soaking the
bleached fabric as the captain assures them
they are still flying.
A girl rides the bus home as the southern sky
sobs itself hoarse. A girl doesn’t recognize
this house, or this one, or these particular
magnolia branches leaning down and
nodding like her mother’s friends at church.
A girl steps down the metal stairs onto a
foreign sidewalk in the downpour, vinyl
wrinkles imprinted on the backs of her thighs.
When a girl’s mother finds a girl in the weave
of their Volkswagen’s headlights, she won’t
be able to separate a girl’s tears from the
sky’s.
When a girl visits her grandparents’ house in
the summer, a girl walks through the kitchen,
opens the laundry room door, opens the lid to
the red Coca-Cola cooler raised off the floor
on rounded metal legs, bottle opener on the
side. A girl snakes the first bottle out by its
cool neck, snaps the top off, then closes the
lid on tomorrow and tomorrow and
tomorrow.
A girl drinks dollar-cups of McDonald’s
coffee and 2-liter bottles of Diet Coke, but
once, a girl drank it all. Married young, all
bleach-blond charm. A girl still teases her
hair, the bitter roots sprayed stiff. Plastic
teeth hard and white like Fisher-Price milk.
Making coffee, a girl is distracted (by love or
loss, an image or a thought), she forgets to
use a filter, forgets to put the pot on its burnt
warming plate, returns to her room to dress
while it steeps. A girl’s daughter finds brown
liquid streaming from the countertop,
trickling along the grooves of the floor tiles.
A girl’s uncle owns a Coca-Cola bottling
plant. During the summer, a girl and her
cousins bottle six-packs, a simple task for
three girls with nothing else to do during the
summer. The narrow glass bodies chime in
their metal cases, sweating lightly until a girl
slides them into the cold again.
Gram used purses like Russian nesting dolls:
money hand-clutch inside makeup clutch
beside small coin purse beside pencil bag
inside the inner pocket of a black canvas bag.
I’d unearth what she needed one zipper at a
time, grumbling when the old metal teeth
stuck to one another, clenched against the
sharp movement. If zippers could feel pain.
Hers always looked like they were about to
faint, but she was able to rouse them every
time. The inside of the makeup bag was
especially soft, lined with years of powders
and smooth plastic cylinders rubbing it all
over. All her bags smelled of rouge and
foundation. Except the smallest one—that
bag just smelled like the bland cloy of dollar
bills. The straps softer than the bodies.
She wore bulbous gold earrings. Shiny clip-
ons that I would snap onto my soft unpierced
lobes when she visited in the summer. I
always wondered how her ears weren’t
longer. I’ve since wondered why I wanted so
badly to pierce my ears when I was thirteen.
Hours spent before Christmas searching
Amazon for dangly earrings. A dozen or so
spilling down my list for Mrs. Claus. More
earrings than books that year.
Her two-story house felt like a mansion with
its Doric columns and row of floor-level
windows, stone lions guarding the front door
under the magnolia trees, grandfather clock
towering in the foyer. The last house on the
street, it stood mere yards away from the
neighborhood pool that filled the street with
sounds of water splashing and children’s
floaties squeaking and adults screaming “NO
running!” until the whistle of the lifeguard
for Adult Hour. The clubhouse smelled of
dried chlorine and wet paddleboards, with
sandy stairs that led up to the mysterious
“Adults Only” billiards room, like in Clue.
The one-foot baby pool was covered in a
scrim of soft red leaves, their shadows
swimming along the flaking concrete floor.
The swings out back were the best way to dry
off. My cousin had tough feet. He would run
barefoot across the hot orange gravel that
connected the white mansion to the
clubhouse side door. I’d follow behind,
picking my way across on my soft white toes
until the scalding stones felt like knives. I’d
sprint the last half, trying to fly and not
entirely failing.
Gram taught me how to crochet, but as far as
I know she only wore store-bought clothes.
When she wasn’t flowing in muumuu-liquid,
she wore black jumpers with the black-
cotton straps slipped under the dry arches of
her feet. Solid-colored sweater, black
sneakers. I can’t recall whether she wore
socks or drank tap water.
She bought me a necklace for the Spring
Dance—a thin silver chain (not sterling, I
learned later, as it greened on the velvet
bottom of my jewelry case) with a small
sparkly silver ball hanging between the
straps of my red silver-sequin-dotted dress.
Tiny disco ball swinging against my
breastplate as my assigned partner and I
swayed to Green Day. Tinier reflections of
my girlish dreams.
At the mall, Gram bopped my hand away
from my mouth and pointed her entire arm at
the boy standing a few stores down from us.
“That cute boy is looking at you, and you’re
biting your nails!”
Seven inches shorter than me, she would tell
me how much she wished she had my long
legs. And yet she urged me to try on high
heels at every store. She almost bought me
my first pair: bright violet pumps on sale
at Value City. She exclaimed when I shyly took
the aisle as my runway. In the end, my
mother’s ingrained practicality won out and I
set the purple pumps back to rest on the shelf
until the next set of awkward teenage feet felt
the urge to rise up.
When Gram moved up from Louisiana to live
near my family after Pampa died, she lived in
the basement apartment of my friend’s
house. Ben was a single child of unhappily
divorced parents, so of course he was
allowed to play the trumpet. Quick to fart and
laugh, or get angry. Tiny handwriting. Left-
handed. I may have been his only friend. We
taught ourselves how to play Egyptian
Ratscrew on the hour-long bus ride to school
using food trays the chaperone had borrowed
for us from the dining room. When I slept
over on a warm summer night, Gram caught
me trying to sneak out to read the next Harry
Potter book with him in his camping tent in
the backyard. She was quick to startle, even
when asleep. He called her Gram, too.
My grandmother collected glossy Vogues
and Southern Comforts on her marble coffee
table. Listened to the classical station on the
way to Burger King, dressed in a stretched
black jumper, sneakers, and a face yellowed
with foundation. Hands so tough, she used to
pull pans out of the oven without mitts, my
mom says. I don’t recall ever seeing her
swim.
I didn’t learn that my grandmother had an
addiction to alcohol until I was in high
school. Suddenly, her musty unclean smell
half-covered up by strong-but-not-special
perfume made more sense. Her bleached hair
with the dark roots groaning against her
temples made more sense. Her forgetful-
ness—the dogs locked in the bathroom, the
cat’s litter box ignored, the coffee pot left on
the counter, no filter in the machine—made
more sense. The fake nails we’d find in the
carpet of the guest room after she left, glue
hardened on the undersides, made more
sense. Her new addiction to Diet Coke made
sense, her replacement for the wine. In this
way, making-sense was how I learned to
recreate the past.
My mother must have told me, but I don’t
remember how. Gram had been sober for
years by then, but it lingered, the feeling that
she was stuck in the past. Ears ringed, never
pierced. Small, strong fingers heavy with
chunky jewels. She wore muumuus when she
was alone at home, after Pampa died.
Nothing underneath. I was at the age when
bodies were everything I could see, but I
didn’t want to see hers. I would look away,
lock eyes with painted portraits and family
photographs, instead of look at her. Really
look at her. I wish I had now. I don’t know
what happened to her gold earrings after she
died in the nursing home an hour’s drive
from my parents’ house. I should ask my
mother if she kept them.