Adding Dimension

 “Bella was blind, ya know,” my grandmother said.  I knew Bella was blind.  In fact, I was pretty sure I knew every Fred-and-Bella story there was to know.  But who was I to stop a ninety-four year old from reminiscing about her younger years and the people in them?  Here she was, mostly wheelchair bound in a nursing home with her wits fully intact surrounded by very few other intact wits.  She could retell any story she pleased.  She leaned back in her chair, folding her shaky hands in her lap.  Her hair had just been permed, and the curls were the same short style they’d been when I was a child.  Except for the fact that it was now white, her hair looked exactly the same in the forty-year-old picture of her and my grandfather that hung on the wall behind her.  I sat on her low bed, facing her, and scanned the other family pictures she’d hung. Children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren; her whole life in just a few square feet, frozen paper images held to the wall with tacks and tape.  In the hallway a woman shuffle by with a walker, scuffing her slippered feet as she passed.  

“Yeah, I remember you telling me that Bella was blind,” I replied.  I began replaying the familiar stories in my mind. Which one would it be?  Blind Bella sticking her finger in the jelly jars at the grocery store to see which flavor she liked?  Or, maybe how my grandfather nicknamed my aunt “Fred” because he liked to tease her that the poor Russian man down the road was her real father?  

“We used to take them food sometimes. They barely had a pot to piss in,” she added.  I leaned back, getting comfortable for the events that were bound to come next.  Someone had once told me that it was good for her to share these stories, so I didn’t mind that our visits were often filled with these well-worn memories.  It seemed like a Hallmark movie, my grandparents’ life in the rural community where my mother had been raised.  Everyone was poor, everyone helped each other, everyone was a predictable character with concrete traits and simple problems.  Even my own grandparents were two-dimensional and static.  I thought about the busyness of my own life: kids, job, stresses. There were so many dimensions I couldn’t fit them into the day.  I wished my life could be as simple as the Fred-and-Bella days. 

“This night though,” grandma continued, “Bella asked if I’d go back into her bedroom with her.” 

Bedroom?  My mental rolodex flipped, but this story wasn’t in it.  “Her bedroom?” I asked.  

“Mmmm hmmm,” she said.  “Said she needed to show me something.” I imagined the youngest version of my grandma that I could muster, trying to see her about the same age as me, and pictured her in the tiny house that was once Fred and Bella’s, not far from where I grew up.  In my mind I watched grandma follow Bella to the rear of the poorly lit house and close the door.  “Jaime, she took off her bottoms and asked me to look.” 

This, I could not muster.  Hallmark movies don’t include characters with private parts and conversations about them. I had never considered that my grandma’s life might have included such things.  Did I even have any friends I trusted enough to share something so desperately intimate or who would ask this of me?

“There were things,” she said quietly.  She said the word not out of modesty, but for lack of a better explanation.  Her eyes looked through me, and I realized she was remembering.  She was quiet for a moment, and I realized the memory wasn’t just an image for her.  The feelings had come back too.  Her voice was different now. “‘Oh, Bella,’ I told her. ‘You have to go to a doctor, as soon as you can.’ It was cancer, ya know.” 

I didn’t know.   

I didn’t know Bella had died of such a thing. I didn’t know my grandma was someone Bella had trusted in what must have been a terrifying and lonely and desperate situation. One woman to another, she must’ve known my grandma to be strong and honest. Someone who would never shame her or turn away from what was uncomfortable and gross. She saw my grandma in a way I did not, and perhaps never would.  

The sunlight was suddenly bright in the room, and grandma smiled.  She didn’t wallow in the sadness.  “That Bella,” she said, smiling. “She was a character.” 

“She sure was, Grandma.”