Once We Were Three

Once we were three granddaughters. Beauty, Brain and Toad.  Brain was never around much, she lived far away.  But Beauty and Toad were close and spent a lot of time together.  Toad would be me.  It has been a harrowing week for me, there have been layoffs at my office, just as I was starting to feel a bit more secure, the job no longer seeming as daunting, this started.  I have to admit I have been freaking out, worrying.  Writing helps, which is how I wound up on the internet the other night when I couldn't sleep.  For some odd reason I googled your name and up you popped.  Well, not you.  That would be kind of difficult, seeing as to how you've been gone for, oh, let me see, 44 years.  Good lord, that is a lifetime and then some.  But there you were, your name splashed in big bold letters across my computer screen.  A hearing transcript, of all things, who knew those things were public?  The web, a double-edged sword.  I was so startled, but read it just the same and now, now I wish I hadn't.  It has brought back that awful day when the phone rang and we learned you were in the hospital and then a few days later, an even worse day.  You had died.

The world changed that day.  You were gone.  It was weird enough losing my sister two years earlier, months of looking forward to the baby, going to the doctor with Mom, hearing her little heartbeat inside Mom, thump, thump, thumping away so very, very fast.  Feeling her move.  How I loved snuggling up to Mom, putting my head and hand on her tummy, feeling her kick.  I must have driven her nuts doing that, but how I loved feeling that baby, hearing her.  Once she poked or kicked, a little fist or foot just popped up, you could see it jutting out on Mom's tummy and I thought it was the most marvelous thing.  I thought it was the baby's way of saying "I am here!  I am here!"  All those dreams and wonderful plans, and then no baby.  That night when Daddy came home from the hospital, his eyes red, and he and Grandmother were talking in low voices and then he told me the baby was a girl, which Mom and I had said all along, only she was very, very sick.  That Mom was fine, but the baby was going to Heaven and I told him he had to go back to the hospital and tell those idiot doctors to put the baby in an incubator, then she would be fine.  But she wasn't and Mom came home with no baby.  Mom looking so calm, serene and sad at the same time.  She would hug me and tell me we were going to be fine, we now had our very own angel in Heaven. Only I didn't want an angel, I wanted my baby sister.  That was in January, early January.  I remember Mom telling me the nights are most beautiful in January, the stars shine the brightest.  We would sit out on the terrace at night and look up at the stars and she'd say "You see that one twinkling really bright way, way up there?  That's our little angel saying hello."  She'd tell me how the moon would sing her lullabies and tell her bedtime stories, so she would have sweet dreams, just like she and Grandfather told me stories.

Daddy decided to take us across the country to visit you that summer.  He knew that seeing you would make Mom happy and so we were off.  Mom and Daddy in the front seat, me in the back sitting between Grandmother and Grandfather.  Mom was in charge of the map, Daddy happily ignoring her directions, until he really ticked her off and she pitched the map out the window.  Which is how we wound up spending the night in a little town's only hotel, where the next day we had the best breakfast ever and our first taste of grits.  I'm still a fan.  The next day we arrived at your house, where we finally got to meet your babies, all huge eyes and shy smiles. Daddy filming the reunion with his Super 8 camera.  I wish I still had those movies, but they were damaged in one of our moves.  There was a scene with Mom sitting on a chair, you on her lap, me on your lap and one of your babies on my lap, wriggling away to swipe a lollipop.  Our grandparents looking on beaming and your father rolling his eyes because we were all acting silly.  We all looked so happy, relaxed, we were where we belonged.  We were whole, again.  I wish there was a photo.

Mom and Daddy returned home a few days later with Grandmother.  Grandfather and I stayed behind with you.  We spent the rest of the summer there, with you and your babies.  It was heaven spending time with you and it was hell because your mother had morphed into this harpy, who continually screamed at you, calling you horrible names.  She actually punished you and me.  Her favorite punishment was to make us scrub all of the doors in the house.  And you, you just bowed your head and said nothing.  You never talked back to her.  I remember when I was back home and I told Mom about this, she could not believe that your mom (her sister) made us scrub the doors all the time.  You had started divorce proceedings, but were still in love with your husband, keeping his name and yours written on a piece of paper, in a glass filled with clear water, next to a little statue of a saint, I forget which one.  We went to Mass every Sunday and you could not sit with us, but had to stand at the back of the church, because you were getting a divorce and still you went to Mass.  I would have told them to f' off.  (Years and years, decades, later, I actually did and soon afterwards I left what remained of my family behind.  My parents were gone by then.)  I think that is when I started to dislike church, politics, hypocrites.  How could the priests say God was love and then turn around and treat you like a second-rate citizen, denying you communion and to sit with your family at Mass?  Of course now, I realize a lot of it, if not all, was probably your mother's doing.  Her way of punishing you.  I have no idea why.  I will never understand the way her mind worked.  And yet, I loved her then, I love her now.  So did you.

Parts of that summer were magical.  Going for walks in the woods with you, Grandfather and your babies.  On picnics in that big meadow, the kids riding along in a little red wagon.  You taught me to sing the entire Sound of Music score.  We'd walk into town singing at the top of our lungs.  Grandfather busting his buttons, happy to be with his two granddaughters, his eldest and his youngest, and great-grandchildren.  We would sit on the back porch late at night, after the babies had been tucked into bed, Grandfather and you spinning fairy tales.  You helped me catch fireflies and put them in big jars with screw tops which we'd punched holes in.  You would always make me set them free before going to sleep, saying the fairies needed them to ride on because they could only fly short distances.  If we kept the fireflies, the fairies wouldn't have them to fly on and then when their wings grew tired, they'd fall and hurt themselves.  I have been enchanted with fireflies ever since, always picturing tiny fairies riding on them.  You kept this wonderful smelling soap in your bathroom and you let me wear your fluffy slippers, the red ones trimmed with marabou feathers.  Their shade of red exactly matched the towels in your bathroom.  Oh, how you loved that color of red, a true red.  You said it was the color of Christmas. You loved roses, white roses.  A love of roses, I believe, is part of our genetic make-up.  I loved spending time with you, my beautiful, beautiful fairy godmother.

Do you know I used to believe you were a real fairy godmother?  You were so beautiful and you loved me, the toad.  As far as I was concerned, you were a real fairy and you sprouted wings after I fell asleep, then went to visit the fairies.  You were such a joy in my life.  You made a rotund, buck-toothed toad feel like a beautiful princess and taught me ballet in the woods, while Grandfather stood watch as you taught me to plié, stretch my arms gracefully over my head and twirl. I loved to twirl.  I still remember those early morning ballet lessons.  Oh, how I loved you.  I hope you knew that.

Your husband came to visit you and the children during that summer and one time you went for a walk with him and came back looking so happy.  You would talk about him to Grandfather and there was this look on your face, you loved him, I could tell by the way your face changed when you talked about him, your voice was lilting when you would describe him to Grandfather.  When he visited, you just beamed.  Something your parents did not appreciate.  And when he went away, I asked you if you thought things would be okay between you and you looked so sad and said, no, you didn't think so.  The day Grandfather and I left, you hugged me so, so tight and said good-bye with such finality.  I remember starting to cry and when Grandfather asked me why, I told him I knew I would never see you again.  There was just something in the way you held me and the way you said good-bye.  I was cold for days and days afterwards.  Even when we got home.  I just, somehow, knew.

Which is why the day the first phone call came in, I just knew, it was a matter of time.  And then you were gone.  Everything shrouded in mystery, lies and deceit.  I didn't know for years how you really had died.  Mom finally told me part of the story one day at the cemetery.  We had gone to put flowers on Grandfather's grave and we were sitting there talking and it just came out.  You had been killed in a hunting accident.  I was still in my teens, still in school, when Mom told me.  It was years and years later, I was out of college, visiting one of our favorite relatives, when I heard another version.  She was moving out of her apartment and in with one of her children.  It was she who told me that family rumor had it you had taken your life.  Only she didn't believe it.  Neither did I.  You loved your children way too much to do that.  They were your life.  You were studying for your degree, living at the university, your parents had the babies and you saw them on weekends and holidays when you came home.  I have a letter from you, written during that time.  You had met a boy and Grandmother and Mom had sent you Cuban coffee, a little coffeemaker and some pretty coffee cups, because he loved Cuban coffee.  And there is a photograph of you taken during that last winter.  You are wearing a brown jacket, trimmed in fur and red pants.  You're standing next to some bushes, your hair blowing in the wind, snow was starting to fall and you look happy, as if you were standing on the brink of something wonderful.  I remember seeing that photo and being so happy because I thought maybe, maybe this meant you were going to be okay.  You look so happy in that picture.

But you weren't okay, were you?  That phone call still came and then you were gone.  Our family was never quite the same afterwards.  A vital part of us was gone, missing.  It was like losing a limb.  Your mother made it out like she was the one who lost the most.  But, you know, we all lost.  My parents lost a beloved niece.  My grandparents, their firstborn granddaughter.  Your children lost their mom, and, oh, my love, how they needed you.  And I, I lost my fairy godmother.  A few years later, Grandmother and I spent two weeks in summer with your parents.  We didn't see the kids, it wasn't their time to visit.  You were not to be mentioned during our visit, not even your name.  It was like you had not existed.  Those were two of the oddest weeks of my life and believe me, I've had a few odd weeks in my time, but those two were definitely weird.  I wanted to talk about you, see your things, read your books, but there was nothing remaining of you. Not even a photograph.  At home, we talked about you, about how much fun I'd had with you, how much we missed you, your laughter.  But in your parents' house, it was like you were never there.  Once I mentioned you, said something like how much I had loved walking in the woods with you and your mother raised her finger and said to be quiet, that I didn't know what I was talking about.

I grew up.  Our grandparents died.  Then my parents. I walked away from the rest of the family.  Long story, not going into it because what would be the point.  But, oh, I remember you, the memories of playing dress-up with you when I was little and our family still intact, of those summer nights on the porch listening to you and Grandfather spinning fairy tales long into the night, singing "doe, a deer, a female deer, ray a drop of golden sun" at the top of our lungs, all those golden moments keeping you alive.  Always with the question of what really happened to you, who had been there, seen you, that could tell me the truth.  Not that I ever found anyone and your mother refused to talk about it.  But I never believed you would take your life.  Not for one second.

Only now it's there in black and white.  I first read it here at home.  The next day I looked it up again at the office.  Still there.  Big as life.  Self-inflicted wound.  I printed it out and drove home with those words ringing in my head.  It still doesn't make sense.  I still don't believe it.  It just doesn't have any logic.  Why, why, why would you do that?  Who were they protecting by letting that be stated?  What really happened?

When something doesn't make sense, they say we only see bits and pieces, God sees the entire picture.  I place my faith in that.  In the hope that one day, someday, all of this will make sense and it will all coalesce into something grand and beautiful and we will marvel and go "Oh, NOW it all makes sense and it is beautiful!"  And I hope, somehow, you have seen your children grow up, they both married truly special people.  That you have seen your grandchildren, who are such joys.  Especially your firstborn grandchild.  The first time I saw that baby, it was like seeing a little piece of you, the same coloring, the same eyes.  Your grandchildren, pure joy.  They must be almost all grown up by now.  I wish them all the joy and beauty life has to offer, wish they had known you. 

When I think about those long-ago days, when we were still in our birth country, those memories seem to be wrapped in tulle.  They are happy, beautiful memories of family, friends, Mom and Daddy dancing down the long hallway of our beach house, dressed to the nines ready to go out on the town, days at the beach, floating in that crystal clear water, you riding a bike with me perched on the handlebars, both of us laughing out loud and Daddy driving the car behind, just in case we got tired, making sure we were okay.  Nights on the terrace of our beach house, looking up at the stars that seemed to cover the night sky and shone brighter than diamonds.  Of the power going out and lighting candles, Grandfather playing his violin and then making shadow puppets on the wall.  Of you dressing me up.  Memories of sitting on the porch, on your lap, while some young Romeo visited you.  Grandmother and Grandfather looking on from the living room, front door open.  You would put a little bit of lipstick, a soft peach color, on me and I felt so grown-up.  I think of those memories like the pretty patterns that form, break apart and form into new patterns when you look through a kaleidoscope.  It was a bubble world, safe, loving, perfect.  Until it was smashed to pieces and no matter how hard the grown-ups tried, they could not put it back together.

I haven't seen a firefly in a very long time, but every time I see a fairy I think of you.  Once we were three.  Beauty, Brain and Toad.