I come from a generation of women who have dealt with situations that made them grow vindictive and hard around the crevices that God made to be the softest. I come from a generation of women who have been called crazy, a little unwell and a little unlovable.
My great-grandmother lived in the time when feet had to be crushed small, when the bones you were born with weren’t good enough and had to be wrapped in layers of bandage and made to bleed until beautiful. My great-grandmother didn’t live very long but lived just enough to give life to so many children that my grandmother was the one she didn’t want to keep.
My grandmother was sold to a foreign family and throughout her life, growing up, she sold lettuce and simple vegetables on the streets of sidewalks to get by. Later on, I would understand why my grandmother took home left-over french fries from Mcdonald’s to reheat later and kept every extra ketchup packet. She would scold my mother for throwing away bread that would mold and food that had been long-expired. My mother would often whisper in my ear, “your grandmother is a war-victim” and I didn’t truly understand until I got older and pieced together the story, myself.
I think my grandmother fell in love, once. Once was enough for her to question all male identity and to lecture me when I came home in the 2nd grade and told her about the boy who gave me a flower. “All men are scumbags,” she would basically say in chinese when the language barrier hadn’t yet grown too thick. I would just nod and forget, nod and forget.
She fell in love with the man who she would later walk in on with another woman. The other woman would be her best friend who had only one arm. My mother tells me, though, that my grandmother did not cry. But not only does infidelity break a woman’s heart— she hated herself for not being as worthy as another woman who had no arm. Nobody could tell her that it wasn’t her fault, that there was nothing wrong with her, that she didn’t need to change.
But I think she did, anyway.
Jealousy became the soul of my grandmother but when I look into her eyes, I know that she is so wonderful and loving. Pain can change a person. Pain can change a lot.
She met my grandpa a few years later and had my mother. I think she did love him, but with caution and less ease. One morning, while her and my ma were wrapping zongzi (taiwanese rice in leaves), she kept dropping them and missing the table. My ma said there was nothing wrong with my grandmother’s eyesight, that something felt wrong about the air.
My grandpa died the next day. That was my grandmother’s last marriage.
Over the years, she would dedicate herself to loving me when my mother was too young to. She would pay for my mother’s trip to America to start her life over and she would raise me to love the color red and big, extravagant hats.
I would sit beside her and watch her reflection as she applied bright red lipstick to her lips in the dresser mirror. She would smile at me, tell me to scoot closer and make me pucker up. “Just don’t tell your mother,” and I would giggle. I used to be a lot more like my grandmother, my mother tells me. I wanted to grow up too fast and I wanted to wear heels at age five and I absolutely loved red nail polish, she would tell me. My grandmother taught me how to be a woman before I could read or write.
My grandmother was my rock. She was my steel soldier, my only guidance to what a woman should be and how a woman should love. She would be the one who would hold all of my secrets, my fears of my biological father, my wishes for her to take my mother and me away. She would be the first number I would dial when he would come home late at night and I knew it was going to be another one of those nights. She would be the first one to teach me how to dial 9-1-1. She would be the one who made sure I was fed, that my skin wasn’t bruised, that my eyes weren’t too soiled, too young. My grandmother was my hope, strapped on a dangling string, held like glass held between my palms that would bleed and she would be the one to make all of it stop.
I can’t really talk to her anymore. The years and the age have caught up and made her weak in her bones and in her speech. I avoid looking at her sometimes because I feel shame for not taking care of her enough, for not loving her more, for not showing it the best I could, for not being able to communicate and open up like I used to when I was little. Sometimes she’ll look at me and smile, weak but always the same. The kind of smile that says to me I will still love you the way I always have even if time and circumstances and life changes.. even if we change.
I remember hearing a song come up on the television, once and it was the same song she would sing to me when I was little, the same song I would struggle but learn to learn. I asked, excitedly, “Nainai, do you remember this song? It’s the song you used to sing to me!” She would nod and chuckle but in a way that made me realize she couldn’t remember. But she smiled because I did.
And I turned my face quickly to hide away the salt rolling onto my cheeks because my grandmother taught me not to cry.
Invitation
I’m inviting my few good followers on here to join me on Facebook since I may not be on here much longer. See “Unca Cliff” on fb.
What’s the advantage in this tumblr. over Facebook anyway? Photo displays are much better on FLickr, and you can have that automatically posted on fb. Friends and comments are easier to find on fb. If you like writing you can post notes on fb. Here I have to search through the dashboard to find friend’s comments. I don’t know, it just seems a little outdated.
