Heavy Air

“Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?”

From “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats

The house was breathing loudly. Inhaling as if lifting heavy air – some of it spilling over and through the fingers. Falling in plops. Like molasses. Exhaling was a train braking, with no station in sight. I tensed, waiting for the derailment, until the heavy air lifted once more. And somewhere in my waiting darkness the uneven rhythm lured me into a fitful sleep.

The summer before, when I was five and my sister was six, my MamaGran was attacked by her generous heart. It began for me with MayCath’s hysterics interrupting my dreams. My sister and I stood on the edges listening to MamaGran’s gasping while our youngest aunt, MayCath, ran next door, screaming for her older sister, our Aunty Vonne.

Aunt Yvonne called the doctor from her house because MamaGran had no phone. Leaving MayCath on the porch with her hysterics to wait for whoever would come, Aunt Yvonne brought a wave of calm into MamaGran’s house. The three of us rode it together as we listened to MamaGran trying to push air through her lungs and patted her arm in turns.

“They’re here,” MayCath eventually called out in whispered urgency. Not sure who “they” were, I saw strangers lifting MamaGran like a baby and carrying her and Aunty Vonne away in their van. We were left with MayCath, barely a teenager herself, who never in her grief and worry thought to explain to two quiet little girls, the urgency, the possibilities. We had never known someone to go away and never come back.

Throughout the following weeks I heard adults talking about MamaGran’s large heart, as her bed and bedroom were made ready for her return. Our father came South early to pick us up for the return trip to Chicago – or so I supposed. I think now he’d rushed down “just in case” MamaGran’s heart was indeed as large as her generosity and gave her similar troubles.

A tall, hippy woman with big feet and raised blue veins on her hands, MamaGran’s light skin was darkened with dots of liver spots and moles. Her salty hair was thick, long, and easily tangled like mine; both of us were tender headed. When mama combed my hair, I’d squirm and cry out as she pulled my scalp with the tangles. Mama would give me a sharp hit in the head with the comb and scold, “Be still, girl!” If I could, I’d run to MamaGran before mama could get to my head. I still squirmed when MamaGran combed by hair but I never cried out. MamaGran knew my pain; she never pulled my scalp or hit me. Because I had her hair and tender head, I feared getting MamaGran’s large and tender heart as well.

When I learned the difference between large and enlarged, being big hearted stopped being a double-edge sword I ducked in fear that my every kind deed would viciously turn to bite back.

The summer following MamaGran’s attack, I saw the result of a heart that was too large. MamaGran moved slowly and seldom left the front porch. She tended her garden sparingly and went to church only if offered a ride. Her rose bushes started to stoop as much as she now did. But from the porch swing, she’d watch us hopping the pattern we had drawn in Aunty Vonne’s driveway dirt between the two front yards, or teaching the southern girls how to jump double dutch with the clothesline. 

Many evenings Bubba and his sister Jean and some of the Klines crossed the street to play pitty pat or smut in the parlor room. A fireplace was handy to provide the soot for whoever lost at smut and MayCath’s piano provided entertainment for whoever had to sit out a hand of pitty pat. MamaGran never played piano or cards but I could see her through the screen door watching us from the porch.

MamaGran still sent us to tell the man on the truck to stop by so she could select three watermelons – one to eat immediately and two to put under the house to keep cool for later. She’d also buy a half-bushel of peaches to can, instead of her usual bushel or more. We still helped her by washing and rinsing jars and lids, but instead of peach cobbler we got banana pudding as payment. And she sat rather than stood as she worked in the kitchen. Most of the peaches stayed uncanned but not uneaten. MamaGran’s peach tree was also in decline.

Except for the slowing down and the drooping, little else important changed  for us during our summer sojourns at MamaGran’s. When a canning jar broke across my pointing finger, cutting it to the bone, MamaGran was able to bind it tight enough to stop the blood and she even bathed it in Mercurochrome and love enough to stave off infection. When my sister’s last baby tooth hung loose, giving her pain and hunger for solid food, MamaGran was strong enough to tie a string to a doorknob and slam the door to pull it out. There was no blood and my sister screamed only a few seconds, or so it seemed to me. MamaGran was waiting with warm salt water and patting hugs. 

I learned to love banana pudding until I ate nearly a whole one and threw up on MamaGran’s neglected roses. I learned to eat cucumber that grew up on vines in MamaGran’s backyard while missing the greens and root vegetable that required so much bending and digging for cultivation. Aunt Yvonne made sure a telephone was installed in MamaGran's house.

Sometimes, while playing summer games, I was overcome with sudden stillness. I’d glance around for MamaGran and invariably find her close by watching. My eyes became a camera lens and my squint into the sun a shutter as I made pictures of MamaGran to remember: tsking by the rosebush leaning on her hands on her ample hips, veined-fingers spread out and pointing behind her; resting on the back steps slowly snapping beans that pinged in the metal bowl at her slipper-clad feet; sitting on the front porch swing slowly moving wherever the wind wanted her to go. 

And the summer I was six, I lay awake late each night listening to the sound of heavy air and waiting breathlessly for a train to derail.