Short Story: Grandma Brooklyn

We got the call that she had fallen and didn’t get up. This was years in the making. The first time we got that call was when we were on a vacation in Florida. My crying yet unsurprised mother had been somewhat waiting for that call but really never being ready. When are you ever ready for the call that a family member you love has died? Fortunately for us it was only a scare. The next few years had this collectively held breath within our minds, waiting and knowing that any phone call can be the last. And we got that call in May of 2013, the day after I had come back home from my freshman year of college. We let the collectively held breath go, and so did she. We planned a trip to Brooklyn in a matter of hours. Knowing my dad, and I lived with him for 23 years so I can say I know him, it usually takes him two days to not be tired from a long road trip. From Georgia to North Carolina takes a solid six to seven hours if you get stuck in regular traffic. From North Carolina to Brooklyn is eight to ten hours. On top of what we had to deal with, we weren’t going here on the best of terms.

Ten hours in a car, as a regular staple of my childhood, has made me hate road trips. My friends love them and I can’t stand them. When you spent as much of your childhood traveling by car, you’ll understand why you hate being in them for anything longer than an hour. She lived in this senior living apartment on Evergreen in Brooklyn, maybe a good ten minutes away from Flushing Avenue where the G train stops, near an Episcopal church the name of which escapes me. On the fifth floor, the place forever smelled of old people and I can never get that smell out of my mind whenever I go anywhere. It’s not an unclean smell or a damp or moldy one. It’s a distinct one that I always fail at describing. The next four days were pure exhaustion and pettiness. This was the week I found out how petty my family really is.

The casket wasn’t supposed to be open. She looked terrible. The funeral was early in the morning and really we just wanted to get it over with. Both of my parents being pastors, dad was officiating the funeral. When my parents were dating, grandma (technically speaking she was our great grandmother) played a really big role in their lives and helped a lot as they got themselves off the ground. He owed a debt of gratitude to her and it showed. In Hispanic culture, grandma being Ecuadorian, what abuela says is law. You respect her. And so he did. And it went well with him all the days of his life. The room was filled with lives who were grieved at her passing. The microphone was passed around, grieving mouth to grieving mouth. People struggling to hold it together as they remembered how they first came to the states and she opened her doors without concern or repayment or help of any kind. She was a pious Catholic. My family came from South America here, a large chunk of them, and grandma was the door that helped them survive here. The room was filled with love for the open casket. Which wasn’t supposed to be open. I looked to my mother, looking at the sleeping body, and I go “She looks horrible.” I have no sense of reverence. I thought she, in true Hispanic fashion, would take her shoe off and hit me with it but she agreed with me. It wasn’t supposed to be open. Family infighting and a sense of entitlement to controlling the terms of the funeral left it open.

Me, my father and younger brother, and a lot of other family members, carried the casket into the funeral car. Inside the casket was my childhood, the ridiculously amazing chicken soup with was more whole chicken than it was soup, the Christmases and birthdays, and the spanish culture and stories I’ll never know. That day she joined her husband of thirty years and three or four of her seven odd kids gone before her. We jump into our van to go through Brooklyn traffic and follow the funeral car. What amazed me then, and now, years later, was that the traffic didn’t stop fully but it seemed to slow down more so than usual. Like the city knew the kind soul that it had lost, and took its ball cap off in respect. The way you do in church when you wear a hat and someone starts praying so you take the hat off in respect. This wasn’t a cheerful sort of funeral where you go “Let’s celebrate her life and remember her for who she was.” Oh no. God no. This was one of those funerals that could be summed up in a collective sob. I wasn’t like that. I was nineteen and this was my first funeral. I was watching and paying attention. It was all I knew how to do. And so we stepped into the cemetery where she now rests.

The cemetery workers lowered her into the ground, all of our hands holding a healthy rose. The flower was probably the most alive thing we had seen all day, a part of us being lowered into the ground with her. We all dropped our roses onto the casket, sitting as a testament to a part of our lives now gone. I looked at the other gravesites, various tombstones stuck into the ground. Years later I read while browsing online a quote someone had written that said “A cemetery is a place full of people that said ‘I’m right’”. It’s haunted me ever since. She joined her three or four children and her husband of thirty odd years. She never dated again or remarried by her choice. The cemetery workers started throwing dirt onto the plot and we all went to our own ways. My mom, leaning into my father, finally let go. She tried holding tears in for too long. It was the early afternoon and we had a long drive ahead of us. Another ten hours in the car. Nobody said a word the entire trip.

Don't even get me started on the piragua guy that works here.

This past November, fast forward to 2016, my dad texted me to bring back coffee for the house I drank all of it to make sure I can speak coherently at work. I go to the Publix near the house on Kildaire, and walk through the coffee aisle to get the only coffee suitable for our liking: Cafe Bustelo. Before I found it on the shelf I saw this small plastic jar with coffee in it a few steps away from the Cafe Bustelo. Sanka. It had a yellow twist off top to it. Grandma always made cafe con leche when my parents were there and we always wanted some because we wanted to be grown ups and drink coffee for fun. My brother and I used to want to drink coffee for fun. That’s how young we were. And she used Sanka. I remember being six years old when I climbed a footstool to open the cupboard to look for something and I saw that on the wooden shelving. I was twenty-three when I saw it again. And I remember going, in my head, “That looks famili...oh.” I bought the coffee, and stepped into my car. The remainder of the grocery visit was silent. I pulled the skin on my face down with my left hand, breathed a frustrated sigh. Now it affects me. Now it kicks me and when it does it kicks hard. But why now? I may never know that answer. I drove home in silence.

Short Story: Waffles

I’m up at 2:15am and I’m ready to head back home. I had decided to go to bed early the night before so I can drive through the night and cut through rush hour traffic in Charlotte. I brushed my teeth, threw my luggage back in my car, and realized I needed something to eat. Seven hours on an empty stomach is a surefire way for me to hate myself and other drivers. My going to bed early resulted in me getting two hours of crap sleep because commanding my body to do anything is an exercise in futility. I wanted to go home and get away from the week. We couldn’t agree on a place to live and we were nearing a deadline for when we had to move somewhere, it turns out that picking a place to live for the next year is a bigger deal than I had thought, and it left everyone with a bad taste in our mouths and I wanted to go home and detox. Slowly seeping into my head was the fact that I was going to be living in this area and it was going to be a lot sooner than I had previously thought. I didn’t want to think about any of that. I just wanted food.

Oh you know you're doing something wrong if your heart isn't calcifying by looking at this photo.

I throw my things into my car as quietly as I know how to throw anything. I had been staying at a friend’s place for the trip and I didn’t wanna wake anyone up. Now, I’m about as quiet as a car accident when I’m trying to move around but I guess trying to stay quiet counts for something in my mind. I turn my car on and let it sit there while I close my eyes and run my hand through my hair, sighing the exhausted and defeated sigh that we all sigh when life doesn’t go our way. This was the week that I saw in practice the life lesson I still refuse to accept: Just because you’re willing to bend over backwards for someone doesn’t mean they will reciprocate. Compromise was a one way street this week. I could feel my hairs graying in my hand as I drew the color out of them when my fingers parted through knots and frayed ends. I wasn’t ready to move but I wasn’t afraid of it. I didn’t want to think about any of that. I just wanted food. And I knew there was a Waffle House nearby. Saved.

Waffle House sits well in my soul and in my arteries. While you may end up at other places like Denny’s or Huddle House, Huddle House being Waffle House’s trampy younger sister, you go to Waffle House. There was never a time in my life that couldn’t be aided by a bowl of cheese grits and a waffle from a waiter who still reeks of the Newport cigarettes she huffed down in a hurry in the parking lot, that small window being the only break she may have had in the past ten hours of a busy night. Waffle House locations are either strategically placed or hidden away somewhere. It always looked weird to me that there were Waffle House locations in building complexes, nuzzled away inside the complex like a big Lego piece. Those locations are typically smaller and they look limited. The ones that are hidden away, like this one, you have to look for because they’re an oasis in a desert when you’re driving and want something to eat.

It’s about 2:30am now and I pull into the parking lot of this empty Waffle House. The last small group of people, about two our three people that are maybe slightly older than me, head out so it’s just me and the waitress. I worked the night shift at a convenience store. America wouldn’t exist without people like us. Idiots who are willing to work at 2:30am for meager pay, long hours, and never hearing that you’re doing a good job. This waitress is tired, doesn’t wanna be there, and she basically knows she works at Waffle House. I’ve never worked in a restaurant before, I don’t intend to start, but I imagine the realization of you working at a restaurant that is socially known as a place where you go to settle a belly full of liquor isn’t exactly the best way to establish self worth. She looked like she hated herself for even thinking working there was a good option. But I don’t imagine people in good life circumstances to choose Waffle House. It’s more like the circumstances force you to pick working there. I work for Fedex. You don’t go to work there. You end up working there. It’s the same principle. It turns out that she more or less ended up there.

She was a nurse in Ohio for years and then moved down to the Lawrenceville area to get away from her family. I was trying to find out why she would exchange being a nurse for a waffle cook. I didn’t get that much information out of her and I don’t think I wanted to know. Some of those kinds of questions have answers that I think would scare me out of wanting to move out of my parents’ house. I don’t even remember how we got on the topic of her moving down here, all I know is that we were talking about it. She kind of avoided the questions a bit, you’re not a social person if you think working at 2:30am is a good choice. You do that so you can avoid people as much as possible. And I understood that. I just wanted my food and that was it but I also knew that the waitress serving me my food is just as human as I am, if not more.

I eat and then I get up to go pay. Nothing special there other than my eating habits resembling that of a lion feasting on the broken throat of its kill. As is Waffle House tradition I hand her my card. Now this is the important part. Because our cards have our full names on it she looks at my card and she stops for all of one second and she looks at my card and she says “I have a two year old son who died in 2012 and his name was Joshua David.” It is 2:50ish in the morning right now, I’m at a Waffle House in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and I hear this sobering statement. I feel like I shouldn’t be surprised that this is what I experience at Waffle House, really I just don’t have any expectations for Waffle House trips other than the cooks not spitting in my food. So far, so good on that one. But this? This is new.

And she gives me what I call “The Mom Look”. And I’m sure everyone has seen this look in action before. It’s the look where you’re doing or saying something and the mother nearby looks at you as if what you’re doing and what you’re saying is reminding you of their own child. As if they’ve mentally swapped you out for their kid and they get that parental glaze in their eyes, for better and worse. That’s how this waitress looked at me. I don’t know if that’s why she left Ohio. I don’t know if that had anything to do with her working at Waffle House. That look she gave me still hasn’t left my memories and I suspect it to never leave. It’s a stamp on a hard reality check that these normal workers are just as shattered and devastated at life’s relentless cruelty as we are and my God my heart still breaks for that woman.

How do you respond to that? Are you meant to respond to that? Nobody gives you instructions for how to deal with that. I figured that I would have some sort of pastoral training embedded within me, having grown up with both mom and dad as pastors and being perpetually active in their church. Nope. None of that kicked in. All I knew was how to be human and part of me was not only grieving but sought to grieve too. But what could I say to her? I’m sorry? That doesn’t bring her child back. I didn’t name myself? If you wanna go down the “I’m a scathing asshole” route then yeah but it’s 3:00am now and you don’t need to do that. As Nanny told Janie, she’s a cracked plate. Whatever healing can take place has taken place and is still taking place. Sometimes you’re not meant to respond. Sometimes you can’t help them. You don’t have to be okay with that. There is a natural human trait, inborn in all people, of wanting to help others that we perceive to be in trouble. If my mind was a punching bag then that inborn trait was Mike Tyson in the second round of training his signature right hook-left hook combination. There was nothing I could do. No Jesus to give her. I figured that Jesus is still grieving with her anyways.

I get back in my car and drive home. Five of those seven hours were in complete silence.

Short Story: Slow Cooking

My friend Jared mentioned to me, laughing and in some defensive spirit about my character, that he talked me up to a mutual acquaintance of ours. I just happened to find her very attractive so he played the role of the good friend that tried talking me up, which is an exercise in futility. There is very little good to talk about but I’m biased. He said that he told her:

“Yeah he may be an ass but he will take good care of you.” And honestly it surprised me how confident he was in that assertion.

Did I just read that....yeah...you did just read that.

When I moved down to Atlanta I knew that coming down here would be exhausting. I set out to build my home down here. A place of refuge and stability that I had growing up and then some. I knew it would be hard work but I didn’t know how exhausting it would be. I wake up everyday for work at 2:45am with Sundays being an exception. I wake up at 5:55am for work. Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I work mornings and nights. Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays are days I have class. Mondays I run after class ends at 7:00pm to work at 8:30pm, and Atlanta traffic is set up to where I’m getting to work with five minutes to spare, even though I’m only a few exits away. Wednesdays and Fridays are slightly easier but not by much. It’s work, school, and maybe sleep. Sleep ends up being in the work break room. A dimly lit room with one  bright florescent light that bleeds through your eyelids, a television that’s always set to ESPN to let my coworkers dream their high school athlete dreams of playing. I don’t have the heart to say anything insulting about that to them. I never understood watching football or basketball that avidly. I don’t want to discuss anything like sports at 12:30am after loading planes. I want my body to stop hurting at that time.

My joints ache and I routinely feel my bones losing cartilage. My feet are crushed against the steel tips of my boots and my sweat sits within my clothing like rain on a car’s windshield. My elbows shred inside my skin and my fingers ache coldly, regularly bending and inappropriately contorting and hitting machinery. Never breaking or dislocating but never sitting comfortably either. I’m young enough to recover from this kind of physical beating but I know in my forties I’m going to be vacuuming enough Tylenol and Advil to kill a bear. I woke up one morning on the break room couch, two hours of crap sleep in my system, and I could feel my lower body fricasseeing in my clothing. A fever. Oh boy. Just the thing everyone wants when they wake up from what really was a nap at work on a stiff couch. I woke up to my body slow cooking like a well seasoned rotisserie chicken in my pants and I was hemmoraghing sweat. The back of my skull pulsed and throbbed like Stravinsky’s orchestra the night that his Rite of Spring premiered and I was boiling.

I didn’t go home. That would’ve been too easy and too smart of me to do. I got up, put my work boots back on, and felt every fissure and crack and crevice in my body fill with lava. I was on fire and my blood could probably boil a tea bag. I was cooking inside my own skin. I run my hands down my face slowly, stretching out the forming wrinkles and newly grayed hairs that stood as a testament to time bitching at my body. A testament to stress and my capitalist worship. I walk into the ramp office and lay down there against the long desks that overlook the ramp and the taxiway. Five planes in, two planes out. Three and a half hours of this and I didn’t want to die. There isn’t a difference between being stubborn and being stupid to me. I mixed those two lines together back in high school. It was at this point that I could feel my sweat velcroing my skin to my clothing. I could walk out right now and go home and still get paid for doing it. I’d get written up and ruin any potential of having a good reputation here when I leave but I would be okay with it, all I had to say is that I had gotten sick. Yet I’m stubborn.

I can’t sleep with my upper body slumped against the counter like that so I just keep my head down. It stopped the kick drum playing triplets on the back of my head. I look up and see against the computer monitor stand is a little white package. I reach out for it and my arm feels like pure steel. Heat and pressure pushing against my elbows and phalanges as I try to use them at least one more time before I willingly die from what could be classified as a low boil going on in my work pants. Extra Strength Pain Relief. That’s what was lying against the small space in the computer monitor. I looked at it for at least two second before I felt, not heard, a voice, in the sound of the silence that was in my head, say “You have to keep going”. I felt tears wanting to form. I couldn’t explain to you how I felt cared for in that moment but I did. Like my mom was looking over me and could hear her son’s blood boiling in his veins as he wanted to die from this new sickness. You really have to be a special breed of dumb to continue like this.