Granny

by Deirdre Abrahamsson

We made the round of relatives from Tuam to Gowna to Malin Head, before we finally arrived in Ardee.

"Come in, come in, how was the drive?" Uncle Tony ushered us in to the back rooms of his pub, to the warmth of the kitchen.

We carried our bags upstairs, down the dark hallway to our drafty, dusty rooms. A single bed in each, and heavy drapes across the windows. We scurried back downstairs, to a meal awaiting us--chips and sausages and rashers, all smothered in brown sauce and ketchup--chased down by glasses of orange that Uncle Tony brought us in from the bar.

More talk of traveling, the roads we took, the way we should have come to get there sooner. Time for us kids to leave the kitchen. These conversations had gotten old, and there was nothing for us to say.

With our pockets full of pence and pounds, we headed down the road to O'Connell's sweet shop and loaded up on Maltesers, Flakes, and Curly Wurlys. Our cousins led the way to the playground just along the river, where we played for hours, until it was time to go back.

Dad was upstairs in the sitting room watching television. We filed in, John, Siobhan, and me. The cousins too.

We looked at the TV, we picked up books, a newspaper, Bunty magazines.
Distracted.

With a creak of the sitting-room door, Aunt Katherine brought her in.

My grandmother, my father's mother. Walking, but frail, Aunt Katherine led her to the seat by the window.

She sat in the chair, silent, glancing at us and the TV. She wore a gray dress, just past her knees. Her legs were thick in her flesh-colored stockings, and she wore heavy black lace-up shoes. Her hair was short, curly, gray. She wore glasses. She looked sad, uncertain, maybe afraid.

"Well," my father asked, his voice unusually high. "What do you think of the kids? Who do they look like?"

He had already been to see her in her room, giving her the carton of cigarettes he bought from duty free.

She didn't answer, but she looked at us.

My eyes stung as I stared hard at my magazine, words and pictures swimming.

My father watched TV and made occasional small talk with my grandmother, waiting for her to respond. She rarely did.

You could cut the discomfort with a knife, it lay so thick in the room, smothering us all.

I vaguely remembered my grandmother from earlier times, when she lived in the house on Cavan Road. We would stay there for a few days on our trips to Ireland, another set of drafty rooms, the house where my father grew up. I have memories of her by the hearth in her kitchen, preparing tea. Sitting in her living room on a Sunday morning while Father Michael said mass. Glimpses of her, but no memory of her voice, what she said to us, what she said to my parents.

And now here she sat with us, near us, but not with us, voiceless again. I waited to be dismissed by my father, so I could go downstairs, go outside, and breathe again.

As usual, nothing was said afterwards. No explanation, no reassurance. We were silenced too.

There were stories overheard in passing, stories loosely pieced together over time. Over twenty years of depression. She gave birth to nine children, something was not right, was never right. Whispers of hospitalization and electric shock treatment.

A half-guessed story, never fully told. Just weighing on us, on me, uncomfortably, as my grandmother's presence pained me and scared me and made me feel guilty that something was wrong. All those times we went to visit her at Uncle Tony's pub, not once do I remember kissing her cheek, putting my arms around her shoulders, holding her hand. Did she dress up for us?

Was she excited to have us visit and sad to see us leave? What did she want to say to us? Who did I look like? Her sister Cassie told me long after that I looked a lot like her. Brigid was her name. She has been dead now for over ten years, and I still don't know her story. My father never told me. And I never asked.