The Queen of North Street

We all die a little bit every day. Some people, like my grandmother, commit suicide slowly. By the time I came around she was nearly gone.

My whole life she struggled to breathe. I don’t remember what I called her, but her name was Doris. Maybe I called her grandma. I never called her granny. She might have wanted us to, coming from Georgia and all. But, Granny was a character in Looney Toons not a person I knew.

The way her body laid in bed created the illusion she was covered in blankets, but she was always too hot for covers. Her fleshy folds spilled out everywhere, barely hidden by a thin house dress. She was large, but everybody is to a six-year-old.

It was a hospital bed. It moved up and down by pushing buttons. An arm extended from the head up and over and dangled a giant triangle so she could pull herself up. It looked like a hangman’s gallow. 

It also reminded me of a cherry picker my uncle once borrowed to lift the engine from his canary yellow, seventy-something Camaro. One day I thought that car should be green. I took a Crayon to it and cost my uncle a paint job.

I would sit on the floor in her room, starving for attention. The concrete cooled my little sun-kissed body. I’d count the pebbles in the smooth surface, trying to jostle some loose. My army figures would jump from stone-to-stone. Between them flowed lava or rushing waters, or something else you should avoid on a mission.

Having no idea I was in the room, she’d yell.

“Tony!”

I’d leap up, killing a few of the remaining cells in her well-worn heart.

“I need some ice!”

Those two words, I need, were why I sat on the floor. Nothing meant more to a boy like me.

She had an array of hospital-provided thirty-two oz cups with straws. I’d always get crushed ice since her toothless gums couldn’t handle the larger pieces.

Years later, I’d do the same for my mom as she laid in a similar bed, bleeding internally.

I’d run as fast as possible, fill the cup to the brim, then race back to her.

“I need my cola,” she’d plead.

I don’t remember whether or not she had an accent. She had to, being from Tifton. People rarely come from there without an accent, and rarely lose it when they do. Maybe hers was obscured by the slur of a toothless dying woman.

Her “cola” was cherry flavored Faygo, which she kept in stacked cardboard cases along one side of the room.

When she needed to be sat up to see the TV, she’d yell. When she couldn’t reach her St. Joseph’s branded glassware, she’d yell. When she needed a new lighter for her Virginia Slims, she’d yell.

Eventually, she had a bell installed in the living room with a string that led back to her. For a dying woman, pulling a string is easier than yelling. It was one of those little golden ones like on the Bailey Christmas tree in It’s a Wonderful Life. If Angel’s get their wings every time a bell rings, there’s a dominion that owes allegiance to the Queen of West North Street.

We’d watch Night Court. Me on the concrete. Her in the bed. She’d laugh. I don’t remember what her laugh sounded like, just that her whole body jiggled when she did.

You could tell she was once tiny and vibrant. Her bright red lipstick is evident in the black and white photographs our family still has. Her dress always snuggly fit her curves. Her right knee bent to showcase her best angle. Almost always, the photos were posed in front of her gardenia bush. The white, fragrant blossoms, casting ephemera, enhanced her splendor.

Poppy looked the same as I remember him, just darker. He had that Greco nose, bushy dark eyebrows, and the widow’s peak I now see in the mirror. He’d leave the top two or three buttons undone on a thin polyester shirt, under which a white sleeveless helped protect his furry skin from the Tampa heat.

I knew the look well. He kept it until he died at 86. With her wrapped around him he seemed different. He was more confident than I remember him—happy, even.

She only got out of bed for food.

Poppy was an incredible cook. Apparently, he learned from her, but I never saw her at the stove. She drank her breakfast and lunch in bed, a combination of Faygo and Ensure. Still, she’d make her way down the hall for his dinners.

When she’d get there, we’d help her sit down. She’d put all her weight on the table while we positioned a chair. Then she’d fall back like a flour sack. Her face was ghostly and sweaty. I couldn’t see her lips anymore. I never saw her dead body, but I imagine it was much the same. I looked forward to seeing her at the table. I missed her when she couldn’t make the journey.

Doris was a sick woman long before she was in that bed. Who knows what came first? Was it the depression, the addiction, the weight, diabetes, heart disease, the Faygo, ambulance rides, the yelling, the crying, the anger? I’ve lived long enough to know they all feed each other. With my mother, I’ve had a front-row seat to how it could’ve happened.

It would be easy to turn her into a caricature like the mom in that Johnny Depp movie. But, I don’t remember them talking about getting a crane to remove her when she died.

I was 7. She was 63.

I remember sitting in the living room with many people. Some of them I knew and some I didn’t. Like all Italians in my family, they smoked, played cards, and talked loudly. I don’t remember much crying. I couldn’t cry.

Somewhere along the way, I associated death with beds.

Who knows where these thoughts begin, or why six-year-olds think them?

I thought they were for dying. I slept in my mother’s bed many nights as a boy. Sometimes it was because there were no other beds. Other nights I was scared she’d die.

I’d stay up as long as I could, watching her chest rise and fall, and making sure she still breathed. What would I do if she stopped? Maybe I’d call 911 as fast as possible? Maybe I’d jump up and down on her, mimicking what I’d seen on M.A.S.H.? Whatever action was needed (that word again), I’d fix it. 

For some reason, the most emotionally compelling show on television right now is Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. The concept is ridiculous, but it works.

Among some clichéd storylines is one about a father dying with a disease that has locked down his body but spared his mind. Her father sings from his heart to her.

After a magical MRI machine zapped her pretty, young head, Zoey hears heart songs in a way that has yet to be explained. It’s like What Women Want as if written by a musical theater nerd.

When we watched the season finale, the inevitable happened; the ill-stricken father died. As I watched an incredibly well-done, single-shot scene—that captured each main character singing Don McClean’s American Pie—I found what I was meant to write about this week. Home.

So, here I am. Trying to write about home. And I’m lost. I’m stuck on my dead grandmother. 

My thoughts and words meander like an ant on a wall: falling, but trying again. Don’t we all watch ants thinking, they have no idea where in the hell they’re going?  

Why am I writing about a woman I barely knew?

If this were a book, I’d tell her whole story. I’d walk you through her childhood in the deep southern piedmont of Georgia. I’d weave a narrative through the heartache and joy that surely came along with being the mother to seven from at least three fathers. I’d try to understand her in a way I didn’t have time to when she was alive.

I may even tell the story of her gardenia bush and how we all associated it with her. I’d tell you how my mother took a clipping and tried to make it live after they sold the house. I’d try to explain the pain I felt when I drove by years later—to show it to the woman who’d become my wife—just to find out the new owners had cut it down. They paved over it with concrete.

But, I’m tired.

I’m listening to the Avett Brothers, which is usually an excellent choice to put me in the mood for creativity. King has Metallica; I have Seth and Scott.

They’re now singing to me, “go to sleep, my man.” 

So, I will. 

Maybe tomorrow this will make more sense. Maybe then I’ll remember what a home is. Maybe I’ll be able to reach deep into that twisted gut of mine and pull out a memory worth describing, or a feeling worth reliving.