imperial violet

MORE TICKLES THAN PUNCHES

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

birfday brisket and pot ash redux

**WELLSY WELLSY WELLSY, IN THE NOW PASSING STORM OF 15 + HOUR WORK DAYS AND VOLUMINOUS TIME WITH AN ISRAELI SNIPER, VIOLET'S HAD HER ONE YEAR BLOG BIRTHDAY, I'M ALMOST ALL GROWED UP. IN THE NEXT YEAR I VOW TO POST MORE OFTEN, EAT MORE CHEESE, AND CURE BERSITIS. ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO SEE FROM ME? JUST FOR FUN, HERE'S A REDUX OF THE POST THAT LAUNCHED THIS HERE BERG**

my grandmother was the stuff of legends, a mythical gaudy creature. a heartbreaker. according to family lore, she shuffled off the squaresville coil of her air force officer husband and six daughters to run away with a small time gangster named big al. they took it on the lam with a bun in the oven and several thousand dollars of the bank's money. apparently they were fairly inept, as gangsters go, and ran out of money in a small town called garden city. shortly after the birth of their baby, big al was found hung on a meat hook. so there she was, one baby, zero cash, and six kids abandoned in the beehive state. and there she stayed.

my mom finally took me, via amtrack, to meet her, when i was 14. i imagined a femme fatale, all red lipstick and super slim cigarettes. i imagined a cruel beauty. the woman who made my own mom crazy. what i found was an old broad with yellowed skin and big pores, who smoked lots of non filtereds and lived in a trailer. she fixed us bologna sandwiches and talked about brisket. all of her stories revolved around cooking and eating really delicious brisket. though we, ourselves, on this particular trip, never ate any. she smelled like soup and i didn't like her.

the doctors told her alcohol would kill her and it did. 10 years later we took another train to her funeral. she had been cremated and the plan was to bury her ashes at my mom's oldest sister's farm in iowa. grandma's ashes were collected in a glass 'sun tea' container which spent the afternoon on the kitchen table. annie, the only baby she kept, the daughter of big al, showed up in a tight tee shirt with fringes secured by sparkly beads. it read 'my body is an outlaw, it's wanted in 7 states.' she was the prodigal and the other girls clearly resented her. then there was jim, grandma's boyfriend. he was a man, missing an arm and with a penchant for long, lingering hugs. he was the sad hero of the affair, the boy who'd lost his girl. at the ceremony, we were all asked to pour little peices of grandma into the rose bushes while aunt mary played 'glory of love', by peter cetaris on a boombox. i started to cry. not regular crying, but those deep, earth shaking sobs usually reserved for the worst dreams. i didn't know this woman, i didn't like this woman, i held her responsible for all sorts of nastiness and yet here it was. she was a woman and a mother and a person who someone loved. she drank and smoked and ate brisket and died. and there you have it.

jim ended up giving everyone from the funeral party head lice and we spent the next few days washing and picking through our hair with an impossibly tiny metal comb. then he called everyone and asked them to join the 'friends and family' plan from m.c.i. but no-one felt much like doing it.