Interactive Writer’s Workshop: Mireille

Okay y’all, so this is the first installation of Interactive Writer’s Workshop! It’s a piece I have been writing in bits and pieces since May about my grandmother, Mireille (pronounced Meer-ay with a heavy French accent). It’s most certainly a work in progress, but I’m feeling stuck. I hate disclaimers before a piece so I won’t write one, but I will admit that’s it’s really hard not to. In any case, please be honest! 

Also, please excuse the lack of indentations/formatting. WordPress ain’t tryna let me be great *side eye*

My grandmother, the woman who once scrupulously watched international and local news and derided soap operas, is now wildly entertained by Jerry Springer reruns. I suppose it’s kind of funny when you think about it. She doesn’t really know what’s going on, but she gets excited when the audience chants, “JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!”

Before she went to live in the home, she was particularly moved by one of those commercials for injury lawyers. You know the ones that are often badly acted and feature some catchy jingle to remember the number to call? Well, there is a J.G. Wentworth commercial that features an operatic ditty, imploring watchers to “Call JG Wentworth, 877-CASH NOW!” She was reverential about this commercial. No one could speak when it came on. Her eyes would close peacefully as she jerked her arms about like a conductor and swayed. In that moment, I could see her sitting in the living room of that tiny apartment on West 93^rd street, listening to classical music on the radio and humming along with that same jerk and sway.

There are ways in which I am my mother’s child: my love for anagrams and Scrabble, my inability to do just one thing at a time, my penchant for ordering food with cream-based sauces, my willingness to sacrifice my comfort for kindness. There are ways in which I am a mirror of my father: my gift for mediation, my annoying habit to take on people’s accents when I speak to them, my spirituality and my short temper. But indelibly, in a way that cannot be fully explained and does not need to be understood, I am my grandmother’s child.

It’s no secret that I am my grandmother’s favorite. She never tried to hide it. I did everything my grandmother asked of me and in return, I received lavish praise. I’ve always been enamored with her. She became my world since my mother was always at work.

 She picked me up from school almost everyday and asked me about what I did in class. She would prepare me a snack when we got home, which was usually one of two things: Italian bread slices perfectly toasted to dip in my cup of milky Sanka or various sugary cereals poured into that same milky Sanka. I never liked milk so instead of fighting with me, when my Grandma realized I liked coffee, she just substituted one for the other.

It was she who untangled my unruly knots and created four neat plaits on my head—one for each corner. Even as her hands pinched with arthritis, she twisted and pulled my hair into these sections. I detested the style. I always longed for the impressive designs of my other friends who would get braids with rows of beads or the girls who had 10 barrettes dangling from their heads. Grandma found the excessive trinkets to be gaudy and declined my requests.

She taught me everything I know about decorum and being a lady. She would constantly creep behind me to remind me to straighten my spine, admonishing me in French for slouching. She drilled me on my “pleases” and “thank yous.” She taught me how to properly set a table, watching me as I practiced placing the glasses in the proper angle from the knife.

I watched her every week as she painstakingly gave herself the most thorough manicure I have ever witnessed, always using the dusty rose shade on her nails. I would scramble into her room when she sprayed her texturized curls with Wave Nouveau because I loved its smell. I studied her as she chose the right accessories to pair with her perfectly assembled outfits. Nothing was ever out of place.

I think I obsessed over these rituals because it was one of the few opportunities I had to see who she was outside of being my grandmother and my mother’s mother. But I still wanted more. What did she love about herself? What were the secret memories that would make her hold back her smile?

I would get other quick glimpses of Grandma, The Woman. When she would hungrily eat grilled corn on the cob without thinking about the way she chewed. When she would suck her teeth longer and louder than any of her other friends as they gossiped in Kreyol. When she would laugh openly until her stomach hurt and she’d say, “Woiii! Mwen pa kapab!” waving her hand in defeat and wiping the tears from her eyes. The fullness of this unfettered Grandma enchanted me. I always wondered why she wrestled her untamed beauty into good posture and ironed shirts.

When I go to see my grandmother in the nursing home now, she always gasps in surprise, tells me she’s been waiting for me and showers my face with kisses. Sometimes, she cries with joy. The guilt is most potent when she cries.

My grandmother suffers from early onset dementia. Thank God, she still remembers who her immediate family is. I try not to think about the possibility that there will come a day when she doesn’t recognize my face. She struggles more with the mechanics of living: she can’t walk anymore, she wears a diaper and she has forgotten how to swallow her food. I have found her holding food in her mouth hours after she was scheduled to eat.

I often come around mealtime since I’ll typically go after work, so I try to get her to eat while we watch Family Feud. She will make comments here and there—about Steve Harvey being some doctor she knew in Haiti, about the vivid colors on the TV, about things only her mind can understand—but it’s largely me trying to think of things to say in an attempt to quell my discomfort.

I like when we get to take my grandmother out of the nursing home. For holidays and her birthday, we bring her to the family gatherings. Grandma is at her best when she’s not in the home. She dances in her wheelchair, often to a rhythm no one else can hear. She laughs that hearty laugh and there is an air of contentment that lifts everyone in the room.

Every time, she takes a moment to express how happy she is to be with everyone and how beautiful life is. It makes me want to lock her in a never-ending embrace as I watch her eyes close and the peace wash over her—much like it does for those JG Wentworth commercials.

The best thing is that she is now completely unconcerned with matters of comportment. She’s gotten progressively funnier and more brazen—more real. The button that she worked so hard to keep shut has burst open.

At Mother’s Day brunch this year, she stole my sunglasses from the table, put them on and said, “Ca me va bien.” This looks good on me. She angled her head left and right and encouraged me to take a photo. She took them off, but whenever she became bored by our conversation again, she would put them back on and zone out to her own rhythm. It was utterly delightful.

Where there were once tiny peeks into the woman behind my grandmother, I feel as though I am now seeing her spirit in full.