Page 73 of And Still Her Voice
Homecoming
October, 1969: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Los Angeles where the local time is three-twenty p.m. and the temperature is a warm ninety-two degrees,” our airline pilot announced. “The Santa Ana Winds are coming out of the northeast twenty to thirty miles per hour.”
The winds make me nervous. Joan Didion wrote about theseason of suicide and divorce and prickly dread,wherever the wind blows.My parent’s trial separation (divorce wasn’t allowed in the Catholic church) had been imminent and my father had taken his life.
I stood out on the curb waiting for my ride in my lace up leather moccasins and a knee- length purple wool coat. The October weather in New York had been the opposite of Los Angeles. I took off my coat and sat on my one piece of thrashed luggage. The air, zapped of any moisture, turned my skin lizard-like.
An empty bag of Bugles chips, a snack we never had at home, floated by. The bag, like a body having served its purpose, now just useless garbage, was being blown back toward the ocean. Ifelt like useless garbage and just wanted to go down to the beach. I was more surprised than nervous when Maggie finally appeared. I didn’t recognize her until she removed her Jackie O sunglasses, but then off my look, she said, “Blue contact lenses.” Her eye shadow matched the color of the sun-bleached sky. Bleached also was her hair which looked strange next to her skin, a darker shade than mine. Wearing a short polyester paisley dress and black vinyl boots, she looked like she’d just stepped out of the cover ofSeventeenmagazine.
“Sorry, the traffic really blows,” she said, moving in for a side hug, one of those tentative greetings or farewell half embraces our family gave, if any at all.
The syrupy scent of Windsong perfume lingered as she pulled away. Welcome home, Anna and—” she said, her eyes probing mine. “Grandma Phoebe.”
Taken aback, before I could ask what or how she knew anything about Grandma, Grandma, being all about manners and such, said, “Thank you, Margaret. You look nice.”
“Thanks, Grandma, and I can’t wait to hear more about this transfer of consciousness thing. Mom filled me in. It all makes sense now, weirdo. With you coming home, she thought it was best I know.”
“What about the others?” I asked.
“Not yet. It’s going to be a rite of passage sort of thing. Not ’til they’re mature enough to grasp this hippy-dippy shit.” Maggie raised her hand, salute-like, to measure our heights, from the top of my head to hers. “Hey, I’m taller than you now.”
“And so? Are we still competing?”
“No, just saying.”
Back home, nicks on the kitchen wall marked our height. Always a competition, I’d notice Maggie’s subtle tiptoeing. We’d race in the backyard to see who could run the fastest, who couldthrow a rock the furthest, who could jump the highest. We’d stick our arms out to compare who was tanner.
“Anyway, no fair. You’re wearing heels,” I said, “but your boobs look bigger.”
“It’s the pill.” She smiled, pulling her shoulders back as I followed her to the parking garage where she stopped next to a new compact white Ford Falcon sedan.
“Yours?”
“Bought it with my own money.”
I put my luggage in the back seat and then slid onto the vinyl passenger seat. It was the first time I’d ever smelled that new car smell. “Nice ride. You must be doing well at the bank.”
“I am,” she said, adjusting her glasses as she looked into the rearview mirror from where a string of rosary beads hung. “It’s also how we got the apartment we’re living in.”
She must be dating the bank president, I thought, unfairly, as she backed out.
Ahead of her, she had her whole life planned out. I envied her vision for her future. She’d work for a while longer at the bank while she finished college—going to college had never been in the cards for me—and then she’d buy her own place with her own money. I’d already dashed any of Mom’s hopes that I would be the perfect Mexican daughter who waited for marriage before leaving home. And now Maggie wasn’t about to marry anyone, much less anyone who didn’t come to the table with his own income. He had to have a college degree like she was working toward, he had to wear nice shoes, and he couldn’t be a drinker.
She caught me noticing the turquoise ring on her finger. “I love it, thank you again. So now tell me about this phenomenon where you share a consciousness with Grandma,” she asked as we drove past the entrance to Griffith Observatory.
“It’s complicated. It’s like–remember that time we went up to the observatory?”
“You mean when Michael walked off holding another woman’s hand thinking it was Mom.” Maggie laughed. “It was dark. He couldn’t tell.”
“Maybe he did know. Anyway, I remember looking through that giant telescope, seeing all the stars and finally those weren’t just shadows on the moon, they were mountains. Only with time and distance—”
“I wonder if now you can see the flag Neil Armstrong planted?”
So much for trying to explain Grandma and how until recently it had been like looking through a kaleidoscope of loud colors.
***
We turned onto Brand Avenue. “So that’s why I need to go to India. I think it might hold the answers as far as finding a way to undo what Grandma has done.”
