Page 3 of And Still Her Voice
But the memory pushed up through the grave, or maybe it was a dream, hazy and fickle. I floated up weightless and heard music in a mishmash of color. Just before I got Bella, I sensed something super weird about Grandma, but I couldn’t put the uncomfortable feeling into words like I could with a tummy ache or a wiggly tooth. I’d been too young to understand that Grandma wasn’t the be-all and end-all she’d led me to believe. She used big words that roughed up my throat and ached my gums.Psychology Todaymagazine had yet to be published, besides I’d have been too young to comprehend the psychiatry of narcissism much less the future concept of Stockholm Syndrome. The distinguishing moment came into focus.
I’m four years old and seated at the grand piano we inherited from Grandma, in the chamber room. Trying to master Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,”my small hands stretch across the keyboard,while my two little sisters twirl around the room, leaping from one embroidered flower to the next on the Oriental rug, another hand-me-down from Grandma. Sitting behind me, next to the fireplace, Mamá cradles baby Michael as she keeps talkingabout me to Dad who remains silent. “She has your mother’s ear para la musica.”
As I played the piano, Mamá kept making these comparisons about Grandma and me—as if it might endear us to him or them—like the color of my peach skin or auburn hair, “tambien pelirroja.” I knew when my mother spoke Spanish, for emphasis, she was either super mad or trying to please my father, like it made everything sound a little more pleasant, made her sound more like one of those submissive wives from the Bible that Father Reynoso talked about at Mass. Plus, she didn’t think Grandma understood Spanish, but we did. And they wouldn’t stop yakking about her. Dad finally spoke up. “She’s got Phoebe’s eyes.” He always referred to his mother as Phoebe, or worse, anything but mother. He referred to me as Mouse because my ears stuck out like his, the better to hear with. Lucky me.
“Igual de misterioza,” Mamá whispered low enough, but I still caught on. The one disadvantage to talking about Grandma, in Spanish or English, was that her voice became more acute in my head, like a screeching rat. I stopped playing, swiveled around on the piano bench, and, in a sound unfamiliar to me outside of my head, the voice asked, “Are you talking about me, darlings?”
My parents’ faces turned paler than a couple of Vikings. Dad then beelined it for the kitchen, probably for a beer. At that moment, more than what I said, it was how I said it. Neither “darling” nor “querida” were words in our home’s vocabulary, much less that of a four-year-old, but Grandma had spoken up through me. Again, it’s not that I hadn’t heard her before, but only inside my head, thought-like. Never out loud. Funny, I’d never thought about how the voice in my head sounded out loud. Did it really matter to a four-year-old? Was it so abnormal? But when the strange sound spilled out of my mouth, it felt a bit freaky, to say the least.
Mamá must have figured I was old enough or ready to learn about my condition because, as if one thing connected to the other, she got up to take a seat next to me on the piano bench. “You know what I’ve told you about La Llorona?”
“You mean the crying Mexican lady who drowned her niños?” The story was one she’d tell us kids to keep us in the house after dark.
Mamá nodded and then shook her head. “There’s no such person.”
Whew, that’s a relief—no Llorona. I plinked a few notes on the keyboard. But then, as if the truth about the crying woman was meant to soften the blow, Mamá leaned in and whispered, “Mija, oigame.” I stopped playing and turned to see her eyes darting around like she wanted to make sure we were alone, like La Llorona hadn’t snuck into the room.
“I’m listening.”
“There’s no old woman out there.” She cupped my face, tapping her index finger on my temple. “But there’s one in your cabeza. You were born with your abuela’s mente . . .” She released her hands and my suddenly heavier head dropped.
“Que? Her mind in my head?” I couldn’t quite follow. Besides, did I really need to know? I mean, I barely knew that my favorite color was rainbow and that I loved chocolate and that smell of comfort when you strike a match, but I couldn’t say why I loved Ludwig van Beethoven as much as Elvis Presley. So, Grandma lived in my head. So what? I mean, did I even know that everyone in the world didn’t think the way I did? How should I know most people entered this world alone and died alone?
“Y, a veces su voz comes through, tambien,” Mamá added.
Her voice, too? My lips parted, stale air swathing my heavy tongue, as Dad staggered back into the room slugging down a beer. I pursed my mouth, folded my hands in my lap, and satquietly, the metronome ticking back and forth, my eyes in unison, as I waited.
Dad chugged the last drop and burped. “Isshefinished talking?”
She? I licked my lips and swallowed. So, this wasn’t the first time they heard her noise spilling from my lips. Is this why my tongue felt so tired like stretched-out bubblegum? This was just the first time for me to put one and one together and still come up with only one, the first memory of Grandma and me as a single person. I raised my hand to my mouth and gnawed the skin around my thumbnail until it bled, listening as the grownups went on discussing my situation. I wiped the blood onto the hem of my dress and then pounded down on the keyboard to try and drown out the noise and that’s when Dad grabbed my arm, yanking me off the piano.
He was sorry, but the only solution my parents would come up with was to not talk about it, not the voice; later, not the broken arm. It’s no wonder I became silent, slowly losing my own voice. In kindergarten, my teacher reported to my mom that I seemed to have lots of conversations with someone named “Phoebe” and how I wasn’t interacting with the other children. It didn’t take long to realize that none of the other kids had grandmas who talked to them. Mamá sat me down, stared me in the eyes, and asked Grandma to please leave me alone. That didn’t seem to work, and by middle school, I sat alone to eat lunch, having lost any friends. Even my words left me alone. Keeping me home was for my own protection. Yeah, right.
Around the age of nine, I’d been seated at the piano practicing Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier.” No one else was around, so Grandma took this opportunity to speak up using musical terms to describe the process of the transfer. Sometimes when she spoke in her lyrical way, like some sort of lethal lullaby, I’d fall asleep,but this time she had my full attention. I continued to play the piano, acting like I wasn’t interested in the story of my birth, but I wanted to hear more about it. I couldn’t remember being born, of course, but she said it had been worse than her own death. Never mind the pain Mamá went through carrying me around like a bowling ball for nine months before trying to push me out. Never mind the pain I went through being born.
There’s a reason you don’t remember these sorts of traumas, like when you stab your dad. I had to believe the whole birth process had to be the first worst day of my life, the second would be Dad’s stabbing.
From then on, Grandma and I would sing a discordant duet. She would use music to try and bridge our generational gap and I would keep jumping razor-wire hurdles.
After she’d trespassed and then moved in, literally taking up space—never bothering to knock before entering—her sharp sound insistently scraped against my skull, my ambitions dulled into a haze. As I got older, during moments of clarity, I never questionedhow, but onlywhy me?It’s not just because I had two sets of realizations or the mindfulness of two people, it’s that it got to be too much, especially when it conflicted with my own agenda. I mean, what teenager wants her grandmother’s nonstop, two-cents, for God’s sake! You’ve got to wonder how many other grandmas or grandpas in the world out there were fueled by such an egotistical desire. Everything would’ve been better if I could have found a way to disappear Grandma, once and for all.
Unfortunately, out of all of the research I’d done about my condition, including some of Grandma’s old pamphlets on the subject stashed in our library (before I set the fire during a botched séance when I was ten to try and send her back to wherever the hell she came from), I wasn’t so sure this religious thing hadn’t gone a little haywire somewhere from the start. I mean, I’d read that if a transfer’s done wrong, like if the prayer isn’t clear or if aperson isn’t ready, there could be terrible consequences. So, there you have it. Talk about fucking up. If there was anyone in this world I hated more, it was her.
CHAPTER 4
A Love-In
Good Friday, 1967:Two days before the Easter stabbing.
My parents are at it again and I hate them! I hate my grandmother worse. I know “hate” is a strong word, but isn’t “love” stronger? And what are those two emotions anyway? All those songs about love, and how much it hurts, I hate how much I hurt. The Bible says that we should love one another as God the Father loves us, but if God is anything like my father, there’s a major problem. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Well I got news for you: I don’t like my neighbor, Mr. Krüger, much less myself. And yet, I really want love. I’m confused. I mean, how horrible a person can I be if love is something I crave? Dear God, if you exist and I deserve even more than the air I breathe, can you please, please help me find love? If not, I believe I’ll just die.
The arguing stopped. Maybe they finally killed each other. I set down my pen, still feeling hurt, but now also feeling that old Mexican Catholic guilt for having written about my feelings. It was as if I suffered from diabetes like some of my relatives who weren’t allowed to have any of the candy on the giant Easter egg hunt called life.
***
Easter morning arrived a couple of mornings later carrying a basket full of hope. My parents had reached a truce. Usually, I saw the world more whitewashed, but this morning I woke up in a room swimming in a soft shade of morning light, the color of a baby chick. Feeling all cozy and warm, curled up in bed, I listened to the starlings serenading the rising lemony sun as the breeze, bitter cold but sweet, snuck in through my window. Not exactly a Pollyanna, but no matter how bad things seemed, I always felt better after a good night’s sleep, like what happens when a jury returns the next morning with aNot Guiltyverdict. The scent of gardenias and jasmine marched in stronger than the scent of the damp Verdugo hills, a sign that spring had sprung into full bloom. Yawning, I stretched my arms to the ceiling, and as I turned, I noticed my hairy armpits, like the shredded paper grass I’d stuffed into the Easter baskets the night before for my siblings. Someone had to fill them, and I hoped the day might also be filled with the sweet pastel promises of better things. After all, it was a time for renewal, Father Reynoso would preach at the ten o’clock a.m. Mass at Cristo Del Rey Church, a time to be more loving.
I slipped my spindly hairy legs out of bed to get ready for the day, and then rushed into the bathroom, ahead of everyone else. When I glimpsed at my skinny self in the mirror, I could almost see the love in my heart smiling through my ribcage. I grabbed Dad’s razor. I decided to shave my armpits. Feeling a little daring, I decided to shave my legs, too. Why not? I asked my reflection before opening the cabinet door. I’m sixteen, so it’s about time. Starting at the ankle, I scraped all the way up past my knees, up my thighs, feeling sort of sneaky and sexy at the same time. I finished the other leg and went back to my room to put on the sleeveless pink and chartreuse-colored A-line dress that I’d had toalter since losing so much weight. Mom bought it from “the JC Penney,” as she referred to the department store, after I’d shown her the ad and we both agreed it was tasteful, not too grown up—jeez in the old country I’d already have been married by then with a couple of mocosos underfoot!
