In those days you could still cycle down the main road and survive. In the evening traffic was minimal, cycling to the cawing of the late evening crows, retracing the tracks of my first secret Catholic friendship. Calling in on my gran, playing cards with one of her slightly crazy sisters or my other gran sitting in front of a turned-off telly watching for signs of life outside the window. How often did I push my bike to the subway entry, turn round and wave at my gran still standing there anxiously waiting? And how I would love to do it now, then turn round, for one last wave. Before I am swallowed up by that subway entry.
Visiting Gran
Granny clacks her cameo rings, gnarled knuckles gripping scored and burn-marked surfaces. She’s dealing cards onto her coffee table.
„Can I maybe open the window?“ Me, small-child conscious, tries to prise, unpermitted, the window latch open. But it is stuck with years and years of smoked-out Silk Cut. The china dog guarding the plastic fireplace seems to be mocking me as I sit back down in resignation and am promptly swallowed up by a too-big mock leather sofa. It farts me out again just in time to stop my son from hitting his head against a chipped edge. He is trying to pick up cards, which have tumbled out of his hands, uncoordinated in anticipation, onto a deep-pile carpet which needs a good shampoo and conditioning.
„You’ve dropped your cards. Be careful.” Granny admonishes. „And there’s still one there!“
„Where?“
„There. By the poof. A Queen of Spades.“ she snaps. And I had been told that she was almost blind.
“Here. Let me.“ The card is greasy, smudges my fingers. I try to wipe it on my trousers before putting it back into the nervous grasp of my son.
„Mind ye don’t bend it. I’ve had those cards for ages.“ Granny sticks a Silk Cut in her mouth and squints over a lighter.
We’re going to play Blackjack. Granny goes first, looking for all the world like a dragon with a perm, she slaps a card down on the table.
„But I don’t remember the rules!“ I protest.
„Aye.“ she replies.
„No! I mean how does it go again?“ I glance quickly at her ears. She’s not put her hearing aid in again.
„THE RULES! HOW DO YOU PLAY IT?“
„Sure ah taught ye.“ she says.
Thirty years ago I think, but don’t say it.
„I’ve forgotten, Granny. Just tell me again, please!“
„Och!“ Her eyebrows snap at each other in annoyance. „Them aul things.“ she mutters under breath. Then louder:
„Yer aim is to get a hand of twenty one. Two to nine at face value. Ten, Jack, Queen and King are all worth ten. An Ace can be one or eleven. Blackjack is when you get twenty one with just two cards. That’ll be of course an ace and a ten.” She hacks up some phlegm.
„Er, ok.“
„Was will diese alte Frau, Mama?“ iii
„Dylan, das ist unhöflich. Die ist deine Ur-Oma!“
„Ja, aber ich weiß nicht was sie will!“
„Die Regeln erklären, natürlich.“
„What‘s that? What does he want?“
„For me to explain the rules, Granny.“
„Eh? A biccie. Does he want a biccie?“
„Oh Mama, darf ich eins haben?“iv
„No Dylan you had enough earlier!“
„Aber Mama, nur eins, bitte.“ v
„No, Dy-“
„Och let the wee cub have a biccie! Would you like a wee biccie?“ She slaps her cards down in delight. She gets up before I can stop her and shuffles over the shag pile onto the dirty carpet and out into the kitchen.
My son’s face is glowing with victory.
„Don’t get too excited.“ I say and feeling mean, add „They’ll be stale and soft and nibbled at the edges by mice.“
„Eeeh, Mama!“
„Oh shut up and look here. The aim of the game is to score twenty one. These cards here are worth......“
Visiting the Past
And so, I am lying in bed. In almost darkness. In between. I let them come. Images and whispers, snatches of thoughts and associations, just as suddenly snatched away again. I am tense. So tense that my right arm begins to go numb. I move, flinging my arm at some silly angle above my head. Free, blood assaults my veins. It hurts. A swollen sack of pain. Concentrate. I must concentrate. Images and whispers, snatches of thoughts.
It´s you – my namesake. Twenty nine years ago. July 1983. The second time we took up our friendship. In the mess of your parents’ house. Too much furniture, a pile of tyres, bin bags full of God knows what. The family dog, a young Alsatian, pisses in the hall against the telephone table.
„Shall I get a cloth?“ I offer, me, the good girl, the nice visitor.
„Och leave it be. ‘s good for the carpet.“ Your father says and pets the dog as if in praise. If he registers my surprise he doesn’t let on.
„Maggie!“ he roars „Wud ye put the kettle on!“ and goes into the living room to put the telly on. Maggie, a big woman spilling out of shapeless clothes, appears through a doorless doorway, sniffs the air, then seeing me, tries to flatten down her toilet brush shock of hair. Behind her, her spitting image, her eldest son Ian, smirks.
„Och it’s Craferd, aul’ Craferd.“
I stick out my tongue at him.
„Never mind him!“ shouts Maggie and pushes him back into the living room. „Go mik us a cup o’ tay, ye cheeky hallion, ye.“ And then to me „Sharn’s in the back bedroom tryin’ tae get wee Adele tae sleep.”
„Oh“
„Och sure ye’ll be alright. Go aun in. She´ll be pleased tae see ye.“
In the dim, curtains badly drawn, Sharon is bent over a cot singing softly. I make a big show of closing the door carefully, and am rewarded with a smile and a whispered invitation to come and look. An impossibly tiny baby, with big liquid eyes and jet back curls, is sucking on a dummy and staring riveted at her mother.
„She’s lovely.“ I whisper in awe. And indeed she is. Up until now I could never really see what all the fuss was about as regards babies. All this cooing and geeing and soppification. And then I stare too at her mother. Can this be the same girl who had tried to engage me in a conversation about my sex life at the toothpaste counter less than a year and a half ago? While I had blushed and stammered in my supermarket overalls, and tidied up rows of mouthwashes behind my weekend counter, she had looked at me knowingly.
„There are things you can use, you know.“
And while she was giving birth and learning to nurse I was drinking my way through my first year at university, learning little in the way of academic knowledge, but a lot about life. And politics, philosophy, unrequited love. And deeper meanings. Or so I thought. But now, perched here on the edge of a bed in a dusty cluttered room, I realize I know nothing. Nothing at all.
The meaning of it all
What is
love?
Frogs or
Aubergines bursting
at their purple seams
or me