Summers with Alma

   She would sit for hours in that old beat up chair. You know the kind-squared back, squared arms covered in gold-just a big gold square with little knots all over it.  It looked as if it had done battle with a cat or two.  She would usually throw an old, faded green and gold cover with over it.  I don't know why.  It was uglier than the chair.  And it was hardly sufficient.  Every time she sat down it would slip a little more into the crack between the seat cushion and the back of the chair.  Eventually she would have to get up and re-position everything.  The chair always sat in the same corner with the same little table and the same little lamp and the same Naugahyde  foot stool for the nine odd years I knew her.  The house always had that closed-up musty smell common in a lot of old houses.  But hers also had the added bonus of years of floral air sprays and cigarette smoke. The television sat directly opposite her and though 'color' had been around for a considerable time she still used an old black and white set.  When she wasn't watching her soaps she was listening to big band or 'hill billy' music (Box Car Willy was a favorite) on that old phonograph or eaves dropping with her CB radio.  On these occasions she would remove her glasses, close her eyes and put her head back.  She seemed to stay that way for so long I often thought she might be dead.  I would creep over to her to see if she were breathing.  Sometimes she would just be asleep. Other times she'd wait until I got close enough then she would grab me and start laughing that thin dry cackle. Once I honestly couldn't tell so I took her hand mirror off her dresser to put under her nose like they do in the movies.  I had barely got it close to her face when her eyes popped open and she said, "Stop that foolishness! And put that back before you break it!" She scared me so bad I nearly dropped the damn thing on her face!  They didn't do that in the movies.
 
    Her hair was rather thin and very gray and she wore it all teased up in a dome.  For some reason I could never fathom she thought it hid the bald spots.  To me it just looked like some weird spiders web through which you could see the pinkness of her scalp.  I guess being farsighted had its advantages. She really had no idea what she looked like.
    She was kind of sallow from a lifetime of smoking and she wore her skin like an old leather bag.  Her uniform of choice were a pair of stretch polyester pants (cut off for the summer), one of those sleeveless polyester 'shells' and if she were chilly she threw a cardigan over it.  She always had these long, red, dragon lady fingernails.  On each hand were wedding rings, remains of the two loves that had entered and left he life. In the right hand lived an extra long menthol cigarette.  God forbid her breath should smell like the rest of her. The inside of her middle and fore finger were literally yellow, a testament to the years of devotion to the god Nicotine.  Through out my life I have always associated the color yellow with her.
 
    She was a rather thin, bony woman who stood, when she was able to stand fully upright, just under 5'5".  Her back was always a source of complaint for her and in the latter years of her life she walked with the help of a walker.  At one time, however, she wore a belt with an electrical 'box' that sent out currents to stimulate the nerve endings in her lower back.  This was suppose to help her to walk easier and without so much pain.  I guess you could say she never really got the hang of the thing.
    It was summer and  we were sitting in the car waiting for her.  Our little car in the 1970's was not equipped with air conditioning so the windows were down and the radio was on.  We, being kids, were bee-bopping in the back seat.  As she came out of the house we were watching her; out of the door, down the steps and along the sidewalk toward us.  Then it started.  First was a shake in the right leg. Then a little kick. Then another kick.  Then her left hip jutted out and she grabbed her back.  Well we kids didn't know what was going on.  We thought she was dancing.  We started clapping our hands and laughing and having a good ol' time.  We didn't know the damn thing was shocking the hell out of her.  By the time she got to the car the belt was off and words were coming out of her mouth that would make a sailor blush.  Our first stop that day was her doctors office and no, she did not need a "damn appointment! I'm not going there to be fucking congenial!"   When we got there we all stayed in the car.  I never knew what transpired inside that day but when she emerged she had the walker.

    Visual acuity was not her strong point.  She was about as farsighted as a person could be.  Even though she wore glasses she would scrunch up her nose and upper lip so she could focus.  Plus if she were reading something she would hold it so far away form her face everybody else could read it too.  My adolescent and teen years were filled with the National Inquirer, Ellery Queen and a whole host of pulp fiction crime stories.
    The crime stories were a little too racy for us kids so she kept them buried in a baskets under the Good Housekeeping magazines on the side porch.  The side porch was completely enclosed, the three outer walls being screened with crank windows.  If you opened all the screens at once you would get a nice little breeze. Unless it was fixin' to storm.  At those times we thought we had the only tornado in captivity.  This was frowned upon.
    In one corner of the porch she had a fancy cushioned antique lounge chair.  This, of course, was the coveted seat.  However, if you weren't quick enough to get it there were the two metal outdoor chairs that were covered in floral patterned sheets and tons of pillows.  That was suppose to make them more comfortable and appealing.  There were little tables and stands with red geraniums and ferns and in between these were the notorious baskets.  Now we were aware that she was aware that we knew those little paperback 'books' were out there and where they were.  We also were aware of the fact that she knew we read them.   Every so often we'd look up at the window in the door and see her squinting back at us.  Then we would hear, "What cha'll readin'?  Better not be any of my crime stories."  Then we would hold up the Good Housekeeping with the little books tucked inside and usually she would go back to her t.v.  Sometimes, however, she would come out with us to make sure we understood those crime stories were not for kids and then she would precede to tell us all about the latest one she had read.
    The National Enquirer was different. That was breakfast fodder.  While most people were reading about national politics or the latest sports scores with their bacon and eggs we got to hear about the lady in Kentucky who had the alien baby and the man who found the face of Jesus in his grilled cheese sandwich.  According to her this was a pat of our education that the school system was apparently lacking.  It might be best if we didn't mention it though.

   Summer.  Ah, summer!  Summer was the thing.  Now the rest of the school year meant shortened visits and usually on the weekend.  But in the summer we could be there for days.  Which meant no curfew for starters.  As long as we were 'in bed' by the time she went to bed.  The youngest of us kids and the only boy slept in the front bedroom with her which left the back bedroom for us girls.  And being girls, we were all over that room, from the 'really vintage' clothes to the 1950's Bakelite jewelry to a box of really old photos and love letters.  Only once or twice did she ever yell at us from the other room.  Of course we had no idea what she said since she didn't have her 'teeth' in.  We would just look at each other and start giggling 'quietly'  The only light we had came from a small lamp on a bed stand on the far side of the room.  It was there on the floor with our pillows that we read the love letters.
    It was the letters that enthralled us the most.  They were from a Lt. Harris who was very much in love and apparently stationed in England somewhere near the coast.  He kept comparing the beauty of the landscape; the water, the birds, the cliffs to her, his 'dear sweet Alma'.  More often than not his letters would end romantically although a little gross.  In Almas, she would admonish him for something he had said and then do the same thing.  Of course all of this would get an "Awww, so romantic" or "gross" followed by giggles from us.   There were some that we didn't understand.  Things about England or some guy named Gerry.  And she would write about working in D.C. (boring) and 'family' only we didn't know any of the names.  One even had a lock of dark hair.  We didn't read that one.  We were too scared to touch the hair.
    A good deal of the photos were black and white of women wearing hats and gloves and dresses that hung below their knees and men in suits with hats  and baggy pants.  There were a lot of hats.  We never knew people really wore that many hats.  There were some photos of men in uniforms but the one that caught the eye of all of us was of a young man with dark wavy hair.  He had a little mustache, wore a tank style undershirt with trousers and was looking right into the camera.  He was beautiful.  We had hoped it was Lt. Harris but on the back it read 'Robert age 21' and that was all.  There weren't any other pictures of him and no mention of him in any letter. Just the one photo to prove he ever lived.  In later years I would find out the letters were between her and her first husband.  He would survive the war and give her two children.  There wasn't a letter with the lock of hair.  It was just wrapped in paper to keep it safe.  The hair and the photo of the young man were of her youngest brother, Robert who was hit by a car and died shortly after that photo.  She never said anything more about it and I didn't ask.

    The boy being the youngest of us kids always fell asleep before anyone which meant he woke up first.  Usually he would go on in the living room and watch cartoons.  One morning he couldn't get the show to come in.  So he did what any kid would do.  He went to get the only grown-up in the house. A couple of minutes later there was a blood curdling scream that woke everyone! He came running out of the room screaming and crying, speaking gibberish and pointing at Alma.  After a few minutes we realized he saw Alms' teeth in a glass of water and when she started to speak he really freaked. Of course we busted up laughing.  That up set him even more. Eventually we felt bad for the kid.  I mean it was the first time he had ever seen his grandmothers teeth in a glass when normally they were in her head. Now while we did feel bad we didn't feel that bad. All day long we went around with our lips curled over our teeth and kept saying, "Kiss me"  just to get him worked up all over again. (Kids really can be mean).

    While her house was one of the best places to be when I was growing up it could just as easily be one of the most miserable if you were being punished. Especially in the summer.  You see her back yard had only two trees. One was at the back door-a small redbud tree.  There was a little picnic table by it and next to that a small clothes line.  The other tree was in the very back of the yard-a big oak.  Unfortunately, it shaded more of her neighbors yard than it did hers.  In between the two trees was nothing but garden.  All garden.  I believe her son planted it but I never actually saw anyone do it.  We would just show up one warm day and it would be there all lush and green and full of things for us to pick, pull, snap, shuck and shell.  And all of it out in the open under the full sweltering strength of the summer sun.  She probably had the best and fullest garden I had ever seen, unfortunately.  An afternoon with all of us working together wasn't too bad.  A weekend on your own because you were being punished absolutely sucked.  I bought home an 'F' on my report card once and while they all went to Kings Dominion guess where I was.
    On the up side the ice cream man came every afternoon during the week all summer. And of course we heard it several blocks over which gave us plenty of time to convince her that yes, we did hear it. Yes, we did do EVERYTHING we were suppose to and yes, we would get her one too. I don't think I have eaten so many ice cream sandwiches and Nutty Buddies before or since.

    Summers also meant time spent at the river and for us that was the Rappahannock river.  It also meant time at the summer house, all five rooms of it.  She and her late husband, and a few assorted workmen, built the place.  It was a sitting room, two bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom. There were also two screened porches; the front one for the adults and the larger of the two in back for us.  This is were we spent our time when not in the water or wandering the 'neighborhood' which consisted of four dirt roads and one tarred road that led to the marina.  That porch was our domain...well until it was invaded by the adults.  And since she smoked liked an inferno she spent quite a lot of time with us. The station out of Warsaw was all that the radio would pick up clearly.  We had it on what seemed like all the time. Of course we didn't have a t.v. so it was our entertainment.  She would have us out there dancing and laughing and carrying on.  She use to tell us all about the dances and concerts she would go to in D.C. when she was young.  She would try to show us how to do some of the dances like the Foxtrot and the Jitterbug.  We, in turn, tried to teach her how to do the Hustle and the Bus Stop.  Now if we all had been able bodied and of an age where we could remember and follow the steps it might have been a successful and educational exchange between two generations.  That was not the case.  Instead we were five gangly, ungraceful kids and one sixty-two year old half blind, half deaf lady with a bad back and a dodgy hip. What we were was a mess.  There were arms and legs going every where.  We were bumping into each other; tripping over one another. She almost threw her hop out at one point trying to Jitterbug; something that none of us could quite grasp. We were five kids and one old lady doing something resembling the Fox Trot/Hustle/Jitterbug to rock'n'roll at full volume. It failed to produce the desired result.

    At calmer times, when the tide was out she would take us down to the water and show us were to look for crabs clinging to the underside of old logs, pieces of wood and other debris. Moving the logs would send them scurrying sideways and burying themselves into the mud. We could find them hanging out around the base of the post under the pier. Along with the crabs there were tiny shells which we always thought were seed oysters.  Sometimes they would be closed and stuck to a larger shell but a lot of the time they would just be empty tiny shells stuck in the muddy sand.  When the tide was way out you could see these little shells sprinkled across the shore like stars in among bigger shells, bits of drift wood and water vegetation.  At these times she would bring out the nets and we would lay them out near the logs or the pier as carefully as we could trying not to stir up the water. Then we girls would get along the edge of the net and she and the boy would gently roll the log over and 'herd' the crabs onto the net.  Sometimes we would have to wait what seemed like a long time.  If we were lucky she might try to sneak us out a Coke, they came in little bottles back then.  It didn't happen often though. Most of the time we didn't get anything-no Coke, no crab. My favorite thing to do was to take a long string and tie a piece of raw chicken to one end and dangle it in the water off the side of the pier.  She told us to drop it easy as close to the post as possible 'cause that's were the crabs like to hang out. As soon as they grabbed onto the chicken I would gently start to raise the string and slide a pole net under it.  I got more crabs this way than any other. While we sat on the pier she would tell us all about an aunt she had up in Baltimore who taught her how to crab. Of course we being girls wanted to know about all her boyfriends or the kind of clothes they wore. What we learned was that she grew up in D.C., went through the tenth grade and had to wear dresses all the time which we couldn't imagine. She went to secretarial school, got a job in an office in D.C. where she met and eventually married her first husband and had two children.  He ended up running off with someone she thought was a friend. But she had two children so she went back to work, met her second husband who built things like the summer house.  They never had children together but he helped her raise her kids as his own.  He was some years older than her but he was the love of her life. When he was sixty-four or five he had a massive heart attack and died.  She never loved again.

    Once a month we would pick her up and go to the Ponderosa Steakhouse. Going out to dinner with her was something of an adventure.  For some reason she would insist in getting food she knew would be hard for her to eat. Steak and corn were the worst.  They were always getting caught in her denture. She had a habit of 'sucking' her teeth to get the food out and if that didn't work she used the edge of a matchbook. But if it were under her denture that required a trip to the ladies room, a major expedition indeed.  Especially if she had that walker.  Once this was done and all the food she was going to eat had been consumed there was the process of reapplying the lipstick. The dragon lady red lipstick to match the dragon lady red nail polish. This for some reason was done at the table and was quite a production.  Her lips were thin and her hand a bit shaky which made for a very wobbly upper lip. Once it was applied to the mouth she had to go back and remove it from the face. Then finally there was the removal of it from the denture 'cause heaven forbid there should be some red mingled with the nicotine yellow.  Now you might think that was the signal the meal was over for her. You would be wrong. Actually, when all the left over things such as unopened salt, pepper, butter packets, rolls wrapped in her napkin and anything else she thought could possibly be portable went into her purse, then and only then was the meal finished.  Yes, you read that right. Into her purse went the dregs of her meal.  We once found a half eaten piece of fried fish in there. No idea how long it had resided there. It was kind of gnarly. No tartar sauce though. And don't think for one moment your purse was safe.  Oh no. If there was more than she could safely deposit into hers then it went into the next available purse.

    By the time I was nearing my late teens she had not only acquired the walker, which she would run you over with in a heart beat, but she also had started wearing a hearing aid.  Now I say she "started wearing".  I should say "she started wearing a hearing aid on special occasions" 'cause that's the only time she ever wore the damn thing.  She wore it to church, to the doctors office and on Christmas day up until dinner time.  According to her, people would be too busy shoving food in their faces to talk and she didn't need to hear them eat.  I understand that living alone there would be no real need to wear it but if you have a visitor wouldn't that be cause enough to put it in?  If someone comes to visit presumably they want to converse with you and not have to yell the same thing three times over. I mean they may not necessarily want to share their incontinence problem or whether or not someone changed the formula for your denture cream with the guy down the block.  But the worst part wasn't having to yell whole conversations or do it three different times. It wasn't even having to put up with the weird looks from everyone else. No, the worse part was when she did wear it she would inevitably have it up too high so it made this high pitched shriek.   Apparently she couldn't hear it but it sent the rest of us into spasms.  I suddenly understood why dogs howl.

    By the time I was seventeen I had moved on.  I never heard anything more of her though I had often wondered.  I'm fifty now so I wonder no more but despite the walker, the hearing aid, the denture and a whole host of other habits both unpleasant and strange she was an intricate part of my youth, a character who was both surprising and wonderful. She was the one taught me how to make fried green tomatoes: egg wash, flour, salt, pepper and some dried oregano.  She had the largest collection of Harlequin Romances I had ever seen of which I only read one. She was the only one who ever encouraged me to write.  And one of only a small handful of people who ever made me feel as if I had worth.  And to a foster kid growing up in the 70's  it was a big deal. So I raise a cup of Sanka (she is the only person I have ever known who drank that). 'To you Miss Alma, where ever you are'.


*This is a semi-autobiographical story.  Some changes have been made for obvious reasons-partly to protect the people in it and partly because my memory is crap.  However, I hope you enjoyed the story.