Box Girl (20 page)

Take, for example, this anecdote, written on a piece of paper that says “Mrs. Betty Snellings” at the top and is decorated with a bluebird perched on top of a picket fence at the bottom, red roses climbing up its sides. This is the paper my grandmother uses to write down her grocery lists. And because this particular story is written on this particular paper, I know exactly where I was when I wrote it: at my grandmother's house. There is a grease stain in the bottom left-hand corner of the paper, so I remember when I wrote it, too: the afternoon of my grandfather's funeral. The grandfather who would say, every single time I talked to him on the phone, “Da'lin, why do you live alllllllllll the way out in California? Pleeeeease move back to the east, da'lin. Why don't you move to Savannah, or Charleston, or Charlotte?” And every time,
I'd let him get all the way through his appeal, even though I already knew it by heart. For years, my grandfather pleaded with me to come back east, like it was his dying wish. When he died, I was still on the wrong coast.

After his funeral, we sat with my grandmother in her den in Georgia, eating a tin of homemade cookies, fried chicken, biscuits, green beans, and pimento cheese, drinking sweet tea during the day and cocktails at night. The following week was going to be her sixty-second wedding anniversary. All day and all night, we told stories and cried, but more than anything, we laughed. I wrote one of those stories on the grocery list paper:

My grandparents were driving back to Augusta after visiting some cousins in Columbus, Georgia. The whole family was in the car: my dad, who was six at the time, his older brother, and his younger sister.

“We were driving on one of those real country roads,” my grandmother said. “You know Pop never liked to take the main roads.” When they drove past a large factory, my grandmother said, “Look, that's where they can O'Sage Peaches.”

“No, Betty,” my grandfather snapped back, “That's where they can O'Sage
Pimentos.
” The two of them argued passionately about this for the next four miles. “I just
knew
I had seen the word
peaches,”
my grandmother said. “So I wasn't going to let it go.”

Finally my grandfather got so mad he slammed on the breaks and said, “Damn it, Betty, I'm going to turn this car around and show you.” And he did just that, wheeling the car in a U-turn. They rode in silence as they approached the building, each waiting to prove that they had been right. When they got to the factory, one side of the O'Sage building said, “Peaches,” and the other side said, “Pimentos.”

“Oh we laughed and laughed!” my grandmother said. “If only every argument could have been settled so amicably.”

Seeing that story and her name at the top of the page reminds me of not just that day, but of many days, of all the days. It reminds me of the way my grandparents' house smelled like Joy dish soap. It reminds me where the chocolate was hidden: in the china cabinet, and if not there, then behind the Saltine cracker tin in the kitchen cupboard. It reminds me of their remote control, which they called a “clicker” and tied to the coffee table with a string so they'd never lose it. It reminds me of the collection of condiments my grandfather kept by his reclining chair—Texas Pete, Tabasco, salt, pepper, always within an arm's reach. It reminds me of the Twenty-One-Gun-Salute at his funeral, and of his flag-draped coffin. It reminds me of my brother's eulogy, perfect, without a word written down. And that reminds me of the story about the day my grandparents met:

My grandmother's first husband died in World War II. It's a very odd feeling, knowing that I would not be here if it weren't for that war. She was a very young widow with a very young son, my uncle Alex. My grandfather (my dad's dad) was a captain in the army and landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day Plus One. While moving inland through France, his left knee was blown out by shrapnel from an artillery shell. Most of the men around him were killed. He was evacuated to a military hospital in Augusta, Georgia, where my grandmother was volunteering as a “Grey Lady” for the American Red Cross. One of her duties as a Grey Lady was going from room to room with
a basketful of items the wounded soldiers might want or need: postage stamps, pens, candy, playing cards. My grandmother was a beautiful young woman with porcelain skin and thick brown hair styled like Rita Hayworth's. When she walked into my grandfather's hospital room for the first time, he looked up from his bed, propping himself up on his elbows. She asked if he'd like anything from her basket, and my grandfather replied with a line that is as well-known in my family as our own last name: “Da'lin, what I want from you is not in that basket.”

If the argument about the peaches and pimentos was typed into a Word Document (or the notepad app on my phone), not on my grandmother's grocery list paper with the pen she uses for crossword puzzles, and if it did not have a grease stain from the fried chicken we ate that afternoon, would it have reminded me of all of this? Would it be the same?

On the other side of that same piece of paper, I wrote down an expression my Aunt Kirkley used while listening to the story of the peaches and pimentos: “It's like being in a fork fight, and all you have is a spoon.” Kirkley lives in Savannah. A flight attendant by day and a trout fisherwoman by other days, she is never short on witticisms and old-fashioned sayings. I guess I had pressed her for an explanation of this locution because I also wrote, “Oh come on, Lilibet, you can't stage an attack with a
spoon. Maybe
you can defend yourself.
Maybe
.” Reading that, I can hear my aunt's raspy southern accent, and I can see her standing there saying it, leaning on one skinny leg, one hand gesticulating wildly, the other hand firmly gripping a Styrofoam cup full of vodka.

8
Two of my favorites: “Don't worry about the horse going blind; just load the wagon,” and, “I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

Numb

I'm sure this is hard to believe, but sometimes I forget I'm in
the box. So sucked into a book, or the endless, mindless wonders of the Internet, I forget there's anyone else around. This never lasts long, though. Some body part will need re-arranging—my right elbow will go numb, or the tips of my left hand will start tingling—and I'll be jolted back to reality (or, more specifically, false reality) and made aware that I am not alone, and that there is a family of four from Tallahassee twisting their necks toward me, totally confused.

Beach

The box has a beach theme tonight, replete with all the appropriate
accouterments: a blue beach chair with a pair of surf trunks slung over the back, three white beach towels (though they are probably hotel towels), and neon Wayfarer sunglasses. The artist has even been kind enough to include beach heat, caused by the blinding overhead lights that blast on every minute or so, the wattage of which is befitting to, say, tweezing your eyebrows, not sitting on display in your Skivvies. The concierge tells me the idea behind the schizophrenic lighting: “Now they see you, now they don't!”