Pleasing The Dead

May 20, 2016

            My Aunt Gladys lives above ground, but most of her friends do not. She is the youngest and only living sibling remaining of her ten brothers and sisters. As my godmother, she has taken special care to watch out for me my entire life. And ironically, taught me every curse word I know before I could tie my shoes. Getting up in age these past ten years or so, she is beginning to get a little out of it sometimes; but she will always be my Nanny and I love her dearly.

            I tell my children about their great Aunt Gladys before they fall asleep at night. There are so many tales to tell. The time she ran over her foot with the car in her drive way and would not go to the hospital until she had put fresh underwear on, powdered her nose and applied a fresh coat of lipstick. And the year she came over for Thanksgiving and did not put the car in park before she got out, so it rolled away while Uncle Hilaire was trying to get out of the passenger seat and we were unloading the boxes of food from the trunk.

            There are also the less entertaining, but entirely charming memories. When I was six, I really wanted a fancy cloth doll from the toy section at D. H. Holmes’ Department Store, but my parents could not afford it, so Aunt Gladys stayed up every night for a month sewing one for me. On Christmas morning, there, under the tree, was Melinda with a note from Mrs. Claus and a tiny suitcase – or a grip as my mother called it – full of clothes for her. I was so excited. It was my very best Christmas, all because of Aunt Gladys.

            This is the story of All Saints Day a couple of years ago when my Nanny and I went sleuthing in the graveyard.

§§§

            Nanny called me one Sunday afternoon and asked if I would go with her to the cemetery. I said yes, of course, because what better way to spend my Sunday afternoon than creeping around a graveyard with my godmother. An hour later, she was outside my house to pick me up.

            She pulled up to my house in her powder blue tank of an Oldsmobile with the horrible turning radius. When she knocked on my door, I picked up my purse and went to follow her out, but she stopped me on the threshold.

            “Wait, I want to come in. I brought you something. And I have to use the ladies’ room,” Nanny said and brushed past me.

            “Didn’t you just come from your house? It isn’t that far away,” I said.

            “Yes, but I didn’t have to go then. Plus, you should never miss an opportunity to pee. Didn’t your mother teach you that? She always told me, ‘Never miss an opportunity to go to the ladies room, Gladys.’ She was a little more polite and lady-like than me,” Nanny said, winking as she walked through my house to the half bath off the living room.

             When Nanny came back, she began pulling things out of her handbag and setting them on the kitchen table. Tiny packages of Kleenex, an assortment of ballpoint pens peppered with hotel and drug logos, a green leather wallet bursting with receipts, a handful of peppermints, a fortune cookie, an array of lipsticks, a hot pink coin purse, and three silk pouches with snaps. These last items she handed to me.

            “What’s this?” I asked.

             “Oh, just a little something for you and your girls,” Nanny said, not trying to hide her smile. 

            I pulled the snap and opened the silken purse to find a delicate beaded bracelet.

            “Thank you, Nanny. It’s beautiful,” I said, slipping it onto my wrist.

            “You’re so welcome. There’s one for Sarah and Olivia, too. But don’t worry, theirs are the same colors so they won’t fight over them,” Nanny said with a smile. “Okay, I’m ready to go. Let’s hit the road.”

            I left the other two bracelets on the table for my daughters and locked my front door. In the car, we carefully slid across our respective sides of the white leather bench seat.

           “Where are we going?” I asked, as Nanny turned left onto the main road, away from the cemetery.

           “To Dorignac’s to pick up some flowers,” Nanny said. “Never show up empty handed.”

           “Not even to a cemetery?” I asked.

            “Especially not to a cemetery,” Nanny said. “I don’t want to piss anyone off, particularly not any dead people.”

            She parked in the handicapped slot at the front of the local grocery store and sent me in to pick out the bouquets. Particular as she was, she had given me specific directions as to what kind of flowers to get and how to pick out the best challah bread for Uncle Hilaire – the kind without raisins because he abhors them.

            Ten minutes later, I returned with the goodies and Nanny nodded her approval while I put the bags in the backseat. As we were leaving the parking lot, she put the Oldsmobile in drive instead of reverse and rammed into the signpost in front of the car.

            “Fucking Christopher Columbus!” Aunt Gladys yelled.

            I tried to stifle my laughter. She had never cursed in front of my mother, who had never said anything worse than Jesus, Mary, & Joseph, but never hesitated to curse in front of me.

            “I don’t have time for this. I’ll get it fixed later,” Aunt Gladys said, putting the car in reverse this time and driving out of the parking lot. All the while her right turning indicator blinked.

            We drove across town to the cemetery where my parents were buried the previous year. It did not seem like that long ago, though. Every couple of weeks, I still pick up the phone to tell my mom things and then catch myself and put the receiver back down.

            After we parked, I took a deep breath and walked over to the plot in the middle of the back row against the fence. This was a very different cemetery than others in New Orleans. No fancy mausoleums or tombstones in this graveyard, these graves were actually below the earth and only had ground-level placards to distinguish them.

            I busied myself sweeping off my parents’ nameplates so I would not get too upset and start crying. I looked up to see where Nanny was and noticed that she had never made it over to the back row. She was several rows up near the front, slowly ambulating along the placards and reading people’s names out loud. I let her be, thinking she must be trying to distract herself from grief as well. I poured fresh water in the small vials that were attached to the bronze nameplates, then placed the flowers – American Beauty roses for my daddy, who had grown them beside his vegetable garden, and lilies for my mom, her favorite. I thought of my parents as I trimmed the thorns and extra leaves off the stems, wiping away a few stray tears with the back of my hand. Then, looking up to find Nanny, I located her a few plots over. She was bending over a large and ornately decorated nameplate complete with bas-relief carnations and the Virgin Mary, trying to open the little portrait doors which, like a locket, opened to reveal the pictures of the deceased.

            “Nanny,” I called over to her. Startled, she jumped a little bit, but luckily did not fall. “What are you doing? Don’t disturb them.”

            “Oh, what do they care?” Nanny said. “They’re dead anyway.”

            I was a little shocked by this comment but could not help chuckling to myself. Nanny walked over and closed her eyes to say a few words over her sister’s grave, completely unaware of how funny she was. I walked back to the car to give her a few minutes of silence.

            “Who are these hydrangeas for,” I asked Nanny pointing to the bouquet still in the backseat when she got back in the car. “Did I forget someone?”

            “Oh, those are for Dolores,” Nanny said as if I knew who that was.

            “And Dolores is…” I said, waiting to be filled in.

             “Maryanne’s sister, of course. I have to find out who is older. Dolores always said she was younger, but I think she was older,” Nanny said as we drove back towards my house to another cemetery.

              Metairie Park Cemetery is the older kind of graveyard that has wide enough lanes to drive through. It is rather pleasant actually, all the old oak trees shading your path as you drive or stroll through. My mom used to take my son, Thomas, here to do homework when he was younger because he had such trouble concentrating at home with his sisters running around. Cemeteries are quiet and calming – if you are the one walking around that is.                  

             Nanny stopped the car in the middle of one these lanes, labeled Avenue C on a tiny post sticking up a few feet from the ground. She remembered to put the car in park and left the air-conditioning running for me since it was a particularly warm November day. Then she walked over to the Roberts family plot, not in a particularly svelte or sneaky manner mind you, and proceeded to read the birth date for Maryanne’s sister, Dolores.

             She turned and yelled something out to me in the car. I rolled down the window.

             “What did you say?” I asked.

             Nanny held her arthritic pointer finger up to me as a sign to wait and then took her sweet time walking back to the car.

             “I said, ‘I knew it. Dolores is older!’” she repeated for me, leaning into the open passenger window.

             “Was older. You mean Dolores was older,” I said.

             “Oh, whatever. Can you hand me those hydrangeas?” Nanny asked and shuffled off back to Dolores’ plot. “I hope she likes periwinkle.”

             After she laid the flowers down in front of the Roberts’ tombstone, Nanny came back to the car smiling at her accomplished mission.

            “Whoo, it is hot out there,” Nanny said, lifting her skirt so that I could see where her panty hose knotted behind her knee.

            “Well, you are wearing pantyhose, Nanny,” I said, “No one wears those anymore.”

            “Oh, I’m just an old lady stuck in her old ways. What do I know?” Nanny said as we bumped along the lane.

            “Are we going back now?” I asked, directing the air vents towards her.

            “Aren’t ya hungry? I’m feeling peaked and I need a little bite to eat. I thought we’d get some lunch,” Nanny said.

           “Well, all this sleuthing has really worked up my appetite,” I said.

            “Fried oysters?” Nanny asked.

            “I like the way you think,” I said.

            Nanny turned out of the iron gates and we drove over to R & O’s for a late lunch.

            While we dipped our fried oysters and sweet potato fries in ketchup, we talked about the warm memories we had of my parents, Kathleen and Stanley. Nanny used to go everywhere with Kathleen when she was a girl. With the ten-year gap between them, Kathleen looked after Gladys and made sure she had everything she needed. My mom used to go to the library once or twice a week and Gladys would go with her just to have special one-on-one time with her big sister. Now that my mom is gone, Nanny has taken care to spend more time with me. I know she misses her just as much as I do.

            She ordered a bread pudding for us because she has such a big sweet tooth, just like my mom, and began to talk about the upcoming family reunion.

            “It’s going to be a gas,” Nanny said. And we clinked glasses of iced tea in a toast to family, laughing.

            I could not wait to tell my kids about my latest escapade with their Aunt Gladys.

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