Grandmother's Skin

Words are just pictures when you think about it. A string of pictures in an order that someone, too long ago to think about, decided looked just right.

It took me longer than most to understand that order.

At four, everyone was content for my world to be colours and sounds; at seven, they assumed I preferred to hear characters come alive through my mother; by nine they’d sent me to a specialist. You see, it’s not that my parents were too poor to have a daughter who could read, or that they themselves were uneducated. In fact, my father was so well educated that they would call him a coconut. I used to think it a strange nickname for a man who didn’t like coconuts, but I get it now. Brown on the outside, white on the inside. I expect he liked coconuts even less after he realised that.

His mother used to tell him not to try so hard to fit in with his co-workers; that he’d married my mother, and had me, and could do no more to encourage their acceptance.

“Wear your skin on the outside,” I heard her say to him once, “else it’ll tighten around your heart.”

Her thick accent carried the loneliness you only feel when there are no records to tell you who your ancestors were. I liked to imagine my grandmother was the first. The stone of some exotic fruit that sprouted when she arrived here and swelled into a chaotic tree that eventually bore me.

It was her voice I missed the most when she died. That rhythmic drawl like the whispering of the ocean against the belly of a galley, taking you far from here.

My father took me with him to clear out her house. It was stale, with sticky spices polluting the air. I used to think it was a colourful place, but I realised the grey rooms had only been made vivid in her light.

My grandmother had never thrown anything away. Tattered boxes were swollen with frayed newspapers and ravaged books, and large bags had gorged themselves on pallid coats with horrid patterns.

“Possessions are things we borrow from the Universe to show her who we are,” I could hear her echoing through the rooms.

I had always assumed she must have had lots of money to have so many things. Looking at her life now – now that she was gone from it – it occurred to me, that was impossible.

I knew there had to be more of her somewhere. One shining thing that would tell me I had not just imagined her; pieced together an incandescent creature from the wrinkled scarfs and crumpled dresses strewn about me. I decided to find it.

We spent days there. It was the summer, and it would be weeks before I was shepherded back through those ancient gates and subjected to the wounds my classmates volleyed at anything other. So, whilst my father organised skips and donation bags, I searched.

In the back of her wardrobe, I found what I had been looking for. In amongst her best clothes, those reserved for the Lord and the passing of old friends, was a gift bag. The ink on the tag was faded, the letters melted together. I couldn’t have read it anyway, but I imagined the bleeding spirals spelled out “Marnie”. I knew that this gift was intended for me. I worked my hand in.

When I drew it back out, I saw the book for the first time.

It was glorious. As black as the deepest berry, and exquisitely beautiful. It wore gold accents like a fierce Candace; not too many to detract, just enough to give it distinction. It writhed beneath my sweaty grip, imploring me to open it so that it may sing to me.

I peeled back the black skin.

Never had I so keenly felt the curse of my illiteracy.

…..

My father found me sometime later, my knees sore from the uneven floor and my head embedded in the wardrobe door.

My pathetic tears had left swollen blisters on the cover of the book, still clutched in my hands.

My father tried to take it from me, but I drew it to my breast. I felt it throbbing with my heart.

“What you’ve got there is your grandmother’s story,” he said. “Our story. It tells of a young woman nurtured in the dust of a tiny island a million miles from here, persuaded by promises of education and extravagance to trust an unsteady ocean –”

“No!” I cut him off.

He smiled with understanding, “I could read it to you, if you’d like?”

“No,” I said again; he didn’t understand anything.

He carried me home that day, and, bundled in his arms, I imagined I was a young woman swaying with the tides of a wild and fickle sea.

My parents let me keep the book.

……

It consumed me. I spent hours secreted in my room poring over the words within for some semblance of familiarity. I traced the intricate symbols with my fingers and hoped with my whole heart that one of the images might translate into a language I could understand.

The code remained indecipherable, and my grandmother’s words concealed from me.

Still, I took it with me wherever I went. It was an ID tag around my neck or a bright coat with a bold design. Everyone would admire it. At school, I finally commanded the respect of my classmates.

“I’ve never seen a book like that,” said one girl, “can I touch it?”

“That looks so exotic!” said another, “I wish I’d had a gift like that.”

“Thank you,” I would tell them, letting them run their hands all over its leathery face, “it’s how I came to exist. It’s me.”

Soon, I was too preoccupied with friends to spend hours looking at a book, so I stopped trying to read it.

Still, I took it with me wherever I went. It was a badge of honour.

I would sit in the playground, or the hospital waiting room, and pretend I could read.

Once, an old lady with kind eyes asked what had me so absorbed.

“My grandmother has just got off the boat, and she is cold, so she is going to go and buy the biggest coat she can find.” I don’t know why this lie came to me, but my answer seemed to gratify the eyes. After that, I told many stories about my grandmother’s adventures in this New World; how she tried bizarre foods, and met strange people, and shopped for pretty things.

As time went by, I began to forget quite how this wild woman truly came to find herself planted among tower blocks and lamp posts, and I stopped needing the book with me to tell our story. I kept it in the jewellery box at the back of my wardrobe.

On warm days, I would bathe in the light coming through my bedroom window and draw my toes through the taupe carpet. I was alone on an island a million miles away, and the warm sand welcomed my weary feet. I might venture to retrieve the book on such a day and trace its golden intricacies with my nails. Perhaps I would chart a course across her dark, silky canal and down the cascade of pages; oh, to unshackle my grandmother’s voice, to liberate her tongue – the longing would prick my eyes with tears – and then, the shrill chiming of a mobile; a friend would arrive; I had a boy to meet. The moment would be lost.

.….

It was a cold day when my other grandmother died. But then, she had always been a cold woman. She left me with very few memories, but lots of money. My mother said I could use the money to make memories. The first thing I did was buy some golden powder for my eyes. Then, I moved to the Big City.

……

$20,000 can buy you an identity.

My apartment, and everything in it was new – I was new; reborn inside clothing stores and refined in cocktail bars – the only exception was my book. A friend persuaded me to put it on display in the living room, so guests might see it and know that I was uncommon. She liked the way the immense black contrasted with the polished white of the rest of the room. I had a heavy gold lock fitted. They could have the casing, but the secrets of its stomach were for my grandmother and me.

It was the only book I owned. I had long since learned to read but reading had lost all appeal.

…..

$20,000 sustained my identity for less than a year.

I moved back to my parents’ house. Back to rules, restrictions, and rude awakenings.

On warm days, I would shut the curtains and curl myself between budget sheets. I was a story about a girl lost for too long. Once front-page news, now drowning in a sea of sensational scandals. From its former home, the book taunted me. It whispered through the slats of my wardrobe, it yearned to be free. If I removed it then, it was to trace its face and long to replace the gilding with pure gold. Or try to squeeze the life from it. It would flinch and twitch but refused to yield.

How can someone die with no worthwhile possessions save for a book?

One grandmother had the foresight to leave me something with which I might construct myself. But this? It was as useless as the coats the woman had cocooned in and shed. I realised, then, she had so many because she was searching for one that might effectively disguise her; but does anything draw attention to the dark like the light? She was never going to fit in here, but she could have given me a chance.

…..

As my parents age, the impermanence of all things tightens like irons around my essence. Worse is the idea that some things that ought never to have succumbed to the oppressions of time are lost to its embrace.

The book has come to settle on a shelf in my modest apartment, between Angelou and Plath, and, on occasion, I sit with it, a child again. I caress the careful contours, stroke the unfading leather with senescent fingers, and ache with mistakes of the past.

If I have the courage, I lift back the black mask. I run my eyes down the cracked spine inside and follow every mountainous tear. I study the chasm between the ragged edges left behind and those forced to occupy their space, and read with disgust the traitorous, cartoonish words inhabiting a false body. Every time I tenderly graze the dark skin, I remember the rage that had ravished me that day.

My grandmother’s writings had fallen victim to the hands of an impetuous child, driven to the edge of reason by an unsatisfied desire to understand. They had been scattered on the wind, and the poor carcass left barren. Unable to bear the sight of the hollowed skin, I had replaced her story with one I could read: “Mr Tom Goes to Town”. And still Mr Tom sits boldly in my grandmother’s coat and mocks me with his rosy smile.

…..

Now, through rheumy eyes, my father will take my hand, “Read to me about the island dust carried to this country by a changeable wind,” he implores.

And when I begin, as I always do, with a pair of bare feet dragging through soft sand and splintered planks to arrive at solid concrete and carry a shivering girl to the nearest coat shop, he smiles steadily, and I wonder if he ever read the book.