Tiny but Mighty

Dear Aunt Maggie,

No one in the family ever talked about it. But in order to be brought to the States by your uncle and sold to my grandfather’s brother at age twelve, you must have been around seven when you were orphaned. Auntie Filor was even younger, maybe five.

Lying in bed as a child, I would hear snatches of stories of children living on the street, searching through horse dung looking for undigested grain, their Orthodox prohibition not to steal being so strong. You and your sister were in an orphanage. Your uncle sent money for a ticket to bring you to California. Maybe it was the only cash he could scrape together. Maybe he knew that your lively personality would serve you best.

It meant you were separated from Filor. If you were ten, she was probably eight. I can imagine you telling her that her turn would come next. Uncle would send for her soon and then you two would be together again. I can image you giving her a brisk hug and turning to go…your heart breaking. The two of you had been through so much together, you’d learned to close doors in your minds in order to take another step forward…and another step.

Who took you to the ship? Did you look up and see it looming over you? How did you manage the crowd boarding, with people jostling you with their bundles? Were you traveling alone? Maybe you were traveling with other orphaned girls, some of them even old enough to be picture brides. And then? You must have come by train to Fresno. Who was with you as you crossed the great, bewildering expanse of this nation? I assume your uncle, a man whose name I would never know, met you at the station.

When I was in my 20s, I brought my VHS camera when I came to visit. You told me that when you were twelve you lived on the uncle’s farm. You were out working in the fields, when someone came and told you that a letter had come from your sister. You said you ran to the house, so excited to hear from Filor. But there was no letter.

Instead there was a man. He was 26.

“They told me I was getting married. They dressed me in a woman’s dress and put me in high heels. They put lipstick on me and we drove to the Justice of Peace. They signed an affidavit that I was 18.” How the justice of the peace could look at this skinny little girl and think she was 18 was beyond me. He must have been bribed.

The man handed over $1200 to your uncle and the man took you home with him. That man was my grandfather Krikor’s brother, Vartvar.

“I didn’t know anything.” Maggie said, her dark eyes flashing. “I didn’t even know how to boil an egg. Your uncle taught me everything.” I only remember my Uncle Vartvar as an old man with gentle, faded blue eyes. Confined to his recliner, he spoke to me in an incomprehensible language.

I could only imagine what “everything” meant. There’s silence on the tape while I tried to figure out how to diplomatically ask you the next question, but you went on.

“Your uncle had a few dogs, you know, to guard the house and barn. The white one was his favorite. He was always talking to that dog and playing with her. One day, I did something he didn’t like. I don’t remember what it was. But he got so mad at me, he took a big knife, like a machete, and chopped that white dog’s head off. He pointed that knife at me, ‘If I could do that to my favorite dog, just think what I would do to you.’ ”

Whether it was malnutrition, trauma, or having babies too young, you never grew much. You just came up to my shoulder and I’m all of 5’3”. Soaking wet you might have weighed all of 89 pounds. You worked the grape fields, boiled the clothes, scrubbed the floors on your hands and knees, fed chickens, wrung their necks, became an amazing cook and baked the delicate lavash on the hot plate of a wood stove.

At harvest, while the grape dried to raisins, you worked in the packinghouse alongside my grandmother Elisa, pitting peaches and stuffing them into cans. You probably had to stand on a crate to be able reach the worktable. You raised three daughters, my favorite being Mary with her raucous laugh and great smile.

And you kept your head on your shoulders, literally.

Meanwhile, when the order of nuns who ran the orphanage returned to France, your sister Filor left Turkey with them. She never took vows, always a dourly-dressed lay-sister.

When Uncle Vartvar died, you moved into town a few doors away from Mary and George. They didn’t have any children and had tried to adopt several times when finally Rodney came into all of our lives.

Everyone loved Rodney. You had other natural grandchildren but he was your heart’s delight. I remember one time he wanted to show off wrestling moves and no one would volunteer to get down on the floor with him, but you did. You were more like playmates than grandmother and grandson. Without a drop of blood in common, he somehow had inherited your personality, your constant optimism, your love of life.

When Rodney was 16, he got a job working in the warehouse to make money to restore a 1938 roadster he’d found moldering in someone’s barn. The final touch was the seats waiting to be paid for at the upholstery shop. It was near the end of Rodney’s shift and he was lifting a pallet laden with cases of peaches up to a high shelf. The forklift tipped over, and one of the lift beams crushed Rodney’s skull. There was no protective cage.

That car sat in the garage untouched and Uncle George went to the cemetery every morning. You never spoke to me about Rodney with sadness or loss, but more as a wonderful event that happened in your life.

With Rodney gone, the house went silent. The ticking of the kitchen clock could be heard in every room. Then my dad called and told me your sister was coming from France to live with you. You and Filor hadn’t seen each other in 65 years.

Seeing you together was like night and day. For all your brightness and good humor, Filor was dark and melancholy. Where you were expansive, she was compacted. Were you two always so different? Was that why your uncle paid the passage to America for just you and not Filor? Or had being left behind in the orphanage or the years of genuflecting in the convent curdled her soul?

But I have to say one thing for Auntie Filor, she did fill the house up again. Clicking around the dial, Auntie Filor found TV evangelists ranting about the wages of sin and asking for money. From early morning to bedtime, the noise was constant. She drove you nuts.

I flew out that summer to visit. We were all getting ready for the annual Chakmak picnic where all the survivors of that little town, all the starving orphans who had found their way to Selma, in the Central Valley of California, would got together to eat and talk and eat some more. Mostly it was their descendants now, all but a few old folks having passed away. You started out as one of the youngest of my grandparents’ generation and now you were one of the few elders we had left. This was the first year Auntie Filor would be able to join us.

But Auntie Filor wouldn’t come to the picnic; she kept saying it was “sinful.” “What is the sin in it?” you said. “Please explain to me what is the sin.”

You threw your chin up at me, the signal that I should try to convince her. I thought for a minute. “Auntie Filor, you know Jesus organized the first picnic.” Filor looked up from her crocheting and gave me a stern glare “What you saying?” “You know the story in the Bible where Jesus performs the miracle of the loaves and fishes. That was the very first picnic.” “Blasphemous girl,” she hissed. She pulled her chair up closer to the TV and turned up the volume. You just shook your head.

When Aunt Filor died, a few years later, the house was silent again. I noticed that now you needed to sit on a couple of cushions to be able to reach the table. You asked me to stay with you for a couple of weeks. You said would teach me all the Armenian dishes. But I was still in my twenties and thought that time was endless. I would be back the next summer or maybe at Christmas.

The next time I came to visit your vigor was gone. Arthritis had finally claimed your hands. There would be no filo stretched so thin you could read a newspaper through it, no grape leaves to roll, no lamb and peppers ground together for lahmajoun.

The last time I saw you we were standing in the driveway. As I was about to get in the car, you said, “I hope I’ll see you again.” “Of course you’ll see me again, Auntie!” I grabbed you in a big bear hug, ignoring how frail you’d become.

But you knew the truth, even if I chose to ignore it.

And if I chose to ignore the truth, maybe it’s one thing I learned from you. Not to let pain or the threat of loss stop you from living. To be willing to laugh and enjoy. To be willing to keep your heart open, to love. To be willing to get down on all fours and let someone else’s child throw you and pin your heart to theirs.

Thank you for reaching your hand out to me, for your affection. For showing me bitterness will even make steel brittle, that tenderness makes us strong.

All my forever love,

Gaylon