After the Earthquake

After the quake, Steven drove to his grandmother's house to check on her. He realized that the damage was serious when he walked in the door. The entrance tiles were filled with vivid memories — the hospital week, his grandfather's deep breathing, the funeral service in the rain. The brilliant light of memories was filled with fragments of broken glass.

Many memories were lost, all because her grandmother had used vases instead of something sensible. Steven had tried to talk to him about the metal, but he liked to look at the delicate colors in the memories. His wife had picked up the plastic, but the plastic was too soft to be exposed.

"John?" grandma called.

Steven glanced around the broken glass and found his grandmother sitting in the middle of the living room.

"Hello, Gogo," she said.

"Where is John?" he asks. "I looked for him, but everything was broken."

"Let's clean up a bit," suggested Steven. She could not bear to tell him that her husband was dead, she looked weak now. "I brought you new dishes."

He did not say that the new containers were plastic.

Some memories survived. The hallway cabinet was the best. Steven got three months of his grandmother's childhood in a large embalming pot and his father's first day of school at the Batman hot tub. The Chinese house was very ugly - full of memories of a broken cup of tea for friends and broken champagne flames for birthdays and souvenirs. There was nothing in it with the lid, so even the unbroken cups were empty.

"I have a son like you," said his grandmother.

"I know." Steven did not know if he was sad or did not remember him or was relieved to remember his father. Both, he thought.

She poured out the memory of her grandmother's fight with Aunt Jane on Tupperware. It wasn't something he used to keep, but he was still so small that he never dared to throw it away. Her grandmother looked at the plastic suspiciously.

"I'll put it in the kitchen cupboard," he assured her. "Just a moment, while we clean things up."

She took it to the kitchen and found it full of envelopes on the table.

"Well, grandma," she said, "you can't put memories on paper. What did you think?"

"I wanted to send them to John. He's planted overseas."

He wiped the dirt off with a paper towel and threw everything away and headed straight for the trash. He could not even say what he was trying to send.

Throughout the house, he rescued as much as possible from Tupperware containers with good safety lids. She encouraged her grandmother to help her, especially to look after her while she worked. They redeemed Aunt Jane's wedding and her grandmother's first day and the time her father was suspended from fourth grade for fighting. He gathered memories in the kitchen cupboard, and from time to time, his grandmother would open the door and look at the bright colors locked inside the plastic.

That night Steven put his grandmother to bed and called his wife to tell her he was going to sleep on the couch. Her grandmother was always independent, but she never left her alone now. Tomorrow she would make arrangements for a nurse to stay in the house.

Steven woke up to the sound of the dishwasher crying and found granny lying on a chair, her head resting on the kitchen table. One cupboard was open. It should have been packed with well-packed Tupperware, but it was empty.

She put her hand on her grandmother's shoulder and saw that she was not breathing. He started dialing 9-1-1, then put his phone back in his pocket. She had lost her grandmother in the earthquake, and the little she had saved had sunk into the water. He should have known better; he had never liked the memories stored in the plastic.

Her grandmother was carrying a glass of perfume bottle with a few drops of memory inside. He found it yesterday, and it was so small that he did not bother to put it in a solid container. At the memorial service, the mother gave her grandmother a baby boy — Steven — for the first time. In memory, and in death, his grandmother smiled.