Pretend

I remember the night I encountered my great-grandmother’s secret, perched in a glass of cleaning solution on the shelf above the bathroom sink.  I was perhaps six and it hadn’t occurred to me before that moment, that the teeth that I had always seen clinging to my Nana’s top and bottom gums, masticating endless meals, shining as they were revealed mid-grin, might not have been her own.  I’m not sure if I had fathomed the idea of fake teeth as a possibility at all (besides the plastic Halloween variety), until there they were, like some aberrant birth deformity suspended in formaldehyde. What else wasn’t what it seemed to be?  Who else held secrets that I was clueless about? 

This may have been one of my first clashes with perception and I strung that moment onto a necklace with other small betrayals and epiphanies that I would have to stumble upon in order to grow. I was to collect another only a few years later. 

Grandma Frannie and Grandpa Irving had never proclaimed that anything of theirs was off limits to explore.  My three cousins and I spent a month of our summer vacations from elementary school together every year and we relished each untethered moment with adventures in exploration, creative and otherwise. While the boys were off searching for treasure or ghosts, my younger cousin Hadria and I often spent endless hours lost in our Grandma’s closets and bureaus hiding between the sweater sets, “casual wear” and dressy gowns, trying on high-heeled pointy toed shoes, and imagining we were the kind of glamorous women my mother liked to socialize with. 

Photo: Etienne Girardet, unsplash.com

I called Hadria into the room from the depths of a closet in the adjacent dressing room, an extravagance I never had in our loft when I was growing up in New York City.  She skipped across the soft, Kelley green wall-to-wall carpeting. “What?  Whacha want?  How do you like this, huh?” she said, spinning around in a borrowed dress, before landing in a dramatic jumping jack sort of pose. Her skinny legs and arms stuck out in all directions, reminding me of a bony starfish with lipstick and an oversized evening gown.   She was giddy from the freedom we’d been gifted, great swaths of time unsupervised. Though our grandma knew from her perch downstairs in the den that we were safe, she gave us enough space to explore our imaginations without an audience. Meanwhile, she completed the NY Times Sunday puzzle or read yet another book.  

That afternoon I was searching for bangles or clip on earrings to complete our dress up outfits but I had opened a drawer and found bras and some funny underwear.

We were still giggling when there in a nondescript box, nestled between layers of white torpedo shaped bras, when my hand groped a fist-sized, flesh colored, silicon filled sack, soft and cool to the touch.  I picked it up, bewildered by what it might be, it’s plastic-like skin almost human, but too rubbery and without warmth.  It had the shape of a breast but reminded me more of a raw chicken cutlet. Why on earth would our grandma have such a thing?  

Photo: Ante-Hamersmit, unsplash.com

“What do you think this is?” I whispered, filling my cousin’s hand with my find.  It melted over the borders of her small fingers and then I watched her instinctively mush and squeeze its soft form, a quirky smile sliding across her scarlet lips.  

“It feels weird!” she said, shrugging, and we giggled some more. 

*** 

Hours after our discovery, we would begin to see our grandmother as more than we had before.  She was no longer just a mother, a grandmother, our nurturer with the expressive eyes and comforting ways.  She was no longer just a “tennis lady” or an artist or a wife.    

“Grandma, what is this?” I had asked, the eldest, leading her to the drawer that held her secret.  Hadria, stood next to me, silent, all eyes.   

In the bathroom soon after, our Grandma honored our curiosity with an honest answer, and my cousin and I, only seven and nine, stood there comprehending the weight of that truth.  She peeled up her shirt revealing a bra and her loose, lily pale skin at her middle, as if her belly had never made it outside by the pool with the rest of her.

She was inviting us to know her better, to help us not fear life or the hurdles we must face. She was smiling, grandma perfume tumbling into our young noses. Francis Lawner— with her bright blue eyes set in a sea of wrinkles— was one of the most authentic, generous, and beautiful women we knew.

Without hesitation or apparent shame, she pulled down her bra revealing another sack like the one we had found, and the long, thin scar that stretched across the flat terrain where her breast had once been.

I do not remember feeling afraid, because my grandmother showed only acceptance. 

“I had cancer many years ago, before you were born. I’m okay now girls, don’t you worry. The doctors took it all out of my body. Cancer is a sickness that can be very serious, but I had my breast removed so I could stay healthy and be here long enough to watch you kids grow up.”

“Does it hurt?” Hadria asked. 

“No, not at all. It’s just a scar, nothing to worry about,” and then she handed us the other silicon filled sack that had rested in her bra to avoid curiosity and perhaps pity.  Francis Lawner was much too proud for such things. 

We had learned that day that she was a warrior of sorts, although we never gave our respect for her strength a name.  We never said a word to each other about it again, we didn’t have to. My cousin and I had seemed to have shared an unspoken initiation into the realm of womanhood where secrets lived that we were worthy of keeping. That scar made her even more important to us, this woman who did not concede to vanity, but knew to convey to us that she was entirely whole, standing in her truth. That one moment transported her far beyond the realm of subservient wives and dutiful mothers.  She had survived something that had threatened to pluck her from us prematurely and yet she had chosen not to submit, or at least that’s how it seemed.  She was even stronger than I’d thought and more real than I’d perceived her to be.  She suffered, she had fought, and she had won. 

-end- 

Me and Hadria