Grandmere Adele-Marie (standard:drama, 2263 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Aug 08 2007	Views/Reads: 3422/2213	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Three extraordinary women in Orleans (France) face the challenges of age with grace.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

that we heard blows from the broom handle exploding beneath our feet or 
under the bed as one or another of these sick women pounded on the 
ceiling in an appeal for help.  There was no telephone, of course, and 
so they came to depend on the storekeeper below -- when he was in the 
store.  He was a saint, that man, who at the first hoarse cry from 
Héloise or whimper from Gilberte, would leave his customers and go 
rushing up the back stairway to succor the ailing.  Actually, I'm sure, 
he was really trying to stifle their cries, so his customers wouldn't 
be frightened away. 

But then each Sunday afternoon, the shop was closed.  And in the spring,
it was the custom ... that is, I used to put on my best dress, with a 
bright shawl over my shoulders and crossed tightly over my breasts, and 
a gay white hat with a wide brim which looked as if it came out of the 
last century, but nonetheless attracted quite a bit of attention, If I 
must say so ... to walk for hours with Maman along the narrow paths 
beside the river, to the park.  More than once, in fact nearly every 
Sunday it was so; and Maman would always ask our three neighbors below 
to come with us.  Often they were too ill, however on some occasions 
one or another would yield to Maman's pleading, since all three never 
left that dwelling together, at the same time, that is.  Grandmere 
Adele-Marie never came with us, but on other days, she would demand to 
be taken to the park, and it was then that we could hear her clumping 
down the stairs, to her wheelchair. 

I must tell you about those stairs.  From the apartment above the shop,
they went down to a back room that was always piled high with boxes and 
wooden barrels ... and the floor was always covered with sawdust to 
soak up the spills, so it smelled always of pungent blood and 
yesterday's milk.  Now at the side of this storeroom was a green door 
with four glass panes on top, but you could not see through them 
because they were painted over with the yellow paint that went all the 
way down the hall to a second stair, and this was the one that climbed 
up two stories leading to our apartment.  Actually -- and this is 
beside the point, but I must tell you -- below the storeroom was a 
cellar which ran the length of the whole house.  So it was by a 
trapdoor under the stairway that you could descend among the sacks of 
onion and garlic and potatoes to the dusty wine racks, where a few 
bottles still rested. 

And so, as I was telling you, when we heard this pounding, Maman would
start and I would jump. 

"It must be Gilberte", she would say, "poor Gilberte, her heart has
finally given out." and we would rush out the door, down the stairs 
into the shop, back to the storeroom and up the other stairway to the 
second floor, where Gilberte would open the door as we arrived on the 
landing and say something like, "I beg of you, please help me pick up 
Grandmama."  Adele-Marie had fallen out of bed. Again.  That poor 
woman, how she stood so many falls from that high bed without breaking 
more of her bones I will never know to this day.  And Héloise would 
stand by, helpless, gasping and wringing a dishrag. 

Then Maman would make tea for everyone and make the three of them sit
down quietly, and we would spend an hour recalling the time a thief 
came into the cellar after the shopkeeper's money -- for he kept it 
under the paving stone in the north corner, since banks were always 
closed when the market day was done -- and found himself locked in 
because the trapdoor had jammed; and how the police made quite a joke 
of this.  You could hear them laughing all the way down the hall and up 
the stairs. 

Well, that is neither here nor there, and you must excuse me if I say
so, but sometimes I could not be altogether pleased with those three 
women, because, after all, one must have consideration. 

The clocks in two church towers were chiming three am or perhaps it was
four, when I awoke to this furious pounding beneath the bed.  It took 
me, perhaps, half a minute as I groped around in the dark for my 
chemise, since it was pitch black because the street lamp was not lit, 
and we do not waste electricity by leaving a light burning all night 
long, even though we are two women alone. It was taking such a time for 
me because, you must know, there are some nights in Spring when I can- 
not stand to sleep in a chemise beneath the cover, and I had thrown it 
off, I do not know where, so there I was groping about on the floor, 
still half asleep, with this insistent pounding beneath my hands and 
knees, and the music of my mother's snores rising and falling in the 
other bedroom. I must admit, I was really somewhat angry. 

I finally shook Maman awake.  We found our clogs and went clattering
down one long stairway and up the other to find the door wide open, and 
these two naked women waving brooms and making shrill cries, while a 
frightened bat flew acrobatic manoeuvres from the lamp to the four 
walls and against the bare window, which was open just a crack at the 
bottom.  From the other bedroom, Grandmere Adele-Marie barked 
instructions and offered advice from where she couldn't move from the 
bed, since she was still pounding on the ceiling with her crutch.  It 
was a scene that I can never forget, I tell you. 

This year, not long before Bastille Day, Maman and I were awakened once
again, but a solemn pounding, just as daylight could be seen through 
the window frame.  We knew at once that it was different this time.  
Maman did not say a word, but searched in the armoire for her black 
dress (which I had not seen her wear for over a year, since despite her 
age and her serious approach to life, Maman certainly does not disdain 
the bright colors and modes of every fashion change, though I must 
admit that she would never again appear flashy or avant-garde) and her 
black shoes with low heels and the black shawl with fringes which I 
remember from the funeral in Paris ... and with a simple gesture of her 
hand, she made me understand that I should dress the same way and not 
hurry about it.  I have often wondered in this circum- stance, what 
knowledge comes to us that informs us so certainly of the truth;  that 
certainty which dictates feelings and actions so appropriate at the 
moment, even as our judgment says, "it is only another bat." 

When we arrived, the door was open.  Héloise and Gilberte sat in the two
armchairs, facing each other, with a sadness that touched me deeply. 
Maman knelt beside them and took one hand of each. They all began to 
cry quietly.  I stood beside the open door, not knowing what to do, 
tears running down my cheeks as well.  For the first time since I can 
remember, there was a silence in the other bedroom, where Grandmere 
Adele-Marie slept. 

I do not like to remember that time; it was not pleasant.  Maman and I
found sponges and cloths and gently washed the old woman whose fiery 
spirit would not molest us with her pounding any more.  We dressed her 
in an elegant gown, which she had preserved all these years in the 
black trunk with broken hinges, and tucked the torn spot in the hem 
under her legs, so it would not show. I dressed her hair in the latest 
fashion, since I know how to do this very well;  and I tell you, she 
did not look a day over eighty-five when we were finished. 

Not long after that, Héloise went to live with a distant relative who
was, by good fortune, a doctor, while Gilberte moved back in with her 
former lover, who at this time had a wife, five children, his father 
and his brother-in-law all living together in his house.  They have 
never written and we no longer know where they are. They are gone.  Yet 
many times at night, I suddenly awaken and reach out for my chemise as 
the church-tower clocks chime the hour and I listen as the echo of that 
pounding below my bed dies in my ears. 

*     *     *     *     * 

Seattle WA Copyright 1990 Gerald X. Diamond


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