The Accident

My grandfather died four days before his fiftieth wedding anniversary; we held his wake on that day, and my grandmother filled their house in gold-trimmed decorations celebrating the long love she had already lost. Everything bore his and her name—composed in fine lettering and adorned with the shapes of roses. An anniversary napkin clung to my father’s scotch, concealing the golden liquid within the fogged glass. He kept his eyes focused somewhere I couldn’t see and rested his calloused thumb over the big “5-0.”

“Papa, what are you looking at so hard?” I asked, feeling my nose wrinkle in attempt to focus on his stare.

He shook his head—a gesture I recognized in him and my brother when they didn’t want to talk about such things. “I’m remembering. That’s all.”

“Remembering Pap Paw? What are you remembering?” I sat up tall, recalling what my father told me about growing straight instead of crooked.

My father looked at me—straight at me, and I couldn’t recall a time when he ever did it before. “He had a hard life, you know. After his accident, he was just shy of my age and all of a sudden he couldn’t take care of himself. It turned him mean as a snake.”

“Pap Paw was never mean to me.”

“I know,” he said. He took another sip; I could smell his breath from where I sat, Indian-style, on the carpet. “I want to remember him like that. Your grandpa. Not as my father.”

I was afraid to even speak to my grandmother. She was the one who would chase us from the midnight hour board games and scold me for running outside without shoes on. She sat on the sofa staring at my grandfather’s armchair designed to help him rise without the use of sturdy legs. My mother pulls on my ear and tells me to give Mam Maw a hug—she’s the one who needs it the most.

My grandfather was the first person I knew to die. The living room floor where my grandfather told me stories of war from his wheelchair was suddenly filled with strangers dressed in shadows, their voices echoed inside the tiny house like the hum of a beehive. I walked barefoot across the faded, burnt orange tile and into the kitchen. I remembered my grandfather and I, sitting at the kitchen table beneath the glow of the green chandelier and resting our tired chins on our knuckles. I knew he was silently letting me win at those board games we played to learn about one another’s lives, yet still I slipped him pink bills and high number cards beneath the wood so we could keep playing. But the board games lay hidden in the attic while the table was cluttered in pungent foods instead of our elbows; one-time use gold kitchenware and plastic cups stood in the place of almost burned cookies that my grandfather and I would bake on our late nights together.

“And how are you doing, missy? You’ve grown faster than the weeds!” A voice rattled from above me, its body reeked of something like vanilla and wilted flowers.

I looked up to see an older woman my mom introduced me to, but her name was nothing like I’d ever heard before, and I couldn’t quite remember what. Something like Bernadine or Estelle. “I miss my grandpa.”

“Well of course you do, precious girl. We all do. He was a good man.” Her teeth were too straight to be real, and she had lipstick the color of Thanksgiving drawn across her front two.

“He was the first person I knew to die. How many have you known?”

She laughed, spilling a little of her punch onto the kitchen tile. “Sugar, I already lost count.”

She exhaled loudly and tried to pat me on the shoulder, but I leapt out of her reach. I didn’t like for people to touch me, and suddenly I couldn’t quite breathe right. My cheeks burned and my eyes started to water, and I wasn’t about to start crying in front of a lady who didn’t even count my grandpa. I couldn’t see the windows through the forest of chattering bodies, and I needed to breathe in; I carefully wove myself out of the polluted kitchen and onto the back porch.

My shoes, stained in colors of the earth, sat on the wood, and I begrudgingly slid them onto my feet as to protect my skin. I was always scolded for galloping across grass ridden with shattered glass and ant beds with delicate toes; I preferred the calluses of my adventures to the daintiness of pretty feet. I walked down the wheelchair ramp that my father built with his hands and recalled how he felt his age by the way his back bent and ached for months after. The fireflies were out, giving light to the darkness where streetlights could not burn. Staring at the fluttering lights, I recalled my brother and I running between these pecan trees at dusk, catching fireflies for our grandfather to see. He was always waiting inside the porch swing with bowls of orange sherbet, his wheelchair parked far enough away from first glance that he could’ve been sitting by choice.

I told my mother that I didn’t want to wear black, that my grandfather would’ve wanted me to wear colors. So we wrapped my unripe hips in an evergreen velvet that clung to sofas and leather chairs— always leaving bits of fur like my mother leaving lipstick on cheeks and collars. My feet throbbed inside the Mary Jane framed shoes, but I kept venturing deeper into the trees, following the small traces of light created by fireflies. I wanted to be lost—I wanted to run away into the places where myths are dreamed and witness the magic whispered to me before I fell asleep. But all that I found were the fences of other people’s yards, back porches and barking dogs. Everywhere I went was restricted, out of bounds, and I was stuck inside the perimeter of my grandparents’ yard that suddenly didn’t seem as infinite as it did when my brother and I used to explore it.

Then I found myself running back towards the house where the ceiling lights bled into the firefly light. I ran up the driveway, past the windows and doors and into the street I wasn’t allowed to cross by myself. My cheeks warm and wet; I wiped my eyes with the sleeves of my nice coat, and I couldn’t control my sobbing. I stood on the painted flashing white lines of the road and waited, like my grandfather, for the lights.

My mother told me that my grandfather died peacefully. But I saw his face at the funeral. It was scarred from a car crash; his van that was designed to allow his broken back and lifeless legs to drive was unrecognizable from its collision with a telephone pole. My father said the brakes didn’t work, and my grandfather couldn’t stop. I too could wait here for a passing car and rise as my grandfather did. I would pass peacefully between here and heaven where my grandfather turns cartwheels with our deceased Doberman, and we could all play board games again. I could tell him about the way my father pretended he wasn’t drinking the scotch that made him raise his hand at my mother. I could tell him about the way my mother never slept in our house, that she crept out of the driveway with her headlights off and talked on the phone to someone named Steve. I could tell him that my brother didn’t pay attention to me anymore and that I was alone most of the time, that I missed my Pap Paw and wanted to catch fireflies for him again.

I couldn’t see the darkness anymore with the blaring lights swallowing my entire body. The lights kept brightening, intensifying; I heard roaring, high squealing and the scent of burning rubber. I closed my eyes.