One hip pressed against the wall, her palm warm on my shoulder to steady herself, she’d ease out a square leather case with silver fittings glittering at the corners. It had one of those swing-down catches with a little crooked tooth. The tooth snugged into a metal loop on the front. We’d sit down on the stairs, knees touching, the box between us. She’d nod and gesture ‘go ahead’ with two fingers. I’d wipe my hands on the lap of my brick-patterned skirt then gently brush time’s dust off the top with the hem of my blouse, swing up the silver hook and lift the lid.
She’d usually turn away for a while to stare over my head at something I couldn’t see. I’d guessed perhaps she was seeing ghosts, but when I looked up the stairs, there was nothing there.
“My mother was a dainty woman,” Mom would say softly, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron, not looking at me.
Somehow, my self-absorbed self understood that I should be reverent, that I shouldn’t rush. So we’d sit in the dusty quiet and stare into the shadows of the box, waiting. I shivered when I touched the flimsy wrappings, held loosely with thin faded ribbons or plain parcel string, knowing they held her memories. The rustling papers stirred up a confusion of scent – lavender, lemon, rose and then leather.
I lifted out the treasures, one by one. A thin Blessed Virgin Mary cradling baby Jesus between her ivory arms. Packs of brittle greeting cards with stained edges, red-striped airmail letters cramped with Dad’s blue-black writing, over-stamped with ‘Allied Forces Overseas’. A carved wooden Sphinx the size of my hand, branded ‘made in Egypt’. Three faded roses bound with lace to a slim silvery wrist-band. A dark brown baby shoe worn down at the heels.
I picked up a photograph tucked against a corner. The date in the pinked margin read February 1938. The camera had caught her dark oval face and her unblinking gaze under a solemn brow. Grandmother’s thick wavy hair was pinned up under a fancy hat. Her fingers gripped the back of a velvet chair. Less than 12 months later, she would sit in a dentist’s chair for a wisdom tooth extraction and not awaken from the anesthetic. My mother was 19 years old, guardian three young siblings to keep safe from the social service authorities who wanted them sent to an orphanage. She bore the weight of that death all of her life. I know that now.
In comparison, the box that lay in my damp hands was feather-light.
I’d peel back the layers of tissue and there they were – my grandmother’s shoes. They were tiny – size 4, I think – black, with 18 shiny leather buttons marching from the arch to the ankle. They were creased but hardly worn, just enough to give off that comforting used smell. The heels were the width of three of my fingers, about two inches high. I traced the seams and fancy threading along the tongues. I gleaned the cobbler’s name on the instep with my fingers, as if the words were Braille: Savage Shoes. There was no question of me putting them on. At age eleven I was almost as tall as my mother. Already my feet were bigger than hers.
Mom would sometimes pick up a packet of letters and fan through them like they were leaves, only with writing. I remember asking her what they were. She’d said, “Your father wrote such beautiful poetry to me when we first met,” with a sad profundity even I could comprehend. And I would look from her beautiful chapped hands that were almost never still, to the mute epistles in her lap, wishing I could know what she was thinking, what she was wishing. My eyes would feel hot and full and my ears would throb.
We would rest there on the steps until my brothers banged through the screen door or the milkman came or the telephone rang – two long, two short. Too short. Then she would motion for me to put everything away. She’d push the box back into the shadows, snap off the light and close the door with a sigh. I would sigh too, my skinny shoulders rising and falling in time with hers. Leaning against the step, she would fold me to her chest, the sweet powdery smell of her body filling my nose, displacing the scent of our pasts.
Back then I thought it odd that she never wanted to hold my Grandmother’s ‘good’ shoes. But when my mother died too soon, I began to understand the power of possessions so personal.
Even today, when I venture to our storeroom to go through the things that I’ve stored since her passing, they hold a resonance that brings back that pulsing throb, the thickness in my throat, the tremor of longing in my fingers. Oh, Mom.
I tuck them back into their boxes and seal the lids with fresh tape. Perhaps next year I’ll try again.
