An Empty Ballroom
"Clara Bow" By: Victoria Morse
An Empty Ballroom by Mirabella Markarian
We are visiting Grandma today, Dad says, and I sigh. Visiting Grandma and Grandpa means sitting on the floor of their apartment and playing with their old chess set for hours. It means awkwardly greeting her to no response and kissing her on the cheek. It means pretending I don’t hear my Grandfather’s soft sobs from the other room. I am always glad to leave.
On days when I am bored of chess, I stare at the photographs arranged neatly on their dresser. Pictures of my grandmother when she could walk and talk. I couldn’t believe the woman in the photographs and the one in the wheelchair was the same person.
Their apartment is small, and her room is even smaller. I like to touch her necklaces, encrusted with bright, gleaming jewels, and her earrings, pretty and delicate just like her. Her watches are my favorite; the little watch faces gleam as I turn them toward the light. Sometimes I flip through photo albums. My grandmother playing with little me, laughing and cradling me in her arms. Her eyes crinkled at the corners, once so full of light and love, now dull and empty.
There were good and bad days. On the good days, she would be on the couch, watching Shirley Temple or any old black and white show. I would watch sometimes, but it was mostly to hear her laugh, like birdsong. Then she would smile, and her eyes would light up, and I knew she could see me. Hi Grandma, I say.
On the bad days, she must have felt trapped inside her mind. Trying to piece together forgotten faces and memories, slipping away, just out of reach. An old ballroom recording of her past playing on loop, slowly becoming more and more incoherent. Muffled. A confusing mesh of sounds, record scratches and all. She used to hum sweet little melodies, and Dad would smile sadly. She is quiet now.
She slept a lot. Sometimes she would sleep through our entire visit. On those days, Dad would speak in a hushed whisper with my aunt and grandfather in the kitchen. On those days, the quiet was too loud.
Her name was Diane, and my family tells me I have her eyes. Hazel. Brown in the center, and green all around, like golden honey in the sunlight. Not blue like my mother’s, or brown like my father’s. She and I shared this, at least.
I knew she was dying from the way her little body pressed into her mattress for warmth, huddled under the blankets. Her hand, withered and small in mine, her legs, weak and thin under the covers from so many years of disuse. A husk of the beautiful woman I never got to meet.
When she died, I didn’t cry. I was sadder for the ones who knew her when she was herself. Grandpa cries for her, and I cry for him.
Diane, honey, say hi to your grandchildren. See them? Right there?
I gaze into her eyes, the same as mine, for a flash of recognition, the slightest change in her delicate features.
She stares right through us.
She is gone, but I am not sad like I should be
I think she left a long time ago
