The Gloves

My childhood self half-believed my older brother when he told me Grammy never took off her pearls, not even when she drifted off to sleep in the massive four-poster my grandfather had vacated years before my birth.

Maybe it was true. Like the glasses of tea pooling condensation on her covered porch, Grammy’s pearls were a part of her.

No one saw my Grammy without them. A choker, a double strand, or a traditional single strand tied together everything she wore, the same way my mother went to work daily in her nurse’s scrubs.

No one saw her fling her choker, the necklace with the simplest clasp, against the wall before taking all of her necklaces to her jeweler to be re-strung into a single, too-long rope, but everyone knew it was around the time she started wearing the gloves.

Delicate ivory silk.

Spotless white linen.

Impossibly pale-blue kid leather.

Slate grey suede.

She had a pair to match everything she wore, and I can’t remember seeing her wear the same thing twice, although I must have, since I spent every Sunday after church, in her flawlessly proper world. My brother and my cousins, all boys, played hours of football on the manicured yard. My mother worked an overtime shift at the hospital. I lounged on the porch with Grammy, soaking in her unique fragrance, lavender and tea leaves and a hint of menthol.

Fascinated by her femininity, I studied her hair and her make-up and the way she effortlessly walked in heels even in the softest grass. I valiantly tried to perfect the calm, rolling way that she spoke. I asked for a pair of soft blush pink gloves to wear to church on Sunday.

With my careful attention to her every move, how could I have missed the way she balanced the tea tray almost on her wrists? The way she pushed open the French doors with her forearms? The quick intake of breath as she drew her silver comb through my unruly curls? The tears that glittered silently above her lashes when she slid her own tortoise-shell combs into her hair?

One Sunday, when I was twelve and still learning about discretion, I left a book at Grammy’s. My exhausted mother drove me back up the long driveway and waited in the car with my brother.

I ran breathlessly to the back porch and found Grammy with her hands cupping an empty glass of sweet tea, her gloves carefully discarded next to the pitcher.

Those hands didn’t belong to my grandmother. Couldn’t belong to my grandmother.

Bent and hobbled and curled.

Swollen and knotted and inflamed.

Red and raw and cracked.

Broken.

Swiftly, Grammy folded those hands under the table. In her clumsy haste, she grazed the edge of the wicker table and couldn’t hide her sudden grimace of pain. Shame flooded her eyes, but her gaze remained steady.

With a grace I have yet to replicate, I sank into the chair next to her and kissed her powdered cheek, laying my head on her shoulder. Silently, she placed her naked, damaged hands over mine, where we sat for an eternity, ignoring my mother’s car horn in the driveway.

This is a fictional response to a prompt for The Red Dress Club: write a short piece, either fiction or non-fiction, about something ugly - and find the beauty in it.

 

Concrit is always welcome here.  I know I have a lot of work to do in my journey to improve as a writer!