Grandpa’s Death

It’s not quite the dead of the night. The lights in the living room are still on, fan whirring softly like a mechanical beetle. My mom is half asleep in the study, next to the landline phone, tethered by coils. Me, and my two younger sisters, Ferret One and Ferret Two, are huddled on our parents’ bed, surrounded by clouds of soft blue mosquito netting. The bar of light coming in from the doorway splinters in the cracks of the netting. We’ve been told to go to bed hours ago, but we know it’s special circumstances and we take full advantage of it. Dad’s father is in the hospital again. He’s been in and out so many times that we’re more concerned with the lack of bedtime enforcement than some situation the grownups won’t tell us shit about. 

We’re taking turns scaring each other. The stories get ridiculous and we get more giggly than frightened as the shadows get longer. My mom comes to shush us only once. I tell them about the night crawlers on the ceilings and the invisible suits that watch us from outside the windows. They wave this off. My middle sister, Ferret One, has a red eyed witch and Ferret Two makes up a story about how the closet in the bedroom we’re not allowed to go into is full of flesh eating spiders. This is quite the nightmare fuel for me. We don’t realize how this stuff sinks into my brain. The spiders get us though. We huddle in the very corner of the bed, screaming, laughing and shoving each other. 

This part in my memory has one of those hilarious movie jump scenes. 

“Wait, do you really think thakurda is going to die?” asks Ferret One.

“Nah I don’t think so,” I reply. 

Cut to: dead body in the living room at my grandparents’ house. 

We all surround it, mouths gaping. There’s two pieces of tissue stuffed up his nose, to prevent fluids from spilling out (I’m told).

I can’t take it but I’m fascinated at the same time. Not by my grandpa’s dead body swathed in white, but by the adults around me that were crying. They were all usually so stern, so tall and somber, cracking a smile now and again. I look, then look away, look, then look away. I go into the back room and study myself in the mirror. I strike a pose, pretending I’m in a sad film about sad things. There are sniffles and wails in the background as funeral arrangements are made. 

On the car ride back to the apartment I find myself with a window seat. I screw my eyes together to try to squeeze out a tear. It feels like I’m trying to shit. The movie lens shifts away and I’m just a little girl in a car on a random Saturday afternoon who’s making faces. We stop at a red light and a passerby looks into the car, his eyes falling on me. The tears come immediately and I cry silently, beautifully. Leafy shadows come between us and the car speeds off.