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On Visiting the
Family Dead The trip to Maspeth
to the cemetery was probably the longest I had ever taken. Even longer, I
think, than the trip to Flushing for the World’s Fair. We started the day by
going to church in our own neighborhood and then returning home for
breakfast after buying delicious buns and donuts from the German bakery near
the church. I ate, alternating between a cream donut, feeling the
yellowish-white cream ooze out of the dark little hole at the end, the
powdered sugar sticking to my lips at every bite; a jelly donut, its deep red
filling sticking to my fingers; and a crumb bun, crunching the small knuckles
of crumbs lightly between my teeth, glorying in feeling the fresh crumb break
down at the center and roll in pieces against my teeth. This pleasure lasted
until my mother prodded me to hurry up for we had a long way to go and the
return before Sunday afternoon dinner. Both of us trundled
to the subway in the time-limbo of Sunday morning. Even the trains were lazy.
Who travels on the subway between nine and noon on Sunday? A little more than a
year ago my sister had died of leukemia. She was two years older than I, and
many times I wished that it was I who had died instead. Even in death she was
the full center of attention, and I envied her as I had envied her in life;
her exquisite beauty, her sparkling intelligence, and the all-around
niceness of her person. As I cried at her funeral I was never quite sure of
what it was I was crying about, but I chose an appropriate place perhaps
nearer to the casket than anyone else. My mother and I went
regularly to the cemetery not so much to pay our respects as to relive my
sister’s life. How many times I asked myself “Why do I have to go along?” A
question as useless as it was futile. I went because by some special logic I had to. And so it was, every Sunday
at first; every other one by the end of the first year of mourning. I prayed
for maturity because I knew that after perhaps four or five years the visits
might become perfunctory and eventually few and far between. Although the winter
showed signs of relenting, I still wore a heavy coat with its matching grey
wool cap, neat, clean knickers, and the tall socks that often became loose
and fell inelegantly to an ankle. To this picture of conformity was added the
grey woolen gloves (not to be used for making snow balls because the snow
broke holes in the fingers), which matched the almost shiny grey buttons of
my coat. My mother wore black,
from her severe hat to the black hose and black orthopedic-looking shoes. The seats of the
subway car were made of woven cane. With luck I would bend a strand that was
broken so that I could finger it nervously or could snap it off outright and
take relish at breaking it longways into individual strips. It was a long
way to the cemetery. I counted every stop,
a number I came to know by heart. I wondered why the train bypassed the
small, less busy stops. Why the Myrtle Avenue stop was so filthy, the soot
caked on the ceiling tiles? The wheels of the
train sang songs, which I accompanied, to myself of course. Long rhythmic
songs, now shirring in high octaves, now bellowing in low ones. Songs I had
overheard in the dull wooden radios of butcher shops, the knob caked with fat
and blood. Songs of crooners’ desperation and loss. I heard them spinning
out of the wheels of the iron train. Four stops more to
go—that is, to go before our first change. The first change of several. Who
were the people who got off and on? Anonymous people, red-faced men, groups
of women, children like myself—but I was sure that they weren’t going to the
cemetery. Were they, like the children of the story books, going to
grandmother’s house? I don’t even remember my grandmother. She died when I
was very young. Only I went to the cemetery. My mother and I
almost never exchanged any words on these trips. An occasional, “Look out!”
but rarely more than this. Sometimes she sat quietly, saying a rosary, with
the beads hidden in her hands behind the black leather purse. I am sure that
it was a long trip for her too. When we finally
reached Canal Street, we climbed many steps and different stairways until we
went to another part of the station. We had to get a local now out to
Maspeth. The cars on this line were older. The backs on the seats were
taller, the separations between the seats had a tall metal partition. Some of
the poles in the middle of the car were made of porcelain whose chipped and
scarred places revealed the hazards of their daily use. This train also had
its number of stops but then the names rang foreign and strange, nothing like
the names I was accustomed to. I had travelled into another’s land. I even
thought that people spoke another tongue—German? Polish? Some people used to
call this the country. From the windows I could see empty lots of tall,
sleeping weeds. Five more stops to go
to the end of the line, and when it came we went out to the street passing
through the turn-of-the century doors of the station only to take a trolley
that rattled along to the end of its line. When we got there the trolley
expired at the doors of the cemetery too afraid to go beyond. We stepped out
to the cobblestone streets. The driver merely took his driving wheel and went
to the other end of the trolley and clanging his footpedal, rattled off. One could not go to
the cemetery without flowers. You couldn’t. Why not? Why, for respect, of
course. Of course. Respect, yes. The flower shops were
arranged so as not to seem commercial. All had a silver-colored skylight. At
the front of the shop there was a store front. No décor. Just flowers. And
sober minded, sober faced clerks went about wrapping flowers with sedate
paper. The smell, so sweetly pungent. I didn’t know what I was crying about
but knew even then I envied her in death. The smell of the flowers so strong.
White ones. “Yes, the white ones. They’re the ones I always get, don’t you
remember?” “Of course, who was it, your daughter, wasn’t it?” “Yes, yes.”
“How well I know, Signora, I lost a brother.” And also for Aunt Millie. We
mustn’t forget the others lying there too. Respect. Of course. The entrance to the
cemetery had no particular motif, stone pillars, iron gates, just an entrance
into death. The long, wide street—no, not a street just a driveway of sorts,
wide enough for funeral cars. Wide enough to feel like two small beings
walking solemnly through the shadow-cast way. Stones with names I
do not know and cannot remember. Monuments large like houses. Some houses so
great and large with names sculpted in large solemn letters. Angels looking
up to God. Christ looking down at the earth. Shadows creeping up to the
stones and hiding. Stories carved on stones. So-and-so dies at age two.
So-and-so dies at 92. Grandparents, loved by all; parents loved by their
children; children by their parents, brothers, and sisters. Why was I crying
so hard alongside my mother who cried like she didn’t know why either? Just a
bit more to go and then turn to the left, step on the sodden, forbidden
ground. Look for the red-stone marker and walk in to the second row, two over
and there she is. Plain, no frills. Why no house with her name carved out on
top if they cried so hard? A rose was engraved on the stone, its branches,
shorn of thorns, curved up the side then turned. Beneath was her name and the
incisive cloture of her two dates. Eleven years in all. Ours was a tragedy
too. There began the
prayers, not whispered, but loud until they broke into sobs and yells. I held
my mother’s hand hoping she would stop. Couldn’t she cry quietly like anybody
else? Why did she have to cry so loud? And why did she have call out to God?
I held her hand stalwartly as I had seen in the movies. Perhaps people would
forget her bellowing when they saw me standing there like a grown man holding
her hand (how many more years would it be?). And the tears came and rolled
down her cheeks. Why am I now crying, her hand holding mine, both of us
calling out to God? For respect, I kneel on one knee, just like in the films. Why did she have to
die at that time, and I, now why am I condemned to angry bereavement and
tortuous trips to visit her grave, placing delicate white flowers in their
appointed place? How fresh the flowers! What a delicate aroma they give off
against the dry coldness of the stone. Their smell awakens the letters of
her name. How lucky she is even in death to have such lovely, quiet
surroundings; to have her name carved so delicately and neatly like her own
do-gooder’s handwriting. She is what she was. By now my mother’s crying and
bellowing have calmed down and then, tired, it ceased. Our aunt over in
another corner did not get our grief, just our flowers. Then we retreated
down the long drive, through the iron and stone gate into the dormant
trolley. Through the iron-turned doors, train after train, stop after stop,
change after change, until we reached home. When I opened the
door I remembered I was hungry. My father raised his sad face from the
newspaper. Nothing was said, and we ate in silence until it was time for me
to go out to the streets and walk along rows and rows of houses looking for
anyone to throw me a ball. |