| dewy decimal |
2004-11-07 - 12:29 p.m.
My grandma had died three days before at the Saint Francis Medical Center, a quick but painful death. All that week there had been no stopping that rain, slapping the ground with it's heavy drumming. We were in my grandma's house going through her things. I think it was on a Sunday.
I was alone in the shoji room that was laden with straw tatami mats. Through the paper screens I could see the dark shape of the mountain apple tree on the other side, being shook by the rain.
All that morning I read along the dusty old spines of her bookcases, salvaging anything of sentimental value or historic novelty. I think maybe I'd ended up keeping a book or two. Her drawers were packed with silk fabrics and the dusty odors of aged paper and moth balls. I remembered the way a dress may have hung on her slumping bac as I ran my hand inside of her closet . Suddenly I hear a honking from outside.
When I get outside I see that our dog, Lady, had between her jowls a flapping, black duck. The nasally, horn like cry persisted as its emerald-tipped wings flapped lividly. At that moment I had such sympathy for the animal. That it had not died sooner. Old Lady had never caught anything bigger than a lame pigeon before. I stood shocked as Lady lay the injured duck down at my feet.
After I called my Dad he had come back with a big red axe in his hand. He came over like a man with such purpose as I never did see. Since Grandma died he had seemed much more resolute of a person. He twisted his chin and said something to Lady before he lifted that big old axe and chopped that big duck's neck right down the middle. I turned my head as the axe came down. When I looked again that duck was still honking. I looked at my Dad curiously for an answer.
"Duck's are real strong creatures. Their internal organs keep working for as long as three hours after they're killed sometimes." Lady was sitting next to Dad now and her tail was wagging as she cleaned herself. The dead, black body continued to flap although with considerably less strength.
Suddenly we heard a car pull in to our gravel driveway. It was Dad's brother Harold who had come over from New York for their Mother's funeral. I'd always thought it wierd that Uncle Harold had always addressed Grandma as "mother."
When he came up to us and sees the bird his face wretches for a minute. We tell him about Lady's catch. He was wearing a bue oxford shirt and khaki slacks. His arms held a manilla envelope, "I brought you a little present." He hands the envelope over to me. It was full of literature from several academic institutions in New York. "There are also FAFSA forms in there for you. Cooper Union's a great school if you can get in." I thank him when suddenly I hear a dragging sund from aroung the corner where a pile of stacked crates sat. An oleander bush also marked that corner.
The three of us went around to see what the matter was. We all looked in amusement as we watched a beat up old cardboard box no more that 3 square feet by three square feet dragging itself along the gravel. The top of the box was folded close. Someone had written something on top of the box in a black marker. The words were running a little from all the rain, it said:
Dear Sirs,
There is a very sick dog under this box. I have put her inside of here because of all the rain, but her feet are free to moving as she pleases. I hope that if you have any food you might open the box so that she may eat. I do not think she will lived too long though.
Thank you.
"What a bizarre thing," Harold said.
My Dad tentatively studied the dragging box before he moved in toward it and unfolded the top of the box. Wheh we looked inside we were shocked to see and long haired, black and white dog. Its face was pointy and half of the body was an open sore. I remember how badly it had stunk in that box. Oh that poor dog. Parts of its leg were so bad that bone had been exposed.
I went inside to see if Grandma had anything in the fridge for the dog. Grandma's kitchen was very dark. As a matter of fact the whole house was pretty dark. There were no white walls in any room. The kitchen was painted a drak emerald and the dining room a dingy mustard color. Finally I found half a cooked steak.
We threw the steak into the box and, man, that poor dog must've been so hungy. The salted meat was gone in less than a couple of minutes.
Later on that day, under the pattering roof of that dark house I began thinking about all these old objects that my Grandparents had never wanted throw away. Things that I had no reason to keep myself, but things that for one reason or another they had decided should have stayed in this house as long as they had. I felt an eeriness creep over me but I did not fear any phantoms. In fact the eeriness had come from a strange feeling that it was I who had been hauning that house.
That old memory came back from the year I'd found that poor dead girl in the gulch. She had died after falling from a poisoned lychee tree several years ago. Poisoned trees tend to have pretty weak limbs. I was the unfortunate person to have found her dead body. She had been dead for quite sometime by then. As I had stood on a higher ledge looking at that body, I felt a sense of remoteness. That body was a world apart from me. That body in a white and blue palaka print dress. I remember her little body half sunk into a rain puddle that had blackened with rot. It looked like a pool of oil but even at the age of 10 I knew that it had been rot.
That feeling of remoteness was a surreal one like that of being in a dream and being in half-belief. When I backed up into the macadamia nut tree behind me my finger felt something oily. When I studied my fingers they were slick and black with the rot water and suddenly that remoteness disappeared. Knowing that the poor rotted girl had stood exactly where I was at one point. That day shaped me in strange ways.
Uncle Harold was heading back to New York the next day. I begged my Dad to let me go with him but my Dad said that he needed me right now, so I ended up staying in that old, dark house for a while and on that day of the dead duck I sat on Grandma's cold wood floor stroking Old Lady's fur into the late night, black as an oil well, watching Johnny Carson.