So you know what you're getting into...

Here shortly I plan on posting some writing I've done as of late. I think I'll start by sharing a short story I wrote about my Grandma smelling like feminine wash. I submitted it for publication this year, but sadly (and surprisingly) it was not accepted. Enjoy!

A Birthday One Summer’s Eve

“Birthday candles used to cost me five cents,” my grandmother said as she leaned across me to light two tall, red taper candles in the center of my cake.  “I went to Walt-Mart today and they were TWO DOLLARS!”
                 
                  My grandmother was five feet tall and stood hunched over at her shoulders, as if gravity was slowly overcoming her, headfirst. She had skin like leather, big blue eyes magnified behind thick glasses, and seemed to only own one outfit which she wore every day, without washing. Her outfit consisted of a faded floral cardigan, yellow San Francisco Zoo shirt (she repeatedly pointed out the shirt was a gift-- that she would never go to San Francisco herself, because of all ‘the gays’), and pleated beige pants that stopped just short of her ankles revealing her varicose veins, red socks, and white Reebok classics. She carried a purse, but never brought it inside. She smelled like mothballs, roses, and ginger ale.  She had at least four dollars in quarters and twenty peppermints in her pockets at any given time, which as she walked, created the same sound as a slinky traveling down a staircase.

                  In the mid-90’s, during what my grandma lovingly referred to as “my fat years,” I celebrated my tenth birthday in our backyard. We lived in a small three-bedroom house in a fairly diverse suburb of North Dallas.

                  My dad, a blue-collar Vietnam Vet, who was equal parts Jeremiah Johnson, Homer Simpson, and Don Imus, was actively working outside to ‘scoop the poop’ of the Poodle/Terrier mix we called Little Bit, in preparation for the party. My mother, a high school teacher, busied herself in the kitchen searching for the fancy hand-painted chip bowl she purchased on a vacation, that always seemed to evade her on every holiday and birthday. Later we found out my dad had swapped Little Bit’s food bowl with my mother’s chip bowl. When she confronted him about it he replied, “She needed a bigger bowl; she’s a growing pup, damnit!”

                  My older sister locked herself in her room earlier that day after my grandma asked if she was still dating the boy that had recently broke up with her (by placing a hand-written letter on our screen-door, which my dad hung on the fridge, “so she will see it,” he had said).  I sat in the company of my grandmother and twin sister. My grandmother rambled about the outrageous price of birthday candles and my twin sister ranted about how the other kids would think we were poor because my grandma didn’t buy normal birthday candles and instead put two candlesticks leftover from Christmas in the center of our cake. We listened to grandma warn us about all the evils in the world as we anxiously awaited our guests’ arrival. We discussed such topics as, Herbal Supplements, The Dangers of Gypsies, and my personal favorite: Symptoms of an Untreated Yeast Infection.

                   My parents said my twin sister and I could together decide to invite five friends to our party, but the week before my party, my grandma gave out all five invitations to the nearest neighbors who had children that weren’t necessarily friends of mine, but were my age. As the guests arrived, Grandma ushered everyone through the galley kitchen and out the back door to the back yard. We were the only kids on our block with a trampoline and so naturally, we were the “cool kids,” despite my dad standing by the ladder, and yelling “ONE AT A TIME!” which could be heard in three-minute intervals within a three-house radius, by everyone except my grandmother, who was standing next to him. As dad yelled at the kids, my grandmother yelled at him, “What? I don’t know what time it is! Is it time for cake?”

                  To my father, who purchased the trampoline, it was a death machine, catapulting preteens high into the air then sending kids head first into the ground, snapping their necks.  Popular games like ‘Crack the Egg’ were strictly prohibited. He would motion to the rusted, metal swing-set falling apart in the back of the yard and insist kids play on it instead because it was much safer. Later that day, the boy that lived five houses down was nearly impaled by a portion of that rusty old swing-set. He had a four-inch gash in his side and while my mother ransacked the bathroom for Neosporin, Grandma grabbed the Windex from under the sink and generously doused his open wound, explaining that the Windex would work wonders and he’d be better in no time.

                  The party was going just fine until my dad, while bragging about the shed he recently assembled, noticed spray-painted curse words on the back panel in the small space between the shed and the fence. He called out to my mother, “Damnit, Brenda! Call the police! Some gang graffitied the shed!”
Our backyard was entirely fenced in. According to my father, a gang must have jumped over our fence, spray-painted vulgar words with various misspellings on the back of our shed. My grandmother suspected the only black kid on our block was responsible, insisting that the handwriting was that of a colored boy.

                  I watched as my mother’s eyes scanned the backyard moving from one neighborhood kid to the next, past my sister, and landing on me. I did my best to look inconspicuously surprised by the news, but my mother knew better. She smiled and shook her head then walked over to console my father who was growing more, and more angry as he fervently scrubbed at the word “shithead,” using the arm of his shirt, and his own saliva.  



                  I spray-painted the shed the weekend before my birthday. My grandma took it upon herself to purchase a can of red spray paint and touch up a statue of the Virgin Mary that stood in my mother’s garden. The statue was a garage sale find and gift to my mother from my grandmother a few years back. My mom planted bushes in her garden in an attempt to minimize the presence of the statue. Originally the statue was the natural slate-gray of the stone, and since the bushes in the garden had grown some, the statue sat quietly amidst the other plants in the garden.  My grandmother felt the statue needed to be revamped and so, while my mother was grocery shopping, she spray-painted The Virgin Mary a shade of “Shock Red.” After Grams discarded the half-full can of spray-paint, I retrieved it and set to work on the back panel of the shed.

                   My twin sister Kelly sat arms crossed on the edge of the trampoline, rising and falling with the weight of April Porter, a chubby strawberry-blonde girl who lived directly to the left of us, as April did gravity defining toe-touches on the trampoline.  Grandma sat next to the trampoline in an old metal porch chair, questioning the weight limit on the trampoline, and asking April Porter what she had to eat for breakfast. As my grandmother stroked the fur of Little-Bit with my father’s grill brush, she explained to my sister that taper candles were actually better than birthday candles because they burned longer. 

                  My grandma and Little Bit seemed to share a unique bond. My dad had named Little Bit after my grandmother, whose nickname growing up was Little Bit. Little Bit and my grandmother had the same gait; both walking with a shifty, unsure left hip-- which in stride, made them look like they were doing some type of senior citizen Cha-Cha step. That, and they both shared a deep-seated desire to destroy my mother’s flowerbed. Once my grandma watered the flowers so much that my sister and I were able to use the flowerbed as mud-pool, in which we would lay down in our swimsuits and cover ourselves with the soil and flower petals, pretending we were at a luxury spa. Grandma always insisted my sister and I wear her Life Alert necklace, in the case that we started drowning in the eleven inches of muddy soil that became our mud-pool. 
She explained the mechanics of the one-touch button as I imagined a head football coach might go over drills with his offense.

                  Now Molly, if Kelly is drowning, you just push the red button. You don’t have
                  to push it more than once. Don’t push it too hard. Just push it. And Kelly, if Molly
                  is the one drowning, you push the button. Just make sure you really push it. But not
                  too hard. If Molly has the necklace on and she’s drowning, you just need to…

                  My mother announced it was “cake and present time” and all the kids bottlenecked through the backdoor into the house.  As my grandmother leaned over me to light the two taper candles that stood like the Twin Towers in the center of the cake, her fragrant Delicate Blossom aroma flooded my nostrils. 

                  The scent of mothballs and floral bouquets was a tell-tell sign my grandmother was present. The aroma would often greet us before she did and hang heavily in the air long after she left a room.  I might encounter a similar scent at the mall, on a walk, or while cleaning out our garage, but I never could pinpoint exactly what she smelled like. I spent many an hour behind the perfume counter at Dillard’s trying to decipher just what perfume my grandmother wore. It was not until years later, on the night before my senior prom, that I solved the mystery of my grandmother’s secret scent.

                  It’s funny how a familiar scent, like a familiar slant of light, can transport you back to an old memory once forgotten.  
It was the night before my senior prom and I stood in front of the elaborate expanse of protected sex options, which along with vitamins, made up aisle 14 in our local drug store.  Originally I planned to nonchalantly drift over to the aisle and if spotted, seem confused and bee line to the tampons, but I was not prepared for so many options. I stood before products I had never heard of and felt compelled to learn more about. As I finished reading the description on a box of “her pleasure” condoms, my eye caught a body wash of sorts on the bottom shelf of the display. I lifted the feminine wash to my nose, opened the cap and inhaled. The scent caught me off guard and when I realized why, I shouted with confirmation, “SUMMERS EVE!” The memory of my tenth birthday party came back to me. It was my grandmother. That Delicate Blossom scent was none other than Summers Eve, a feminine wash. Had she bathed in it? Did grandma realize it was not intended as regular body wash? I had so many questions! I pulled out my cell phone and dialed my sister, Kelly. 


“Kelly. Grandma smells like SUMMERS EVE!”

“What? Molly, are you drunk?”

“No. …Well I did drink a wine-cooler I found in the fridge, but that was only to prepare me to buy condoms, ...but I’m not drunk. I remembered that smell from our tenth birthday party and I am in the drug store looking at feminine wash and…”

“Is this the reason you called me? I have to go.”

                  That day I bought the Summers Eve. I figured it was one of the wisdoms my grandma knew about that only old people and Mexicans knew.  The kind of superstitious practices that work. Like cutting an onion in half and leaving it in your room to absorb germs when you’re sick, or cracking an egg on a baby’s head to avoid the Evil Eye. Grandma was full of these wisdoms. It turned out that the weight gain was not due to an untreated yeast infection, and although I don’t know any gypsies personally, I did watch an episode of a reality TV show featuring a family that seemed very nice.  Grandma may not have been right about everything, but as it turns out, I too prefer taper candles and scratch off tickets on my birthday.