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This is how my grandmother seemed to me, ghostly-there but not for me-
and certainly no bulwark against the hostilities of life.
While sitting in class I couldn’t help but reflect on how I was surrounded by extremes especially at home- indifference on the one hand and a battering reaction to my person on the other.
I developed a habit, perhaps out of sheer boredom, of distractedly traveling back to the times I had been with my father all alone at his chicken coop. Those were my most memorable attempts at trying to get closer to my father and show the older man some of the things I had learned all by myself while he was away at work. I was especially mindful of those intimate moments together since I’d suddenly become aware that my father was not in Panama and that if he had been he might have behaved as though he was proud of me being his “Junior;” but, then the next minute he would give me one of his famous scowls for no reason at all and reject me all together.
It had been painful for me all those years to be almost without guidance. However, my fleetingly pleasant memories of a father had been, well, almost enjoyable when I suddenly remembered that my father had been away at sea for more than three years now. At least that had been a comforting thought to me and, furthermore, an indication that he did not aim to return to Panama. So, the thought of being free of his cruel aggressions mixed with his unpredictable emotional lashings towards me outweighed my chimerical fantasies about having a normal father-son relationship.
My mother, on the other hand, had abandoned me again after making earlier attempts at visiting with my sister and me. At this juncture in my life, just as I was about to make that leap into early adulthood, since adolescence was a short lived luxury in the Panama of our youth, I had not seen or heard of my mother in as many years as I had not seen my father. It was almost as if they had conspiratorially gotten together to agree to be absent from their children’s lives all together. Of course, this was an absurdity given their horrendous relationship.
At this particular moment in my self-education I found myself feeling ready for higher educational challenges as I completed a Spanish novel I had picked up in one of the few book stores that existed in the city. The store was right across the street from the lofty presence of the Instituto Nacional- the most outstanding secondary/preparatory school in Panama City. It had been the school I had set my sights on after hearing my grandmother’s constant banter about her deceased son, Eric, and how he had managed to finish his secondary education at The National Institute.
My thoughts about my grandmother and the aunts I lived with and the possibilities of following in my sister’s footsteps and just run away from them all started to crowd me, however. That too was an option considering the indignities I would have to suffer to my budding manhood if I stayed around them. “But I won’t go to my mother as she did,” I thought, feeling that, finally, I had more room in the house since Aminta was gone and my aunts were mostly away from the house working. At this stage of the game I might be free of the harassment long enough to finish my secondary education at the National Institute. At least that is what I hoped.
The thought of leaving my grandmother alone also entered into my momentary decision to postpone my bolt from the “family” circle. I felt obligated to be with her and the thought of leaving her side made me feel sad, as if it would have been some kind of betrayal.
But, it seemed as though she was like a woman enamoured of her stupid washboard and wash pan, I mused, when I thought of my beloved grandmother. It was uncanny but she presented a ghostly presence in my life on too many occasions. She was there at home but hardly paid me any attention and she was the kind of person who offered me no show of that strong womanly protection I really craved, the kind I had seen other mothers exhibit towards their children.
I was sure to find her at her washboard on the makeshift laundry area she had set up on the balcony area in front of our apartment in Magnolia Building, day in and day out. After retiring from Ancon Laundry you would think that she’d be glad to enjoy some rest from the obligation and toil of scrubbing away at somebody else’s dirty clothes but, no, she even developed a business out of it, a business that even I helped her with.
I made a mental note that I had been living with those women since 1943 and how my grandmother and I had sought each other out after the initial shock of being thrown together. I had always looked to grandmother for protection from the wrath of the men in the family, my father and my uncles, who I could count on to come over and maltreat me from time to time during my early childhood.
But, now I was grown and possessed of greater perspicacity and my grandmother appeared to me like the queen who refused to take on the role she had been divinely commissioned to assume- or even to wear her crown. I had repeatedly tried to get closer to her, my reticent queen, but noticed that her attitude was more of total indifference to me, especially when she was in the presence of any of her own children. It was as if they completely overshadowed her.
Whenever I considered my options around my grandmother, I thought of my brave sister’s decision to run away to live in the City of Colon with my mother and join my little brother, I would miss her. Hankering to do the same and run away would have been more at gaining that independence I was positive I’d have living alone.
I decided to remain with my family for these personal reasons, however, and I continued hoping that after my grandmother’s trip to her homeland of Jamaica some good Obeah Man or Woman might have opened her eyes to the jewel of a grandson she had at home. Open them wide for her to realize that it was me, Juni, who was worthy of her protection.
My hopes would remain high, although guardedly so, as I built up my expectation that my grandmother would sponsor my education even after secondary school. I say guarded since I began suspecting the total truth behind my grandmother’s accounts regarding the death of my uncle Eric, the most gifted of her children and whose grave we never visited. If she was as emotionally invisible in his life as she was in mine then, would it be no wonder that he wasn’t around amongst the living any more to tell his tale?
This story continues.
