My Grandmother’s Fairy

There is a famous story in our family, traded on Thanksgivings and Easters, about the summer afternoon you went for a walk and saw a fairy sleeping in a neighbor’s garden. You loved to describe its gossamer wings, the slight body tinted with otherworldly colors—purples, aquamarines, golds—and the androgynous features, beauty that neither man nor woman could resist. As the story goes, the fairy awoke under your gaze, blinked twice in the sun, then fluttered away, unphased by your humanity. You were fifty-seven, a grandmother, when this happened. I was not yet born. But I became your namesake.

~

Seven children were too many for a woman your size. But you were Catholic, as was your entire generation: thoughtlessly faithful, imaginations stained by saints and incense and ringing bells. Michael, your first, was born in South Carolina in August 1956, when hospitals had no air conditioning. After that you hated the heat. (As do I—a small commonality I think of often when I dress on summer mornings.) The remaining six came rapidly, sometimes only sixteen months apart. My mother was your last, an accident you hated until you met her: the quietest baby with wide eyes. Nobody said so until after your death, but everyone knew she was your favorite.

~

What I don’t know is if you were always odd or became so. The stories I hear about you exist outside of time, hanging in the ether like mathematical axioms. To avoid crowds, you only went to the grocery store at night, bringing home the last pieces of rotted fruit. You loved the British empire, followed tabloids about Diana and the Queen. Agatha Christie novels lay half-read around the living room couch where you stayed up until three and slept until one. My mother said this was the best time to catch you—late, when the rest of the house was asleep. Then you were patient, ready to listen and twist yourself into a version of maternity you found unoppressive. A place where no one would see. There was only you and your daughter, the promise of someone listening, the promise of someone heard. 

~

Like many in our family you went to rehab. I don’t hear much about this, perhaps because people are ashamed. When I ask my mother, she says she didn’t know it was happening; she was nine. Her only memory is a warm spring day when you tripped down the stairs, giggling, and began painting the bannister bright yellow. No one knows where you got the paint. My mother says you didn’t notice her at first, but when you did, you giggled even harder and gave a theatrical shhhh. Then you fell down, your body tipping over the paint bucket so a yellow waterfall trickled down the steps. The noise attracted others, and soon you were whisked away, my mother left to mop up the mess.  

Only now does it occur to me how lonely you must have been, how unhappy. Were you tired of looking at your house? This woman who thought the stairs should be yellow, bright and cheerful as the sun, the morning, some untold version of herself? 

~

Once you were sober the eating disorder began. Unpredictable foods—bananas, almonds, anything coconut, chocolate—you avoided. Berries were poisonous and bread made your stomach clench. You lived off clementines, oats, grapefruit, frozen chicken, controlling your portions until you were barely there, a specter of a woman. You refused to sit at the dinner table, instead eating small bites at the kitchen counter while everyone else enjoyed meat and potatoes. My grandfather, the great admirer of Ava Gardner, said you were too thin. But by then his voice was just one more in the rabble, the white noise you called your life. 

~

There were pills too. My father, your guest, is the one who remembers this. You kept them in leftover jam caps. Color coded, organized by weekday. No one knew what they were. Protein supplements, maybe. No matter, you took them morning, afternoon, night. When the doctors asked if you used medication, you said no. My grandfather didn’t remember it was a lie. 

~

You weren’t interested in me or any of your grandchildren. My mother says this regretfully, but I think I understand. By the time I was a person, a girl who could see you, you no longer wanted to be seen. The whole of you was elsewhere. I was too late. 

~

It’s said that you starved yourself to death, although I don’t know what the doctors thought. I’m not even sure what caused the trip to the hospital. You fainted, perhaps. All I know is the story of my grandfather who, after years of not sleeping by your side, finally saw your bare legs. Sticks, he called them. He cried. 

They hooked IVs into your arms, forced nutrients and water into your body. But all your children say you had lost the will to live. And once someone wants to die, there’s nothing you can do to stop them. 

~

I was there when it happened. I remember you, gaunt, sleeping under the white hospital sheets. The room smelled of medicine, chemical cleanliness, and the blinds were drawn so the day’s light barely filtered through. I was home sick from school; my mother and I went to visit you after lunch. You woke up a bit. My mother spoon-fed you yogurt, talked a while. Then someone called her, so she stopped into the hall and gave me five dollars for a hot chocolate at the hospital café. When I returned, my mother was crying and flustered. There were nurses surrounding your bed, and someone was calling my grandfather. You were already gone. 

~

I do not know you. All I have is collected anecdotes, strung together. I am the namesake you never wanted, wedding you to this earth you chose to escape. Or is it that you have left, as you planned, and I am lonely for you? There is a shadow of you inside me which I ignore until, inevitably, it casts itself on a summer day whispering the world looked like this when your grandmother saw a fairy, and then I am plunged into the unknown of who you were, who I am. I wonder if you would like me, now that I am a young woman with your name. If you would have been proud. It would have meant something to me. 

Every summer I walk through neighborhood gardens, looking for something magical and winged. I have never seen one, but I am not yet as old as you. I hold hope for someday, and in the meantime, I harbor this secret belief—this last unwitting gift you cannot know you gave.