Thirty-Three

For the longest time I thought all tea was green tea. I remember as a child, spending most late Sunday afternoons sipping it away with my neighbor. I remember sitting at the little oval table in the kitchen, between my mother and Joan. I can still hear the clink of the spoon as I would stir the hot liquid in the tiny white ceramic cup. I used to think the only way to drink tea was with a splash of cream, a hefty scoop of sugar, and off brand Oreos. Joan would put a pile of them on a napkin between us. “It doesn’t look as bad if we say we are sharing,” she would say sneaking another few from the crinkly package.

I remember wanting to wear something nice to our “tea parties”. I mainly used it as an excuse to wear my mom’s jewelry. She had this one gold locket I loved, it was shaped like a heart and inside held a picture of me as a baby. Anytime I wore it Joan would mention how pretty it looked, and ask to see what was inside. Each time she would, I would giggle. “Joan! It’s just me! You’ve seen it before!” She would just smile bigger and ask to see it again. Still on my neck, I would pull the heart apart and flash the image of baby me to Joan. She would squint at it and then bring her large rose colored plastic readers to the bridge of her nose. A smile would spread across her lips. She loved pictures. She loved them so much so that by the time I turned fifteen Joan would have thirty-three picture of me in her home.

My mom used to hold my hand as we walked across the patch of grass that separated our house from the Greenwoods’. Whenever we arrived I would ring the doorbell as many times in a row as fast as I could until my finger got tired. I wanted Joan to know it was me. It became a tradition even years after she passed away. Through the pale green curtain, I could see Joan’s husband, Bobby, shuffling to greet us. He would peel back a corner of the fabric and cover his eyes with both his hands, “Not you again!” he often joked as he opened the door and ushered us into the kitchen. Today, if you were to enter the house, there is a small table just next to the entryway. On the table is a framed picture of a little red-headed girl.

My mom had taken me to get professional pictures done when I was around five or six. My hair was long and curly. It was a deep shade of red, I wish I still had. I wore a pink leotard and matching sparkly tulle skirt. One of my hands held a sequined gold wand with a star on the end. Joan said I looked like a real princess. She told me once that the reason she put it in a gold frame and placed it right by the door, was because she wanted everyone to know that she lived next to a princess. If you walk into her house, I’m one of the first things you see. She told me I was her pride and joy. A phrase she would continue to tell me every time I saw her. That is until she forgot, until she forgot me—until she and I became strangers.

My parents started building our house next door before I was born. My mom remembers doing the whole bring cookies to your neighbor thing. My dad remembers helping Bobby fix his T.V. and then sharing a Bud Light on the back porch. After I made my entrance into the world, my parents brought me to meet our neighbors one night. My mom says when we went to leave Joan, handed me back to her, kissed my forehead, and said, “She is my joy.”

I can’t quite remember when our tea parties started but, I soon became her adoptive grandchild. One hot summer day, the sun spilt into the small glass walled room just off the living room. The carpet was a dusty rose and a white wicker chair in the corner held a stiff stuffed Popeye the Sailor. There was a steaming ceramic cup on the table next to him. The carpet squished under my feet as Joan and I twirled around the room singing together, “I was…” we drew the line out for dramatic effect. “Walking through the woods one day, in the merry merry month of may I was taken by surprise by a pair of loving eyes,” we elongated the “s” sound and then together shouted “and they almost carried me away!” There are two pictures of me in the sun room. One of my dad and I dressed up on our way to the father daughter dance in fourth grade. The other my face is painted like a purple butterfly.

There are eight pictures of me on her fridge. One of me a month old wearing an oversized frilly bonnet. Joan always told me I should have been the Gerber baby. There are eight pictures of me, and one of each of her actual grandkids, peeking from under the ladybug magnet I made for her in art class. The kitchen has always been tight and warm. When the little window above the sink was open, it would make the small space smell like fresh cut grass. The sun would illuminate the yellow wallpaper. Along its surface were lines marking my height right in the middle of her kitchen wall. When I grew, she knew. She would have me put my heels flesh against the base board and stand as tall and proud as I could while with a shaky hand, she would drag the pen across the top of my head. Each line was drawn, heavy handed in black ink like rungs of a ladder leading up to a clock of North American birds. Over the years I learned that if we stayed until four o’clock, a blue jay would caw. “You’ve grown so tall,” she would say looking to the wall. Then usually she would follow it by saying something like, “I can’t believe you are going to be in middle-school soon,” and then eventually “You are definitely not old enough to be getting you driver’s permit.”

When I got old enough to cross the lawn alone my mom stopped holding my hand. She stopped reminding me to join Joan for tea. The Sunday visits dwindled down to every other week, and then once a month, if that. Yet still every time, there was a cup of tea on the table and I was greeted with the words, “you are my pride and joy”. Towards the end of her life, Joan would cry when she heard the doorbell ring more than once. Sometimes we would take our tea into the living room. Bobby would sit in the dark red chair and Joan and I together on the faded couch. In the living room live seven more photos of me. There are five on the mantel above the fireplace and two on the coffee table, images of me missing my front tooth.

The rest of the thirty-three pictures are upstairs, are scattered through the house. Three in her bedroom, my first ever school picture, teddy bear dress and all, right on her night stand. Two on the dining room table, here I’m at my eighth grade graduation. Two on either side of the gold ornate mirror, both of me in fluffy tulle tutus. Along the stairs there’s Joan and I watching the fourth of July parade. One on the wall in the hallway between the bathroom and guest room, shows me clutching our large dog Grizz. If you go back downstairs and continue counting, you’ll find the final three right when you walk through the door. Which leads us back to a small curly red-haired girl in a pink leotard, head cocked slightly to the left inviting you in.

Joan’s daughter Linda moved in to help take care of her around the time I was in high school. Linda knew who I was and would call my house if I hadn’t been around in a while. “I know you’re busy, but she really misses you,” she would say.

The Sunday before I started my sophomore year of high school, I sat back at the little dining room table. Linda walked into the kitchen, “Mom did you take your meds?” there was silence. Linda walked towards the bathroom. The tea kettle screamed.

“Taylor is that one of your friends?” Joan asked unaware of the rising tension, “I just can’t believe it,” she looked far off. “I remember they day your mom brought you here to meet me. And now you’re headed off to another year of high school.” She had that misty look she got every time I walked in. Then April came and so did my fifteenth birthday. At the oak dining room table Joan placed an envelope on top of my tea cup. Scrawled in her large fancy cursive writing it read: Happy Birthday! You are and always will be my pride and joy. Love, Joan. I trace over the script every one in a while.

When I was little I assumed that she repeated herself simply because she was old. I loved hearing time and time again about how her and Bobby met, it was a simple love story of a far of time in my own mind. I hated hearing about the time her daughter, Linda, was hit by a car. She always used to get shaky when she told that one. I was so caught up in her stories that never noticed that she was forgetting things, people. At first I pretended I didn’t notice when she started to forget her own daughter’s name or where she was. “You are my pride and joy.” She repeated like a mantra almost every time she looked into my eyes. Almost. The last time I saw her, her eyes where vacant. “Who are you?”. A stranger. To Joan, I became a total and complete stranger. The girl in the thirty-three pictures was a stranger.

At one point, Joan knew every time I grew and inch. She knew when all of my recitals were. Then Joan didn’t know her grandkids names. She forgot she even had children. Everyone she loved became a stranger. She eventually forgot Bobby, screaming when she wok up in the middle of the night to an unknown man in her bed.

After Joan had died, I sat at the center of the little oval table in between my mother and Bobby. He had said he missed seeing us around. I think he really just wanted to feel close to her again. He wanted to live in a time when his wife was someone he knew. I stared at the tick marks on the wall. The blue jay cawed, and I sipped my coffee with cream.