Bernie Baby

My grandmother bathed us

in Holy Water.

She kept a vial in every room

of the tiny ranch house

where she raised seven children.

Most visits,

it was the normal stuff

from the local church.

On special occasions,

she pulled out the bottle

she had mail ordered

from Lourdes, France.

She would bless our foreheads

and our bodies.

“Lord give Annie strength.

Give her a stronger back than I have.

Bless her so she does not have this pain

when she is an old woman.”

One year,

my cousin had an abscess

on his big toe.

She took him into the kitchen

and prayed over his foot.

She doused the toe

with her Holy Water.

The abscess ruptured

into a puddle of blood and pus

on the floor.

It is now a family legend.

She passed away nine years ago.

She smoked until

her lungs filled with tumors.

She wouldn’t let them treat her.

She wanted to sit in her chair

and puff until she died.

“I’m an old woman.

The Lord will take me

when he is ready.”

When she became bedridden,

she made a request of me.

“Annie, keep the family together.

Keep your mother and her sisters

from fighting with each other.

You are the one who can do it.”

She and I were the peacemakers.

Kindred spirits.

Aside from dark hair,

I look nothing like her.

She was short and slender.

I can remember her telling me

that her waist was seventeen inches

when she got married.

I am 5‘9“ and broad.

I can remember being about

eight years old,

and realizing that I was

already bigger than her.

But it didn’t matter.

Even when I was a teenager

and fully grown,

she would scoot over

in her little armchair

and make room for me.

She would rub my back

and touch my hair.

She would tell me

about her life.

How she wanted to join

the diving team,

so she taught herself to swim

in the river

even though she could see

the raw sewage floating past.

Pittsburgh was dirty in those days.

We would watch

Billy Graham and

Little House on the Prairie.

She would pray The Rosary.

She is the person

who taught me to be tender.

We would have tea parties

at the tiny, round

dining room table.

Lipton tea with

spoons full of sugar

and Cremora.

I would sneak into her kitchen

and sink my fingers

into the loaves of dough

rising under dishtowels

on the stove.

In the Summer,

she would send me outside

with the dog.

She didn’t think it was strange

that I would rather lie face down

on the picnic table bench

and search for four leaf clovers

or smush berries from the

front hedges into the sidewalk

to make designs

than find the other kids

on the street to play with.

At lunch time

she would make me sandwiches.

Peanut butter and apricot preserves.

I will always associate apricot with her.

On rainy afternoons,

I would sit with her

and she would

make me memorize

the 23rd Psalm.

She always said,

“If you are afraid,

say Jesus’ name three times

and he will come to save you.”

She also had more practical advice.

“The best finger for picking your nose

is actually your pinkie.”

And I remember the way she would laugh.

How she would gag if she kept

her dentures in for too long.

The day she told me how she wished

she had bought sandals

for her son Joey.

He drowned on a family outing

the summer he turned seven.

He had asked her that year

for a pair of leather sandals.

She had said no,

thinking they would

make him seem too girly.

Decades later,

she was still thinking about

how he never got his sandals.

Now, I wonder what she would think of me.

Thirty and never married.

Most of my relationships with women.

Nonreligious and covered in tattoos.

One of them for her.

The hummingbird over my heart.

Each Mother’s Day we bought her a fuchsia.

She would hang it in the front window

and watch the hummingbirds

eat from the flowers.

I miss her.

In my adult life,

I have tried to embody

the good she taught me.

To love people.

Show affection.

Be a peacemaker.

To outweigh my flaws with beauty.