From the top of the stairs, my parents called me into their room. “Rajan, come upstairs,” my mother said cheerfully. To my surprise my brother and sister were there already, everyone was waiting for me. I closed the door behind me, leaving my innocence outside.
The weight of my father’s words trickled down my spine. Sweat accumulated in the cusp of my palms and everything I touched fell from my grasp. Every fiber in my being rang to the rhythm of his voice until there was complete silence. It’s a myth that young kids don’t have the capacity to understand death and its meaning. I understood perfectly well. My grandmother had died; it wasn’t rocket science.
I left my parents’ bedroom and went back to the kitchen, where I was doing math worksheets. My cousin Victor, who was around twenty-four, sat across from me with his arms folded. “Victor, did you know grandma died?” I asked, confused.
“I found out sometime last week. We wanted to wait to tell you guys.” Everything began to make sense. My uncle and aunt had arrived sometime last week and were sorting through her things. My siblings and I hadn't been to school in a few days; my dad said something about a surprise vacation we were going to take once he finished something at work. My grandma hadn’t called from the hospital since Saturday, something she usually did every couple of days. Everyone around me, save my siblings, had been living a life void of happiness—to preserve mine. I had ignored all the signs and was living in a bubble of ignorance. The truth was hidden from me, but I hid from it just as much, a mistake I’d have a hard time forgiving.
On the day that she actually died my friend had invited me to see Chiddy Chiddy Bang Bang on Broadway. My aunt Diane drove my dad and me to the theater. Along the way my dad got a call from the hospital, telling him that her final moments were near. He dropped me off with my friend and then rushed to the hospital. She died a few hours later. I imagine a few doctors standing over her after resuscitating her for the last time. Some nights, I try and empathize with them; their inability to quit, to see death; or their inability to let seeing death stop them from seeing life; or maybe they’re just sons of bitches like the rest of us, paid to do a job they don’t believe in. I wonder if on that last time they thought anything of it. Or when she died if they even blinked or just threw the white sheet over her face and moved her lifeless body to some dark corner in the basement. I wonder what my dad thought, sitting in some waiting area, his own life flashing before his eyes, unable to control his approaching future.
We held her service at the local funeral parlor, a few blocks from my house. I stood over her casket, unable to move. I had never been to a funeral before so I wasn’t sure how to act. I wanted to poke at her cheeks and then shake her body— proof that she was actually dead. I even thought of slapping her. I eventually decided against it and kept silent. I remember thinking that this would be the last I would ever see her. I wanted to count how many moles were on her face and measure how far apart her eyes were. After some time my aunt Wendy dragged me away and said I should give other people the chance to say their goodbyes. I hadn’t finished saying goodbye, but I gave her one final kiss on the cheek and sat down.
After we buried her the next day, we began the final round of sorting her things. She had lived in the house for almost forty years and had amassed many things, mostly junk. Some of the stuff was to be split amongst her three children and other family members, some was to be donated, and the rest was to be thrown out.
Amongst the piles, I found a picture of my grandma from a cruise she took during the late ‘90s, a couple months after I was born. I asked my mother if I could keep the picture and before she could answer, ran it up to my room. I placed it on my mantelpiece, directly next to my action figures.
When I was growing up, my parents were big believers in my being active. When I wasn’t in school, when I wasn’t sleeping, when I wasn’t eating, I always had to do something. I was forced to read, forced to take gymnastics, forced to take music lessons, I was even forced one summer to go to gardening camp. But of things I did in the hardworking name of activity I never felt forced to practice vocabulary with my grandma; that came naturally.
My grandma used to remind me a lot of those thumb figures from the movie Spy Kids because her mobility was limited. She was a woman of medium size and overall was in good shape, but over the years her bones had expanded the way concrete does in the summer. Ironically, as they expanded they hardened and contorted to an odd shape that to me didn’t resemble a bone. She wobbled and occasionally emitted an agonizing groan when she thought I wasn’t looking.
She would attest to her youth in everything she did. She didn’t go to bingo night with her lady friends because she thought it made her less appealing. She didn’t let my dad do her laundry because to her that made her look weak. When my family went out to barbecues and parties she had to come because she didn’t want people to think she was dying. Everything she did was a calculated tactic to convince the world that she was still young, and I loved it.
We had a special corner in our house that she designated as the “vocab area.” She would make these flash cards with words that she wanted me to know and we would routinely practice until I could fluently say every word on command. Some of the words were: so, is, if, scared, sand, and toys. One of the happiest days of my childhood was when I finally pronounced funny correctly.
The “vocab area” was in our basement adjacent to my playpen and protected by the imaginary castle we built around it. The castle was designed like a bomb shelter and so had a strong emphasis on foundation. Its base was made up of large steel cylinders that were intentionally planned to withstand any and all attacks. The ceilings were low, but it was important to my grandma that we decorate it with paintings of my family so that she wouldn’t get homesick if we ever needed to spend the night. There was no visible entry point from the outside, which is what made it purely genius. In order to enter we had to crawl through a hole that ran directly under an active volcano that we anticipated at any moment could explode. We had to move quickly to avoid the possibility of instantaneous death but also cautiously to evade the razor sharp spikes that lined the tunnel walls. When we finally made it into the castle, she would take out the notecards and we would start our practice for the day. The castle was under constant attack, and we could hear the sporadic sounds of gunfire and the terror of screams that followed. My Vocabulary was the only defense between us and total death. Every word I pronounced correctly was another solider who got to go home to his family. I was a commander-in-chief, I had responsibility.
To the outside world the notecards were lifeless and completely blank save whatever jumble of letters had been written on them. In the castle they were secret codes that needed to be unscrambled to produce missiles, which would destroy our faceless enemies. They were care packages bearing food that could provide much needed nutrition to our soldiers. They were anything I could think of.
Over the years our castle has rotted away like every other thing in my basement. The paint that outlined my loving family has chipped away and its quality and elegance have faded. Rupturing and tearing from the inside out, gravity has pulled the walls in closer and closer to the ground. I can no longer find the tunnel and can’t even tell if the volcano is active or not. But occasionally I allow myself to think of where my troops are in the world. I like to think they’re out there somewhere, with my grandma, building our new home.