Upstairs

In the upstairs bedroom, at the back of the house, down a hallway with burnished hardwood floors, past the bathroom with the porcelain bathtub with claw feet and where my grandfather’s shaving brush lay on its side in the medicine cabinet as though he’d used it just that morning, my great grandmother sits up in her single bed, her ancient hands spread on the lace coverlet as she waits for dinner.

Grandma Yule is bedridden. I have never seen her downstairs at supper or sitting on a chair in the front room. I have never seen her walking or even standing up. I wonder how she got to the upstairs bedroom but I don’t ask. Someone must have carried her up the stairs. I wonder if it was my dad.

Grandma Yule sits still in her bed. She wears a cotton nightgown that is white with a print of small pink rosebuds. The nightgown has long sleeves with elastic cuffs and a high neck gathered with a pink ribbon that is tied in a bow. Her skin, what can be seen of it, drapes in folds and waves as if any moment it could slide into her hands and on to the bed. Her thin gray hair is parted in the middle and braided, the braid lays on her chest like half a necklace.

What else do you remember?

I remember there was a rocking chair next to Grandma Yule’s bed. It was small as if for a child, made out of a deep dark wood cut to show the grain. It is my chair now. I took it from my mother’s house after she died. She kept it in her sewing room in the basement. Now it’s in my office. I never sit in it though. It seems too small for me. I just look at it.

Is that all? What else do you remember about that room?

There was a tall thin window that looked out over the back yard and there was a tree in the back yard that had roots that had broken through the ground like whales swimming next to a boat. I remember that Grandma Yule’s bed didn’t face the window so she probably didn’t see the tree or know about the roots.

And there was a bedpan, a white one with black trim. The bedpan was kept under the bed but I could see it because the blankets and bedspread on the bed hung just a foot on either side so all of the floor could be reached by a dust mop. And I remember that the bed pan was always there and always gleaming white and clean as if never used although it had to have been. Grandma Yule was bedridden after all.

Was she nice, your great grandmother? Did you like her?

I don’t know. She seemed nice enough. We didn’t spend much time with her. She was so far away from all of us. Later, when my grandmother decided she couldn’t take care of her anymore, Grandma Yule went to live in an old age home, that’s what they called them then, and when she turned 99, the local newspaper came and took her picture. In the picture, she is wearing a pink quilted bed jacket and her hair is pinned up, no braid. There is a birthday cake with dozens of candles. I don’t have the picture but I can see it in my mind’s eye. It’s as real as if I was holding it in my hand right this minute.

Is it a bad memory, the memory of your great grandmother in the upstairs bedroom?

No. She seemed content, upstairs in the back bedroom. I don’t know why. Maybe she was glad to be somewhere where she could ring a bell and someone would come help her. Maybe she was used to not complaining. That would make sense considering the times. I don’t know what she thought. She never told me. I never asked.

Are you glad you wrote this?

I think so. Grandma Yule had a life. I need to try to remember it more. She was someone before she was in the upstairs back bedroom. She did other things. I should know what they were.