Alyson Font
I play a game with myself to pass the time: Similarities and Differences.
Similarity. There is still that worn green couch whose fabric is ripping on the sides. Difference. My newest school photo, where the right side of my mouth curls up more than left, hangs on the fridge.
My legs swing in anticipation under the table, occasionally hitting the back of the chair. Hunger ripples throughout my stomach, and I groan at the emptiness as I wait for my grandmother to wake up. I continue.
Similarity. The glass bowl is still filled with Hershey kisses with glass angels looking hungrily down on it from each side. Difference. The apartment is much smaller and crammed with furniture. It seems to watch my every move.
I normally hate pancakes for breakfast, but today is not that day.
Similarity. There are still those porcelain boxes on the glass table. I remember my grandmother telling me that each grandchild got one when she died.
My mind stops at that thought, and I only hear the steady ticks from the grandfather clock.
I bounce off the wooden table and walk toward the boxes. My bare feet pick up layers of dust off the floor as I go. There’s four boxes in total. Each one has a unique shape – cube, oval, egg, and cylinder. Flowery pastel colors dance across the porcelain. They appear so finite – so delicate– that I only dare graze my pinkie finger along their rims. My mind turns – I think about which one I will choose for myself. Maybe the baby blue or the buttery yellow?
A door creaks open across from me, and I see Bello and Bella. The story goes that my younger cousin had trouble pronouncing abuelo and abuela, and just said belo and bela instead. The name always stuck.
They walk arm in arm together. Bella shuffles her feet toward us while Belo desperately clings to her arm, slowly moving his frail legs.
I quickly rush over as she envelopes me in her arms, giving me two kisses on each cheek. Nothing has changed. Flowery perfume overtakes my senses, and I settle into the comfort of her arms.
“Que linda,” Bella says, hugging me tighter.
“Hola Bella,” I say, doing my best to emulate the Cuban accent I grew up hearing.
Her gray hair is styled and filled with hairspray. Her eyes are still alight with love with wrinkles that stretch across her face that show the years she has spent smiling. Today she is wearing a velvety purple shirt with black leather pants. Thick gold jewelry hangs from her ears and neck.
“Can I please have pancakes for breakfast?” I blurt out.
Bella’s eyes crinkle in a smile, and she nods.
“No kiss for Bello?” the raspy voice of my grandfather asks.
My muscles tense up slightly, and I hesitate before I give him a hug.
I feel the ridges of his spine poking through his shirt. He presses his wet lips to my cheeks and holds them there. It is as if he has forgotten how to kiss as well.
I quickly break the hug and rush back to my seat at the dining table. It doesn’t take long before smells of cooking oil and flour are paired with the sound of batter sizzling on the pan. Bello shakily sits down at the chipped wooden table. He has a packet of saltine crackers out in front of him that he slowly eats. I focus my attention on Bella, and how she easily moves around the kitchen. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my grandfather looking at me.
“How old are you,” he asks.
“Eight.”
A nod. We descend back into silence. A minute passes.
“How old are you?”
“Eight.”
“Hmm.”
Silence.
Finally my grandmother carries over a stack of pancakes, and I already feel saliva building up in my mouth. A cream porcelain plate is mostly hidden by the stacks of huge pancakes my grandmother sets down. She brings a glass bottle of Auntie Anne’s syrup over.
Bella makes the best pancakes. There is a slight tan with slightly crispy edges all around. The pancakes are thin, the width of the plate that holds them, allowing me to devour multiple in only seconds. Thick syrup oozes my unblemished fingers, and I feel no embarrassment sticking each finger into my mouth to savor that sweetness just a bit longer.
Bella sits at the table, watching the way I scarf down the food, and smiles to herself.
My grandfather rapidly says something in Spanish to her – something about more saltine crackers. She heaves a sigh, and slowly pushes herself off the table. I excuse myself from the table as well, catching my grandmother in a hug as I do.
I say lightly, “Te quiero, Bella.”
She kisses the smooth lines of my cheek. “Te quiero mucho nieta. Never forget how much I love you.”
I hear the wet coughs of my grandfather as I head back to my room.
…
The hot Houston sun blares down on my black dress. I feel the fabric greedily absorb every photon of light and yet none of the warmth passes onto my skin. I feel cold. Goosebumps snake along my arms and throat. Were trees always this green? They surround the group of people, and I note that today is a beautiful day. Birds lovingly call out to one another, and wind tickles the grass. The green of nature’s skin sways happily with only the open wound before me breaking up the loving scene. The wound is six feet deep with clumps of dirt being expelled. I feel nature’s wound as if it is my own. I guess it is.
I watch the black suits, my father being one of them, lower the casket slowly into the ground.
My mind drifts to a story about my grandfather. How Bello watched his own father come home from work one day and die of a heart attack right in front of him. Bello was only seventeen. What a coincidence that we both experienced our first deaths at the same age.
The priest reads some statements about how my grandfather will always be remembered and was well loved. And I listen numbly. My family has been holding onto his memories long before this day arrived since he could never remember his own.
I look to my grandmother up ahead, who sheds no tears, but looks at the grave fondly knowing one day she’ll reunite with him.
Sixty-five years they had been married.
From 1958 until August of 2023.
And I mourn. I mourn for my grandfather, but also for the fact that some neurons in his brain could no longer connect with one another. As a result, those broken connections extended way past the brain.
It extended to everything.
Eventually the priest stops his sermon and we all stand there in silence. People walk up to give their condolences to my grandmother until only a few of my family is left.
And it isn’t long before they leave too.
I turn my head over my shoulder and whisper to the wind.
Te quiero Bello.
I begin to head to the car when I turn to see my grandmother, my Bella, sitting on a bench still looking at the newly turned soil.
“Bella,” I call.
She turns her head and gives a slight smile that communicates all her pain and love simultaneously. I sit next to her on the bench, the concrete burning the skin of my legs. My goosebumps begin to fade.
Her flowery perfume wafts over me, and it brings me back to when I was a child, wrapped in my grandmother’s loving embrace.
One arm wraps around my back and pulls me in close.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into her hair.
“It’s okay,” she says simply.
We sit in silence for some time.
I hear the sounds of crickets in the grass and the sound of tires across dirt roads – leading people to reconnect with their loved ones. Sunlights streams through the lush foliage and dances on the ground.
My father calls out to us, and I know we must head back. I look at the grave one more time, committing the scene to memory. They will put a headstone here in time and eventually grass will heal over the wound and that will be that.
I’m sorry I was a horrible granddaughter.
I head back to the car, shuffling my feet as my grandmother clings to my arm.
…
Back at the apartment I sit at the dining room table dragging my nail through ridges in the wooden table. A porcelain plate sits in front of me. A dark blue swirls around its edges eventually making its way to the center. I had never seen the full design before. It’s empty.
Guests trickle in and out of the apartment sharing their condolences again. It falls flat on my ears. Most everyone in this room grieves for the man they knew. I grieve for the one I never got to know.
My dress stills clings to my skin from all the sweat. It breathes in when I do. Moves when I do. Stays silent like I do. It is a second skin that never leaves me.
My father comes over to me. Red veins overtake the whites of his eyes, and I wonder how my face must look. Unchanged.
“You hungry?” my father asks.
I look at the empty plate.
“Pancakes would be nice.”
At these words, I want – no, beg – for my grandmother to rush into the kitchen and start making pancakes. I’ll smell the oil sizzling on the pan and look toward the shaking frame of my grandfather.
“¿Te gustan los panqueques?” I’ll ask even though he won’t hear me despite my attempt at Spanish.
He’ll probably say, “How old are you?”
And even though it was the fifth time he asked me that day, I’ll happily say, “I turned eight this past February.”
He will smile and look at a wall, and I’ll smile at the arriving food because at least we are both trying.
But I am too old for dreaming.
When I look for my grandmother, I see her sleeping on the couch. The more I stare, the more pronounced her wrinkles appear, and her skin seems to slide off her chin as if it is also tired. Her hair is still done up with hairspray but it has long turned white.
Grief overtakes me. I feel the way goosebumps return along my arms and the way my body seems to drop in temperature. I don’t think I can move.
“Let’s all go to Waffle House then,” my dad replies, and I am reminded of what I said.
I nod, and I feel my muscles struggle to smile in an attempt to look like everything is okay.
As we all move to head back out into the smothering heat, my gaze snags on the porcelain boxes next to the grandfather clock. Their color seems more faded. I quickly turn my head away and continue walking.
I have never liked eating other pancakes.
Alyson Font is a first-year student studying Creative Writing and Neuroscience. Outside of writing, you can catch her listening to music and munching on food.
