My father’s mother, Mamie as I used to call her, never was very affectionate with me. It was said that her favorite granddaughter was the youngest of her son’s numerous children through multiple marriages, because that last one had been named after her.

I still see her standing like the Statue of the Commander at the top of the stairs of our apartment building, looking down at very little 5 years-old excited me, running up towards her to show her the beautiful shoes I had chosen. Mamie had given some money to my mother for my birthday and told her to buy me some shoes. My mother walked me to the BATA shop and let me choose a very cute pair of black varnished and shiny Mary-Jane’s. I said: “Look, Mamie, look at my new shoes! Aren’t they beautiful?” And I twirled as I arrived on the landing. I was dressed in birthday attire: the nice burgundy velvet dress my father had brought back from a trip to Europe, complete with a lovely hand-made lace Claudine collar, white short socks also bordered with a trim of lace and my baptism gold chain and medal. I felt like a princess going to the ball.

But Mamie took only one look at me and at my shoes, and said: “Why did you buy these shoes? These are Sunday shoes. You cannot wear them every day. I do not like them.”

I looked up at her pinched lips and drawn-in nostrils, the sign of utter disgust or anger about to blow, and started to cry. I must have suffered such pain that I have blacked out all other memories of her, but the last day of her life.

It was September 1971, and I was to be nine a month later. I discovered Mamie dead in her bed.

For the last few months, since June maybe, Mamie had been ailing and by September she was hardly leaving her bed rest. Because her health had been so bad, our family did not take summer vacation all together as usual. My mother drove the family’s FIAT up to Brittany from the South-Western town of Toulouse where we relocated from the French West Indies in September 1968. My two sisters and I and my mother’s mother, Bonne-Maman, piled in the car while my mother’s father, Pépé, took the train to Brittany. It was not that the FIAT was too small to contain us all and the luggage, but my grandfather never drove a car in his life, always cycled to and from work or to the stores, or walked, or took a bus and was scared to death of cars and speed.

My dad and his mother stayed behind at home, together with our West Indian governess Eugenia, who cared all day for Mamie. Eugenia had been working for Mamie since before I was born, took care of the house, and cooked. Mamie had begged her to come to France with us when my parents decided to live closer to my mother’s parents; my father’s father was dead long before I was born and my father had no siblings. Mamie had lived almost all her life in the West Indies, where she had moved from Italy in 1927, at 30 years old, where she kept her Italian accent, met with other Italian émigrés, lived a life of privilege thanks to my grand-father’s hard work and was probably afraid of moving again, to a country where she would not know anyone, even my mother’s parents, whom she had never met.

On this September day, my dad was harvesting the last fields on his estate; my sisters and I enjoyed the last day before school. Bonne-Maman was there too. It must have been a Sunday as both she and Pépé came to our house every Sunday for lunch. My mother sent me to Mamie’s bedroom to ask if she wanted something for her “goûter”, the afternoon snack we ate at 4:00pm.  

I trotted to Mamie’s bedroom, opened the door, and saw her lying on her right side. She had her face turned towards the French window leading to the terracotta patio, her right arm folded with her hand under the pillow, the other on her hip. She seemed deeply asleep. I tip-toed to her side and said: “Mamie, Mom wants to know what you’d like for “goûter.” She did not move, nor did she open an eye. Her mouth was slightly ajar but she did not drool as she was sometimes prone to. Her face was yellow like the beeswax candles from Church, yellower even because her pillow was so white.

I touched her hand: it was cold. I thought that was strange as it was still summer and the day was hot. I came closer and touched her face: it was cold too and hard, like a stone. I had already seen a few dead animals, domestic and wild; beloved cats and road kills alike. But never before had I seen a dead person. A cold shiver ran along my spine and I felt the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck tingle. I walked cautiously and as silently as I could backwards towards the door. My heart was beating to the point of explosion; I could hear its drumming inside my ears, feel its pulsations in the veins of my temples. I did not know if I was more afraid of death, or of a dead Mamie. Maybe Mamie was not dead after all; maybe she was about to tell me off for waking her up from her afternoon nap. But she never moved. Maybe she was really dead but could still tell me off; maybe she could see me and I could not see her; maybe her ghost was already in the room ready to play tricks on me. Maybe it was about to grab me, make me yellow and cold too, and take me with so that Mamie would not be alone.

As soon as I got to the door, I turned back and ran down the bedroom corridor, and stopped right by the pantry, leaned on the wall to catch my breath and calm my heart. I walked into the kitchen where my mother was busying herself, warming up some milk for the traditional afternoon “café au lait” she, Bonne-Maman and Pépé always had at 4:00pm. Bonne-Maman was also in the kitchen, sitting at the table and knitting. My younger sisters were dutifully eating their slice of bread and squares of chocolate.  I remember Eugenia standing there too, helping out with the dishes.

“So what does Mamie want?” my mother asked. “Mamie is dead, I think.” I said. “She is all cold and yellow and hard to touch.” “What?” my mother screamed and ran, followed by Eugenia, to Mamie’s bedroom.

I remember screams of “Oh Mon Dieu!”, “Jesus Marie Joseph”, tears, exclamations, noises that blurred into an incredibly distant brouhaha, as the adults gradually forgot all about us. I remember Giliane, -one of my mother’s friends from Guadeloupe- who had accompanied her two sons to their new boarding-school, rushing in,  hers and Eugenia’s accents conjuring images of my happy Caribbean island while everyone else cried. I remember seeing Pépé coming in from his afternoon constitutional with the smile of the contented gardener, freezing up at all the commotion. I remember my mother frantically placing one phone call after the other. At that time, the telephone was a luxury in the South West of France: not every family had one. To call the West Indies, one had to first call the Operator and ask for “les anneaux pour la Guadeloupe” and I imagined millions of rings threaded on a rope that one could hold onto in order to get back to Pointe-à-Pître if one wished to do so. The Operator would tell you how long it would take: one hour, maybe ten or even not before the following day…

My mother was trying to get hold of my father. She managed to get through to the neighbor’s wife who ran to her husband harvesting nearby who left his workers alone and ran to my father’s estate where he eventually found him and told him there was an emergency back home. My father had taken Giliane’s sons with him to show them a French farm. They all jumped in my father’s car; he drove as fast as he could. When my father arrived at our house, my mother ran to him, followed by a procession of mourning adults whose number had since accumulated: my mother’s brothers had arrived –one from Toulouse, the other from the Pyrenees with his wife, Bonne-Maman’s brother – a priest, Gilian, my mother’s parents, Eugenia. I was the last one to run out.

I did not hear what was said. My father stumbled and almost fell, caught in time by Giliane’s sons. They pulled him up and helped him walk up the front steps into our house. When my father was falling, when his legs gave way under the burden of the news, he brought his right hand to his face. An animal sound came out of his mouth, an exhalation of pain, the “Humpff” we let out when hit in our stomach. He cried. It did not last long and maybe later he cried more in the secrecy of his bedroom, in the privacy of his life with my mother.

When my father saw me standing silently at the front steps, he put his hand on my head. Someone must have told him I was the one who had found his mother, Mamie, dead.

©Sarah Diligenti – Exercises in Writing, October 2009