There was this time when I was a kid. Like waking up in a memory. Older brother’s out in the front yard practicing his swing. Starting to get ready for baseball, which meant that I was starting to get ready for baseball, too. Clouds in the sky fluffy and white and feeling closer than clouds usually felt, like maybe someone was back there holding them up, like they were props in a play. The underbelly of each one a crayon-grey like I had never seen. But maybe I just never looked at them like this. Paying attention.
Don’t know if I’m ten years old or if I’m thirty-one years old and I’m looking back at me who’s ten years old. Same thing, I guess. Same me.
No breeze.
Marcus practicing his swing. He motions for me to come over and join him. Says he’s going to show me how it’s done. Only been doing this for an hour, max—probably more like ten minutes —but already he’s an expert. Always good at whatever he does. Telling me that we’ll both be hitting home runs soon, like that’s the whole point, to hit as many as you can. Says it in a way that lets me know it’s true.
But first, he says, focus on your swing.
Start with how you stand. With how you plant your feet. With all ten of your toes in the dirt. Makes you wonder if that’s any different than what you’re usually working with. Starts swinging for the fences. Says that’s what he’s aiming for. But when I look around there aren’t any fences, because we’re in the front yard, and our house is right there. Maybe next summer we’ll build them. Until then it’s just us and the pine trees and the tall grass at our knees, all of it reaching for the sky.
Focus.
My older brother standing in front of me, practicing his swing. And I’m leaning forward, checking out what exactly it is he’s doing that’s so special. The secret to hitting home runs. But then something quick and violent happens. From the corner of my eye I catch my brother swinging his bat, over his shoulder and then rushing forward in a flash of movement without looking where he’s going with it. Reflexes jolting my head back, but I don’t think it’s quick enough, because then there’s this dizzy feeling near my face, and and my brother drops the bat and looks at me like something just froze him up.
And then he’s screaming, and there’s liquid pouring down over my top lip into my mouth. And I’m reaching up to check where exactly this it’s coming from, trying to find it’s source, because that’s how things work when things stop working. Brain doesn’t know what just happened. Takes some extra time to catch up. Tells my hand to investigate. Is it rain? Blood? Yup. Looks that way. You’re more than just dripping, too, kid. That’s what my brain tells me. You’re leaking.
Marcus running inside and yelling for Mom-and-Dad like it is one word stitched together.
So I start yelling too, but different kinds of stuff. Bad-word stuff. Right in the front yard. Because I’ve been hearing the words at school and it feels like I’ve been holding them in for this exact moment. Waiting to release them on the world. Realizing why grown-ups like them so much. How the words grab everything’s attention around me. Like maybe even the birds are watching me now, even the clouds.
Has everything always been this close?
Waking up in the middle of a dream. Asleep in the bed next to my brother because… well, because nightmares. And with him I felt safe. And he’s leaning close to me in the darkness, hushing me, telling me not to cry, asking what’s happening in my dreams that’s so scary. What are you seeing in there? But all I can say is that when I wake up it’s like I have lost something, and I’ll never have it back.
Ice pack against my face and everyone’s giving me every bit of attention I could ever want, but Dad’s reminding me that bad words aren’t okay to use, even when I’m hurting.
And Grandma’s sneaking me a single Skittle before dinner, just the one, kneeling down in front of me and whispering in my ear, Nothing you do from the heart will ever be wrong. Which is a silly thing to say, but that’s Grandma for you these days. Does a lot of that. And everyone’s too busy feeling bad for me anyway.
Ten toes. That’s what I’m thinking.
And the Skittle that Grandma hands me, which is soft and kind of mushy, fading white like maybe she was holding onto it for a while before she handed it over. And I wonder for how long. And if she was planning on eating it herself before my brother hit my nose. Looking at Grandma’s hand and noticing the color from the Skittle smeared on her palm. Which kind of grosses me out when I look at it. When I focus on it too hard, so instead I look at other stuff. And I pop the Skittle in my mouth. And it’s soft, and warm, and I start chewing on it, but in a sneaky way because dinner’s almost ready.
Windy outside. Dark, too. Branches from the toyon bush beyond my bedroom scratching at the window like goblin that’s trying to reach up and pull me down somewhere. But not today. Today I swing hard and for the fences. Nothing but home runs. Ten toes down all the time. Chest out. Not sure if I’m still talking baseball.
Grandma talking in her sleep. And I’m listening to it, thinking about that word Dad used with my older brother that one time, calling what she’s got sundowners. Which sounded to me like something he made up right there on the spot.
Feeling bad for her when she talks in her sleep because it sounds like she’s visiting the past, and it doesn’t sound like the past wants her visiting. Whimpering in her sleep like she’s running from something, or chasing something that can’t ever be caught.
The wall between our rooms thin. Something you could punch through if you did it right. If you swung hard and for the fences. Everyone’s asleep except for Grandma and me. Because Grandma’s both awake and asleep at the same time, because the sun is down, and because she’s a sundowner. And then there’s me, I guess, who is just the one thing. Just awake.
Talking in her sleep. Mumbling things. Telling me all about the horses that she used to steal.
Like having a dream and then realizing you’re having a dream and then waking up in that dream. And for a moment you are alive there, too. In both worlds. But then some deep part of your brain catches you and wakes you up because that’s too many skies to be under all at once. Because even just the one is sometimes too much.
Things clumping together in Grandma’s mind, and then leaving. Memories sticking to other memories like they’re getting rolled in glue first.
But for whatever reason the horses keep. Guiding her, I guess. What horses do.
Forgetting what day of the week it was, and then what year. Forgetting her age, or if she had a doctor’s appointment. The skin between her eyebrows pinching together when she’d ask a question.
Never did feel like I had much of an answer, though. Like there was always something else that she was asking, some secret question hidden in the words.
Feeling awful about it for a while. Changing the subject as gently as I knew how. Trying to play along. Trying to not linger or get my feet stuck thinking about it, which was mostly an easy thing for me to do back then. Was a kid and mostly only thought about things the one time.
Telling myself that she was just getting older and when people get older things start leaving. Figured that’s what the horses were for. Strong backs to carry things away.
Noticing the holes in her brain getting bigger. Pieces of who she was starting to fall through. More than just memories, too. Like before when you’d look at her you’d see lots of color. Messy blotches of it. Color bleeding onto more color. Leaking. Like holding up a painting to the light at just the right angle and saying to yourself, Yup, that’s her. The paint running down the canvas, streaking. That’s Grandma. But now when you look at the painting it’s just a bunch of different shades of gray like bloated clouds. Like you could smell what rain they carried.
Like waking up in a memory and Grandma’s asking you the same question again right after. And strangers are starting to notice. Tossing smiles your way at the bank, sympathetic, or at the check-out line in grocery store, or from the lady who hangs out on the corner of Bristol and Memory, with the jeans that don’t fit right.
But this was all later, I think.
Running errands. Trying to help out. Putting something together in your mind as you sit watching her stare blankly at a blank TV in a pizza parlor. Learning from her expression, how it sags when people smile at you in that sympathetic way, piecing together in your mind that memory and awareness are two separate things almost entirely, much as you might sometimes wish they were the same, and that Grandma knows exactly what’s happening to her because of course she does. Just doesn’t have the first clue how to fix it.
Changing kindness. Questions like T-ball. Questions that you know she she knows the answer to, like What’s your favorite thing?
My favorite thing?
Yeah. In the whole world.
Her face scrunching together, deep in thought. Saying, Animals, probably. Horses most of all.
Smiling and pretending like you didn’t already know that’s what her answer would be. Hiding it from her like she used to hide easter eggs at the ranch for you and your two older brothers. Avoiding wet cow shit like it was a bunch of land mines and laughing, all of you together. Sunshine and the sound of the creek, and of the frogs. And cows in the distance, and coyotes and Fiddleneck. Bushes of stinging nettle, wildflowers of every color on every hill from here until forever.
Asking me now, What are your plans for the future?
Playing along.
Same questions she’s always asking you, but giving her a different answer anyway. Doing what you can. And then just rephrasing it. And then not even doing that anymore. Growing tired. Giving her the same response every time like it’s leftovers for dinner. Feeling deceitful at first, but then even that starting to slip away like sweat off a horse’s back.
Slick.
Remembering how her hair used to be the color of autumn, red with streaks of brown like rot in a barn door. Looking at it now and just seeing gray. Like the color in her hair and the color in her mind decided to hold hands on their way out.
Wanting to reach over and kiss her on the forehead, but for some reason not knowing how.
Noticing how much she seems to enjoy it when people pretend, but pretend to not be pretending. Most of all, her grandsons.
Asking, Have you done something with your hair, Grandma? No? I don’t believe you. It looks great. When are you going to start looking your age?
Saying how silly it is to say such kind things. Blushing, with her hands out in front of her body, palms up, like she’s trying to touch the kindness buried in each lie as it moves towards her. Saying, Oh quit! A smile covering the whole of her face. You don’t really think so, do you?
Of course I think so.
Ten toes. Chest out. Staunchly independent until she met Grandpa, who wasn’t your real grandpa, but was the only grandpa you ever remember having. A rancher with swollen fingers and a cigarette always hanging loose and unlit from his mouth. Like the plan was to chew on it rather than to smoke it. Backflips into the peanut-shaped pool on your eighth birthday. One of those fun-size packs of Skittles always in his breast-pocket. Always a little warm and a little mushy and the color leaking onto the wrapper. Always a handful ready for when his grandsons would visit. Three hundred plus head of cattle he’d say. Five work horses. But his favorite horse? His favorite horse was retired. Laughing whenever he told us that. Like the image of a retired horse was the best joke he had. Just hanging around now, he said. The horse. Tugging on grass and sleeping all day. Grandma becoming what she always wanted to be.
Like the things that we forget about ourselves never existed in the first place.
Like there was nothing before what there is now.
A cup of apple juice on the coffee table in front of her. On the couch in the living room reading a book about The West. About ranching and horses, and about how big the world used to be. A colorful photograph taking up the whole of each page.
A great book, she says.
I’m in the kitchen putting together a turkey sandwich for myself when I hear her say it. So I walk over and sit with her, asking if maybe she wants half of what I made, but she doesn’t hear me because she’s living in that book. Freckles of dust caught hanging in the air in front of her face.
A great book, she says again.
A great book, I agree. A real beautiful thing.
Ten toes.
Chest out.
Older now than I was before. Couldn’t tell you by how much, though.
The horses are beautiful, she says.
I take a bite of my sandwich and she points to one. A photograph of a brown horse with a white back. She says, This one’s an Appaloosa. I used to steal one just like her from the man down the road when I was a girl.
I laugh a real laugh and pinch a bit of turkey that fell out of my sandwich onto my jeans, tossing it back into my mouth. A real horse thief, huh? I ask, smiling at her like it’s something new, something I hadn’t heard already a million times in her sleep.
Thin walls. Something you could punch through with your fist.
He was a grumpy old man, she says. That’s who I stole her from. Always shaking his fist at something or other.
Laughing something real.
She says, Her name was Gypsy. The horse. And I always brought her home when I was done riding.
I thought you said you stole her?
Her eyes bright and wide. Smiling now. Laughing.
Isn’t that more like borrowing?
She ignores me question, and tells me how she didn’t even know that they were called Appaloosas back then. Heard a Native boy who lived down the road call her that. Called her something else though first. Painted. A painted horse. Says how thought that was her breed for a while.
No way, I say. That’s something.
Always liked the sound of it. A painted horse. Stuck in my mind for whatever reason some things stick and others don’t.
I take a long look at her smile sinking away in thought. The apple juice on the coffee table like she’s a kid who just got home from school, just waiting on her parents to point her somehwere. Waiting to be told where to go.
take another bite of my sandwich, and I nod in agreement. She was beautiful, I tell her. That painted horse. The one you stole and then brought back.
Ten toes in the dirt, and a painted horse named Gypsy eating grass, laying in the shade of an old oak tree, waiting for Grandma to come steal her.
She says, I miss her.
I know you do, Grandma.
I miss the way she used to look at me.
I know you do.
Will you do me a favor?
Setting down my sandwich and putting my arm over her shoulder. Pulling her close. Her head leaning against me like I saw her do with Grandpa when things were ending.
Will you remember her for me?
Nodding at the wall. Doing my best to hold something back. I tell her, Of course, Grandma. Of course I’ll remember her. I’ll remember all of the painted horses you stole. And all of the horses you left unpainted, too. I’ll remember them all for you.