Wonders In Dementialand: Dementialand

by Suzka Collins

  I did.

  "I bought them at Michaels. They had a huge sale a month of weeks ago and I bought two summer's worth of flowers..." Violet took a deep breath and continued in unstoppable excitement.

  "Did Lil'Vi call me today? I can't remember. You know she calls me everyday. Rain or shine. Last week, yes I think it was last week when I put that paper... uhh... the… you know, the… wax paper over my cabbage horns cause it was raining at the church. Do you know how to make the cabbage horns? For the life of me, I don't know why you don't learn how to make them or speak Slovak. What if I die? Who's going to make them for the church? Who's going to make them for the dead people's wakes when I not here? Well, I can’t worry about me dying right now, I need to make a hundred plus thirty-two for the church's party. They need them in the morning for after Mass, the long Mass. Oh my God, is it THIS Sunday? Do you know when I gotta do that? Maybe Lil'Vi would remember the day. Yes, Lil'Vi will remember. We better call her now."

  Violet looked under her purse and shuffled through stacks of papers topping the table in front of her looking for what she forgot.

  "Not sure, but I do know that I told some man... What am I looking for?"

  The little Einstein looked at me for some answer but I didn't have a clue what was happening. Leaves moved closer to the window, the sun winked again at my mother - a sun that was tired and getting ready to leave.

  "Oh yes, I almost forgot. We need to get my driver’s license expanded. You don't have to worry, I have the picture already, they just need to check my driving and expand the expiration numbers on my license. I already have it here somewhere in my purse."

  "You mean renewed? Had it expired?”

  Violet began empting her purse on the cluttered table.

  “Mom, forget it for now. I believe you. Later. Look for it later."

  "You know I've been driving since I was twelve. I will tell the man that. Maybe he can just stamp it and skip me driving all together. What do ya think?"

  "I don’t know, mom… I don’t know."

  "Remind me to bring him some candy."

  Behind the chatter, snapshots of my mother played

  inside my head. Numerous pictures squeezed themselves together. I could see all of them at the same time. I saw something in my mother under the chatter. It is hard to explain but there was a peaceful clarity in her voice even though there was no order.

  [That was about the time when I learned to listen more closely... without my ears.]

  "Well, it could have been the pastor. I told someone that I would bring two trays of my cabbage horns. Everyone loves those horns. Maybe we should make some for Richard at the bank. After all, he is the president and he does print out all my music sheets without charging me a dime. He doesn't have to do that, you know. He really should be Jewish."

  The tickertape of words, jammed into sentences fell out of my mother's mouth yet seamlessly sewn together. "Wait. Wait a minute. Maybe it was that funny looking priest with the tight Toni permanent? You know who I’m talking about. I think he keeps the lotion on too long but I wouldn't say anything. I like him. He’s kind. Did you notice his hair? It's so kinky. Sometimes it's like a Brillo pad and then after a week or two, if he washes it often, it turns wavy like Philomela's hair. But when he puts all they grease on it that's when it's turns more like Loretta's Loretta?" husband on 23rd and Kedzie. Remember

  "Mom, isn’t Loretta’s husband bald?" "Oh know. When did that happen? I got to send her a prayer card."

  As my mother continued seaming her words into a line disconnected thoughts, I slipped off my shoes and sunk into the sofa, resting my head on the back cushion. The room was now yellowed by the tired sun; lace curtains moved closer into the conversation by the afternoon breeze; and the lemon pearls on the rim of my cold beer reclined in favor.

  My mother hardly noticed that I had surrendered myself to her stories and the tiny breath that separated them. We were unplugged from the world. What I thought was real just minutes ago had lost its grip. I allowed myself to be cradled in the nonsensical, cockeyed rhythm of my mother's chatter. The crazy babbling and chopped up sentences were more engaging than trying to interpret their meaning.

  In those moments, I was encouraged to pursue my mother’s flanerie. I had to go with her. I had to go where she was. I knew I could always find my way back home.

  < UNITED AIRLINES > FLIGHT: #841 Tues Jan 17 DEPART: Chicago at 9:55 PM ARRIVE: California at 3:57 PM CANCELED

  Rebook return February 28

  16.

  CEMETERY PICNICS "Where did that bag of breads go to, I lay it right here?"

  "Look, girls, look for that bag. There will be no sandwiches, no picnic without bread."

  With hardly a breath break, Violet had chopped her line of thought and had turned up her volume to maximum shrill, "Pavel. Pavel..." She had turned to her girls, "Where is your father? Suzka go look for your father. Ask him where he put the breads."

  Violet whipped her hand in the air and had turned her body 180 to a group of tightly stuffed bags. One of them was hiding the breads.

  [ That summer in the 50’s, the first Corvette was built in Flint, Michigan and the Chicago Cubs signed their first black player Ernie Banks. I still have his autographed picture someplace. ] Violet had prepared and bagged all the food for the picnic in the back kitchen behind the store. The kitchen was one of four rooms where Violet and her husband lived and started their family. All morning Violet made sausages and sauerkraut, plum dumplings and blueberry bublania. She cut slices of meat stuck in clear jello and wrapped them carefully in brown paper; Pavel's favorite.

  One by one she carried the bags with meats and tins filled with cookies to the front of the store, the showroom part which now was flooded with the sides for the day: blankets and pillows, sunbonnets and sweaters, bug spays, mosquito repellents and two bottles of Campho Phenique. Stacked haphazardly on a group of bellied bags near the door were four mismatched aluminum folding-chairs with worn crisscrossed webbing. The floor had lost its space. Violet carefully stacked everything she would forget. Every needed item for a family picnic and their duplicates waited at the store's door like an unruly line of kindergarteners seconds before a bell announced its recess.

  Violet shuffled her way around the boxes and bags looking for what she forgot. "Suzka, stop it. Stop jumping around. "Violet put a theatrical shiver of medical seriousness in her voice and placed her full hand over her chest. "I swear, you're gonna give me a nervous breakdown. Don't make me go crazy… you hear me?"

  The six-year old child showed no concern over her mother's missing breads, "Mom, just ask Jesus to find the breads."

  "Don't be sacrilegious. That's St. Anthony's job. Go, go, go. Look for your father. I’ll talk to Anthony by myself. "Violet made the sign of the cross like she was scratching the breath of an itch. "Jesus Christ, give me strength."

  Neighboring roaches had looked out from the walls at the bagged utopia but kept their distance. They lived next door at Polanski Pizza, a popular Polish familyowned establishment. The roaches ate pizza droppings of sausage and cheese and after they were fat and sleepy they would crawl punch-drunk through the walls to Violet and Pavel's side late into the night. Violet hated the drunken roaches. She would throw telephone books on them and ask the girls to jump on the books securing their demise. Pavel would clear the remains after Violet stopped screaming and his girls got bored jumping from book to book.

  "Paaaavel! Where are you? It's already 10 o'clock. We're gonna be late." Violet's wristwatch and the store's clock read 8:32. It’s not that she couldn’t read time properly she simply manipulated and greatly exaggerated the numbers to her benefit.

  It was going to be a hot Sunday, the first in a long line of the summer's family picnics. During the winter, every Sunday the family would go to the house of Violet's parents where everyone ate, laughed, talked over each other and loudly argued together. When the snow melted and the first wrapped tulip popped up from the hard soil, it was Pavel's turn.
He would take his family to picnic on his parents’ graves. Cemetery picnics were old bohemian traditions in Chicago. And the first Sunday of the summer was the most sacred. It was mandatory, demanding an appearance as any wake or marriage would.

  Anything related to the church or death came with social obligations. Some events required compulsory appearances, which brought everyone in the family out into the open: out of sicknesses, hospital stays, probations or protective witness programs.

  Violet walked outside and handed two cloth bags to Pavel. "These bags need to be in the front close to me; this one on the seat and this one on the floor between my legs. My legs will hold it tight from spilling." She wiped her hands on her apron and looked closely over the piled collection. She looked at her husband as if she were handing him an I.O.U. for future appreciation. There was no time to waste. No time for expressing the slightest sign of gratitude. She hurried herself back into the store.

  A cup of steaming coffee sat on the car’s roof. It was early. The sun was young and unaware of its strength. Pavel slid back his hat and scratched his head at the pile of bags gathered on the sidewalk. Suzka sat on the curb resting her thoughts on her knees and hiding from her mother.

  "What's that old man across the street lookin' at?" the girl asked her father.

  Pavel looked up. A man who adequately filled a folding chair like a bohemian Buddha had focused his attentions on Pavel’s car packing from across the street. His tongue and lips worked in unison rolling a wet fat cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. Navy blue pants mooned over his large belly. Under his belly two legs spread out like wings of a stuffed turkey but with white socks and brown slippers.

  Pavel waved.

  The old man couldn't see Pavel's neighborly gesture or he simply refused to respond. His eyes were flattened behind a thick dark glass framed in horn rims. His head never moved, a standoff of sights. The old man kept his wave to himself but offered a reprehensible opinion that walked across the street by itself to Pavel – ‘your'a doy'ng id all wrong’.

  Pavel stared back thinking, 'Whatcha lookin' at ole man?’

  On weekdays a jumbled pile of cars parked by Europeans who spoke bad parking would have blocked the view and muffled his remarks from crossing the street, but this was Sunday. Parking customers were at home. Family businesses were closed.

  Pavel adjusted his hat and returned to packing the bags in the car. He recommitted himself to the day.

  Their store was one in a row of storefronts. A jumbled collection of family businesses started fathersand-mothers ago when dreams were only dreams and families were bigger than bad luck. The storefronts were long and tightly lined next to each other on a busy street. Only a thin slice of air separated them, the slice of space where the day took a rest from the heat of the sun. All the buildings were the same: store showrooms in the front, living spaces in the back and separate apartments on its second floor. We lived behind the store in four rooms.

  The front face was the only thing visible from the street; a face that did not match the rest of its flat brick body. On both ends were two large windows where neon tubes hung. The glass tubes illuminated a humming blue color outside its casing and twisted to spelling the store’s name – VIP Dry Cleaners. On the window's inside floor was a line of potted cattails.

  People on the street looked over the cattails to see Violet working at the counter. Kids and Imogene could not see Violet. They would have to believe she was somewhere behind the windowed glass.

  [ Imogene was a little person who lived in one of the apartments above the cleaning store.]

  When local customers walked into the store with their soiled cloths to be cleaned and mended, a bell loosely fastened to a metal strip at the top of the door, wiggled. The sound like a nervous giddy schoolgirl talking to her friends about her first kiss, could be heard in the kitchen forty feet away. The bell called on Violet to come quickly to the front of the store, a customer was waiting.

  Before the clothing went to the commercial cleaning factory, alterations were made in the back of the store’s showroom: a sewing area with three long folding tables. The center table had one Singer sewing machine. On Each side were piles of suits, pants and dresses waiting for repairs. There were threads, a number of scissors, some with pinking edges and wax chalk markers. And buttons, buttons everywhere, some packaged and labeled with the garments name, others lost and alone. The floor was covered with short threads. They were disabled casualties, the runaways of the cleaning store business, lying dead on the battleground after the alterations. Violet would gather all of them together and bury them once a week in the Hoover.

  When the mending was complete and the garments were returned from the factory after being chemically cleaned, Violet would place them carefully on a paper covered wire hanger with fancy cursive lettering VIP Cleaners. Pavel would deliver them to the garments’ homes when he was not working at Western Electric.

  Next to the cleaning store was Polanski Pizza and next to the pizza store was a tavern with dark floors and poor lighting. When Violet couldn't find her husband, she would tell Suzka to go to the tavern and look for her father. Violet hated Pavel's drinking. She hated the taste of whiskey and the smell of beer.

  [ The world’s most famous taste in beer at that time was Schlitz. The beer that made Milwaukee famous.]

  "What's that smell? It smells like sewer gas." She would squish her face and move the faint smell with a waving hand for the dramatic effect and then argue with Pavel for hours.

  Violet would whisper to her girls, "Your father's drunkenness is the cross we have to bear. Remember Marie's husband Ralph? He was a terrible drunkard. Remember at Stella's wedding, when he fell over two tables, drunk, stinking drunk? He lay there on his belly, on broken glass in a pool of whiskey. His daughter, who was about your age, went over to her pitiful father and picked him up and took him to their car. And now she's a doctor. She took that cross she had to bear and got a degree in medicine."

  "Go down to the tavern and look for your father. He'll come if you go get'em. Tell him I have dinner on the table and it's getting cold. Tell him you're hungry, no... tell him you're starving. Act weak, but don't go into faintin'. God only knows what's on that bar room's floor. Tell him to hurry."

  Suzka walked in the tavern and stopped at its entrance. Her eyes were closed inside to the new darkness. She brought in the light behind her to back her up. No one could see the little girl, but a cockeyed pigtail silhouette gave her away. She was shorter than half the room. The top half was where all the drinking and talking took place. After her inside eyes opened, she walked past a long line of bar stools, touching each one as she passed them, except for the stools that had butts pressed into them. Suzka knew the face of her father's butt.

  When she got to her father, she would squeeze between the stools and tug at his leg to get his attention. "Mom wants you to come home right now. She has dinner on the table."

  The other butts in the tavern knew Suzka. They would laugh and say, "Little one, tell your mother your father will be there shortly. He's helping me move an electric icebox for the poor old widowed lady upstairs… Would you like a pickle?"

  "No Sir, my mom has dinner waiting. I could take some pretzels though. That shouldn’t ruin my dinner."

  But today is Sunday and the tavern is closed for business. The owner and its loyal customers are packing their own cars with sausages and Old Crow for the summer's first picnic.

  Violet balanced two wax-papered trays on her hipbone and side shuffled her body through the store's maze that led her outside.

  "Pavel, why is all this stuff still sitting out here? What have you been doing? How are you going to get everything packed inside the car? We're not gonna get a parking place near the grave unless we leave in the next five minutes. You know how crowded the cemetery gets." Half of Violet's words bent with her body into the station wagon as she continued talking and fussing.

  "Put those trays right here. This one goes on top of everyt
hing. But not so on the top that the heat goes to it. Put it on top as not to get smashed. And this one..." Her words were ahead of her thoughts with no place to go.

  Violet stood outside the car in the sea of bags and looked over the situation like the captain of the Titanic. Her five-foot aproned body faced her husband holding two more cloth bags in his arms. Pavel hadn't moved. His full mind was under the driver's seat of the station wagon where he securely wrapped and placed his bottle of Old Crow whiskey.

  "And put those flowers in last. They go on top of everything else." …flowers that Violet will plant on the graves of her in-laws.

  With conclusive vibrancy, Violet's tone changed. She spoke as if she was reading the last line in a long novel. "Ok, that's it. We're ready. Let's go. I’ll get my purse."

  In less than five minutes, Mira, Suzka, Lil'Vi and Pavel jammed everything into the station wagon with no order.

  Their picnic was stacked to the car's ceiling looking like sausage meats stuffed in its casing. Lil'Vi sat on her mother's lap in the front. Suzka and her sister Mira sat in the back; the last two pieces in the summer Sunday’s puzzle.

  " You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are blue. You'll never know dear how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away... Did you lock the store door..." a question heard but never stood a chance of being answered.

  "Turn around, Pavel. Go back. I'll jump out and double check its lock."

  * The cemetery where Grandma Agnes and Grandpa Otis lived was not far. They were buried in Chicago's west side where a large population of dead people resided. The most notable residents included Sam Battaglia, Anthony Acardo and Al Capone. Pavel told his girls their ghosts made the cemetery a safe place to rest.

  In a short time they reached the tall iron gates. Suzka's eyes worked intently outside her sockets. She was concentrating harder than her years were used to looking for the tall cement angel with open arms and blank eyes. The angel was close to where they would have their picnic. Everyone Suzka did not know lived there. They were family.