The Egret and the Elephant — By Nicole Spiegel-Gotsch
artwork by Sonia Redfern
In 1910, when you were a baby in Puerto Rico, there was a fire. A spark flew in your eye. The eye became infected and had to be removed—or “enucleated” as Mom would say. Before marrying and moving to New York, you managed your sister’s restaurant keeping the peace on horseback with a gun at your hip.
In Spanish Harlem you raised your five children under the thumb of an abusive husband. At fifty, one day you woke up completely deaf and suffered a nervous breakdown. They took you to a hospital where orderlies beat you. That’s how they dealt with a partially blind, deaf, Puertoriqueña who only spoke Spanish. “Maltraito.” Mistreated, you call it now. Abused, Mom says.
Your husband wanted to go back to Puerto Rico. So, he did for a while.
In 1972 when Mom and Dad got married and move to an apartment in Flushing, you begged Mom to take you with her. Two years later, you become my abuela. There are two buildings connected by a hallway in the basement where the laundry room is. You live in one, and I live in the other. But we’re always together. We sleep side by side in my trundle bed in the living room or the big queen-size bed in your apartment.
Abuelo comes back from Puerto Rico. Things change. One day, I step between you when he tries to hit you. I’m six, he’s at least six-feet-tall. “You don’t hit your wife,” I say. When I ask why you married him, you tell me, “No siempre fue así. Solía traerme flores.” He wasn’t always like this. He used to bring me flowers.
Abuelo leaves again. Things are good when he is gone.
Mornings, you and I get up together. Make the bed. Sweep and mop the floor. Then breakfast. Warm farina with milk, sugar, and a pat of butter on top. During the day there’s laundry, vacuuming, dishes. Then maybe we take a walk or sit on the benches in front of the building.
Sometimes we grocery shop. I read the can labels and count the money for you. We have our own language. I trace words in the palm of your hand and use our home signs when you can’t lip read what I’m saying.
After dinner we watch Merv Griffin. You sew by touch. Counting the stitches. I thread the needle for you. One night you step on one. It lodges in your heel. I pull it out, wash your foot, dab it with Alcoholado Superior and bandage it. “Mejor que un doctor,” Better than a doctor, you say, patting my face. When I get tired on long car rides, I lay my head on your lap and you cover me with your sweater. When Mom and I fight you step between us and say, “Por favor, no pelees.” Please don’t fight.
One day, Mom looks over my shoulder at the black and white photo in my hand. “That’s me with Abuela. I was like her seeing eye dog.” But I am never your seeing eye dog. We are more like buddies. Partners in crime. Symbiotic—like the egret and the elephant.
Now I see you throwing down dominoes. BAM! “¡Dobles!” you say slapping the double sixes face side up on the white formica kitchen table with a chuckle. Your soft wrinkled face crinkles with laughter. I am home from school this week with chicken pox. We must play a dozen times in between games of checkers and rounds of Casino—a card game no one else seems to know. You laugh even harder when I catch you cheating, chalking it up to not being able to see well. “Yo no lo vis, mi ojo,” you say, gesturing to your one “good” eye. I look at you incredulously. A seventy-two-year old card shark in a blue acrylic cable knit sweater over a floral house dress.
As you get older, your vision gets worse. The world is getting smaller. One day you won’t get out of bed. I tug on your hand. You say, “deja me murir.” Let me die.
Mom won’t cut the ventilator. Eventually, it doesn’t matter. “Era una santa.” She was a saint, Mom says. She wants to make you into a martyr, a barrio icon flattened to perfection. But your true name is written across my heart—Abuela.
A Nuyorican transmitting from upstate New York, Nicole Spiegel-Gotsch is a fledgling writer finding her voice. Although her lifelong affair with books and art started at a young age, it would be years before she explored her own writing, first as part of a Purchase College alumni writing group, and later as a member of the Catskill Writers Guild. Before that, Nicole was a Reporter for GraphicDesign.com, Contributing Writer for the New York Women in Communications blog, and Content Writer for clients in health, tech, and finance. She also co-authored research publications on the role of design in patient health communications. Along the way, Nicole earned an M.A. from New York University and a B.A. in Literature from Purchase College where her senior thesis, Verbal Representations of the Visual: Conflicted Images won the Bell Chevigny Prize in the Humanities for Feminist Studies. Currently, Nicole uses her multidisciplinary background as a marketing strategist and business coach for female founded startups. She is (slowly) working on her first novel.