We were Catholic, but only in Rochester. I was never sure if it was due to fewer churches to choose from in Albion, or simply the more relaxed attitude toward religion that wide-open fields encouraged, but we only attended church on return trips to the city.
Once, at Sunday school, while coloring in Adam, Eve, and the Snake on black-outlined sheets, someone asked about how the original pair, living outdoors, went to the bathroom. I knew how, so I raised my hand and told the nuns about our outhouse. They didn’t believe. I insisted, told them about the black-eyed Susans and buttercups that grew on the path leading up to it. I left out the spiders, tried to make it sound pretty. Like Eden. The other kids laughed, and the nuns bristled. When my mother arrived, they spoke to her in hushes until she became red in the face. She’d never been so ashamed, she whispered not quite to me, on the drive home.
My grandmother visited in Albion, one of only two visits with her I’d ever had. A stranger to me, she won my affection by giving me a bracelet strung with bits of shell and glass. I had never owned anything so lovely. It was from somewhere warm, which I kept saying was Hawaii, though my mother corrected me that this was not the case. Probably it came from Florida. Or Vegas.
My grandmother was not like other grandmothers. She moved from place to place and drank whiskey like water. Besides the fact that my usually laughing mother became silent in her presence, I knew only five things about my grandmother: (1) her name was Anna Mae—first Jackman, then Baker, finally DeFrank; (2) she sewed my sister Lisa’s lace communion dress and matching veil by hand; (3) once, when we were still in the city, she’d left eight wrapped gifts for our eight Michigan cousins without any for us, and as soon as she pulled away, my mother simply tore away the eight Michigan names and gave the gifts to us; (4) she sprinkled salt on her apples and taught me to do the same, which tasted bitter, but I pretended was the best thing ever, if only to earn her admiration; (5) she was a hard woman, not given to admiration.