IMOGENE
DAILY SPECIAL
Liver & Onions, with Gravy & Buttermilk Biscuits .75¢
IT WAS THREE years ago now, but I remember it like it happened last night.
When I woke, three, maybe four days later, I was in our apartment, not the hospital. I struggled to get out of bed. My stomach and legs cramped like a thorny pincher crab was trapped inside me, fighting to get out of my body. I hunched over and made my way to the door where, clinging to the wood frame, I braced myself.
Across the hall her bedroom door was closed. I sank to the hardwood floor and stared at that closed door and all it meant. Then the lower half of my body stopped cramping. It went numb and limp instead—couldn’t move my legs, so I dragged myself across the hall, reached up, turned the glass door knob, and opened her door.
The window was open, the air crisp. Her pink chiffon curtains I’d made on her one-month birthday floated in the breeze. The top of Thomas’s head raised over the rim of our rocking chair, the chair where I nursed our sweet daughter all the months of her life. He sat up, slowly turned his head, and looked at me. He looked older in the grey evening light. I sat on the floor in the doorway. He stood. She’s gone, he said and then lifted me up into his arms and carried me back to bed. Now sleep, he said.
At four o’clock in the morning I woke to the sound of her crying. Then a terror bolted through me—she was cold and alone! Leapt from our bed, where Thomas was sound asleep, rushed into her room, reached into the cold crib and rustled through the blankets for her tiny, warm body. Christina, I said. Christina! She was gone.
That thorny crab kicked and pinched inside me again. I plucked her blanket from the crib. It was a small quilt that Pearl, Mamaí, and I made during my pregnancy, stitching every square of pink and yellow together, talking, laughing, and waiting for Christina’s arrival. I took that quilt and ran down the apartment stairs and out the back door of our store. I ran for an eternity through the black tar streets, then backyards, then driveways and dirt alleys of Manzanita. Clutching her quilt I ran through the night until my bare feet hit gravel, then stopped.
The leaning black sign with chalk-white letters read Cemetery Road. I’d seen that sign a thousand times in my life but had never felt its heaviness before that moment. Cemetery Road. Another closed door. I ran again.
Ran until my feet felt the cold edge of the lawn at Neahkahnie Graveyard—squeezed my eyes shut—didn’t recall being there just days before. Though I must have been. Had no memory at all. I buried my face in her quilt and trembled at the lingering sweet smell of baby powder.
Opened my eyes. The full moon emerged from behind black clouds. It had a milky halo and cast a translucent light over the graveyard, bringing life to the tattered, faceless statues of winged angels, praying children, and the unkempt stones of fallen veterans from forgotten wars.
Marble headstones leaned in the often-waterlogged soil like old friends supporting one another to the bitter end. I went up and down the cracked, stone pathways where trinkets of love lay forsaken. Some graves were clean and well tended, others swallowed up by weeds, thistle, and the passage of time. Hugging her quilt close to my chest, I walked. Moonlight danced and shimmered off the hard surfaces like it did the waves in the ocean. Felt I was drowning—kept walking on those cracked stones that now felt like rushing waters. Rising, sinking, floating . . . rising again.
Then, there it was: a fresh mound of earth and a tiny statue of an angel with wide open eyes of cold grey marble. The world spun. The waters rose. My limbs were heavy. I held the blanket closer and read the brass plaque: Baby Christina – May 1954 – September 1954.
The wind whistled through the leaves and gravestones. Then I heard it. The wailing; my wailing—crying, the slow click of footsteps on that very crumbling pavement, whispered prayers. The Church Ladies dressed in black, holding their gloved hands out to me. I saw Christina’s tiny casket lowered into the ground. I heard Mamaí gasp. I squeezed my eyes shut. Didn’t want to see it. No! I screamed. No!
Just then the rains began, cold and soft. Leaves shook as the drops landed. The graveyard glimmered like a precious stone for a moment, then the moon slid back behind the clouds. Darkness wrapped around us . . . I grabbed my stomach, feeling as if that crab had nearly stabbed and dug its way out. Dropped to my knees and covered her grave with the blanket. I lay down next to her, my sweet child, and cradled my arm over the cold soil. She was warm now. I fell into a deep, deep sleep.
Woke in the early morning light to shadows; Thomas and Bud stood over me.
She’s gone, Immie, Thomas said, kneeling down, trying to lift me from Christina’s grave.
No! I said and flung my arms and body over the mound of dirt.
He tried again to pick me up. No, I said. Go away.
Immie, Bud said as he leaned down close to me. Honey, your feet are bleeding and you’re nightgown is soaking wet. Let us get you home. Bud scooped me up into his arms and carried me to the car. Thomas followed.
For several weeks Thomas refused to let me visit the graveyard. He watched me closely. I resented his eyes on me, watching me, preventing me from what he felt was wrong or perverse in some way. In his way, his “we just have to move on” way. A few weeks later I was able to drive again without cramping, without crying, without wanting to drive the car off a cliff. Convinced him I was fine, whatever fine meant. He finally returned to work.
After that, each week when I went grocery shopping in Tillamook I turned off the bend on Highway 101 and slowly drove down the old gravel lane to Cemetery Road. I parked, sat in the car, and cried, and then opened the door and put my feet on that cracked and crumbling ground. My legs went numb and that old pincher crab fought and clawed inside me every time, so I hunched over and walked that broken stone path to Christina’s grave.
The first week I planted two hyacinths, pink and purple. Colors I thought would have been her favorites. Then I put some of the soil from her grave into a small, canvas flour bag and put that bag in the back of my Woody with the groceries. My disapproving husband never knew the flour bag he carried in with the groceries contained the dirt from his daughter’s grave. I gently placed that precious soil in the garden patch outside the back door. I did this every week for one year.