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By
Eos
Dead Rebel Of The Week
~ Ms. Aimee ~
Ms. Aimee was probably in her 90's when we first met. I was 11. She had been moved into the only apartment on East Main Street, two houses away from where I lived. Apparently, her son and daughter-in-law felt she was no longer able to live in the 'big house' alone anymore. Ms. Aimee was born and raised in our town and now found herself living in a part of it that she had grown unfamiliar with as she got older.
She moved in at the beginning of October, just as the trees were really coloring up. She took a walk every late afternoon just as the sun was starting to think about going to bed. I watched her night after night making her way toward the golf course, but not knowing, really, where she was going or when she would turn around. Nobody seemed to pay much attention to Ms. Aimee. The first snowfall that year came early and I didn't see her any more that winter. I wondered briefly if she had died.
Spring came and with it came Ms. Aimee resuming her nightly walks. I soon found myself sitting outside in a tree at the end of our yard just so I could watch her walk past. She was so tiny, so quiet, so... old. But, always, she walked with a purpose and a certain grace that only a dignified elderly lady can manage. She always had a sweater in her hand although I never saw her wear it. Sometimes she had a gardening-type hat on and sometimes not. Her hair was always kept in a neat bun at the back of her head. I always wondered how long her hair was. Her shoes were the 'old' kind. They had a slight heel and she must have had a pair in every color in the rainbow. Sometimes I thought the only thing that kept her moving was the beat that her shoes made on the pavement. Did she move to that beat or did that beat move to her?
One night as I was sitting in my tree and waiting for the passing of Ms. Aimee, I heard some commotion from Main Street; tires screeching and voices raised in panic. I jumped out of the tree and ran to the front of our house. There was Ms. Aimee standing in the middle of the road talking to the folks that had come out of their houses. She had almost been hit by a car, because she was walking right down the center line. I went over to stand beside my mother and Ms. Aimee looked at me and said, "Well, I know you!" My mother told me to walk Ms. Aimee home.
I'd never spoken to this lady. I mean, old people were pretty damn creepy, ya know? Besides I was one of those kids that was never heard and preferably not seen either. I was quiet in self defense. Ms. Aimee seemed not to notice. I knew her name because the scuttlebutt around town was that the daughter- in- law wanted the big house so they had kicked Ms. Aimee out of it but were too cheap to put her in a home. "That woman should NOT be living by herself!" was the general consensus. Yet nobody checked in on her. Ever.
My mother had told me to walk her home but apparently Ms. Aimee hadn't heard that part. She continued to walk down toward the golf course just as she did every night. In my child's mind, I figured I should probably walk with her until she went home, so that I could tell my mother she was home. I did what I was told.
We walked along in silence with Ms. Aimee looking like she did every day. A purpose and a destination in mind. I felt like I should say something to her but I didn't know what. How do you talk to an old person? I finally just took a deep breath and blurted, "So why were you walking in the middle of the street like that?" I startled her. I think she forgot I was there. "The street?" she said. "Why, yes… we are walking on the street!" I didn't say anything else.
We got to a very small bridge that crossed a stream leading into the golf course, and Ms. Aimee went to the other side and down into the grass. We ended up on a small part of the bank that backed one of the ponds. The kids called this part of the bank, "The point." We used to jump off of it into the water. Ms Aimee carefully spread her sweater out and sat down. I sat down beside her. I watched her as she watched the water. I could see her eyes widen at every 'plop' of an unseen frog or fish, could see her smelling the damp and slightly mossy air, watched as the sporadic breeze played with the strands of hair that had escaped her bun. I swear as we sat there, I could see her eyes change from their faded blue to a more vibrant shade. She looked at me and beamed. "You know, if mother wouldn't have my hide, I would just go swimming right now!"
I said, "Your mother would definitely have your hide." I was scared to death that she would throw herself off the point and I'd have to save her or something. And how old could her mother possibly be anyway?
I don't know how long we sat there that first day. I watched her as she watched the water but I wondered what she was really seeing. What “when” she was really seeing. She looked at me after some time and said, "Well, let's get Blackie out of the field and get home." I asked who Blackie was. She got a confused look on her face and looked around. She smiled sheepishly and said, "Mercy me! I forgot we didn't bring Blackie!"
We walked back up to the road and she started walking in the wrong direction. I said, "Ms. Aimee? Isn't your house this way?"
She looked where I was pointing and said, "My lands, I think you're right!" We walked back to her house with no more conversation. I said good bye as she walked into her front door and she smiled at me in that way that creates a secret.
I got home and got a, "Where the hell were you?" from my mother. I told her what had happened and she told me that I should have just made Ms. Aimee go home. I must have slipped up and shown some emotion because I got a backhand and was ordered to 'get the fuck out of my sight', so I made myself scarce. I curled up in bed, crying, wondering what it was like in Ms. Aimee's head. Who was Blackie? What was Ms. Aimee's mother like?
The next night, as Ms. Aimee walked past my hiding spot in the tree, I said a shy hello. She heard me and looked up and got a puzzled look on her face. She said, "Oh! You're the little girl I saw a few days ago, right?" I nodded. "How would you like to see something amazing?"
I told her that I would, jumped down from the tree and followed her back to the same spot on The Point as the day before. Once we got there she spread her hands in a grand gesture and said, "Ta da!"
I made an appreciative, "Ooooooooh" sound and she looked so pleased with herself. We sat in the grass again and Ms. Amiee started talking.
Over the next few months I found out that "Blackie" was a snow white, swaybacked horse that her father had retired as the family carriage horse and had given to her to ride. Every day Ms. Aimee told me the same story about how she was riding Blackie down the middle of main street one day, and Dr. Baker was coming toward them. She was so small that the doctor thought Blackie was a run away horse. She laughed every time she told me this story. She said that Dr. Baker stopped his buggy and got out and "waved his arms like this." Ms. Aimee would then hand me her sweater to hold and she would stop right where she was and wave her hands above her head three times. She would laugh so hard I thought she'd make herself fall over. She would explain to me Dr. Baker's amusement at finding a little girl with her hair in pig-tails riding this big swaybacked horse. "He acted like he was angry and yell, 'You scared me, girl!'" It was her favorite story and I never got tired of hearing it.
Sometimes, if we were getting close to her house and she hadn't told that story yet, I'd ask her if she had had any animals when she was a little girl. That would remind her of the time, when... and we were off to the races again.
I found out that she had been married and had lost her husband in 1963. His name was Bill and he had been a wonderful man. She and Bill had three children and two of them died before the age of three. The only one left was her son, who she didn't see much of any more. Probably because he was busy with his own family, she reckoned. Apparently he came every two weeks to take her to the grocery store. Other than that, she 'didn't have many visitors.’
I was never in Ms. Aimee's apartment. She never remembered my name, although she asked it almost every day. Some days she would be my age and some days she would be hers. She had to be the loneliest person I'd ever met besides myself. I figured she was lonelier than me, because, at least I remembered who she was from day to day. But we laughed a lot and shared stories. I learned about how a marriage was supposed to be and that making love to your best friend and husband was the most amazing thing in the world. The days that she talked about these kinds of things to me, I figured she was probably in her 30's in her mind. I often wondered how she saw me. I was always 11 years old. I learned about the pain that came with losing a child and the lurking fear that it would happen again. I learned what a 'hussy' was and why she was glad I wasn't one.
On Ms. Aimee's more lucid days I asked questions that seemed important to me. She would never look at me like I was an idiot and always gave me direct and honest answers, as if I mattered. I asked how she washed her clothes. Somehow I had assumed that she didn't have a washer or dryer in her apartment. She told me that her 'clothes machines' were left at the big house because there was no room for them in her apartment. She washed her clothes in the sink with Ivory Soap. I learned the many uses for Ivory Soap; from washing yourself to washing linens and doilies and clothing. Ivory Soap is some kick-ass stuff. It gets rid of fleas on your dog, too! To this day, I won't spell it without using capital letters and that's how I think of it in my mind. It didn't occur to me at the time that I should be horrified that her beloved son didn't even worry about his mother having clean clothes. I guess the ignorance of youth is bliss. Sometimes.
I wondered why Ms. Aimee chose this particular spot to come to every day. Most every day the neighborhood kids would be down there jumping in the water or fishing or smoking cigarettes that they had swiped from their folks. I asked her about it once, and afterwards I never thought of "The Point" the same way, ever again. Nor could I ever go swimming there or cast a fishing line from the banks of that pond from that day on.
Ms. Aimee was a little girl when the pond was dug. A sizable stream was re-routed for the purpose of adding water traps to the golf course that was being built. I was stunned to learn that it hadn't always been there. She and her friends would ride Blackie to watch the men dig with the Giant Machines that made Tremendous Noise and shot great clouds of black smoke in the air. It was all terribly exciting! When the pond was finished and the water had stabilized itself, that's when the first generation of kids used the Point as a diving spot. That's where she met her future husband Bill, and that's where he stole his first kiss from her. The Point was where he proposed to her and where she accepted. She and Bill used to bring their young son to The Point in the winter to ice skate. She told me that she liked coming here now because she liked to remember the happy times. She said that she had a film that was taken 'a long time ago' of her and Bill and their son on that same pond, ice skating. But the film didn't come with her to the apartment because the projector was so old and her son was afraid she would start a fire with it. She used to watch that film a lot, though, back in the days. Black and white with no sound, but it was a precious memory that she had been denied seeing ever again. She said she knew it was silly but she liked to imagine that the ducks on the pond were her and Bill and their only surviving child ice skating. "See how they look like they're skating over the water?" she asked.
I saw.
And I could also see clearly, Ms. Aimee as a young woman, laughing with not a care in the world as she twirled in the arms of her husband. She may not have had that film but she had her vivid memory of the day that film was taken. The memory was better though. It had color, the sound of laughter and the feeling of frigid cold biting at her nose. It also had the taste of hot chocolate and fresh bread when they got home.
The day came when Ms. Aimee didn't show up under my tree. I waited for three days. On the fourth day, I saw cars outside Ms. Aimee's apartment and I walked over. I saw her son looking pissed off at the world for some reason. I asked him where Ms. Aimee was. He said, "She's dead."
She’s dead... just like that. He'd seen us together before, and knew that we were friends. I stood there with tears in my eyes and he said, "Hold on a minute. Just stay here." He went into the house and came back out with an old purse. He handed it to me and said, "I guess she meant you."
There was a note in the purse that said, "This is for my girl in the tree." The purse held a handkerchief with hers and Bill's initials embroidered on it, a small horse figurine, and a tiny picture of a duck on a pond. I never figured out if she had meant to give it to me on one of our walks or if, in her final hours, things suddenly became clear and she remembered me and wanted to say, "good-bye."
I took it home and hid it in my room. My mother never knew that I walked with Ms. Aimee every evening. Nobody missed me so it was never an issue. I had to grieve in silence and solitude for my best friend. I heard the adults talking about it. Ms. Aimee had been dead for four days before anybody even knew. I couldn't tell them that I knew.
My mother went to the funeral as did most of the neighborhood. I didn't know why they bothered. They didn't even know her. I didn't get to go because I was just a dumb kid. I didn't NEED to go I was told. So, I did the only thing I knew to do. I went to The Point and I cried for hours. I watched the ducks ice skate on the water and I imagined hot chocolate and fresh bread on a cold winter day. I promised Ms. Aimee in my heart that I would wash something with Ivory Soap and think of her while I did it.
I grieved as only a child is able to grieve. I tore handfuls of grass in protest, I looked at the clouds and asked, "Why?" I wasn't expecting any answers though. Who gives answers to a pain in the ass, unwanted kid?
I grieved for Ms. Aimee and I grieved for my life. She had taught me about the world, and the things in it – things that most people have to learn the hard way, for themselves. In her own way, she had been my mentor and tutor, showing me things I still think of to this day. She had made a big difference in my life, when nobody else ever bothered to.
I wanted to go with Ms. Aimee because she had brought some gentleness and understanding into my short, difficult life. I felt that it was all gone. But Ms. Aimee wasn't gone. She gave me what I needed right then. A gentle breeze kicked up and moved the cat-o-nine tails on the other side of the pond. I heard fish jumping and saw the water ringing lazily out from where they had landed. A pair of ducks came from where they had been laying in the sun and slipped silently into the water to my right. I watched in fascination as they ice skated for me. Their low ducky murmuring was the sound of Ms. Aimee and her husband sharing a private chuckle over the head of their young son. My only hope for Ms. Aimee was that she was able to put her hair in pig tails, climb up on old Blackie, and scare the hell out of the local doctor as he was driving his buggy down the road.
