she walks in beauty
S
Pearls & Lavender
tanding in the garage, purging shelves with the door thrown wide, I’m surprised by a 1970s photograph tucked in a box of old paperbacks. Colors have faded, but I know the image. My grandmother’s arm is draped around my shoulders like a stole, her cheek pressed against mine. Longing swells in my chest. I can almost feel the softness of her hands, hear the lilt of her voice. I am now nearly the age Mamo was when the photo was taken. Mamo had come of age in the 1940s, a rightside-of-the-tracks girl from Missouri who eloped with a gentle, hardworking farm boy. She became a beautician and, even in her eighties, still wore her hair thick and auburn (threaded silver by then) and painted her lips and nails Hollywood red. She was a beauty— confident, charismatic, round in the right places. I did not inherit these traits. I took after my Dutch father—wiry, freckled, pale. Nothing like Mamo. My younger sister, however, with her red ringlets and button nose, carried the resemblance. Yet fragile from birth, she struggled through her childhood. Her hardships paved a strange path for me. She was the orchid in the terrarium. I was the pansy in July. Mamo saw this—and she reached for me. The day of that photograph, she had driven her big blue Oldsmobile across the Mississippi River to fetch 10-year-old me for a visit. At her red-brick house, she served egg salad on triangle toast and sweet tea in cutglass tumblers clinking with cubes. As we removed our aprons after washing dishes,
she whispered, “Now, Shawnie-Girl, I have a surprise.” Her lavender bedroom felt like stepping into lilacs: lavender walls, lavender quilt, lavender curtains. She placed a jewelry chest on the bed and told me I could wear anything inside. Beads and brooches gleamed on top. Beneath a hidden tray lay her treasures: two rings and a strand of pearls. She clasped the pearls around my neck, cupped my face, and whispered, “Beautiful.” Then she brushed my limp hair, rocking with the rhythm of the strokes. “Jesus loves you. Your Mama and Daddy love you. Papo and I love you.” With bobby pins, she smoothed my hair into a French twist. In the mirror, I saw a girl braver than before—her cheeks flushed, her chin lifted.
“It wasn’t the pearls or the French twist. It was Mamo— and the way she made me feel.” We spent the afternoon lost in clip-ons and clasps. At one point, Mamo pulled a pillbox hat from her closet and placed it on my head. “Try this, Madame,” she said with a faux-English lilt. Without hesitation I replied, “Thank you. I don’t mind if I do.” Something in my spirit was breaking free—guilt, worry, self-consciousness? I didn’t know. But Mamo saw it. “Next time, a lipstick,” she promised. “A pearly pink. Like the inside of a seashell.” When Papo came home, the late sun spilling across the lavender bed, Mamo asked him to
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