Marie Taylor, Ink

 “Turn up the lights. I don’t want to go home in the dark.”

Last words of O. Henry

Her name was Mary but as a small child I could not pronounce it and so I called her Mimi. She was of Croatian descent and a second-generation immigrant. She spoke English fluently but never learned to read or write. She certainly never drove a car – that skill was carefully guarded by her tall, silent husband whom I always circled warily.

She was of middle height with thin mousy brown hair that only looked good on Saturday when she had a standing appointment at the local beauty shop for a wash and set. She had a long oval face, large ears, and a distinctive nose. As a young woman, her body must have been delicious, for even in middle age, which are my earliest memories of her, she had fine, heavy breasts and slim hips.

While Mimi made her living cleaning the houses of the town’s wealthy families, her own home was very humble and drab. The carpets were threadbare and the floors had been washed with Spic and Span so many times that only gray linoleum remained.

There were very few knick knacks in the house except for one I remember very well. It was a small figurine of an old peasant woman with a kerchief, or babushka, tied around her head and a broom in her hands. Mimi said the woman was a “stada baba,” a name meaning “old grandmother.” She would often say to me, “One day when I’m an old stada baba with a babushka will you come see me at the Poor House?” I would say yes and she would laugh and hug me.

In those days, the County Poor House was a terrifying specter and the only option for those who were poor or without children to care for them in their old age. Social Security was still a new-fangled idea and Mimi never had a Social Security number or regular paycheck, and certainly no medical insurance or paid vacation.

On Sunday afternoons, starting just after the last mass let out from the Catholic Church, the local radio station would play the music of the ethnic tribes of Europe. There was the Italian Hour, the Polish Hour, the Irish Hour, the German Hour and so on. When the Hungarian Hour came on at 1 o’clock, I would cross the alley and go to Mimi’s house.

Mimi and I would dance to the wild music of the chardash. We would twirl and spin around the kitchen table until we were both out of breath and dizzy. Then she’d say, “Let’s have a little nip.” She would pour me a bit of beer in a jelly glass and whisper, “Now, don’t tell anybody.” I would laugh with delight at this small transgression.

As she got older, the years of scrubbing floors on her hands and knees, of hanging out of second story windows to wash them, of soaking her hands in hot water full of chemicals, eventually exacted a price on her strong lithe body. Her joints became swollen with rheumatoid arthritis. Her thin arms and legs were often dark with bruises from falling and there was always the look of pain behind her brown eyes.

By the time I was in high school, our Sunday dances were a thing of the past but Mimi would occasionally visit me in the evening. I would hear the bang of the kitchen door and she would hobble. She would apologize for intruding into my superficial teenage life and say, “Don’t be mad I came over. I just didn’t want to be alone.” We would watch a few tv programs together and sometimes she would cry a little from the pain. At nine o’clock she would cross the alley and go home.

One night, many years later, I awoke from a dream; I was drifting in a cloudy kind of place. Although it had been more than 30 years since her death, there was Mimi with her hair freshly done and wearing a faded house dress. She looked like she was 30 years old.

I said, “How happy you look, Mimi. I bet your legs don’t hurt anymore now that you’re in heaven. I bet you can even smoke as many cigarettes as you want.”

My comment about cigarettes was pure projection on my part because Mimi had never smoked. I was the 30-year, pack-a-day nicotine addict who was now one year into abstinence. I felt her smiling as she replied. “You only come here when you don’t want anything anymore.”

I instantly understood that she was right. It was only when desires were left behind that a heavenly state existed. She turned to leave and added, “You know, Marie, up here the light never goes out.”

A jolt shot through me and I immediately became fully awake. The year before I had lain in Intensive Care, drifting in and out of consciousness, in a limbo of darkness and shadows. I had been afraid that the light might go out for good. Now this kind woman had come back to tell me I had nothing to fear. There was a place of safety waiting where the light was eternal.

I never forgot Mimi’s last visit but I know that when I see her again we will both be young and beautiful, and we will dance the chardash around the kitchen table.