Bee Spit
an excerpt

When I was a young girl, until I was about 16, I was fascinated with my grandmother’s attic. She lived in a small, two-story house in Southern Indiana with one bathroom, two downstairs bedrooms, and a loft upstairs. This house that could not have been more than 1000 square feet raised seven kids and kept Gramma and Grampa together for over 65 years.

The attic was just awful in the eyes of my obsessive-compulsive family members, and it was pretty rough on my allergies. I was allergic to everything: mold, varying pollens from season to season, animals, and dust. My eyes would swell shut when a cat entered the room, and sleeping upstairs on one of the seven dwarf beds could suffocate me on a humid summer night.

Nonetheless, I loved the mysteries of that attic, and the history it quietly held.
Gramma kept photos shoved in one of the only dry closets upstairs. Really old ones, too: tintypes, grainy sienna photos from WWI, and random christening shots of people several times removed but nonetheless related, and therefore interesting to me. These were easy enough to find, laid just inside the doorway in an old hatbox. I revisited them often, brought them downstairs, asked a lot of questions, and later took custody of them when I became an adult. Having memorized everyone’s name, purpose, and connection to the family, it only made sense. I loved these people and the stories they told.
I found another box when I was about 16. It was hidden behind a rotted stole and a musty coat. It was either forgotten, or meant to be hidden. Judging from Gramma’s reaction when I asked her about it, I’d have to say the latter. This box was smaller: a pink stationary box from a time when people actually dipped pens into inkwells and wrote legibly. It was from those days when they had the patience to wait for word from war fronts and unknown theatres, and delivered by people who really did make it through sleet and snow and all that.
It contained one photo, and a stack of letters. Some from him, and some from Gramma. She was 17.

When I walked downstairs to ask her about this box, she blushed and followed me back up to the attic. “Where did you find this? Always digging around the photos, aren’tcha.” She sat in the rose-upholstered sitting chair and flipped slowly through the letters. “These are from Jack,” she said, almost in a whisper. “He was my beau before your Grampa came along. Used to drive down here from Batesville every weekend to court me; eventually, he asked me to marry him, and I said yes. Loved him to pieces, that one. So, so funny. Look at that smile.”

“What happened?”

“He enlisted in the Army and got sent to Europe. I didn’t see him again for close to two years; we exchanged some of these letters, but you know what it’s like when you’re young. You want things to happen so darn fast. No patience, no sense that time might return what you want eventually. He had diversions; I know he did. And in that time, I met your Grampa. We got married even after he enlisted in the Navy, but by that time they didn’t have much need for him. So, our family was more or less spared from the war, and we opened the saloon that we ran until you were about ten.”

“So, what about Jack? What happened?”

She paused and smiled, and I thought that maybe I could see her 17-year-old face in the dim light of the attic. “Well, he became a doctor and moved down the Florida. We kept in touch on and off through the years. Married a nice girl, had a family. That's what people did. What they do...” She trailed off.

Gramma stopped, and I saw the glimmer of a tear in her eye. She squeezed my hand. “One of these days, you’ll understand why I saved all these letters, and why I’m going to keep them hidden behind that smelly old coat. If you’re lucky, someday you’ll meet someone who cracks your heart open like a walnut, and everything is laid bare at just the mention of their name. No amount of history or distance can seal you back up, kid. You just carry it. You carry it through your life in little boxes like this, like a secret. You both do. And you carry on in spite of it. Or because of it. It’s what you do.” One tear worked its way down her face, making a pink rivulet down her cheek. She still wore just a touch of blush, never knowing (she would say) who might come to the door.

“Does Grampa know all this?”

She smiled. “No, don’t think so. And you’re not going to be the one to tell him, right?”

Right. Besides, conversations with Grampa didn’t usually last long enough to actually be informational. He didn’t want any, and he didn’t give much. It all worked out if you had a secret or two up your sleeve. You know, for warmth. For comfort.

She was right. She was right about everything.

For over 30 years now, I’ve been carrying this sealed box labeled “Old Mail.” The box was originally used to pack ice cream sugar cones, and seemed the right size to hold letters I’d accumulated over the years. Kids who move a lot save such things, I suppose. I did, anyway.