The Mason Jar Incident
A long time ago, at the tender age of five
(still early in my development as a rotten little kid), I found myself one day
sitting alone in my grandmother’s parlor, a little room cramped with too much
overstuffed furniture, probably shipped from the old country (a.k.a. Sweden).
At least it smelled as though it had been stowed with the bilge at the bottom
of a freighter for a long, long voyage.
The circumstances for my visit I don’t recall.
I may have been prevented from attending a distant relative’s funeral, for fear
that I’d become too curious about the corpse. It was a risk, I’ll admit. There
was a phase in my life when I liked to touch anything inanimate—a dead squirrel
or mouse, a half-eaten finch left on the driveway by the neighborhood stray.
Then again, I may have been sent to Grandmother’s house as punishment for my
habitual apple stealing, which was strictly a seasonal weakness on my part.
At the edge of an overstuffed chair I sat, my
left knee twitching. On the table in front of me stood a bowl overflowing with mints,
soft little cubes that, if left out too long, would eventually turn into little
jaw breakers. They looked tempting. Then again, my knee was twitching. Clearly,
hard decisions lay ahead.
While Grandmother fiddled in the kitchen, I
quietly took a single mint and waited. No repercussions. No sudden snap of a horsewhip.
I returned to the bowl and took small handfuls, which eventually turned into
large handfuls, which eventually turned into an empty candy bowl and one very
hyped up five year old. My knee was now twitching uncontrollably. My lack of
self-restraint was clearly an issue.
Grandmother entered the parlor noiselessly and
stood in front of me, her bourbon barrel body blotting out the kitchen light,
eclipsing my hope for anything short of Armageddon. Smiling at first, she wiped
her dish hands on a cloth stuffed into her apron. Then she looked at the candy
bowl. Then she took out a Kleenex stashed in her sleeve and blotted her brow.
(In fact, I have since learned that in order to qualify as a grandmother
elderly women were required to have at least one Kleenex stashed in their
sleeves. If they wore perfume reminiscent of an old tuna can left opened on the
back step for the better part of the summer, they automatically received a
lifetime membership in the Grandmother’s
Club.) Then she looked at me. I was hoping she couldn’t read my mind, but
something told me she could. Her eyes grew smaller by the second. Back and
forth, to the candy bowl and to me, over and over again. For about twenty
minutes was my best guess.
Finally, in a conspiratorial tone, she
whispered to me, “My dear little Woody, would you do me a favor?” Her dentured
breath poured over me like a thousand ancient casseroles, not all entirely
successful.
Who was I to refuse? I had already committed a
crime against humanity.
“I need some mason jars,” she continued.
“Would you be a little dear and get them from the cellar?”
She led me to the cellar door. It opened with
an agonized creak and released the stale air of the souls of a thousand rotten
little kids, I had imagined. She gave me a little shove—at least at my tender
age of five it felt like a shove--and down the steep and narrow steps I crept
to a little room surrounded by shelves of mason jars, cobwebs, shadows, unknown
evils, and the occasional creaking sound, as if the entire cellar were on the
precipice of caving in, entombing me forever. I considered for several long
moments the unfairness of being entombed in a dark and dank pickle cellar at
the tender age of five just because my grandmother had ordered it so. “I’ll
need three,” she ordered from the top of the stairs.
As I reached for the jars, the door slammed
shut. “A monster! A monster!” Her voice howled, animated, unworldly. “Watch out
for the monster! Woody! Woody! Save yourself!” Never before that moment had I
any reason to believe adults were capable of guile. The mason jars leapt from
my hands and crashed on the concrete floor. I scrambled up the steps. The door
was locked. My mind raced: Was it locked or was an unmovable object—an
enormous, flower-print sack of grandmotherly spite--blocking it from opening? I
still don’t recall to this day. Then the 40-watt bulb in the cellar died.
“Monsters! So many monsters!” echoed from just inches away through the old
plank door.
I pounded and cried, “Grandma, Grandma, help!
The door is locked! Let me out!” I could feel the monsters tugging at my
sneakers. Soon I’d be pulled down into the darkness and eaten alive, my bones
broken into pieces and stored in the remaining mason jars. What’s worse, I was
no longer confident of maintaining control of my bodily functions.
“Oh . . . you’re still here,” Grandmother
said, letting the door fall open, her voice filled with bitter disappointment.
“I’m beginning to think you’re more trouble than you’re worth.” She held out a
huge straw broom and a tin dustpan.
Later that afternoon, we watched TV together,
a new episode of Gilligan’s Island,
on her black and white Magnavox, which occasionally flashed a clear image of
the Professor and my favorite--Ginger. Sitting too close, Grandmother scratched
my scalp affectionately, as if checking for lice.
I hadn’t noticed when it happened, but a fresh
supply of candy awaited me in the candy bowl—like bait below a deer stand.
Grandmother cleared her throat, which was
never a good sign. “I’m going to need another favor,” she began. “There’s
something in the attic,” her breath warm and fragrant like sour dough biscuits,
“after the program, of course.”
I glanced up at Grandmother, her eyes gazing
through sparkly glasses at the old Magnavox, both of my knees now jiggling
uncontrollably. “It won’t take but a minute.”
As I examined her rouge and powder and
networks of veins and crevices, her face betrayed the faintest wisp of a smile,
an indecipherable smile, a smile I’d never even begin to understand for years
beyond my training as a rotten little kid.
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