Nanny

“She’s going.”

Amy stared blearily at the text from her brother, but no comprehension came. She blinked automatically, as if her batting lids could bring some meaning to the words. 

She 

is 

Going

He was talking about Nanny.

Going where?

She wrapped herself in the absurd question, using it as a temporary shield against the oncoming reality. 

Her phone was buzzing. It was her brother again, but this time he was calling. 

“She’s gone.” 

His voice was matter-of-fact. There was no absurdity that could stave off the reality now.

Going

“We were all there with her.”

Going

“At least she isn’t suffering anymore.” 

Gone

An uninvited image of her grandmother flashed before her. She’d seen her just a month ago – gray, slow, and small in the bulky hospital bed. She’d had to spoon jello into Nanny’s mouth, her hands working in place of the useless knots that years of arthritis now twisted out from delicate forearms. The slack mouth had only been able to grasp about half of the soft substance, sending chunks of red spilling down her soft chin and onto her thin hospital gown. Smiling blankly, Nanny looked like some ancient cannibal, gleefully devouring a carnal meal. 

The first tears came, divined from her depths to fill the vacuum left by her brother’s silence on the other end of the phone. 

“Amy?” 

He’d handed the phone to their mother. 

“Amy? Can you….” the typically steady voice faltered. “...can you come home?” 

The tears flowed steadier now. She had to pause several times to clear the obscuring moisture from her eyes as she searched for flights back home to Atlanta. Nanny was gone. Nanny was dead. And yet her tears, those synecdoches of her mourning, weren’t falling for Nanny’s death – it had been no mystery that the time would come soon. Instead, Amy mourned the grandmother that she’d already lost. Nanny, her Nanny, had disappeared years ago. COVID had left her stranded and alone in her house of 20 years. Without the social contact that had kept her sharp and independent late into her eighties, she had drifted. First slowly – forgetting addresses and birthdays – and then with a head-spinning speed – forgetting the family, forgetting herself – she’d drifted. And with the drift came the fear. The anxiety. The nastiness brought on by panic. Amy’s mother, Nanny’s only daughter, had gotten the worst of it – as women often do. 

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Why won’t you help me?” 

“You’re leaving me here to die.” 

“You don’t love me.” 

“If only I’d had a daughter, she wouldn’t have treated me this way.” 

“I HATE YOU.” 

But Helen, like the dutiful daughter she was, would never react in front of her demented mother. She’d wait until she was safely out in the parking lot of the assisted living facility to fall apart. To sit with her mother’s hysterical denial of her very existence. Her deranged wishes for a daughter that would take care of her to her injured brain’s liking. 

This had gone on for three years. Three years of falls that tore horrific wounds through tissue paper skin and soft flesh. Three years of changing sour dressings and cleaning defecation from sad sheets. Three years of increasing confusion and hurled insults. Three years of disappearing as the family looked on, helpless. Just two weeks before, the nurses had found her crawling in the hallways of the facility, screaming at the top of her lungs like a wounded animal slinking off to find some hidden place to die. A wild and unrecognizable beast.

This brutish image of Nanny scratched and clawed and hissed its way around Amy’s mind as she stared at the cursor blinking on the screen in front of her. She’d offered to write the obituary. She was the writer in the family after all – if having ten unfinished short stories and 30 pages of a novel makes you a writer. But the words weren’t coming. Every time she leaned in closer to her laptop, the wild image of Nanny reacted, coiling into the striking position against the curved smoothness of her skull with hackles raised. More tears came. But these were the hot, sulphuric, and silent tears that bubble up from frustration. She slammed her laptop shut and, careful not to make a sound, grabbed a cigarette from the hiding place in the back of the pantry. She padded barefoot out to the patio – she was in no mood to get lectured by her partner about the ills of tobacco. Besides, they always helped when she had writer’s block (or at least that’s what she told herself). 

The smoke filled her lungs and forced the thoughts from her mind. It was this blankness, she realized absently, that she craved. Even the beast that had been terrorizing her was silent, choked off by the fumes. She stood in the stillness and watched the old tree in their neighbor’s yard. Its subtle movements reminded her of a sleeping giant, twitching against some vivid dream. But she couldn’t stay out here forever. She took another drag of her cigarette and felt something else in the stillness of her mind. Something darker. Something somehow even more painful. 

The recordings. The lost recordings. 

A wave of icy guilt enveloped her, sending her sinking to her knees. She closed her eyes and let out a moan. She’d been avoiding this thought. This shame. The memory flooded back. 

 Where are they…where are they?!  

Goddamnit, Amy! 

They’re gone. 

They’re GONE! 

You lost them. 

HOW COULD YOU LOSE THEM? 

It was 2020, COVID was burning through the U.S., and Nanny had started to get really sick. Mama had called and, holding back tears, described Nanny being taken away in an ambulance, screaming and fighting as she went. Amy had first looked for them then – about 8 hours worth of phone calls she’d recorded with her grandmother back in 2017. She’d had the idea to record the calls after moving across the country. As if saving these conversations – saving Nanny’s story – would somehow fold the 2,000 or so miles between Los Angeles and Atlanta, evaporating the distance that now separated her from her home and her family. 

But the laptop where she saved the calls had crapped out since then – one too many espressos spilled across keys, no doubt. So, when Nanny got sick, Amy went to the Cloud. She’d saved them, of course. But as she logged into the third and fourth accounts, her certainty began to wane. She’d saved them….right?! Wrong. They were gone. Lost. 

The shame had been unbearable back when Nanny was just sick. But now she was dead. Dead and gone and with her, her retelling of her story. Nanny in her own words. And Amy had lost them. Lost them, not just for herself, but for her whole family. She had lost Nanny all over again. 

“Shit!” 

While she’d been suspended in the shameful memory, the spark of her cigarette had burned its way down to the soft pads of her fingertips. She tossed the butt away. She could wallow in the loss later. She would. But Nanny was still dead.

“You have to write the obituary, and you have to do it today.” 

Her words were stern. An impatient teacher dealing with a whiny student. She sat and opened her laptop with an increased resolve. The kind a person musters to get through some unpleasant task. Eating the rotten elephant one bite at a time, her mother would say. She felt the scratching, desperate monster crawling back into her skull. 

“Nope. Not this time.” 

She opened the files saved to her laptop. She’d started (and had yet to finish) a short piece based on one of her grandmother's stories. Maybe it would be enough to silence the beast. 

N-A-N-N-Y, she typed the letters into the search function, crossing mental fingers that she’d included them in the file name. But she didn’t immediately recognize the results. There was no sign of the unfinished story (she’d undoubtedly given it some eye-roll-inducingly obscure title). But, the search had found something – a folder entitled, Nanny. She stared at the screen, paralyzed. 

Could this be them? 

No, don’t get your hopes up, Amy. How could you have missed this? 

Unless…unless, I didn’t look for them here? 

But why would I do that? 

The panic? I was pretty inconsolable when they weren’t in the cloud. 

Was I so frantic I forgot to check?  

She shook her head to interrupt the compulsive back and forth. She knew that she was stalling – not wanting to leave this moment of possibility. This moment where she might not have lost the stories after all. This moment where maybe she didn’t lose Nanny again. 

She clicked on the folder and held her breath. There, on her screen appeared 8, dated audio recordings. She opened the first file. 

“Nanny? Nanny? Can you hear me?” 

“Yes, sweetheart, I can! Are you recording?”

“Yes ma’am! Our first call!”

Amy exhaled heavily and closed her eyes as the sound of her grandmother’s voice washed over her. She listened to the first call, and then the second, and third – fast forwarding through hellos and small talk to get to the good stuff. As she listened, the image she had of Nanny, sick and gray and mean and swallowed up by that hospital bed, began to change:

 Coming out of the theater in Detroit to shouts in the street after the attack on Pearl Harbor 

Color returned to the gray cheeks.

Her first and favorite birthday present – an old, red tricycle her grandfather had salvaged from the dump

The sallow face filled out.

The time her mother took her to New York City and she got to ride a carousel, one of the happiest days of her life

The arthritic knots loosened, untwisting her gnarled hands and releasing her tight fingers.

How much she loved her grandfather and living on his Kentucky farm after her parents abandoned her when she was just 7 years old

The slack jaw tightened and clenched.

Finding her brother, shot in the gut and dying on his couch, and how this moment made her realize she had to get out of the holler 

She rose from the bulky bed. 

Lying about her age to join the Air Force, being stationed in California, and meeting my grandfather on the base

The bent back straightened. 

Pettiness she regretted with the wisdom of old age

The thin gown transformed into a smart sweater set, complete with matching scarf and pearl-encrusted brooch.

Her proudest moments, including graduating from college at age 62

The disheveled hair smoothed into tight, pinned curls.

The boundless love she had for her kids, including for her daughter – whom she thought was the smartest person she’d ever met, if she did say so herself

The look of anxious panic melted from behind the pale green eyes, replaced with recognition and calm. 

Amy studied the image now standing before her mind’s eye. This was the woman who helped raise her. Who’d made costumes for dance recitals and come to every cross country meet. The woman who fed her grandkids apples and peanut butter and told the best bedtime stories. This was the woman she knew.

“I found you, Nanny. I found you.” 

Amy opened her eyes and began to type.