The Silk Pillow

Rosie’s grandma was razor-sharp.

She possessed more knowledge than any grown-up Rosie knew, including her science teacher.

Rosie waited in vain for Grandma to miss a Jeopardy question, always stirring sauce or peeling potatoes over the sink while she murmured the answers to herself.

Grandma spoke to Rosie in English, but she’d hear her mumble to herself in Greek, yell at the newscasters in Italian, and whisper Mandarin while she watered her plants. Her words folded and flowed like she once lived in the countries themselves.

Grandma could explain how the tides worked based on the moon and the earth’s rotation. She quoted an entire passage of Charlotte’s Web when she saw the book in Rosie’s backpack. In school the next day, Rosie was unsurprised to hear the words read back to her, verbatim. 

Since she was older and more knowledgeable than Google, Rosie consulted Grandma with her most pressing and paramount questions.

“Grandma, how can I have shiny, curly hair like the pretty girls at school?” she asked.

“Emerson said pretty is something you’re born with. Beautiful, that’s an equal opportunity adjective.”

“Grandma.” Rosie sighed. Picture frames speckled the floor to ceiling bookcases upstairs, where a younger Grandma posed in silk dresses with people Rosie recognized from her history books, her brunette waves spilling over her shoulders like a sepia tinted movie star. 

“Eat the crust on your toast.” She pointed to the strips Rosie always left behind on her plate. “That’ll curl your hair.”

Rosie choked down the crust from her buttered cinnamon sugar toast. She ate it every afternoon, but her hair was still straight and dull like her bread.

Another day, Rosie asked, “Grandma, how can I tell if the girls at school want to be my friend? One day, they ask me to sit with them, and the next day, they don’t.”

“Just be kind, be yourself, Rosie. Maya Angelou said if you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”

“Grandma.” Rosie sighed. Grandma had more friends than she could tolerate. A porch full of people gathered for a different card game three nights a week. On Wednesdays, when Rosie’s dad worked late, she’d get to stay for a few hands of Texas Hold Em.

“Lies cause hangnails. Look at their fingers.”

The girls at school had mockingly smooth nail beds. Rosie lied to her mom, as a test. She told her favorite color was red now, not purple anymore. She waited three days for the hangnail to appear. It never did.

Rosie noticed that Grandma had small pieces of loose skin dangling around her nails.

One rainy April afternoon, the school bus sighed to a stop, and Rosie slunk off. Her parents had big important jobs, and her brother had big important baseball games after school. At nine years old, she wasn’t big and important enough to look after herself. Her afternoons were spent with Grandma. Rosie often thought it was the only place in the world where someone wanted her to be there.

Rosie melted into the kitchen chair, her backpack plopping by her moist socked feet.

“What’s a matter, Rosie?” Grandma held her back as she bent to pick a crumb from the carpeted floor, capturing it between the long crevasses of her yellowed nails. Most kitchens wore wood or vinyl flooring, Rosie knew. She heard her dad tell Grandma he’d hire someone to replace the short green carpet, update the orange Formica counter-tops, paint the yellowed ceiling from years of Grandpa’s chain smoking. Grandma told him she didn’t want strangers in her home; she kept it clean.

“Nothing.” Rosie laid her head down; her folded arms deputized as the pillow. Her shirt sleeves covered her hands, frayed along the hem from Rosie’s constant wringing.

“That boy picking at you again? I told you. One knee to where the sun don’t shine and he’ll stop.”

Rosie turned to face her grandma, exasperation liquefying her features.

“What is it, then?”

“The spelling bee is tomorrow.”

Grandma’s eyes brightened. The corners of her mouth fought gravity. “I remember your dad in one of those. I made him wear a bowtie for it. He was so angry with me.”

Rosie perked up. “How’d he do?”

“He made it a few rounds, I think. Didn’t win or nothing. I’d remember that.”

Rosie’s cheek collapsed into her palm. “I spelled ‘idea’ wrong today in our class practice.” She closed her eyes and grimaced. “Everyone laughed. Lizzy Wagner told me it was a good idea to stay home from school tomorrow so our class could score higher.”

“How’d you spell it?”

“E Y E D E E A”

“That’s terribly wrong.”

“I know that Grandma”

“How do you spell it now?

“I D E A”

“Betcha never spell it wrong again.”

“Everyone laughed at me.”

Grandma frowned, and her shoulders sagged like Rosie herself sat on her back. It was spring. Rosie had been trying to make friends at this new school since August. Everyday Rosie sat at her grandma’s kitchen table, defeated from yet another day of eating her crust-less peanut-butter and jelly alone, reading about wizards and magic instead of playing and braiding hair at recess.

Rosie made her grandma promise she wouldn’t tell her mom and dad. If Rosie’s mom knew she didn’t have any friends, she’d try to fix it. She’d call the other moms and set up embarrassing play dates.

“Do you have a book with all your spelling words?” Grandma asked.

Rosie nodded.

“Let me have a look.”

Rosie bent to open her backpack, her work soothingly organized in color coded plastic folders. Green for science. Red for math. Blue for History. Yellow for reading and spelling. She opened the yellow folder and offered the booklet.

“Go wash your hands,” Grandma said.

When she returned, a glass of warm milk and two slices of cinnamon sugar toast with the crust removed beckoned her back to the table.

“Have a snack and go take a nap before your parents get here.”

Rosie froze mid-bite. “I can’t sleep. I need to practice my spelling words. I’ll die if I misspell a four-letter word in front of the entire school.”

“Brains don’t work right when we’re tired and stressed. Take a nap. It’ll feel easier after.”

“But Grandma.”

“Trust me on this, Rosie.” Grandma ambled away with her spelling book in hand. The house moaned with each stair she climbed. Rosie imagined Grandma piling pillows on the side table and the floor, a precaution for toddlers. Rosie wouldn’t admit it, but she wanted to be comforted, to let her grandma dote on her.

When Rosie finished her snack, she yawned. Warm milk always had that effect on her. It must have that trip-to-fan chemical in it, the one adults blame after eating Thanksgiving turkey.

“Bed’s made up. Take a rest.”

Rosie found the bed as she expected, pillows piled all around. This time a different pillow, a silk one, waited for her head. She climbed in and collapsed. The silk felt cool and soothing on her cheek. Her stomach fluttered, like when Dad drove over the hill too fast on the backroad home.

Grandma peeked her head in the room and shut off the light. “Rest that beautiful brain of yours.”

Just before she drifted off, Rosie felt the thin edge of her spelling book under the pillow. She smiled to herself, another one of her grandma’s tales.

Rosie rubbed her eyes, and dusk greeted her. She stretched her arms and legs. Downstairs, Rosie heard Grandma and Dad talking, something about meetings and schedules. 

When Rosie rounded the corner into the kitchen, Dad and Grandma stopped talking and looked at her.

Grandma walked over and pressed her lips to her forehead. “Feels like her fever’s come down. Maybe take it again before bed to be sure.”

“Good,” Dad said. “The last thing we need is another virus running through the house. Ready Rosie? Mom’s picking up Lupo’s for dinner.”

Rosie looked at her grandma, and then at her fingernails, searching for the hangnail that surely sprouted. Back to Dad, she said, “Yeah.”

Dad’s phone buzzed. “I have to take this. Thanks Mom.” To Rosie: “Meet me in the car.” Dad stepped outside.

Rosie flipped her backpack over her shoulders. She stared at Grandma, unable to muster the courage to ask her why she lied.

Instead, she wrapped her arms around Grandma’s waist, like always.

“Rosie?”

Rosie nodded; her face scratched against Grandma’s sweater. She smelled like dish soap.

“When you win that spelling bee tomorrow, don’t mention the nap. Say you tried coffee for the first time and stayed up all night studying. Or say nothing. Just keep the pillow between us. Okay?”

“Okay, Grandma.”

“I love you, Rosie.” Grandma bit her lip, and her brows knit together.

The next day, Rosie won the spelling bee.

“How’d you do it Rosie?” Lizzy Wagner asked and took a bite of her sandwich. Crust on. Rosie sat with the popular kids, uninvisible today.

Mr. Fowler perched at the top of the table, hands behind his back, listening, watching. Usually he gave Rosie the creeps; she didn’t care today. She danced on top of the world. She was the sun.

“What do you mean?” Rosie asked.

“You didn’t know how to spell idea yesterday, and then today you win on fuchsia. You must have a secret study trick.” Lizzy grinned, conspiratorially. Rosie was finally in.

Rosie thought about what her grandma said, but she didn’t want to lie to them. She wanted these girls to be her friends. She wanted — more than anything — to sit here every day.

“I took a nap with the spelling book under my grandmas fancy silk pillow.” Rosie shrugged and bit one of her baby carrots.

Lizzy and the girls erupted into laughter. Rosie felt a glow in her chest knowing she could do that.

She doubled down. “It’s one of my grandma’s silly wives tales. She also says if I eat my crust, I’ll have curly hair.” Rosie chomped a big bite of her sandwich crust, and then tossed her straight brown hair to the side.

The girls cackled, a crescendo of laughter that was Rosie’s new favorite sound.

“My grandma says if you break a mirror, that’s seven years bad luck,” Lizzy said.

“You said you slept with your book under a pillow? At your grandma’s house?” Mr. Fowler surprised them, looming above. His eyes were black, like a bird. Rosie thought for a moment there was a breeze in the lunchroom.

Rosie’s cheeks warmed and she nodded.

She clutched the medal hanging around her neck. “That’s not against the rules, right?”

A smile snaked across Mr. Fowler’s face. “No. No. It’s not.”

He stepped back, away from the table. The girls went back to laughing but Rosie couldn’t shake the feeling he was staring at her.

After school, Rosie joyously threw herself down the bus stairs.

“Thank you, Mr. Banks,” she tossed over her shoulder. She sprinted up the hill to her grandma’s house. Her spelling bee medal bounced against her chest as she ran. She clutched it with one hand, in protection.

Rosie waved to Mrs. Graves on the front porch, rocking in her chair. She waved to Mr. Colbert, sweeping his driveway clean for probably the third time today. When she saw Ms. Cindy wasn’t home, she cut across her front yard in a direct line to Grandma’s. Usually, Rosie lumbered around back, climbed the porch steps and took the kitchen door into the house. Not today. She yanked the cellar door open from the driveway. It was faster. She ran through the dark, dank coolness of the cellar. She took the cellar stairs two at a time and ripped open the door into the kitchen.

“I won, Grandma,” she said, breathless.

Rosie met an empty room.

She looked around. The TV on the counter was on, muted. The weather channel.

Grandma was always in the kitchen. Always.

“Grandma!” Rosie dropped her backpack to the floor. She overlooked the wall phone, dangling off the hook by its curly cord.

Rosie kicked off her sneakers and slid through the dining room, always set for ten guests but only ever used on holidays. She padded through the living room, the pink carpet vacuumed into neat lines.

“Grandma!” Rosie yelled up the staircase as she climbed.

At the top of the stairs, Grandma’s room sat to the right, and the room she always stayed in (her dad’s old room) to the left. Rosie rarely entered Grandma’s room unless invited, but something told her she was there.

The door creaked open. On the floor, Grandma curled on her side. A dark red stain pooled next to her stomach.

Rosie shrieked and ran to her.

Grandma groaned and opened her eyes. “Rosie.”

Rosie searched around the room for the cordless phone, missing from its cradle on the nightstand. She needed to call 911.

“Rosie, come here,” Grandma croaked.

Rosie did as she was told.

“The pillow. In your room.”

Rosie nodded, on her toes, ready to run and get it for her. Maybe the phone was there.

Grandma’s ice-cold fingers gripped her wrist. “Keep it. Don’t let anyone have it. Don’t ever tell anyone it’s power.”

“Grandma, no.” Rosie couldn’t find her voice. She couldn’t find her breath.

Her grandma sighed and closed her eyes.

Rosie knew Grandma was dying. Someone stabbed her. Her stomach clenched, like the blade was inside her too.

Knuckling tears away from her eyes, Rosie pulled Grandma’s good towels from the bathroom and pressed them to her wound. She found the cordless phone, and when the dial tone was missing, she scrambled downstairs and put the kitchen phone on the hook.

When the paramedics and police arrived, they found Rosie lying on top of the pile of pink towels. She knew from the movies that wounds needed pressure, so she put her whole body on it.

A paramedic peeled her off and carried her in a cradle out. She noticed a boot mark in the center of the bedroom door.

 Later she’d hear her parents whispering about the boot mark and the bank accounts and the secrets while she clutched the silk pillow in her room, and sobbed, and wished she never told her grandma about her stupid spelling bee.

She’d sit alone every day at lunch for the rest of her life if she could only go over to her house tomorrow. She’d tell a thousand lies to everyone if Grandma made her cinnamon toast and warm milk again.

She’d never get to do those things, but she promised herself —for as long as she lived —she’d never tell anyone about the pillow.