Fighter

Natasha Yannacañedo

I am twelve years old, celebrating my birthday at a seedy Burger King in the Mission District in San Francisco. “Conga” by Miami Sound Machine plays in the background. My family is sitting at two tables, devouring fries and burgers. It is 1986, so transfats have yet to be discovered.

Without warning, a tall, dark man comes out of nowhere, fast, and slugs my mom and then my grandmother in the face. The perpetrator runs away, but my deaf uncle, David, sees the look of panic on my mom’s face. Even though David did not see or hear what happened, his instinct tells him that this man has commit- ted some crime, so he chases after the man. Two other men help him hold the man down while we wait for the police to arrive. My brother is a six-month-old baby. My mom handed him off to my father less than sixty seconds before the attack.

With my Grandma Louise, we are not as fortunate.

Blood pours from her nose; the floor is covered in blood. I am bewildered. How can this man attack my Grandma Louise, a handicapped senior citizen in a wheelchair?

I have a difficult time explaining my grandmother to people. She is like a little sister and has lived with us since I was three, as she is brain damaged and paralyzed on her right side from a stroke. She was in a coma for a month after the stroke, and when she awoke, the doctors were perplexed that she is not in a vegetative state, as she had global aphasia, also known as “left side blowout,” with little or no activity on the left side of her brain.

The ambulance comes and the paramedics sweep my grandmother away in an instant. My twelfth birthday is officially over, and I am not allowed to follow Grandma Louise to the hospital. My Aunt Jackie and Uncle David bring the kids back to my house. We soon discover my grandma is fine, but her nose is broken.

At the trial, the judge asks, “Do you have anything to say?” My grandmother laboriously walks in front of the judge with her walker, step by step, looks her attacker right in the eye and grunts, “Nose!” while pointing to her deviated septum. In one word, she conveys all her rage at him for desecrating her beautiful face. This moment in the courtroom captures the essence of my Grandma Louise—a fighter.

Growing up, I witness Grandma Louise living every day trying to find words that won’t come out of her mouth. She says yes when she means no and no when she means yes. She is severely impaired in both comprehension and expression of language. What breaks my heart daily is my grandma often asks why. “Why, why, why, why, why?” She says it when she gets upset or frustrated about something. I always feel like she is asking, “Why did this happen to me?” “Why do I have to live like this?” I understand at a young age that life isn’t fair. And I learn it from watching my Grandma Louise struggle every day.

In spite of this, my grandma still finds joy in her life. She teaches me not only that it is important to fight but also how to find beauty in the darkest existence.

Grandma Louise has a boyfriend at the senior center. She often flirts and winks at men, showing off her twinkling, baby-blue eyes. She loves any kind of candy,

but especially White Divinity from See’s Candies. Blackjack is her game of choice. She applies makeup every day, sometimes drawing her eyebrows on crooked, as her “good side” is paralyzed. Her incredible spirit radiates under the paralysis and brain damage.

Before her stroke, in her 60s, Grandma Louise went out dancing five nights a week; she loved to dance anything ballroom—foxtrot, waltz, swing, American tango. She even won a dance contest. Grandma Louise owned two businesses, a dry cleaner’s and a flower shop that were connected in the back. She bought the adjoined businesses without knowing how to be a florist! She went to floral

design school after she bought the business. My mother was the only child in her school who had a working mother. At the age of 60, Grandma Louise showed up at my mom’s house with blonde hair. My mom protested, “You can’t dye your hair blonde—you are my mom!” Grandma Louise shrugged it off, saying, “I can do whatever I want.” She never left the house without a full face of makeup.

After the stroke, it must be excruciatingly frustrating for a woman so composed to have to wear a chunky leg brace and practical, polyester pants suits. Grandma Louise spends a year perfecting her signature with her left hand while her paralyzed right hand remains curled up in a claw position.

My grandma always sings, no discernable words—old, joyous songs. “Louise” is my favorite. The melody still dances in my head:

Every little breeze seems to whisper Louise. Birds in the trees seem to twitter Louise. Well, each little rose tells me it knows I love you, love you, baby. Every little beat that I feel in my heart. Seems to repeat, what I felt at the start. And each little sigh tells me that I adore you, Louise. (Leo Robin, 1929)

It is strange how a brain can separate these things. She cannot construct a sentence, yet she can sing these melodies.

Throughout my childhood, I often wonder what my grandma thinks of me. How deep does her attachment go? What are the limitations of the heart with that much brain damage? But then I think, “Actions speak louder than words,” and I know how much she loves me. I cherish her winks; they make me feel special, like we have a secret. Sometimes, she leans over and squeezes my hand affectionately.

I love to play blackjack with her; we play for pennies and are evenly matched. I sneak into her room and watch TV when my mom isn’t looking. Every time my grandma goes away, she always brings candy back for me. Baby Ruth and Snickers are our favorite junk food variety candy. Even with her brain damage, she spoils me.

Grandma Louise’s doctor, Dr. Matula, tells my mother, “Louise is my most handicapped patient, but she does more than any of my other patients.” She gets her hair done once a week at the beauty shop and goes to senior centers every

weekday. She brings home pamphlets saying “Reno! Reno!” in an attempt to get my mother to take her to Reno. With three kids and her job, my mother is not amused. She gets frustrated with Grandma Louise; she can often be selfish, a result of her brain damage. Grandma Louise asks my mom to paint her nails as my mom is cooking and holding my crying baby brother. “Not now, mother!” my mom barks.

Grandma Louise is such a rebel. Even though she is not allowed, she goes to the store using her walker, one slow step at a time, with her giant diamond rings and purse hanging off her walker. It must take her two hours just to go the two blocks and back. Her right leg is dead weight that she drags along. A policewoman brings her home; she can’t believe my grandma is out on the street. She tells my mom someone will cut Grandma Louise’s fingers off to get her rings, and she is correct, because there is no way anyone would get those rings without my grandma putting up a fight.

My grandmother designed one of the rings with two of the rocks from her

ex-husbands’ engagement rings. She had five husbands. I blame all the men in my grandma’s life for her high blood pressure and stress leading to her stroke; she often had atrocious taste in men.

Except for her first husband. He was an actor who killed himself by accident with a loaded gun. He was rehearsing in front of her at their house and did not realize the gun was loaded. His last words to the police were, “She had nothing to do with this.” My grandma was a widow at seventeen.

The rest of her husbands were basically jerks, including the last one that stole her furniture and didn’t bathe her after her stroke. I suppose my step-grandfather, Grandpa Bernie, was the best, because even though he was an alcoholic, he stuck around to raise the kids. My biological grandfather took off when my mom was a baby. We had very little contact with my mom’s side of the family after my grandmother’s stroke because most of them had abandoned her when she had her stroke. They didn’t know how to cope. Having seen this level of selfishness, I have little patience for people who don’t show up when a crisis happens, and I am a firm believer that when the shit hits the fan, you show up for the people you love.

Grandma Louise has the best facial expressions. Dirty looks, flirty looks, inquisitive looks. When I am 24, my mom and my sister see me play Masha in The Seagull, and they almost die because they say I look exactly like Grandma Louise with all my dirty looks. I take it as a compliment. I had no idea that I could be that expressive. I was a very shy child and was repeatedly told by my mother how my behavior was like my dad’s. I also look more like his Peruvian side of the family with my almond-shaped eyes and curly, dark hair. However, the more I mature, I realize I have a lot of Grandma Louise in me—the love of dancing and the fighting spirit. And of course, the dirty looks.

When I am in college, my grandma becomes weaker and dementia starts to kick in. My mom finally has to put my grandmother in a small group home for senior citizens. I visit when I can, and guilt is often present, because you can’t ever grateful she lived to see me get married, but there is a penetrating sadness I can’t get out from under.

A year later, when I am living in New York, I get the dreaded call. My mom says, “Grandma is in the hospital. I didn’t know what to do, so I let them put a feeding tube in.” I want to scream, “Nooooooooooo!” But I remain calm and say, “Have them remove it. We don’t want to prolong her suffering. Bring her home. You have to bring her home.” I fly back to San Francisco the next day.

My sister and I take care of Grandma Louise at my mom’s house while she dies.

My mom disappears into the kitchen; she can’t handle the final stages of losing her own mother, even though she felt she had lost her long ago to the stroke. It is the first time I hear the death rattle that comes from a dying person, the soul’s

last declaration that it had indeed existed. I want her to stop fighting once and for all—to just let go. I am impatient for her to die because I want her to finally have some peace.

My sister and I are in control of her pain management. Every time she moans, I say, “More morphine!” My Aunt Jackie later tells me she was concerned they would do an autopsy and my sister and I would go to jail for overdosing her. This makes me laugh. What I don’t tell my aunt is I actually contacted a “right-to-die” organization about what constitutes a lethal dosage of morphine. However, it never needs to come to that.

“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” is playing in the background as Grandma Louise takes her last breath. The death rattle finally silenced. I close her eyes for her. My younger sister, Maia, and I take off her hospital gown and dress her in her favorite light blue suit. We meticulously apply her make-up like she would have wanted. Her tiny corpse disturbs me, how wasted her body has become. The bed sores make me cringe. Her skin has become like rice paper, translucent and delicate, while the veins in her hands map her long life. She was 88 years old.

Right after my grandmother passes from this world into the next, the wooden chair that hangs in my mother’s living room is slowly swinging. My mom points it out to us —Grandma Louise’s spirit. For months after Grandma Louise’s passing, the Christmas music box plays in the garage every time the lights are turned on.

My mom feels my Grandma Louise winking hello.

I inherit my grandmother’s infamous diamond rings, but my mother insists I give one to my sister and brother to share, to be fair. I oblige. I often wear my ring and constantly get compliments on it. I am nostalgic and love having my grand- ma with me in this simple way. The hilarious thing is, as a child, I always liked

the other ring, the one I gave to my siblings. But I kept the one my grandmother designed. It’s simple and classic and a reminder of her extraordinary life.