Grandma’s Garden

You spoke with slurred speech in perfect English.
Bloodshot eyes made ugly words more potent.
No longer does the gentle breeze of affectionate words fill my ears.
Violent storms tear roots and leave chaos.

Your stench fills my noes, chokes me, makes my eyes water.
Grandma’s garden, no longer filled with a captivating scent to attract bees.
Thick, black vines clutch me in an inescapable thorny grasp.
Grandma’s garden, no longer lovely, no peace.

The yellow flowers of your tiered skirt, stained gray with dirt.
Your secret, golden treasure hidden within its folds.
Silver hair, once swept into an elegant bun,
Lay limp and flat, flop on your shoulder.

Glahneeeee!
That is what they called you.
Grandma’s Garden.
Deluxe in a twisted way.

Cultivated in dishonesty.
No longer supreme.
No longer superior.
No longer award winning…

Before the morning rush of laundry patrons, I set out to perform my weekly Sunday chore. Armed with a hand broom and a dustpan, I am charged with the dirty job of cleaning lint from the long wall of huge commercial dryers. As I kneel before each metal shrine, I scrupulously seek lost treasures that have fallen from overlooked pockets. Gray fluff flies everywhere. It is in my hair, covers my clothes and it is even up my nose. Using a small, odd-shaped key, I remove the large panel at the bottom of each dryer. I sweep the lint off a slanted screen and off the sides of the walls and toss the huge layer of fuzz into the trash. Jewelry, coins, dollar bills, screws, lone keys, and other various small items are added to my trove. If I am lucky, I will find both sides to a pair of earrings. One time I even found a $10 bill.

“Indian Capital of the World,” “The Gateway to New Mexico,” “Most Patriotic Small Town in America” are a few of the names that Gallup boasts to be known for. However, in 1987 the town was dubbed “Drunktown, USA” in a 20/20 special which aired on ABC network. Historic Route 66 splits the town of Gallup, New Mexico in half, which borders the Navajo reservation and is surrounded by mountainous terrain, red rock cliffs and dry desert landscape. In that year, Zuni, Hopi, Navajo, Apache, Laguna, and Acoma tribes, as well as white and Hispanic peoples made up the population of 20,000. Natural landmarks, cultural attractions, and handcrafted Native American jewelry, rugs, pottery, and more were what drew thousands of tourists to the area at that time.

Most people spent their Sunday mornings at home or at church. However, in this reservation border town, many native families without running water came from far and wide to wash their clothes in one of the numerous laundromats in Gallup. Wash-N-Save was where my mother was employed as a laundry attendant, and at 9 years old, I would often accompany her. The laundromat was the ultimate place to go to spend the long wait for washers and dryers to end their gyratory cycles and it was a smorgasbord of sights, sounds, and smells.

As I drift back to that time, I walk into the building and the smell of diluted bleach fills my nose. The jukebox blares the hits and Michael Jackson’s girlish howls can be heard as he asks everyone “Who’s bad?” People are at various stages of the necessary, yet mundane, process of washing clothes. Some depart with large black bags full of freshly folded laundry. Others are at the long yellow tables, shaking out their towels and folding them into smaller squares. I see a woman and her daughter lay claim to a row of washers and begin to sort their clothes. The musty odor of their dirty laundry assaults me as I walk by. Soapy, white bubbles cover the inside of the round windows of a row of front-loading washing machines. First, they tumble left for a few seconds, then they switch to the right and tumble the other way. Some washers are spinning so fast that I see the silver circle at the back of the spinning drum. The powerful, masking scent of Downy is in the air as a woman removes her clothes from a top-loading washer and plops them into a wheeled basket. As she pushes her cart towards the dryer, the sound of the wheels makes a rhythmic squeak. A couple of kids, chasing each other, stomp past me as their mother yells at them to “get over here!” The tiny ‘clink’ is heard as she puts quarters into the slot to start her dryer. Everywhere I hear machine doors open and close, coin slots being pushed into their chute, and the murmur of different conversations mingled with an occasional laugh.

As I walk along the wall of dryers, I feel the warmth radiating from them and I hear their gentle hum and tumble. Bounce dryer sheets diffuse off fresh clean clothes. In this area, people are coming toward the end of the lengthy process of doing the laundry. Some patrons carefully fold their clothes, separating them by size and ownership. Others hastily fold sloppy stacks, hurriedly trying to get through the process so they can get to the flea market.

I continue further and walk past the row of arcade games. The bong and ding from the pinball machine cut above the whoosh and whack of Street Fighter. The electronic blips and riffs from Galiga are heard above the ominous music of Donkey Kong as he climbs the ladder with Pauline and does his predatory stomp. Then the car engine revs and tires squeal from Pole Position. All are heard in an electronic symphony of theme music and tempo. I stop in front of my all-time favorite, Ms. Pacman. Maybe this time I can make it past the “Junior” level. Excitement begins to build in my stomach and legs when I slide the quarter, I had found from the day before, into the slot. I have been saving it for this purpose. I feel the red joystick in my clammy hand as the intro theme of “They Meet” plays. The completion of each level brings only slight relief, and my heart beats through my chest. At the electronic interlude of “The Chase” I can let go of the controller and breathe life into my hand as I try to relax. I make it to the “Junior” level with two men left but end up dying twice in a row. I am filled with bitter disappointment as I rub the stiffness out of my hand.

After my game I walk slowly and reluctantly to the counter and mom says, “I’m going to clean the washers, watch the register for me.”

Wash-n-Save sold everything from soap to tasty snacks. Tootsie Rolls, Fireballs, Blow Pops, Bubble Tape, Fun Dip, Pop Rocks, Twizzlers, M&Ms, and Snickers ranged from a penny to fifty cents. There were nachos, popcorn, Slush Puppies, soft serve ice cream, hamburgers with potato chips, hot dogs, and pickles. Dirty faced little kids would often come up and look at these treats with longing. I did too. When mom was out on the floor, I was left to tend the cash register and help customers with small purchases. I only knew how to press one button to open the register. Usually, people just came with cash to exchange for quarters. I would press the button and the register would make a ching sound as it popped open. Placing the bill on top of the drawer, I would count out the quarters. Sometimes people would want to buy a box of soap or a candy. Only cash was accepted, and my process was simple. I meticulously recorded everything on a sheet of paper. The item(s), total, tax, money tendered and change given. Tax was added using a chart posted on the side of the register. A calculator was on hand for harder equations. Later, my mom would come back and ring everything up based on what I wrote down. I became very good at simple math and counting money. However, if there was a more complex order, like cooking a hamburger, I would yell “MOM!!” at the top of my lungs and she would come back and take care of the customer.

When mom went out on the floor, she was usually collecting the quarters, wiping down the machines or the booths in the eating area, chatting with customers, making sure everything was working properly, and ensuring that property was not being damaged. Sometimes she would wash clothes or iron for those who paid for the service. There was another cleaning woman who worked there, too. Her name of Ortencia. She was an old Mexican woman who only spoke Spanish and she had long scraggly gray hair. Her duties were to take out the large bins of trash, sweep/mop the floors, and clean the bathrooms, which despite all the use of Pine-sol or bleach, still had the foul odor of old pee.

Outside around the back of Wash-N-Save, the drunks, or “glonnies” in Navajo, loitered. I loathed to go back there to dump the trash. Glonnies would watch with their sad, bloodshot eyes and sometimes call out “Hey!” or “Do you have a quarter?” I did my best to ignore them. The pungent smell of grime and old pee clung to this area, too. What a shock it was to see my grandmother sitting on the cement steps at the back side of the building.

“Grandma?” I said leerily, as I walked closer.

Though she was swaying, she hurriedly tried to hide her large bottle of Garden Deluxe wine in her tiered skirt. Her hair was matted and wisps of it fell away from her face as she looked up with red eyes, slowly blinking. A huge smile spread across her face showing her few remaining yellow teeth. Dumbfounded, I ran to dump the trash and went back inside to tell my mother, a knot forming in my stomach. Later, we took grandma back to the little red and white travel trailer we called home. Mom yelled at grandma in Navajo as she put her into the bathtub, and I sat pretending to watch a rerun of Gilligan’s Island.

Skipper tears off his hat and slaps Gilligan as Grandma yells in perfect English, “Fuck you! Leave me alone you stupid bitch!”

My eyes widened in surprise as I thought, Grandma can speak English?!

My grandma always smelled of Ivory soap and wool. I can still smell her scent when I think of her. Thump, thump, thump went her wooden batten comb, and she would sweep her finger across the strings of her loom as she wove her intricate rugs. She knew the natural chemistry behind medicinal plants and dyes. My grandma sang sacred prayer songs to heal others in ceremonies. I can still hear her soothing voice as she told us stories when we all lay in bed, in her hogan, on a quiet, black reservation night. My beautiful, rowdy grandmother sat in the tub and mumbled to herself in words that I could not understand, as mom took her foul-smelling clothes back to the laundromat to wash.