My mom still misses him, and one night about a year or so ago when she’d had too much wine, she’d told me it was weird that she kept getting older but Sam would always be the same age. That’s how she referred to him, too. Sam. Not “your dad” but Sam, which is really who he was to her more than anything, I guess. Her Sam. Then she went to her room, and I could hear her crying herself to sleep, which is not my no-nonsense mom’s usual approach. Sometimes I feel guilty that I don’t miss him, but I can’t pull up even the tiniest sense memory. I was only eight months old when he died, and after it happened Mom and me moved back to East Rockport so my grandparents could help take care of me while my mom went back to school and finished her nursing degree. And now, sixteen years later, we’re still here.
I’m hanging up some of my mom’s simple sundresses when my eye catches on a fat, beat-up shoe box she keeps on her closet’s top shelf. In black Sharpie it’s labeled MY MISSPENT YOUTH. I slide the final dress into place, tease the shoe box out of its resting spot, and take it to my bedroom. I’ve looked in this box before. Back when Claudia and I went through our Joan Jett dancing cat video phase, I used to love to take down this box and study the contents, but I haven’t pawed through it in years.
Now I open it up and carefully spill the cassette tapes and old photographs and neon-colored leaflets and dozens of little photocopied booklets with titles like Girl Germs and Jigsaw and Gunk out onto my bed. I pick up a Polaroid of my mom where it looks like she was just a few years older than I am now, maybe nineteen or twenty. In the photograph, she has a platinum-blond streak in her long dark hair, and she’s wearing a tattered green baby doll dress and combat boots. She’s sticking her tongue out at the camera, and her arms are around the neck of another girl who has dark eyes and a piercing through her eyebrow. In black marker written down one of my mom’s arms are the words RIOTS NOT DIETS.
My mom doesn’t talk too much about her younger years before she met my dad in Portland, but when she does, she always grins a little with pride, maybe remembering how she graduated from high school and drove an ancient Toyota she’d bought with her own money to Washington State just because that’s where her favorite bands lived and played. Bands with names like Heavens to Betsy and Excuse 17. Bands made up almost entirely of girls who played punk rock and talked about equal rights and made little newsletters they referred to as zines.
They called themselves Riot Grrrls.
My mother was wild back then. Wild like with half her head shaved and black Doc Martens and purple lipstick the color of a serious bruise. Even though my mom is pretty relaxed compared to a lot of moms—like she’s always been up front with me about sex stuff and she doesn’t mind if I swear in front of her once in a while—it’s still hard to reconcile the girl in the Polaroid with the mom I know now. The mom in butterfly-covered, lavender nursing scrubs who sits down at the kitchen table once a month to balance her checkbook.
I shift positions to get more comfortable on my bed and stare at a page in one of the Riot Grrrl zines. It has a cutout of a vintage cartoon Wonder Woman with her hands on her hips, looking fierce. The girl who made the zine drew words coming out of Wonder Woman’s mouth, warning men not to mess with her when she’s walking down the street unless they want a smack to the face. I grin at the image. As I flip through the pages, I find myself wishing that Wonder Woman went to East Rockport High and that she was in all of the classes I have with Mitchell Wilson. When Joan Jett meows for her dinner, I have to force myself to pack the box up and tuck it back into my mom’s closet. I can’t explain why, exactly, but something about what’s inside the box makes me feel better. Understood somehow. Which is weird because Riot Grrrl was a million years ago, and none of those girls know me. But I can’t help but wish I knew them.
*
Meemaw has a rooster obsession. Roosters on dishtowels, roosters on plates, roosters made of ceramic walking the length of the kitchen windowsill like they’re part of a rooster parade. She even has salt and pepper shakers shaped like—guess what—roosters.
I take the salt shaker in my hand and raise an eyebrow at the rooster’s perpetual friendly grin.
“Do roosters actually smile?” I ask, sprinkling salt on my side serving of canned veggies.
“Sure,” says Meemaw. “They’re very sociable.”
My grandpa just grunts and digs his fork through his plate of Stouffer’s chicken enchiladas. “How many roosters have you known personally, Maureen?” he asks.
“Several,” says Meemaw, not skipping a beat, and Grandpa just sighs, but I know he loves that Meemaw never lets him have the last word.
I appreciate how utterly grandparentesque my grandparents are. I like listening to their banter, to their gentle teasing, to the way two people who have been together for over forty years communicate with each other. I like how my grandpa has funny little sayings that he trots out over and over again and delivers in a voice of authority. (“Remember, Vivian, you can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.”) I like how Meemaw has never once solved a puzzle on Wheel of Fortune but still insists on watching it every night and yelling out whatever answers strike her in the moment. (“Mr. Potato Head! Fried Green Tomatoes! Sour cream and onion potato chips!”)
They’re cozy, basically.
But like most grandparents, they’re totally out of it when it comes to knowing what it’s like to be, like, a girl and sixteen and a junior in high school.
“Anything exciting happen at school today?” Meemaw asks, wiping the sides of her mouth with her napkin. I push my green beans around with my fork and consider my day and the homework still waiting for me in my backpack.
“Nothing too exciting,” I say. “I got stuck with a bunch of extra work in English because Mitchell Wilson and his friends are jerks.”
Grandpa frowns and Meemaw asks what I mean, so I find myself telling them about Mitchell’s stupid comment.
“I don’t even understand what that means,” says Meemaw. “Why would he want someone to make him a sandwich?”
I take a deep breath. “He didn’t really want a sandwich, Meemaw,” I say. “It’s just, like, this stupid joke the boys use to try and say girls belong in the kitchen and they shouldn’t have opinions.” My voice gets louder the more I talk.
“I see. Well, that certainly wasn’t very nice of Mitchell,” Meemaw offers, passing Grandpa the salt.
I shrug, briefly fantasizing about what it must be like to be retired and able to spend your days puttering around with your ceramic rooster collection, totally oblivious to the realities of East Rockport High School.
“What he said…” I pause and picture the bright red hives of embarrassment burning up all over Lucy Hernandez. Remembering makes me burn for a moment, too, from my scalp to the tips of my toes, but it’s not embarrassment I’m feeling. “Well, I think it’s totally sexist.” It feels good to say it out loud.
“I suppose, I’d expect better manners from the principal’s son,” says Meemaw, sliding past my last remark.
“Can you imagine what Lisa would have done over something like that?” my grandfather says suddenly, looking up from his enchiladas at my grandmother. “I mean, can you even picture it?”
I look over at Grandpa, curious. “What?” I ask. “What would Mom have done?”