Lost and Found

We lost George. I accepted it as a surprise birthday gift for 8-year-old Dani since it happened around that time in the autumn. There were no goodbyes, no explanations. One day we were off to see Great Grandma Mable in Pittsburgh. When we returned, it was to Gma’s house. No one mentioned George again. He might as well have sunk into Lake Gunnison after all, except we were spared the grieving and funeral expense.

Grandma Mable lived at 1776 Harvard Avenue in Swissvale, on the edge of Pittsburgh. Her father had built the two-story duplex. He and Großmutter Schaeffer had lived upstairs, while Grandma Mable and Grandpa Bill lived downstairs. It seemed very ponderous to me, all mahogany woodwork and heavy furniture. Grandma Mable used the lowest-watt light bulbs throughout. Only the front sun porch was bright; that was where we spent most days, with Grandma Mable entertaining a steady stream of friends. They were like a Greek chorus commenting on neighbors who passed by. That one was a Papist, another was a hussy who wore slacks instead of skirts. 

My Great Grandmother and those elderly women who came daily to confer were intimidating. Grandpa Bill, on the other hand, was gentle and comforting. Mornings he put a slice of bread in a very old-fashioned toaster with flaps that came down and required you to turn the bread by hand as it browned. Then he put the toast in a bowl with a pat of butter and warm milk. It was delicious, especially since he poured the milk from a small blue pitcher with a picture of Shirley Temple on the side. Grandpa Bill insisted the image was not Shirley Temple, but my mother as a child. Afternoons, Grandpa Bill read me stories from a leather volume with gilt-edge pages. These were the original Grimm tales, dark and violent, the version in which the prince mutilates the feet of Cinderella’s step-sisters.

In the evenings my mother and Gma huddled with Gma’s two sisters, Aunt Roxy and Aunt Josephine, all of them sitting on the bed in the guest room, which shimmered with their matriarchal energy. Years later, when I read about the Oracle at Delphi or the Temple of the Vestal Virgins in Rome, I recognized the mysterious and sacred sites from the feel of that room. From what I could overhear, they were discussing whether Gma, Deenie, and I should move to Pittsburgh to be near what was clearly The Real Family. 

They sent me to stay a week with Uncle Joey and his brood, so they could deliberate in private or so I wouldn’t fall so far behind in school. Once Uncle Joey had returned to Pittsburgh from the Navy, he married a childhood sweetheart and converted to Judaism for her. (His apostasy was Strike Two for my Gma – obviously, in the eyes of The Family, a consequence of The Divorce.) As mentioned before, I cried my first night there. But after that I think I enjoyed my three cousins. Sherry was my age; her brothers David and Stephen were a few years younger. Isn’t it strange? I can’t remember any play time with them as I do with Kendall and Munchie. There were at least four or five annual visits with them; yet, there’s only a vague memory of ice cream at Isaly’s deli. 

The Anthropologist explains the lack of recall this way: Although Dani and Sherry seemed to be close cousins, Dani always envied Sherry, who had everything. Sherry had beautiful light brown curls, an ingenue’s smile, brothers, and was definitely Daddy’s little princess. And she was smug about it. When Uncle Joey took me to dinner in Texas he told me Sherry grew up to get a masters degree in English and taught high school.

For a few days I went to school with Sherry, excited that maybe I would be transferring there if the women decided we could stay. At one point we had a spelling quiz. And here is one of those moments that remain eternal and embedded: Sherry is handing back the graded spelling tests. She comes down the aisle and puts mine on the desk, eyes downcast, lips tight, her face a mixture of shame and pity for me. I turn it over and see that I have most words marked red as misspelled. Even now, more than a half century later, I picture Sherry’s face at that moment and start to breathe in shallow gasps. 

That is why the coven decided that we must be banished to Denver. Dani flunked Pittsburgh with a spelling quiz. Or so Dani thought. Actually, the story Dani spun from the dark house of elders and grim tales was even worse. In her story, the women of my family decided that Gma and Deenie could come home to Pittsburgh and stay if only they could somehow get rid of that strange child who looked nothing like Shirley Temple.

A couple years before I was born, Pittsburgh had started to clean up its infamous air, fouled by the steel mills. But in the early 1950s the air was still yellowish gray and always reeked of iron and sulfur. There is a good reason that Night of the Living Dead was filmed there. The gritty, ominous atmosphere of the movie is exactly what Pittsburgh felt like. This setting is important for understanding why Dani’s version of what happened still rings true in my ears. I was terrified of even the air in that strange place. When Gma or Deenie took me walking around Swissvale, I was always frightened. I still feel myself clinging to someone’s hand and gripping the railing of a bridge over the train tracks, afraid to take a step because I knew Dani would fall through. I don’t know why the photo shows me standing independently with hands to my side, bravely smiling into the camera lens.

So how is it possible that I would wander out and cross that bridge to get lost? Dani always suspected that Gma or Deenie took her out and lost her deliberately, à la mode de Hansel and Gretel. I walked, then ran, up and down streets searching for Harvard Avenue as the yellow/gray light turned an even darker gray. I stood before a huge and fearful complex, looking up at the huge sign of the Westinghouse Switch and Signal Factory. When I read Tolkien’s trilogy years later, I wondered if he too had been lost, had looked up fearfully at just such a sign to describe it so well as the ominous Eye of Sauron. “One moment only it stared out, but as from some great window immeasurably high there stabbed northward a flame of red, the flicker of a piercing Eye; and then the shadows were furled again and the terrible vision was removed.”  It was just like that. I began crying.

And then, here came Grandpa Bill calling for Dani.

The Scene at Harvard Avenue in Dani’s Mind’s Eye:

[Family enters and sits down to dinner at the long table in the dining room.]

Grandpa Bill:  Where’s Dani?  

[The women pass a glance, somewhat furtively. Some struggle to keep straight faces.] 

Grandma Mable: She must have wandered out somewhere. [unfolds napkin, places it on lap.]

Grandpa Bill: But she must be lost!

Gma: She’ll find her way. [ladles gravy over her vegetables.]

Deenie: She’s a smart girl. [spreads butter on a bread roll.]

Grandpa Bill: No, she won’t; she’s too little! We have to find her.” 

[Long pause. Sound of cutlery against china. The women chew silently.]

Aunt Roxy: Pass the potatoes, please.

Grandpa Bill: “I won’t stand for this! You may think you can just lose her that way, but I will not allow it!  [He scrapes the chair loudly across the floor as he pushes away his plate of food and jumps to his feet. He grabs his coat and slams the door as he leaves.]

And then he found me and took me home. 

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 ^{Homiletic Footnote:} “  Should not shepherds take care of the flock?. . . You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. . . .For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. . . . I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. . . . I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.” –fragments from Ezekiel 34

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Further Kindnesses of Grandpa Bill

Whenever I compared my skin coloring to the rest of the family and complained or demanded an explanation, my Gma and Deenie claimed that this was because Grandpa Bill had a Native American grandmother. I believe this is a story made up by Grandpa Bill to make me feel that I belonged. On the other hand, I found an obituary for Grandpa Bill’s brother that claimed their ancestor had been the first white man to cross the Allegheny. So perhaps it’s conceivable that there was some biracial mating back then.

Perhaps five years after Grandpa Bill’s heroic rescue of Dani, he contracted some kind of blood poisoning. He preferred to die rather than let them amputate his leg. Gma and I rushed to Pittsburgh. I was sent to stay with my cousins while Gma and her sisters tended Grandpa Bill at home, except for the final day of our visit. It was Easter Sunday, so they dressed me in my best clothes and dropped me off at the house on Harvard Avenue. I waited on the sun porch. I heard Grandpa Bill shrieking in pain from his bedroom at the back of the house. I had pleaded to see Grandpa Bill but sat shaking with fear; how could I face him in the midst of such agony? Finally they led me into his room. He lay there quietly, smiled at me and took my hand. “How’s my little Dani?” he asked gently. I murmured something and said I loved him. Gma led me out of the room and took me to Church. What self-control he exerted to offer Dani a final moment, to help her face death calmly! 

^{Speculative Footnote:}I recognize that my companion Ken seems very much like my Grandpa Bill in his great reserves of loving kindness. Since I know that Ken is a fellow traveler from Wodeguo, I sometimes speculate that Grandpa Bill was an earlier member of the anthropology expedition. Perhaps he was even sent to rescue the mission when it was threatened by the native species.

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