Virginia Hall-Apicella

Issue 16

Flash Fiction

My seventh great-grandfather was a tailor who sewed exquisite clothes before machines took over and made him obsolete with calloused fingers and too many thimbles; my sixth great-grandfather was a farmer who grew potatoes and onions and twenty-one kids; my fifth great-grandfather was a cavalryman whose leg was shot off by a dirty Rebel and he never worked again but still managed to have a wagonload of children; my fourth great-grandfather built furniture with Victorian excess and forbid his children to marry so they would not leave his wife, who wore fancy hats with feathers from birds now extinct, since he would not always be around and she deserved better—still one daughter ran off and got married anyway—otherwise where would I be; my third great-grandfather owned a bar which was a disgrace to the family and came home drunk every night and didn’t beat his wife but she still died having his son who cried for two years every day and every night without stopping; my second great-grandfather brought his daughter to live in America because she was in a family way from a soldier who deserted his company and jilted her and the new son grew up to be a soldier like his despicable father but the son won ribbons and never deserted anyone; my great-grandfather was a mogul who built houses and named streets and lavished his wife with a custom house on Winslow Terrace, the most desirable street in town, with a big lawn and a dormer roof and a third floor for the cook and housekeeper and gave her coats made from the pelts of dead animals and more jewelry than any woman could ever wear in a lifetime of dressing for tea every day and he overspent, got sucker-punched by the Depression, and had the nerve to die too young, which left her to pay old bills and live in an apartment over a dry-cleaning store; my other great-grandfather was a musician in a regimental band—good thing my great-grandmother knew how to weave or how would she have cared for all those sons when he kicked the bucket in the middle of a military march; my  businessman grandfather invested in something and, too bad for him, had a loathsome scoundrel for a partner who left town and left my grandfather holding the bag and he had to sell everything he owned and he gave his wife four sons but she really wanted daughters and it never happened  because if there were four daughters and no sons I wouldn’t be here unless, like most of my grandfathers, I die early.

From what I know—not much, who writes about the women?—all the grandmothers were pregnant most of the time and boiled oatmeal and roasted coffee and made dinner at six o’clock sharp every night and bought or made every Christmas gift and sewed all the clothes and ironed them with irons they heated on the stove and darned socks and knitted hats, especially if they lived in the north, and canned beans and made jelly and ground corn and made sausages from real pigs’ intestines and put kids to bed and washed their faces for Sunday church and drove them to school if they missed the bus and cleaned enough poo to fertilize all of America and still had to wear bustles and slips and corsets and stockings tied at their knees or pantyhose, which might be worse, and wash sheets and sweep floors. (All except the grandmother who had furs and jewelry.) What if they had been spinsters or nuns or lesbians? There would be no one, not even me, to tell their side of it.