Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith

Watching My Grandmother Sleep

I was watching the Mexican Novela. The television too big for the small room where
mi abuela slept. It was always turned on with a low volume. A type
of background elevator music Spanish to make her feel close
to home. She was asleep there and probably had vivid dreams of returning
to her house in Douglas a mile from Aqua Prieta.

When I went for a visit in the nursing home I often
found her asleep. Her tiny body covered in a colorful crocheted blanket.
In the pictures I remember she was always in bright colors
like some lush jungle river cruise. The bed opposite from the window
in the late afternoon catching the sun’s rays. That room was nothing like her room
in Douglas where she slept near a tall narrow window
in a separate bed from mi abuelo, and the only way to enter it was
to walk through another room. That was the room where my brother
and I slept with our tios when we were all little. In that room my tios
always had the radio playing. Top 40 hits
of the early 70’s. Los Beatles, Los Stones some Santana and Creedence.

When I watched the novellas, I was taken by the
faces and eyes. How they looked so tortured and
lonely. Sometimes I would sit there watching the novella for an hour waiting
for her eyes to open. If she woke, she would ask why I did not
wake her? And then she would almost demand that I get my car, drive her
back to Douglas. Las Casa on 15th street. I knew even her bad dreams
were much better than this reality. Her hip broken, unable to walk, her days full
of novella solitude from a bed or a wheelchair. How could I wake her
make her return to the smell of disinfectants, the sound of the busy road
outside her window or her questions about my tio who
walked the streets of Tucson chanting and chain smoking.

Sometimes I would leave her a little note. Set it there
on the small green table next to the bed. I would tell her about
my day teaching 9th graders or about the memories of her
making flour tortillas early in the morning with mi abuelo
while they laughed about the crowded house. Mi abuelo
used to tell me and my brother that the tortillas were so good
because your abuela never washed her hands before she kneaded
the dough. I believed him and mi abuela would just say, “Hay, Manuel
como eres.” Her smile betraying her words. Her hands covered in dough
moving to rhythms only she could hear.

Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith was born in Merida, Yucatan, grew up in Tucson, Arizona and taught English at Tucson High School for 27 years. Much of his work explores growing up near the border and being raised biracial/bilingual. An Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award Honorable Mention, a three-time Pushcart nominee, and an Eleventh-Hour Literary Journal and Kay Snow Poetry contests winner, he is trying to drink less coffee and get better at sitting and seeing.