Swan Song
Dillon Fernando
When the daylight came, the neighbors knew to expect our grandmother’s voice. Every morning, Grandma arose out to the porch, broom in hand, sweeping leaves or dust or nothing at all, and heralded
the neighborhood with sweet, bodacious melodies from her stage. She was the rooster for the cul-du-sac that no one could snooze.
Weathered by age, Grandma’s voice rattled through the fresh sunlight, as the air held the reverb of her notes. Us kids peered out the window, to see her sing and sweep against a yellowed sky. We
hummed along, while brushing our teeth or munching on breakfast. Street dogs harmonized with her.
Clandestine observers leered through openings in curtain-drawn windows.
Grandma sang eclectically–harmonies from back when she was a dark-skinned girl, traveling the nation’s stages in bars and hotels that wouldn’t serve her a plate to eat afterwards; jingles from companies
that no longer existed; hymns she stashed when the jealous church choir banished her; and carols we’d sing with her on Christmas day that she started belting since Halloween.
When a new family moved into the house next door, the stocky father—enrobed in frayed green and fuming in his velvet, pointed slippers—marched up to our grandmother, mid-chorus, and demanded
to know, what the fuck was her problem? And we just peered out the window or crept to her side, wide-eyed and lips pursed in disgust at him. We never stopped to wonder if anyone else cared to listen.
Long after the house was empty of the kids, Grandma’s voice lingered on the porch, as reliable as the fanfare of cicadas. Her voice became a relic of a time long forgotten and few remembered. It was a
rhythmic chant that summoned the soul of a woman long gone, invited to come and exist once again, each dawn. But she remembered the songs, and they, her.
Even as her behavior deteriorated past recognition.
When the siblings came home, the recipes she mentally guarded for pies and casseroles tasted soured and spittable. Grandma stared blankly at Brenda and her baby boy like strangers. We didn’t correct
Grandma, when she rushed the driveway, in a thin, sheer nightgown, breasts hung akimbo, singing a withered happy birthday to the drafted and dead McClay kid, who Mom once loved. A verse from Sinatra
ended with Grandma knocking door to door with urgency, asking if they’d seen her brother Ethan, who missed supper and whose bicycle was found abandoned and dilapidated by the creek. In an improvised
riff—sonically more like a wet-eyed, euphonic wail said through a quivering lip— she begged for forgiveness “for I was young and scared” and “hurt cannot raise the hurt.” As my mother glimpsed the
bruise-colored sky behind her own mother, she caressed her arm and watched the curse lift upon her monster.
Grandma died on a Tuesday after a fall on the stoop she swept. From the wooden porch planks, even her final cries were said to be melodic. On Wednesday, the light shone down. The cul-du-sac awoke.
Curtains drawn open. The air hushed to silence, as if it awaited an encore that would never come.
Dillon Fernando
When the daylight came, the neighbors knew to expect our grandmother’s voice. Every morning, Grandma arose out to the porch, broom in hand, sweeping leaves or dust or nothing at all, and heralded
the neighborhood with sweet, bodacious melodies from her stage. She was the rooster for the cul-du-sac that no one could snooze.
Weathered by age, Grandma’s voice rattled through the fresh sunlight, as the air held the reverb of her notes. Us kids peered out the window, to see her sing and sweep against a yellowed sky. We
hummed along, while brushing our teeth or munching on breakfast. Street dogs harmonized with her.
Clandestine observers leered through openings in curtain-drawn windows.
Grandma sang eclectically–harmonies from back when she was a dark-skinned girl, traveling the nation’s stages in bars and hotels that wouldn’t serve her a plate to eat afterwards; jingles from companies
that no longer existed; hymns she stashed when the jealous church choir banished her; and carols we’d sing with her on Christmas day that she started belting since Halloween.
When a new family moved into the house next door, the stocky father—enrobed in frayed green and fuming in his velvet, pointed slippers—marched up to our grandmother, mid-chorus, and demanded
to know, what the fuck was her problem? And we just peered out the window or crept to her side, wide-eyed and lips pursed in disgust at him. We never stopped to wonder if anyone else cared to listen.
Long after the house was empty of the kids, Grandma’s voice lingered on the porch, as reliable as the fanfare of cicadas. Her voice became a relic of a time long forgotten and few remembered. It was a
rhythmic chant that summoned the soul of a woman long gone, invited to come and exist once again, each dawn. But she remembered the songs, and they, her.
Even as her behavior deteriorated past recognition.
When the siblings came home, the recipes she mentally guarded for pies and casseroles tasted soured and spittable. Grandma stared blankly at Brenda and her baby boy like strangers. We didn’t correct
Grandma, when she rushed the driveway, in a thin, sheer nightgown, breasts hung akimbo, singing a withered happy birthday to the drafted and dead McClay kid, who Mom once loved. A verse from Sinatra
ended with Grandma knocking door to door with urgency, asking if they’d seen her brother Ethan, who missed supper and whose bicycle was found abandoned and dilapidated by the creek. In an improvised
riff—sonically more like a wet-eyed, euphonic wail said through a quivering lip— she begged for forgiveness “for I was young and scared” and “hurt cannot raise the hurt.” As my mother glimpsed the
bruise-colored sky behind her own mother, she caressed her arm and watched the curse lift upon her monster.
Grandma died on a Tuesday after a fall on the stoop she swept. From the wooden porch planks, even her final cries were said to be melodic. On Wednesday, the light shone down. The cul-du-sac awoke.
Curtains drawn open. The air hushed to silence, as if it awaited an encore that would never come.
