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Show in my father's house/ 109 speak. We walked through the low gate of a picket fence while Aunt Helga parked the car, then entered the funeral parlor together. As we approached Grandmother's coffin, my mother squeezed my hand. Her palms were wet and she was trembling. I suddenly felt as though someone lifted off the top of my head, so that the bright neon around the coffin flooded my brain. The voices of a hundred people colored the edges of a deep, effusive silence. Grandmother lay among tufts of satin, dressed in temple clothes, the starched white gown covered by a crisp green apron, which my mother had told me represented the fig leaf worn by Eve in the Garden of Eden. My mother had the same set of clothing wrapped in tissue paper in a box at the top of her closet. I wondered how sick she was and if because my father could not make her well, she would soon be lying still like this, in her temple clothes. Grandmother appeared softer than I had ever seen her. Aunt Gerda brushed past me and tucked a snow-white, crochet-trimmed handkerchief between the stiff fingers. I wanted to reach out, to take it from Grandmother who didn't really need it, and give it to my mother. For a long time I stood staring at Grandmother's still, empty body, trying to memorize her absence. My mother said her life had been hard, that Charlotte's children hadn't liked her |