Grandma Helen by Stacy Alderman
The only picture I’d ever seen of my maternal grandmother was her wedding portrait. Its muted hues, her close-lipped smile, the bundle of blooms in her hands, were spread in canvas across a 10×12 frame, and this image rested on a darkened shelf in our garage.
I felt almost guilty for sneaking a glimpse at it on those occasions when my father sent me to find a screwdriver or flashlight. I wondered why this beautiful photo was kept there, gathering dust, wedged between Christmas decorations and empty flower pots.
The forgotten-about portrait made me sad, made me wonder why it wasn’t hung on the wall. But I couldn’t bring myself to ask these questions, so I turned off the lights and shut the door, my preteen gaze flickering to the faded frame, thinking that it looked just about as lonely as I felt – at home, among friends, and especially at school.
In a sea of three hundred students, I was invisible, unless of course the bullies needed someone to pick on. Some days it was my knockoff clothes, other days it was my Super Cuts haircut, hacked four inches shorter than I wanted. But mostly it was my crooked, crowded teeth.
My family had been saying I’d need braces before I’d even lost all my baby teeth. The dental hygienist commented every six months about how small my mouth was. And when my adult teeth came in just as messily as their predecessors, the orthodontist declared them as “jumbled,” not even realizing the word encompassed every aspect of my life outside his bright, shiny office.
This old guy in his white coat assured my parents that he’d “fix me up,” and I was embarrassed to be talked about as if I was some type of remodel job, left unfinished by an irresponsible contractor.
He rattled off a list of devices and procedures I’d be forced to endure over the next few years, and I knew it was going to hurt, but what could hurt more than the cruel words boys on the cusp of their teenage years slung at me every day?
So I endured the spacers, expanders, brackets, rubber bands, and cleverly-designed brushes to assist in daily hygiene. I implored my two front teeth – the bane of my existence – to fix themselves beneath the strategically placed metal. I begged them to morph from two crossed fingers into straight, gleaming chompers. I tried to manifest a smile like the girls on TV, like the cheerleaders in school.
Three long years passed before the braces finally came off. When they did, my teeth felt huge, like rock-solid mega marshmallows. Not many people noticed. Certainly not guys I had crushes on. Certainly not those girls who I’d been silently competing with since sixth grade.
I was given a retainer to help hold my newly perfect teeth in place. The device was ugly, obnoxious. It made me talk funny. I stopped wearing it after only a few months. My straightened teeth didn’t snag me a boyfriend, a seat at the popular table. It wasn’t like I emerged from the orthodontist office in the wake of some peppy pop song like in the movies. What was the point?
Over the next few years, my teeth crept back into their wayward V, like geese headed in the wrong direction. Failure, yet again, I admonished myself in the mirror before I stepped into the darkened photography studio for my senior pictures.
Over the years I grew used to my cockeyed front teeth. I wasn’t exactly proud of them, and I didn’t show them off – but as life got bigger, the preoccupation with my teeth got smaller. As an adult, they only bothered me occasionally – first dates, candid photos with friends, engagement portraits, wedding day shots. I’d grown, found my place, but there were always those two rogue front teeth, a blemish that would never be fully rectified, a reminder of my past struggles and failures.
On an otherwise unremarkable day at my parents’ house, someone unearthed a photo of my paternal grandmother, the woman whose wedding portrait I hadn’t laid eyes on in decades. I hadn’t ventured into my parents’ garage for years, but I could still see it clearly in my mind’s eye. The cream-colored silk of her dress, the dark contrast of her rolled hair against her pale skin, the smile that only reached her lips, plump and painted red in the hues of the nineteen thirties.
This photo though, the one excavated from a shoebox or yellowed album, showed her in black and white glory, a house dress, a cigarette, a pair of thick, cat-eye glasses perched on her nose. She was smiling fully in this one.
“Rare,” muttered my aunt.
“Unexpected,” declared my dad.
But Grandma Helen’s smile was brilliant, genuine. She was showing her teeth in this one. The front two cross over one another like a flock of rebellious birds.
Like mine.
Stacy Alderman’s short story, Steel Valley, will be published by Anaphora Literary Press in 2024. Her other writing has been featured by The Valley Mirror, Rune Magazine, Macro Magazine, and more. If she’s not writing or reading, she’s probably watching hockey or (dreaming about) traveling.