Since that summer, I have remembered my grandmother in a number of ways. I remember playing cards with her and sitting on her lap in airplanes, and the way she slowly turned away from my grandfather at one of my grandfather’s parties at one of his hotels when he tried to kiss her. And I remember her staying at the Bel Air Hotel and giving me pink and green mints, and at La Scala, late at night, sipping red wine, and humming “On the Sunny Side of the Street” to herself.
I find myself standing at the gates of my elementary school. I don’t remember the grass and flowers, bougainvillea I think, being there when I attended; and the asphalt that was near the administration building has been replaced by trees and the dead trees that used to hang limply over the fence near the security booth are not dead anymore; the entire parking lot has been repaved smoothly with new, black asphalt. I also don’t remember a big yellow sign that reads: “Warning. Keep Out. Guard Dogs On Duty” which hangs from the entrance gate, which is visible from my car, parked in the street outside the school. Since classes are over for the day, I decide to walk through the school.
I walk to the gate and then stop for a moment before entering, almost turning back. But I don’t. I step past the gate, thinking that this is the first afternoon in a long time that I’ve come back and walked through the school. I watch three children climb across a jungle gym placed near the entrance gates and I spot two teachers I had in first or second grade, but I don’t say anything to them. Instead, I look through the window of a classroom, where a little girl is painting a picture of the city. From where I stand, I can hear the Glee Club practicing in the room next to where the little girl paints, singing songs I forgot existed, like “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Little White Duck.”
I used to pass the school often. Everytime I drove my sisters to their school, I would always make sure to drive past and I would catch sight of small children getting onto yellow buses with black trim and teachers laughing to each other in the parking lot before classes. I don’t think that anyone else who went to the school drives by or gets out and looks around, since I’ve never seen anyone I remember. One day I saw a boy I had gone to the school with, maybe first grade, standing by the fence, alone, fingers gripping the steel wire and staring off into the distance and I told myself that the guy must live close by or something and that was why he was standing alone, like me.
I light a cigarette and sit down on a bench and notice two pay phones and remember when there used to be no pay phones. Some mothers pick their children up from school and the children catch sight of them and run across the yard and into their arms and the sight of the children running across the asphalt makes me feel peaceful; it makes me not want to get up off the bench. But I find myself walking into an old bungalow and I’m positive that this was where my third-grade classroom was located. The bungalow is in the process of being torn down. Next to the abandoned bungalow lies the old cafeteria, and it’s empty and also in the process of being torn down. The paint on both buildings is faded everywhere and peeling off in huge patches of pale green.