I carry an image with me, like a Kodak snapshot from 1960 when the colors still looked gooey under the gloss. It’s a picture of my maternal grandmother, Nafina (an Armenian version of Athena) Aroosian, and her daughters, Aunt Gladys and Aunt Lucille, walking up our flagstone path. Behind them, out of focus, a Chevy Biscayne, ice-cream white, with thick chrome tapering to the back fender. The tops of the turquoise-colored seats glare in the noon sun. It’s Sunday, after church, and everyone is out. There’s a hardball game going on in the cul-de-sac at the end of the block. Kids run through the spray of a sprinkler, darting between hedges of newly planted hemlocks.
My grandmother walks ahead of my aunts, with her aluminum cane, the one she brought home from the hospital after she broke her hip. She is dressed in navy or beige. A brooch or a jewel pinned near her collar. Pearls around her neck. A flowered scarf. She never grayed, so her hair is chestnut brown, braided in a bun studded with colored stones. My aunts follow behind. Their hair is coifed like Jackie Kennedy’s. Every Saturday morning my aunts and my mother have their hair done. Every Sunday at dinner, conversation inevitably turns to the merits and flaws of Cilo, Rudy, Luigi, Alan. One hairdresser cut better. One styled better. One was more avanti or European. On Sunday their hair smelled of perfume. My aunts are dressed in white or pale-blue linen suits. Silk blouses, silk scarves. They wear pearls, gold earrings, and gold bracelets; the sun glints off them as they walk toward the house. Neighbors in tee shirts push power mowers, and everywhere machines are buzzing. Along the flagstone walk is a black Schwinn, a red Huffy, a go-cart made out of a milk crate, some bats and balls, scattered.
When my brother, sister, and I would see the white Biscayne pull into the driveway we knew our playing was over. We weren’t happy about it, but we would walk dutifully to the house.
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