Write the Year 2022—Week 18: Still, Life

Sort of, but not really, responding to the Reedsy theme for last week.

Title: Still, Life
WC: 500

There’s a picture of a turkey among the clutter on the shelf above the TV. It’s tiny. It’s in a cheap frame, no doubt from Walgreen’s. It sits at an angle and doesn’t quite fit. It’s a joke and a totem. If my aunt ever steps foot in my home, there’s a prize in it for me if the turkey is on display.

It was my grandparents’ turkey. I don’t know which one. That’s the joke. My aunt has a basement full of my grandparents’ things, the source of all prizes to be awarded. The source of the prizes she awards at the brunch she has—she had—on Christmas Eve morning every year when she’d run a game of family trivia. It turns out that the turkey is, hands down, the most frequent photograph subject in my grandparents’ collection.

There’s a picture of my grandparents on the cluttered shelf above the cluttered shelf above the TV. It’s black and white, and the frame might’ve come from Walgreen’s, too. It was in the goody bag my aunt sent everyone home with a few years ago. Maybe the year before the turkey. They’re on a lawn. They’re walking toward the camera, it seems.

My grandmother is wearing a dress, a shawl, a stole, or a long, wide scarf. She has on ankle-strap shoes, the kind I am sure I’d love if I could see more of them. They’re some dark color. Her hair is some dark color, and so is his. My grandmother is looking up at my grandfather, laughing. He’s squinting into the sun. He has one arm around her. His right hand is shoved deep into the pocket of his pleated-front pants. His white t-shirt blazes. He is not looking into the camera.

There’s a third picture leaning against the frame that has my grandparents frozen within it. This one is small and square, in a metal frame so old that its finish has corroded a bit, sticking the photo to the glass.

It’s black and white by design, not by historical necessity. There’s a tall, thin, dark-haired woman in a halter top and flared jeans. There’s a little girl next to her, young enough to be wearing something that would have come in two matched pieces—a long, blousy smock and tiny shorts with frilled elastic around the thighs. Her mushroom-cut hair is not light, but it’s not as dark as the woman’s, either.

There are white geese all around. They are huge, taller than the girl whose hand is outstretched. We see them from the back, the girl and the woman, that is. The girl might be afraid. She might be exhilarated by this as she has been by everything about the days surrounding this moment. She is learning what an apartment is and that some of them have ponds with geese and ducks. She has the undivided attention of the woman who knows the value of this.

She knows about prizes.