{"id":3806,"date":"2025-05-02T21:48:05","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T21:48:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/?page_id=3806"},"modified":"2025-05-10T14:07:47","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T14:07:47","slug":"bubbies-hands-by-elaine-ferrell","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/bubbies-hands-by-elaine-ferrell\/","title":{"rendered":"“Bubbie\u2019s Hands” by Elaine Ferrell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I. Black.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bubbie\u2019s funeral was on a Wednesday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterwards, we sat shiva. In Judaism, this is a week-long mourning period after someone\u2019s death, to create a sense of comfort and community for those grieving. As semi-practicing Jews, my family did not follow many traditions, but my mother insisted on certain ones, including shiva. The custom I remember most from this event is that all mirrors were covered in opaque black curtains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we arrived back at our house Friday, we discovered someone had already shrouded our mirrors with curtains. The idea behind this tradition was that mourners focus on the deceased, not their own personal appearances. Men were to refrain from shaving, women to eschew cosmetics. As a sixteen-year-old girl, I hated this. I wanted to check that my hair wasn\u2019t standing up. I wanted to pop my pimples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019re being ridiculous, <\/em>I told myself, No one is looking at you. What would Bubbie think of you being so selfish?<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to see Bubbie one last time. I wanted to see her shiny manicure, her beautiful skin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

II. Perfume.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was in first grade, I looked forward to Thursdays. That\u2019s when I would see Bubbie, who would pick me up from school and take me to McDonald\u2019s. I ordered a chocolate ice cream cone and we\u2019d sit at a booth. Both under five feet tall, our dangling feet twinned under the table. Bubbie was diabetic so she couldn\u2019t have anything here, but she enjoyed watching me lick my way around the cone. She listened intently to my strategy for minimizing drippings: \u201cLook, I go all the way around,\u201d I\u2019d demonstrate. She emitted her guttural belly laugh when ice cream dribbled on the table anyway. Bubbie helped me wipe up my chocolate-covered face. Her eyes affixed on mine as I\u2019d parade my sticky hands in front of her. She guffawed again. As we left, I inhaled the waft of the restaurant and the scent of Bubbie\u2019s perfume on my hands. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

III. Shimmering.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In here, the stench of old age jolts me back into reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I slither up to Bubbie\u2019s bed – beige, plastic, ugly – feigning joy. I bend down to kiss her cheek. Like paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her frail body is unmoving. She has not reacted to anything. She may as well be dead already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I should not think this way.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s still here. Still present. Underneath this stranger is the same woman who took me to McDonald\u2019s ten years ago. She\u2019s in there somewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Held against her chest in a hardback sling to keep it from flailing, her left arm is locked to her chest. The stroke has made her arm – the one she used to write, brush her hair, touch my cheek – unusable. It is now a nuisance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But her useless hand is still beautiful. Her fingernails are perfectly manicured in the blood-red polish she always uses. Even now, the polish is not chipped. Her hands are free of warts and wrinkles, so white they are practically shimmering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I can\u2019t bear to look at them right now – pretty and pointless. Instead, I scan the room. Gray, cold, sterile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bubbie\u2019s hands look out of place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

IV. Crunch.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After my brother Ben started school, Bubbie would pick us both up and take us to her place until my parents got home from work. She had followed us up to Arlington, Virginia after she retired from running a small grocery story in rural Virginia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although she couldn\u2019t eat them herself, Bubbie kept a crystal bowl of M&Ms in her living room just for Ben and me. Every day she would offer us one of each color. We would carefully select candies and dance them on our tongues individually until they dissolved. We conducted unscientific experiments to determine which color lasted the longest. He said yellow; I said green. Some days we didn\u2019t want to wait for them to dissolve. We wanted to bite into them instead, feeling the chocolate melt into our mouths. We tittered as we remarked on the crunch they made. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

V. Clang.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did Bubbie die happy? <\/em>I wondered. Is that even possible?<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The drive down to her funeral was a silent car ride. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We spent Tuesday night in some shoddy motel room in Roanoke – four hours away from our home – and drove the remaining two hours into Galax, Virginia for the graveside service the following morning. This was the town my mom grew up in, and she showed me for the first time where her dad was buried nearly 40 years ago. There was already an empty grave next to his, ready for Bubbie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a chilly fall day. I couldn\u2019t see the sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At sixteen, I\u2019d never been to a funeral before. I was expecting sadness, but the weight of the grief on my shoulders was something I was not prepared for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also wasn\u2019t aware that traditional Jewish funerals had unadorned coffins, meaning Bubbie was buried in a plain wooden box with a metal Star of David drilled into the middle. Like she was some artifact being stored. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I barely sniffled during the service, but when the rabbi began shoveling dirt onto the box with my grandmother\u2019s body inside it, the sound of the dirt pummeling the gold star tore holes in my heart. Like a metal baseball bat hitting a steel post, the jangle vibrated in my ears. Clang! <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I bawled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next to me, Ben wailed as well. My mom\u2019s childhood friend, Peggy, rushed over and held us both tightly. We cried into her shoulders. I wanted my mom, but she was grieving more than I was and I couldn\u2019t bother her with this triviality. My dad and the other men were taking turns filling the grave with dirt, as was traditional. The men shoveled while the metal star continued to ring out, reverberating in my ears. Clang! <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was in a tunnel of metallic echoing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clang! Clang!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That evening I dreamed of that sound. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

VI. Vibrant.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her hospital room, I wish I were dreaming now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My family tries to cut the tension with small talk amongst ourselves. I don\u2019t feel like talking small and I don\u2019t want to feel small.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sitting so close to her I can smell her shampoo. But I don\u2019t know what to say. So I sit there, awash in my family’s murmurs and hushes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bed swallows Bubbie\u2019s body; the thin white blanket inhales her chin. We surround her as if she were a precious statue that mustn\u2019t be touched. We are somber. Reticent. Is this how we\u2019re supposed to act? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mind wanders to a time before she was moved to this wing, when Bubbie was in assisted living in the same building. Her nurse, Maria, came to help every day. It was a study in paradoxes: Maria\u2019s jet-black hands atop Bubbie\u2019s pale white ones; Maria\u2019s loquacity and Bubbie\u2019s utter silence; tiny, upright Maria lifting my nearly immobile and fat grandmother into her wheelchair. She hoisted Bubbie out of bed and into her chair with seemingly no effort, speaking in her rapid-fire Barbadian accent: \u201cOkay, Ms. Mildred, let\u2019s get you outta dis bed. Firs\u2019 we go clear de bladda.\u201d Then Maria and Bubbie were out of sight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When they came out of the bathroom, Maria was already mid-sentence: \u201c… colorful birds you like, Ms. Mildred. Perk you up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maria wheeled her to the elevator as I followed them to a floor with some vibrant birds flying around in their cages next to the nurses\u2019 station. Maria wheeled her right in front of their cage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was silent except for the tweeting of the birds. Bubbie\u2019s expression was blank but she seemed to focus on the birds, on their bright yellows and greens. I watched Bubbie watch the birds, wondering how much she observed. I wanted to know how much their colors blurred together in Bubbie\u2019s brain. I wanted to ask if she found any joy in watching them flit about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

VII. Blood.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a child, I\u2019d flit about in Bubbie\u2019s home, inspecting as she checked her sugar levels. At least once a day, she\u2019d bring a fingertip to her thumb to test how tender it was. Observing her move her fingers up and down along her thumb, the flash of her red nails moving up and down, was like watching a cascade of beautiful blood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bubbie would narrate her process to me: \u201cI used this one yesterday, so it\u2019s probably tender\u2026 Yep\u2026 the middle finger should be ok\u2026 Well, that one\u2019s still a bit tender\u2026 Let\u2019s do the ring finger today. Yeah, there we go.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes her process was quick, and only one finger was needed. Sometimes she checked six appendages before finding the least tender one. Once Bubbie settled on the appropriate digit, she would take out a tiny needle from her purse and prick the skin of her finger. She would watch it bleed for a second or two, then place her finger on a strip she had inserted into her portable test kit. The meter above the strip would beep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the days her blood sugar was within normal range, we walked to the frozen yogurt place across the street from her apartment. I ordered a chocolate cone, and she ordered sugar-free raspberry. I asked, \u201cIf you\u2019re getting sugar-free anyway, why does it matter if your blood sugar is low?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are other foods that cause a sugar spike,\u201d she said, \u201cNot just sugar.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I pressed her, yet despite my deluge of questions, I didn\u2019t fully understand. Bubbie was patient with my curiosity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

VIII. Giggle.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was seven, fascinated by newly-discovered words. I\u2019d set up dolls and stuffed animals along my bed to serve as my students and pranced by my easel to teach the perpetually respectful class. I pretended to teach the alphabet and wrote a sentence on the chalkboard using words beginning with B. Like any good teacher, I found visuals I had to drive home the point, underlining Bs as I went. “Bubbie is holding a Barbie\u201d – I flashed one at the class – \u201cand blowing up a blue balloon\u201d – I snapped one – \u201cand has a barrette in her hair.” I fastened a barrette into one doll\u2019s hair. In my limited practice of spelling, I had misspelled the words as “baloon” and “baret” on the chalkboard. In my limited practice of writing, the ends of the lines snaked up the sides. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As was typical on many weekends, Bubbie was visiting and walked by the open door. I was excited to show her what I had written, particularly since I used her name in the sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She knelt down to ask me a question. \u201cDo you want a real live example?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I exclaimed, “Yes!” and shoved upon her the balloon, the barrette, and the Barbie. She let me pin the barrette into her soft silver hair as she tucked the Barbie under her arm. I watched her try to blow up the balloon but she was unable to. Her face turned as red as her nails. I giggled, which made Bubbie giggle, and she gave up completely on the balloon and gave me a tight hug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I still have this image of Bubbie: her face turning red from trying to blow up that balloon, her usually perfect hair askew from my sloppy placement of the barrette, with the Barbie suffocating under her armpit, limbs akimbo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

IX. Silver.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is nothing resembling that image in this woman now lying before me. Dying before me. She is pallid and unkempt. Her silver hair is mottled down and her skin seems sallow. She doesn’t acknowledge anyone’s touch or voice. I wish for the clattering sound of Death to stop nibbling at her toes and consume her entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stop it. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I shouldn\u2019t think such things.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe Bubbie can still hear our voices. Maybe she takes some comfort in that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I don\u2019t. There\u2019s pressure on my chest. Like a soaking wet woolen blanket. I need to get out of here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tell my family I need some air. I don’t hear the response, but it doesn’t matter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

X. Safe.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was eight, we were living in Houston. Bubbie had followed us, like she had followed us to Arlington before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day, it flooded. The school closed early because flooding was projected to get a lot worse – up to four feet of water in some places. Bubbie came to pick Ben and me up since my parents couldn\u2019t leave work immediately. The school was just over a mile away from our house, but about halfway home, Bubbie didn\u2019t feel comfortable driving anymore. I know she shifted nervously in her seat, because I heard the phonebook she used for height shuffling beneath her. She found a safe place to park, unstrapped us from the car, and hailed a cab. By this point, many of the major streets were completely under water, including Stella Link Road, which separated our neighborhood from the elementary school. After about ten minutes, the cabbie pulled over and told us to get out because he couldn\u2019t get us there, adding he wouldn\u2019t charge us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExcuse me?\u201d Bubbie demanded, \u201cYou\u2019re kicking out a seventy-five-year-old woman and her small grandchildren?\u201d Ben and I had unbuckled our seatbelts in the back, but Bubbie hadn\u2019t budged. \u201cTake us home. I don\u2019t care what it costs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSorry, ma\u2019am,\u201d the cabbie demurred, \u201cI can\u2019t go any further.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bubbie huffed and helped us out of the car, then slammed both doors. We were maybe a half mile from home, but we didn\u2019t know which roads were closed. Nevertheless, we walked toward home. Or we tried. Stella Link was completely flooded between the I-610 loop and Brays Bayou. We were stuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bubbie found a payphone and called my dad\u2019s office. She told him where we were, and after she hung up the phone, we waited for him at a McDonald\u2019s. Bubbie ordered us Happy Meals, and we ate in silence while listening to the deluge outside. I wondered if Bubbie was hungry or scared. I was both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I didn\u2019t dare ask for an ice cream cone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When my dad showed up, he looked like a banana, dressed head to toe in a yellow rain suit and knee-high rain boots. He carried Ben and me across Stella Link, which was now a shallow lake. On dad\u2019s back, skinny five-year-old Ben was hunkered on top of his shoulders. I wrapped my legs around his waist and my arms around his chest, feeling his heartbeat beneath my cheek. He planted his feet carefully on the ground with each plodding step, the water almost reaching the top of his boots. My plastic parka crinkled as I watched Bubbie bob up and down on the wrong side of the lake. My dad found dry land and plopped Ben and me down before taking a breath. Then he trudged back to the other side to retrieve Bubbie. When he reached her, once again out of breath, they both laughed. Could he actually carry her across?<\/em> They both wondered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ben and I watched intently from the other side as they tried various strategies. She couldn\u2019t jump onto his back. He couldn\u2019t pick her up in front of him. He bent over and she threw her arms over his shoulders, and that didn\u2019t work either. My dad could not carry her across.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bubbie thought a minute, then knocked on the door of the house on the corner. A Black couple answered. Bubbie turned back to my dad, telling him she would stay there for the night. When the city fixed the flooding tomorrow, the homeowners would give her a ride back to her car. But they are strangers! <\/em>I tried to protest. How do you know you\u2019ll be safe? <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither Bubbie nor my dad seemed concerned. The Black woman waved to us from her front door, Bubbie went in, and we went home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It appeared we were all safe. Although it was my dad who had ultimately gotten us home, Bubbie was the hero to me. She\u2019d kept calm throughout the entire endeavor and always seemed to know what to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

XI. Alabaster.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is the death of an old person such a sordid affair? When young people die, it\u2019s a tragedy. When healthy people die, it\u2019s a calamity. But old people are supposed <\/em>to die. Why do we torture ourselves wishing the inevitable will not happen? Why can\u2019t we just be happy that they made it to 84? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not thinking about this currently, in the hallway of the nursing home. Instead, I feel lost – physically and emotionally – finding myself surrounded by a sea of pink and white hair. Tiny women take no notice of me. They are in wheelchairs or moving extraordinarily slowly with walkers – all hunched over, all wrinkled, all with claw-like hands. Where are their families? Why do they look so miserable?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I focus on one particular woman. She’s in a wheelchair, hunched over her sinewy hands that playfully manipulate a necklace of plastic beads in her lap. Willing it around her neck?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m intrigued by this woman, watching her laser-focus on her knotty knuckles, underneath reds, blacks, blues. Her fingers get tangled up among the beads, as the necklace entwines itself into her ancient hands. She\u2019s murmuring to herself: Black and silver, black and silver.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t take my eyes off this woman\u2019s hands. They are what you\u2019d expect on an old person \u2013 wrinkled, liver-spotted. Perhaps it\u2019s their youthful movements that give me pause, the incongruous agility of them. They remind me of the incongruity of Bubbie\u2019s hands \u2013 their youthful look, their uselessness. I\u2019m incapacitated for a few minutes, watching her nimble hands, hearing her murmur Black and silver, black and silver.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suddenly, I realize where I am, and hasten back to Bubbie\u2019s bedside. I find her sleek, alabaster hand, clasping it in mine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bubbie\u2019s hands are not yet useless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

Elaine Ferrell<\/strong> lives in Silver Spring, MD where she works in non-profit communications. When not writing, Elaine enjoys baking and spending time outdoors. She has been published in Chapter House Journal<\/em>, Motherly<\/em>, ellipsis literature & art<\/em>, Months to Years<\/em>, Soliloquies Anthology<\/em> (Canada), Santa Clara Review<\/em>, and others. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I. Black.\u00a0 Bubbie\u2019s funeral was on a Wednesday.  Afterwards, we sat shiva. In Judaism, this is a week-long mourning period after someone\u2019s death, to create a sense of comfort and community for those grieving. As semi-practicing Jews, my family did not follow many traditions, but my mother insisted on certain ones, including shiva. The custom … <\/p>\n

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