My Grandmother's Apartment

My Grandmother's Apartment

In Fall River, Massachusetts the lumbering three tiered tenements were called Irish Battleships. The apartments became smaller as the building soared. Each floor was a replica of the other— only tinier, like a layered cake reaching up and up.

I loved my grandmother's apartment
following the curving steps upstairs to the
the large kitchen with a table near the windows
where I watched her make perfect pies
as she dotted the crust with butter and cream
I loved the gas stove
its pilot light—an amber-blue flame—
the pantry with high glass-door cupboards
the dining room where she sewed
and begonias and lacey leafed shamrocks
bloomed year round on the window sills

some Saturdays I would sneak through
the parlor used only at Christmas,
funerals or winter Sunday afternoons
when odd, unknown cousins came
and sat on the stiff horsehair sofa
and two maroon side chairs
their arms covered with crocheted doilies

I loved to spend the night in the bedroom
with carved pineapples topping
the high post twin beds
and on the wall a framed print
of a red, luscious strawberry
that later my grandmother told me
was the Sacred Heart of Christ
coiled not with vines but thorns