Now and then, it comes up in random conversation “What disease was it that grandmother had?” asks my brother. “She was a total pain in the ass is mostly what I remember. And by the way, where’s that naked picture of her?
Why does he care, I wonder. It’s not like he would do anything with the photograph.
A photograph, dated 1924, of a young woman. She dared. He dared her. Maybe it was a honeymoon photograph — shades of sepia and cream, taken with an old-fashioned camera. Every bit of young grandmother revealed, as she posed on a wooden side chair, her only adornment, a bow clipped onto her bob hairstyle.
Shocking, laughable, a bit frightening was our father’s mother.
If our mother had known this photograph existed, she would have shredded it. Or burned it. I scold myself for losing it. The treasure. The spontaneous X-rated, personal memento of a time when our grandmother could show off her lithe, 19-year-old body. A photograph meant for her new husband’s eyes.
Before motherhood. Before the mental illness truly took hold.
And now my brother wants the photograph. My niece asked for a copy to convince her pals that her great-grandmother, indeed, posed lewd in the nude. I think tomorrow, I will rummage through my boxes of old photographs once more in search of my grandmother. But so much time has passed. I fear we have lost her for good.
