My Gan's Gloves

My grandmother, despite immigrating to the States from Lithuania in her early twenties, was the definition of a southern belle. Gran was never seen anywhere without her gloves and bonnet. Looking as if she were straight from the 1800s, she was always very confident in her style. At least, that was when she was alive; now that she's passed, her wardrobe lies in my dresser. I imagined this was some weird joke. My entire life, Gran told me I was her favorite, yet it was my cousins who got checks for $100,000 while all I got was the stupid gloves and bonnet.

I say that, and yet I couldn’t get rid of them. They represented too much of my childhood. While my inheritance had me questioning Gran's definition of favorite, I always adored her. Despite dying on her 93rd birthday, she never looked a day older than 60 and had the energy of someone in their 20s. She dressed like a plantation aristocrat, but she acted with the vigor of a firebrand pioneer woman. She would chase me around and play hide and seek when I was little, all with a parasol in her hand.

The only other thing she left me was a letter. Yet, like how I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of her things, I couldn’t read the last few words I’d ever hear from my Gran. If only I could have seen her face one last time, then I might be strong enough. Unfortunately, Uncle Lukas, being the town mortician and the one who found Gran, made the executive decision for a closed casket funeral. He denied the family any sense of real closure.

For five months, I looked at that envelope on my desk and the gloves in my drawer, unable to bring myself to read the letter. On my thirtieth birthday, I decide it was now or never. I ran my fingers across the rose embossed on the back of the clean, white envelope, and then turned it over to read my name, Vivian, in Gran's ornate handwriting. The formality of it all made me feel compelled to put the gloves on first. I thought maybe they could summon some of Gran's strength.

My fingers slid into the silk gloves as though tailor-made for me, electricity seemed to rush through me. I felt like I was a kid again with how much energy coursed through my veins. I took in a deep breath in and opened the letter.

Dear Vivian,

You have always been my favorite grandchild, and the prettiest at that. So I decided to give you my most prized possessions. My bonnet, which was the actual bonnet worn by the character Scarlett O’Hara in the movie Gone with the Wind (1939), my favorite film. Then the gloves, they were my everything. Given to me by a young woman when I was in my early sixties. These gloves have the power to keep you youthful and with surges of childlike energy. The woman warned me that if I ever took them off longer than an hour, that I would die. I put them on without a second thought. But ever since your grandfather died eight years ago, I’ve been awfully lonely. That is why I have decided that it is the time for me to join him. Being so much like me, I’m sure you’ll know what to do.

Yours truly, Gran

Well, that's ridiculous, I guess Gran lost it in the end there. Die in an hour... sure. I shook my head at the ridiculousness of it, and began to pull off the gloves at the fingertips. A chill came over my entire body. I shuddered at how quickly every cell seemed to freeze over. Why am I giving this tall tale any mind? I shook my hands and took off the gloves.

An hour passed. Nothing. Of course nothing, I told myself, though I sighed audibly with relief once the minute hand hit its sixtieth revolution. I laughed in spite of myself. Some inheritance! Absent-mindedly, I scratched my arm as my thoughts wandered over the whole episode. But I noticed my legs were itching, too, and my neck…

Skin all around my body started to flake, as if I had been surfing on the sun. I tried to stand, but my bones creaked, like I was an abandoned car, unoiled and forgotten for decades, I felt my cartilage drying out. My gums began turning into liquid, as though it was jelly in an oven. Pop, my knees buckled under my weight. I began to slide along the floor towards the gloves, peeling my skin to the bone as gravity seemed to multiply with every movement. Even though I was in a pool of my own blood, I continued to dry out, my eyes sizzling like eggs in a frying pan. Finally, painfully, what was left of me reached the edge of the gloves. Once inside the gloves, it’s as if I was plunged into a bath of cool aloe, my body relaxed and slowly collected itself.

I looked up to see a specter of a woman in fine dress and gloves, with a parasol tapping next to her foot. “I tried to warn you, darling, and look at you. Fortunately, you will heal without a scar on that pretty face of yours in too long.” The ghost of my Gran giggled as I lay struggling to breathe on the ground. Eventually I fell unconscious from the pain.

The next morning, I woke up on the floor. I touched my face, the skin seemed no different from before I had removed the gloves. Was it all a dream? As I contemplated for a moment, looking back on what I remembered happening. Absent-mindedly, I began to remove the gloves once more. But that chill stopped me this time. Thinking back to Gran’s letter, I’m not sure if she meant this as a gift or a curse.