Mama’s Chiffarobe by Mel Grieves

When I was a kid, I thought “chiffarobe” was a silly word my mother made up. My father called this hulking piece of furniture an “armoire.” He was the smart one, not Mama. Neither of them was very educated but Daddy read a lot, took pride in speaking properly, and had a refined sense of style. He said that came from his British heritage and I believed I had inherited every bit of it. Mama hailed from German farm folks who tended toward poor grammar and loud beer drinking, and the only literature they took in were snippets of scripture and church bulletins on Sundays. I’ll give them this though: they knew how to work hard. If it weren’t for that quality, and the fact that I have the misfortune of looking exactly like my mother, I would swear we weren’t related.

We’re moving Mama into a nursing home next week and before we do, I’m working late each night to get her chiffarobe stripped and refinished. It’s the one thing she insisted go with her. That and her rocker-recliner so she can watch TV — and nap intermittently — in comfort. Stripping fine mahogany of decades worth of paint and human imprint is a slow process, requiring patience and attention, knowing you can just as easily ruin an old piece of furniture as restore it if you’re too heavy handed. And yet you have to be brave when you apply that first layer of paint remover. It’s strong stuff. Even with wearing gloves for most of it, my nails crack and my fingertips turn raw, but I’ll make this old thing beautiful again, even though I know Mama will most likely hate it. We never agree about anything.

Mama and I have fought from day one. She returned to her factory job as soon as she could after I was born, which wasn’t so common in the 50s, leaving me in my grandmother’s care each day. Frankly, I never thought Mama liked me much, and I guess I’d have to admit, I didn’t really like her much either. Long before I was a smart-assed teenager, I was convinced I already knew more than she ever would. But at some point I came across the word “chiffarobe” in Carson McCuller’s The Member of the Wedding. It was the first inkling I had that Mama might know something Daddy didn’t.

The chiffarobe is older than Mama, belonging first to her mother. It became mine for a few years before I left for college, when Mama got on one of her room-switching terrors. Three or four times a year she would rearrange the living room, and every now and then we would come home at day’s end to find that she’d reassigned a couple bedrooms.  When Mama was angry or upset, she could move mountains. Beds and dressers didn’t stand a chance. People in the outside world thought Mama was like a gentle horse, easy to ride, always willing to go with the flow. But those of us who lived with her knew her wild side.

I figured when she moved me into Daddy’s and her room, she got too tired to move the chiffarobe, or maybe couldn’t find my brother, Donny, to enlist his help, because it stayed behind in my new upstairs bedroom, which, in my opinion, was the best room in the house. They’d moved into the Main Street house the year I was born, when it was already over a hundred years old. Daddy had meticulously ripped down walls in each room and re-plastered. He’d had a string of unrelated careers, from selling shoes to trying his hand at farming, and somewhere along the way acquired skills in building and plastering. They’d also lived in a string of rental houses, and buying the old Victorian with the wages they earned at the new factory in town was the best thing they ever did, according to Mama. She said it was the first time she felt stable, and that Daddy’s job at the factory suited him since he got to inspect others’ work all day and he always liked to criticize what others did rather than to do it himself.

While I loved the work Daddy had done on all the other rooms — I could lie around for hours and seek out faces and objects in the sponged plaster walls — I loved my new bedroom best. It was the biggest room, situated over the living room downstairs, with three double-hung windows facing the street and two more looking out to the east. The wallpaper was still in good shape, as was the gold band of moulding that ran around the room, twelve inches down from the 9-foot high ceiling. Above the molding and on the ceiling, the wallpaper was a mottled white pattern, but barely a pattern. More like someone spent days blowing soap bubbles until their rainbow-colored shadows covered the entire surface. Below the molding, thin vertical stripes of the same mottled white and a deep, rich burgundy ran down to the original pine board floor. I loved the oak hardwood floors Daddy had put in downstairs, too, but these pine floors had stories in them.

I shied away from getting attached to the chiffarobe at first, for a couple of reasons. One was that I never knew when Mama would suddenly reclaim it and make my brother and Daddy haul it down to her own bedroom. She had always been fond of it. But maybe she figured that with the chiffarobe upstairs and her downstairs, Daddy might finally build that long-promised closet.

The other reason I didn’t let myself get attached to the chiffarobe was that, in a way, it reminded me of Mama herself. She was hitting the worst phase of menopause at the same time I was entering my worst phase of puberty, and we were at odds 95 percent of the time. I suppose it’s natural for girls to hate their mothers during this phase, but for us it seemed like second nature. Everyone assumed Mama and I were close, just because I happened to look like her. I tried every method possible to look different from her: slathering on fake tanning cream to combat freckles and fair skin; growing my hair long and ironing it straight (she wouldn’t let me change the red color); dieting and exercising to the point of exhaustion, which was pointless against the tall, big-boned frame and oversized appetite I’d inherited; and wearing a pair of minimum-strength drug store reading glasses that I thought made me look smart and studious, as if I belonged more to Daddy than to Mama. The chiffarobe was tall and big and square, just like Mama, just like me. Worse, a full-length mirror covered the inside of the right hand door, the side with space for hanging clothes. So I would stand in front of the Mama-like structure each morning, choosing an outfit for school that would make me look like the person I felt I was inside, and at the same time see my own half-naked Mama-like structure in the mirror. It made me want to cry.

On the other hand, I loved the left side of the chiffarobe with its shelves for shoes, drawers for sweaters and underwear, and especially the row of cubbyholes. Still, it was at least six months, after Daddy finally gnashed out a closet for Mama. Eventually I felt at home in my new room and bonded with the chiffarobe. I didn’t have big secrets, but there are things no teenage girl wants her mother rummaging through. I filled the cubby holes with school papers, pictures and news clippings, a diary I would restart every few weeks and abandon after three days, drawings and doodles done in dream states while Mr. Perry tried to teach us algebra. I framed the mirror with photos of The Beatles and my favorite Detroit Tigers, and found faces and stories hiding in the mahogany wood grain. For a few years, Mama’s chiffarobe became my chiffarobe, until the start of my senior year.

Each September, over Labor Day weekend, Daddy drove to Pennsylvania to visit the last of his known relatives, his Uncle Gilbert. Since I was six, I’d been allowed to go with him. My brother used to go, but at 13 had declared he had better things to do. Mama happily remained at home to do her fall house cleaning with none of us “slow movers” in her way, and I was grateful to have Daddy all to myself. On top of that, Uncle Gilbert’s wife, Aunt Ruby, spoiled me rotten for three whole days.

I was especially glad to get away that year. Mama had been on several terrors, nagging at everyone about every thing, and she’d started in on Daddy again about redoing the last room in the house, my bedroom.

“We been living here for seventeen years. Plenty of time to finish the job. Why can’t you ever finish nothing?”

“Anything.” Daddy responded out of habit.

Mama shot him a killer look.

“Why can’t I finish anything?” he explained, though I was sure she knew what he meant after hearing his corrections for so many years. She didn’t soften, so he took the next best approach, that being to humor her. “Well, let’s see.” He looked across the kitchen table at me. “What colors do you like, Lizzie honey?”

I cringed inside. I did not want to lose my soap bubble ceiling, nor my wonderful burgundy stripes, and please leave my pine board floor alone. He winked at me when Mama turned back to the stove. “Don’t worry,” he mouthed, and reached his hand out to smooth my hair, his signal that everything would be okay.

So I played along. Maybe we could stretch out this planning stage until I graduated and left for college. I would still hate for that wonderful room to change, but better later than while I still lived in it. I thought of the room I stayed in at Uncle Gilbert’s house, the cream-colored walls and dark wood trim, the drapes flecked with gold, and the forest green leather chair in the corner. I liked that combination. “Green and gold sound nice,” I told Daddy.

Mama didn’t say a word, didn’t stop stirring.

Daddy nodded. “Well, let’s consider that a while, shall we?”

I thought that would be the end of it. After all, my room wasn’t the only thing Mama had been nagging about. Now that there was a start on that issue, she’d move on to something else. And cleaning would occupy her while we were away.

We had a great trip east that year. Mostly we talked baseball and colleges and dream homes. How disappointed we were in the Tigers that season. What Daddy would have done with his life had he been able to go to college. The new plans he’d penciled for the ranch style house he wanted to build. And for the hundredth time — I would never tire of hearing it — all about his year with the Pirates, ending the story as he always did, holding up the too-small hands his manager said would never make it in the big leagues. It was pure freedom, zooming down the highway in Daddy’s refurbished Cadillac, the smoke from his Kool rushing out his open wing window, radio tuned to a big band station, dreaming our dreams.

But it was a nightmare when we returned home. First clue: the smell of fresh paint. I clambered upstairs without saying hello to Mama, then crumbled to the floor. The floor, pine boards covered with multi-tone rust-colored shag carpet. The walls, painted pea green. The ceiling, dark ochre. Mama’s vision of “green and gold.” Worst of all, the chiffarobe — emptied of its drawers and contents that now sprawled across my bed in illogical piles and stacks — the chiffarobe had been shellacked with olive green enamel paint and topped with a gold faux antique finish.

It’s hard to say all that happened next. I was so affected, it all seems a blur to this day. I do remember Daddy criticizing Mama for painting over wallpaper, how that wasn’t going to last, and Mama replying that she couldn’t wait forever for him to get around to it so she had to do it herself, like she had to do most things around there. She was proud of herself for getting so much done in three days, for going with the green and gold I had suggested — they did seem like royal colors, she
said — and for getting a deal at the carpet store.

And I remember screaming at her. “No wonder you got a deal on the carpet. It looks like vomit! Who else in the world would want it?” I pointed at the walls and ceiling. “Don’t you have any taste at all? There’s nothing royal or even the least bit attractive about that color combination. It looks like rotting lettuce and baby shit!” Tears came to my eyes when I looked at the chiffarobe. “And you’ve totally demolished any beauty that dumb old monstrosity ever had!”

Then she slapped me, hard, across the face.

* * * * * *

I’m amazed now by just how much paint Mama managed to get on this thing. Thank God she didn’t paint the inside, that wood remains innocent. Fumes from several quarts of stripper have made my eyes and nose burn, and now the tedious, careful sanding makes my arms ache, but finally the wood grain lives again. I wonder if Mama will appreciate this. Or will she lash out at me the way I lashed out at her when she painted it? Will she understand that I’m doing this out of love? We’ve had so few moments of mother-daughter love. Whenever one of us has tried to get close or share anything meaningful, it deteriorates into a screaming match.

In two days we’ll move Mama from the rehabilitation place into her room at the nursing home. I know she hates this plan, and I expect she’ll keep asking when she can come home to her own little house. Daddy never did build his dream ranch house, but he managed to situate Mama in a cozy Craftsman before he died. We’ll play along, my brother and I, when he bothers to show up to visit. But I don’t expect her to leave the nursing home. My brother can’t keep a job, because of his alcohol problem, and can’t be depended upon to take care of her, and my job takes me away from home too often. Otherwise I would move in with her for the duration. At least, I think I would. The way we go at each other sometimes, it might do her in before her time. Actually, we thought her time had come with this last fall and broken femur. But the doctor says it will likely be her weakening heart that gives out first.

The next night I rub oil into the bared wood with a soft cloth. I’ve decided not to use varnish, but to keep the finish natural, let the grain and texture speak its own truth. After the shellacking Mama gave it, I’m certain it is grateful to breathe again.

When the day of Mama’s move arrives, I reassemble the chiffarobe in the garage and wait for the movers. I spray Windex on the mirror and make it shine. When I look at my reflection, I see Mama. I’m about the age she was when she took an evil paintbrush to our favorite piece of furniture. It took me a lot longer to restore it than it took her to ruin it. It takes more work to fix a mistake than it does to make one.

When they wheel Mama into her new room, I have things pretty well put together, just finishing hanging her clothes in the wall closet. I’ve turned the closet side of the chiffarobe into a TV cabinet, and filled the drawers and shelves mostly with what she’d had in there before, including the things of Daddy’s that have been there since he died: a stick of Old Spice deodorant, the antique magnifying glass he’d resort to for small print, a well-worn silver cigarette lighter, the pocket knife I’d given him for Christmas when I was eight, and the prized baseball signed by his Pirate teammates. I like that his drawer still smells of Old Spice. Mama’s chair sits opposite the chiffarobe, for easy television viewing, and her bed sits along the far wall. “Far” is a relative term in this room. With these few pieces, plus the bedside table the nursing home provides, there’s just enough room to get her wheelchair in and out.

She appears smaller and more frail than I ever thought possible. I ask if she prefers the chair or the bed right now, and she answers that what she prefers right now is the toilet. The nurse wheels her into the bathroom and probably expects to stay in there to assist, but Mama shoos her out. “I can manage!”

Still my mama, I think. But when she comes out, I see the tears. She looks around the room and sobs. “This is all I got left.”

I stand behind her, stroke her hair, peach-colored fluff now that there is so much gray.  “You still have your chiffarobe,” I say, hoping to cheer her. It makes her cry harder.

I know she has much more to cry about than the chiffarobe, but I think focusing on that will help all the other memories and fears subside. “Don’t you like it? I spent a week of late nights restoring it.” I pull a tissue from a box I’d tucked into one of the chiffarobe drawers, but she beats me to the punch by snagging one from inside her sleeve.

“You never did like my paint job, did you?”

“I guess we just have different tastes, Mama.”

“Oh Lizzie, I wanted so bad for you to love me like you loved your daddy.” She blows her nose and looks at me with such sad eyes it nearly breaks my heart. When did those flashing brown eyes start to fade? Now I’m crying too.

“Honey, I don’t begrudge you loving your daddy. I loved him too, loved him first. But I doted on your brother and that left him to dote on you. And I guess that worked out okay. Funny though.”

I must have a strange look on my face, because she follows up with “Not ha-ha funny, but odd funny. The kid you didn’t want in the first place is the one who ends up being there for you in the end.”

I don’t know how to take that and hold onto my thoughts for now. In an effort to make a better relationship with her, I’ve cautioned myself to think before I speak when dealing with Mama. “You want me to help you into your recliner?”

She nods, but keeps talking. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you were young, Lizzie. I wanted us to get along better, and I tried. But nothing I ever did ever worked. It made me wonder if you knew…”

“Knew what?”

“When I got pregnant with you, we’d just started working at the factory and your dad was wanting to buy a house. I didn’t want another baby, not then.”

I half-lift her from one chair to the other, prop the footrest in the middle position, and cover her with an afghan. Then plop myself into the wheelchair to sit beside her. This is rare, Mama being so open and emotional. I fidget with the fringe on her afghan, waiting for her to talk. It’s unnerving, but I don’t want to miss a word. “I guess I can understand that, Mama.”

“No, I mean I really didn’t want you. I drank some stuff that was supposed to get rid of the pregnancy, but it didn’t work.”

“What stuff? Where’d you get it?”

“I don’t remember what it was, and it don’t matter who gave it to me,” she snaps at me. She looks like Mama again, the crying apparently over. “What matters is that you seemed to hate me so much, I was sure somehow you knew what I done.” She lets her head drop back against the chair and sighs. “I mean, what I tried to do. It’s been worrying me all these years.”

“So this is to clear your conscience now? Is that it?” I cross my arms and hug myself. “No, Mama, I didn’t know you tried to abort me. But I sure as hell knew you didn’t like me.”

I can feel us heading toward deterioration again. I don’t want to go that route, but damn, she can get to me. What on earth makes her tell me this now? I find the remote where I put it, close at hand for her in the pocket of the recliner, and switch on the TV. Flip through channels until I find her favorite reruns station. M*A*S*H is on. Good. One of our areas of middle ground. How we fought over Viet Nam, totally opposite opinions, as usual. But we can laugh together while watching Hawkeye.

I’m glad for the silence between us. I wonder where she’s headed with this talk. If she starts harping at me about the abortion I had, I’m out of here. Another horrible fight we had, at a time when I needed a mother desperately. She’d told me I was selfish and besides, I should have the baby so I would have someone to take care of me when I was old. I said I thought that was selfish, and besides, what if the kid turned out to be like her precious Donny and was incapable of taking care of himself, let alone anyone else? I’m glad I still have the Kleenex in my hand.

I guess I hadn’t been looking at the television, or my eyes were too blurry to notice that I could see the both of us in the mirror on the open chiffarobe door. I hadn’t thought about it when set I things up, that Mama would also be watching herself when she watches TV.  And so there we are, at once so close and so far apart.  And who knows how long we have together, if you can really call it “together.” And what will I do if I live long enough to be sitting in a wheelchair for real?

I see that Mama has nodded off. I get up and sort through the chiffarobe drawers, reorganizing. She wakes and catches me sniffing the stick of Old Spice. I decide to start over on our conversing. “I can’t believe this still has a scent.”

“I saved those things for you, Lizzie. You should have them. And you’ll take that chiffarobe when I’m gone,” she orders. Our eyes meet in the mirror. “You’ve gone and claimed it already anyway, looks like.”

Okay, I’d tried to keep the peace. I’d held everything in. But that does it. “Mama you just don’t get it. You say you did everything to get me to love you. Well, what do you think I’ve been doing for fifty fucking years? I know I’ve screwed up. Many times. But I keep trying. And you keep letting me know every chance you get that I’m the one who never does anything right. I just don’t know what to do anymore. You’re going to die one of these days and we’ll still be fighting.” I throw my body onto her bed, bury my face in the pillow and bawl, like I did when I was a kid, like I still do when that kid inside me feels overwhelmed.

Mama has never been the type to comfort me when I’m crying, and I certainly don’t expect it now. So I nearly jump out of my skin when I feel her hand on my shoulder.

I crank my head around to stare at her. “How did you get into that wheelchair and scoot over here without me hearing you?”

“Lizzie, you’re a very loud crier. Always have been, since you was a baby with colic and Daddy wore a path in the carpet, walking you around the dining room table. Nobody can hear nothing … I mean, nobody can hear anything when you’re in the middle of a cry.”

Now I’m laughing. Mama making an effort to correct her grammar at this stage in her life. She laughs too. One thing I have always loved about Mama is her laugh. It’s as loud as my cry, bold and full out. I make a mental note to bring in a video camera and get it on tape.

Mama strokes my hair now, like Daddy used to do, like I stroked hers earlier. “I am sorry, Lizzie. I’m sorry for how I was when you came along. But I’ve never been sorry I had you. And no matter what anybody says, I loved you and you loved me. We just ain’t good at showing it or saying it. Why I told you all that was to say that life is crazy and you should accept what comes and find a way to love it, because it might turn out to be the best thing that ever happens to you. Don’t cover up your love, Lizzie. I wasted too many years doing that.”

For once I feel no need for words of comeback. I reach out and hold her hand. I want to keep this moment going forever. But Mama, always on the move in one way or another, now has other needs.

“You think you can get up off of there and let me have a lay-down?”

Of course, she must be exhausted. While she naps, I’ll go shop for a lightweight robe, toiletries and something to dress up this plain room.

Mama settles on the bed and withinin seconds I hear her soft snoring, but she snorts awake when I fish my purse out of the chiffarobe. “Lizzie?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Lizzie, I like the chiffarobe. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Mama.”

I lean down to kiss her forehead and hurry to leave, afraid I’ll cry again. Who knows how long I’ll have her, or whether we can really restore our bond, if we ever had one to begin with. But today I’m thinking we stripped off that first layer of paint.

Before I close the door behind me, Mama practically hollers. “Lizzie! Lordy, Lizzie, put some lotion on them hands!”