A poem for my Grandmother

Waiting

A sea of brown uniforms swallowed her whole,
and Grace drowned in memories of Johnny.
The band seemed inches from her,
but no sound could mask the pounding in her ears.

Before she had the time to flee, a solider—
a ladies man, Giraulo—fixed his gaze on her.
He stopped her, called her his fire-haired fox
and smiled with deep brown eyes that
didn’t remind her of Johnny’s blues,
the color of the hydrangeas in the orphanage yard.

Joe didn’t know of Johnny. He didn’t know
her pain. He might have been a solider, Grace knew,
but he’d not be her hero.
Joe’s olive skin was too dark to be her angel’s—
Johnny, who fell from the sky
along with the rest of his unit.

She had walked into Johnny’s arms the day she turned 18
and left the orphanage behind.
She walked into Joe’s arms the day she tried to let go.

Joe rode the bus, four hours to, four hours from, Tacoa
to see her nose freckle in the sunlight, if only for an hour.
Four Sundays later, Joe came back to Ft. Bragg,
new Mrs. Grace Giraulo in tow.

On the eve of Joe’s deployment,
she lay in her marriage bed, and dreamed of fair-haired Johnny.
Joe would be in the wilds of the Philippines,
his only comfort the thought
of returning to the wife he’d left at home.
Grace tossed and turned, sick with the thought,
sick with herself.

In the winter months, when the sweltering Filipino jungle
was the only thought that kept her warm, Grace tread
on swollen feet, pacing at the gate of his family’s home.

Early Christmas mornings, after the orange and hard candy
that were her only presents,
my grandmother had paced before the gates of the orphanage,
waiting for the man who’d abandoned her
and her siblings and promised to return.

Months gone from the oppression and despair of
that place, Grace stood at gates,
Waiting for Johnny to return from war.
Waiting to be wed.
Her’s was a life defined by waiting. Waiting
for her father, for Johnny, for Joe.

The spring came and went, and Grace
found something to live for.
She thought of Johnny and thought of Joe
while gazing at cotton fields she once had to pick.

For the first time in her years, her life began,
slowly. I believe to this day,
Grace, long dead, still waits, even though
disappointment and rejection did not meet her
at the gates when Joe returned.

And the husband found
not only the wife he’d left behind,
but the child he would call his own,
fair-hair, blue eyes and all.