"Why do you wear a man's watch?" I whisper to my grandmother one evening, days after my wedding. She smiles at me, then glances at my husband.
"It looks professional," she murmurs. "And it fits my big wrist."
My grandfather walks in and gently pulls her away. "She wears braided twine from garbage bags around her neck to remind herself of the poor," he says, over his shoulder. "And her wrist is so small a ring would slide right off."
"Why do you wear a man’s watch?" I ask my grandmother as she places my firstborn next to me in bed. She grins down at the baby, letting him poke at her nose. She laughs softly. He gurgles.
The baby shifts his gaze to her watch, and she smiles as she hands him back to me to nurse and put to sleep. He makes a little noise and smiles faintly. She stands, looking at him and sighing just slightly.
"To remind me that time heals all."
My grandfather enters to watch the baby sleep. "But she knows it doesn't."
The baby gurgles, and I notice how the whites of his eyes mirror the delicate tremor of the white watch face on my grandmother’s mottled skin. Then, his eyelids flutter closed, and he’s asleep. My grandmother watches him sleep with a wistful smile, gently brushing her finger across his cheek before quietly leaving the room.
"Why do you wear a man’s watch?" I ask my grandmother as my son pushes her wheelchair through the nursing home. She laughs and urges him on, the two of them speeding down the hallway in a joyful race.
She returns, grinning, eyes sparkling with delight as the nursing home staff and old friends look on, startled. "It belonged to Paul Newman, and someone might steal it," she says, touching my son's face with her trembling hands. He smiles, fingers tracing her watch.
My grandfather rolls over from his room. "Your grandmother stole that from Ellie Joe’s Pawn Shop in the West End when she was twelve," he says matter-of-factly. "And no one’s going to steal it from an old lady."
Then, she’s off again, laughing down the hall, shouting with joy.
I follow her to help her back into bed.
I don’t ask again, even as I tuck the quilt made by my grandfather’s mother up to her chin.
"Why did she wear a man’s watch?" I ask softly, a sadness creeping into my voice, as I watch her casket slowly lowered into the earth. The shovels fill the grave, and soon, the grass will wave over her resting place, but nothing can fill the aching hole in my heart. The sun beats down, and my son, too young to understand, doesn’t cry. But I do.
My grandfather quietly weeps as the crowd drifts away, but he doesn’t answer me.
"Why did Grandma wear a man’s watch?" I ask my mother, now wearing the old watch with its worn-out leather strap and cracked buckle. She rests her hand on my grandfather’s bedrail, the silence of the nursing home around us.
My mother runs her index finger over the watch’s face, and it almost seems to smile back at her knowingly. My grandfather stares at it from his bed, not answering until my mother does. She sighs, glancing at me, then at the watch.
“She wore it to hide a terrible scar,” my mother whispers, her eyes on the timepiece.
“And the past,” my grandfather adds, as I gently pull the quilt his mother made over him. He closes his eyes, and soon, he’s asleep.
