Grandmother's house had a narrow staircase rising to the roof.
Each step was covered by a handwoven Persian rug alive with colors, layered one over another. The patterns climbed the stairs and danced upward through the house.
Worn edges and softened colors, so familiar to Nana. Soft green walls surrounded the stairway, with a simple pale railing running along the right side, giving the whole thing an earthy look.
At the top, Nana found her small heaven of timelessness and quiet.
Her two-by-three-foot secret corner of the world. The house was usually filled with guests, and when Nana couldn't play anymore with the cousins and next-door neighbors out in the courtyard, she would hide away, drawing grandmother's stories and playing with her doll, Sage.
One day, her grandmother called Nana to go and help prepare the lunch table. Instead, Nana grew so quiet that no one knew where she was hiding. After a while, she noticed Sage looking at her with her beautiful green eyes.
"What are you looking at? I'm not hungry yet!" she whispered.
She could see the sun shining through the small door built into the window, the one that opened out to the roof. "I wish I could open it and see the river from up here!" she whispered again. "Stop looking at me — I don't have the key!"
"I wish I had a room up here!" she said, this time not whispering much. "It should be big enough for me and you to have a bed." She looked at Sage.
"I would paint it the color of rainbow," she said while brushing Sage's beautiful honey-blond hair. "I would also have a closet for all of your clothes." She looked at the pile of garments cut to look like dresses and pants, imperfectly stitched together for Sage.
"I want to have a desk and chair, maybe two chairs for you and me, so I can paint all day long." She looked at Sage, smiling, almost picturing it in her head.
"Ok, come here now, it's time to eat," Grandmother said loudly. Nana looked downstairs over the rail and saw her looking up. "How did you know I was here?" Nana asked. "I didn't," grandmother smiled, and walked toward the kitchen.
Nana put Sage carefully in her small bed made from her uncle's shoe box, and covered her with the blanket she had found in grandmother's basement and cut to fit the box perfectly. She kissed Sage and ran downstairs to join her grandmother for lunch.
Grandmother's table always unfolded like a little feast of abundance. Her cooking was her love language. She decorated her fragrant saffron rice and beef stew with fresh herbs. You could always find pickles she had made over the winter and kept in her basement.
Nana often wondered whether grandmother was feeding a family of fourteen or a five-year-old granddaughter with a tiny stomach.
Behind the dining table hung a print of The Kiss by Francesco Hayez. Nana had heard her uncle say the name, and all she could think about was why the two people were always kissing when there was clearly no room for that! "Were they in love?" she thought.
"She could have fed him delicious food, that's better than a kiss!" Nana said to grandmother. "Perhaps they had already eaten," Grandmother said. "Or they are about to." She continued, "Why don't you eat your food? I made you celery stew that you like, with tiny pieces of meat."
Nana liked grandmother's house with all the random ceramics and paintings hanging on the walls and flowers arranged everywhere there was a surface.
It was busy, but felt like a warm hug. She felt safe. Sometimes she dreamed about all the pictures and flowers coming to life and dancing around, like the story grandmother told her about the talking plants.
"Grandmother, I wish I had a room here, right up where the roof door is!" Nana said, playing with her food. "I'll make you a room out of blankets in my room," Grandmother replied. "It's not the same. I wanna be on my own, sleep on my own, and draw on my own," Nana said. "Help me get those plates to the sink now. It's time for the afternoon nap," Grandmother replied.
Years later, Grandmother's house was a three-story house with big staircases and big windows, granite floors, and modern walls. Nana's parents moved back in. They gave her the room on the top floor. The very corner. The two-by-three that had once been nowhere.
It had a big bed. A desk with two chairs. A closet. The window opened to a view of the river. Everything she had ever whispered to Sage about, down to the two chairs.
Sage was nowhere to be found. Or perhaps still in a basement that no longer existed. The shoe box, the blanket cut to fit, the imperfect little garments — all of it swallowed by the demolition the way everything gentle is swallowed by something efficient.
The granite floors were cold. The modern walls were quiet. The big staircase had no Persian rugs, no worn edges, no patterns dancing upward. Nobody called her for lunch. Nobody looked up from the bottom of the stairs, pretending they didn't know where she was. Not even a fake painting of the Kiss.
Nana sat at her desk with two chairs and painted. She painted a narrow staircase covered in Persian rugs. She painted soft green walls. She painted a five-year-old whispering to a honey-blond doll. She painted saffron rice and celery stew and a print of two people kissing. She painted flowers arranged on every surface and ceramics on the walls and a warm hug of a house that no longer existed.
She had the room. She would trade it for another sleepover with her grandmother!
