The Girl in the TV

They were framed
in large, gold-rimmed spectacles,
his eyes.
And my grandpa looked
through them
to read the newspaper.
I was beyond,
staring at the TV,
its already small frame
getting smaller
still,
with time.
And I watched the girl
in the TV
shout and scream
at her grandpa.
But my grandpa
did not see.
So I turned it off.
And removed his large,
gold-rimmed spectacles
so that I
might climb onto his lap
and read the newspaper.

He sat on the patched-up couch reading the Chinese newspaper with his large, gold-rimmed spectacles framing his kind eyes. The TV was on in front of him but he seemed not to notice, lost in reading about the world. But I was watching the girl in the TV. She talked back to her grandpa in disrespect and threw the allowance money he’d given her at his feet. I turned off the TV in defiance and marched over to my grandpa, thin on the over-sized couch that was falling apart, to give him a hug. And he folded his newspaper and hugged me back, unaware of the scene that had just passed.

Sometimes, at night, when the whole family was present, we would gather around the board-game Scrabble and put words together for points. My dad was the most serious about this, using his letters carefully, reading up on the rules and restrictions. But even so, he could never beat my mom, who assembled words in excitement, making the most interesting combinations, paying no heed to any such point system. She would get up to make some noodles as my dad took his time on his turn, and finish eating before he could tally up the score. And she’d smile playfully and wink at me, as it was always in her favor.

My sister was like a personal pest who would never stop following me around and copied everything I did. So I took her around sometimes. I did, because if I didn’t, she would start to cry. And because she was always there, she was witness to my acts of creativity, my imaginative genius. I created about ten million games for us to play. Four or five stuck. We played stuffed animals sometimes but I didn’t like the term “stuffed” because they were filled with something real, too, so I called them “little animals” and we referred to them as our “L.A.”s. She always wanted to be the bunnies so I let her be the bunnies and she wanted the cats so I let her have those, too. So I took on the personas of octopuses and armadillos, and when she saw that they were more interesting, we switched. And switched again.

Tall grasses, ones that can only be found near marsh land and still water. A child plodding through them, hands first, pulling the grasses apart as if opening drapery. Her grandpa beside her, she marches through the green world, batting cattails out of her way, sending droplets of dew into the still air.

She is the bringer of color this morning. The vibrancy of a green just waking flows to those tall grasses through her fingertips. She looks up and the sky is opening its blue eyes. A trail of color, blazed through a marsh coming out of slumber.

But she forgets, in her moment, that hers is not the only trail forged this morning, for her grandpa walks beside her, stretching his limbs in accord with the distant trees. He marches beside her, no less ready, no less eager – a youth again in his old age.

Nearer the water, they choose a place to stop. This place will do, he thinks. I will stop here, she decides.

They wait for things to settle. They wait because they have stirred things up.
They wait.
They are here to catch dragonflies.

The first to come are the electric-blue ones, the ones that land at the tip of each grass and bend the delicate stalk with delicate weight. There are opaque-winged ones and ones with dots on them. Some have curled tails. Some have big eyes. Her favorite are the ones with big eyes. But I can never catch them, she thinks, because they always see me coming.

Somewhere to her right, her grandpa is pointing. Look at that dragonfly, he is saying. She opens her hand, but the dragonfly, as if fully aware of her intentions, takes momentary flight and lands elsewhere.