For as long as I knew my grandmother, she had kept her lower right calf wrapped in gauze. She was a very clean woman and would change the gauze at least twice a day, but it never stopped it from oozing a brown stain across the fresh dressings and wafting out a smell of hot decay at certain points throughout the day. Much like the swampy marsh that surrounded us, I associated that smell with death and some terrible unknown, and I was horrified by it.

I still am.

****

When I was eleven, I walked in on my grandmother changing her dressing. I was a little less scared of her by then, but I still froze at interrupting this secret ritual I’d never seen before. I’d also never seen what was under the bandage.

In the side of her leg was a large hole the size of a half-dollar. My eyes were transfixed to the wound, which looked old but was somehow still wet and shiny in the dim lamplight coming from her bedroom nightstand. It took a moment before I even realized she was speaking to me.

“Clarissa. It’s okay, honey. Come on in.”

Part of me wanted to retreat, to run away from that macabre scene and forget it ever happened. But another part of me seemed to sense that this was a chance, maybe my only chance, to find out more about what had happened to my grandmother. She never talked about it, and when I asked my mother, she would just awkwardly change the subject or say all I needed to worry about was minding my granny when we were near the swamp.

So I went on in and sat in a chair opposite where she was applying a fresh bandage. She worked with the speed and ease of ingrained routine, and within a few moments she was finished and looking at me again with a small smile.

“Wondering what that place on my leg is?”

I nodded with a child’s honesty and she gave a laugh. “I don’t blame you, honey. It’s funny looking, ain’t it?”

I leaned forward a little, wrinkling my nose at the still dissipating rotten smell. “Are you sick?”

Her smile faltered a little before she shook her head slowly. “No, not as such. I’m old…and I guess that’s a form of illness. Time’s a disease they’ll never cure, my grandmomma used to say. But no, I’m all right.”

“Why do you have a big hole in your leg then?”