[Pride 2021] Make Me an Angel

Fire Walk With Me reminds me of my grandma’s bathroom. Decorated with mini soaps (all white or jade colored), extra bars piled on the edge of the tub with no need of ever being used. As a youth, I felt like an intruder. Her religion was very present throughout the house. Still, this was where I found the most privacy, so her bathroom was a sanctuary. Embalmed cherubs hovered in the middle of each soap bar, angelic in their silence. They were surrounded by wreaths.

When the angel disappears from the painting in Laura Palmer’s room, I know that safety is finite.

In Fire Walk with Me, Laura Palmer is gifted the painting of a door that she later enters while dreaming. But she already has a painting near her bed, one that illustrates a guardian angel watching over children, and this one plays an important part as well. Early in the movie, she looks at it almost wistfully. Repeated viewers of FWWM know that her supporting characters cannot provide her safety. An angel is a blessing, even if it is made of oil. 

My grandma hung a similar painting over the toilet. I’ve seen many like it over the years, typically in thrift stores where the booths are littered with ceramics. With the bathroom door shut, I did have a feeling of being watched, but not protected. In this house, my behavior was on notice. I was young, and always looking for somewhere to hide from the threats to my own safety.

When Laura’s angel literally fades from the canvas, there is a range of emotions on Sheryl Lee’s face, mainly terror. David Lynch has crafted many a haunting scene over his long career, but this is one of hardest to watch. It remains simultaneously beautiful and horrific no matter how often I see it. Even as a survivor of sexual assault, I am more upset by this disappearance than any scenes involving her abuser. I think it’s the unspoken terror of loss. When we lose someone close, there are no words. No explanations that make sense. All we can do is watch them go.

My grandma’s house was an escape. With my parent’s house set on the overlooking hill, I visited often. I watched Star Trek the Next Generation on her small, black and white TV. I hid behind her couches whenever she had company. As an adult, I only visit her once or twice a year, which I feel guilty about. Her house is no longer an escape because I have abandoned her to it.

Like Laura Palmer, my grandma knows her time is coming to an end. She’s a widower now, and every phone conversation consists of impending death, or as she phrases it, “going to Heaven.” I can’t help but think about Laura’s speech about falling and falling and falling because the angels have all gone away.

I can’t think of anything more terrifying than having to take down her paintings or removing each jade cherub and boxing them up. I used to think of myself as the self-destructive type, and while that’s still true, the reality is that such actions are gradual, not immediate. Many of us dream about being Laura Palmer, but the closest we ever get is witnessing our guardian angel disappear.

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