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from Contest #2

All the trouble began when my grandfather died and my grandmother - my father's mother - came to live with us.

It was 1965. I was home for the summer from boarding school and had just celebrated my thirteenth birthday. I was now officially a teenager. I should have been happy, with the whole summer ahead of me, but my best friend and fishing buddy, my grandfather, had died suddenly and my grandmother was moving in for a few months until she found more suitable housing than the four bedroom home she had shared with him.  Our house was a small post war ranch house with just enough room for my parents and two older sisters. It was going to be tight quarters.

                My father and mother both worked leaving me at home during the day with my sisters. As if this wasn’t bad enough, my grandmother was now moving in. I was distraught.

My sisters were lazy. They ordered me around like drill sergeants. I washed the dishes. I vacuumed the floors. I took out the garbage. I did the laundry. I made the beds, including theirs. In turn, they spent their time trying to make themselves look like the actresses they saw in their numerous teen magazines. This was an impossible feat to accomplish because they were not blessed with gorgeous hair but with stringy, thin and unruly red hair that looked like rusted steel wool. The freckles on their face would become more pronounced after the addition of three pounds of makeup making them look like beige colored spotted newts.  They had inherited very thin lips that naturally curled down into a grimace. They would try to correct this by smearing and artistically applying dark red lipstick. All in all, they both looked like Clarabelle the seltzer wielding clown from Howdy Doody. I felt like I lived in the Peanut Gallery.

The day my grandmother moved in was the day that my life would change forever. She was an overweight woman who looked like my sisters – same hair, same complexion and same lips. Actually, her hair was a different color as she had tried to dye it an azure blue to cover the silver grey that had crept into the red. This resulting color combined with her red lipstick made her look like an American flag – the grand red, white and blue. She made no attempt to corral her unruly hair so she always appeared as though she had barely survived a severe wind storm.

                She arrived in a cab with two bags. One was filled with dowdy old clothes that had gone out of style thirty years earlier and a smaller bag full of framed photos, which she immediately piled on the fireplace mantle. This photo gallery then portrayed a lineage of my relatives who all looked the same – a whole gaggle of Clarabelles.

“Where’s my little Willie?” she loudly asked as she entered the house.

I absolutely hated being called that. Little Willie was the name that many boys named their...well, let’s just say that to this day my name is William. Anyone who calls me “Willie” is in for a whole lot of hurt.

Hearing her, I started to shake. I immediately scurried to the cellar in hopes that she would think that I wasn’t home or had run away.  Most people ran away to the circus. I was running away from one.

“Come give your old Grandma a big smooch,” she said as she wandered from room to room looking for me.

I could hear the floors creak above my head with each lumbering step. Dust and other evil things rained down on my head. I found an old Army hat of my Dads, pulled it over my head and crept further back into the old coal bin.

Most grandsons would love to have a hug from their Grandmother. I was not one of those lucky enough to look forward to this affection. The truth is I immediately broke out into a sweat and started to tremble thinking about the inevitable.  She just loved to grab your head and pull it into her lavender scented humongous breasts while pinching your cheek until you were brought to tears. It was mortifying. To this day I like small breasted women wearing a hint of Chanel No. 5.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” she said as she cracked open the cellar door and peeked down the staircase.  “Are we playing a game, my little sweetie?” she said.

I certainly did not want to be her sweetie so I inched further into the dark corner in hopes that she would go away and not find me. This movement caused me to move up against something that squeaked and scurried over my feet. I muffled a scream but it was not soft enough.

“There you are. Come give me a hug and kiss,” she said as she waddled down the stairs.

I was positive that I was about to die, either from a rabid mouse bite or by being smothered. I inched out of my dingy hiding spot, took my position and was rewarded with an agonizing hug.

“Didn’t you miss your old fat Grandmother?” she said as she tweaked my cheek.

“No,” I thought. “I missed getting beat up in school or having my lunch money stolen more than I missed getting smothered and pinched.”

“My word, it is certainly dusty down here,” she said.

“Well, of course it is,” I thought “You just caused it to become dusty.”

“Your father and mother will be home late so I have to cook dinner for you and the girls. You should clean this mess up before coming to dinner. I’m making your favorite meal,” she said enthusiastically.

“Great,” I thought, “more chores.”

For as long as I could remember my grandmother believed I liked fried eggs, bacon and home fries. The truth is that this meal makes me gag. She would over cook the bacon leaving an inch of grease in the pan so “you could slowly cook the eggs in the fat giving it a home-cooked flavor.”  She would then add large chunks of potatoes – she hated to dice up anything and preferred to whack any vegetable once or twice with a cleaver – to the now sizzling lard. The result of this effort was burnt bacon, cold runny fried eggs covered in a cooling white coating of oil and undercooked potatoes. She would top this all off with her favorite beverage - prune juice. This vile drink was near and dear to her as she drank it with every meal and expected everyone else to do likewise.

My mother got along with my grandmother but just barely. My father was the apple of her eye and could do no wrong. My mother “couldn’t boil water and was too lax with discipline when it came to raising the kids.”

 My grandmother always found a way to cook dinner. I think my mother thought it was easier to let her cook rather than get into an argument with her. My grandmother had some awful meal concoctions, besides the bacon and eggs, which she would serve us. I remember three of them.  One was a mixture of canned cream corn, ketchup and sliced hot dogs. Another, her favorite, was tuna fish casserole topped with something that appeared to be potato chip crumbs. 

Her “Sunday go to dinner” meal was a combination of cow’s tongue and liver sautéed with onions. To some this might sound appetizing but to me, well, it dumbfounded me why anyone would eat that meat knowing what their purpose was in a cow’s life. The aroma that came from the kitchen when this was cooked caused a burning electric sensation, much like several hundred volts, to slam through my sinus cavity, through my eye sockets and into my throat. Shep, our miniature poodle, loved that smell because he knew that his favorite meal was about to be served. I usually gagged.

I managed to make it through this meal and many others that summer by waiting for her to look away. I would quickly hold my plate beneath the table so Shep could lap up the morsels of food shimmering around my plate in two seconds flat. I always tried to give him my prune juice but he would just snarl and walk away This poor dog had to be put on a diet at the end of the summer as he had transformed into this fluffy little blob that looked like an oversized marshmallow and he constantly passed gas. I, on the other hand, spent many hours in the bathroom since my dinner usually consisted of the juice.

My grandmother believed that I could do no right. Anytime I attempted to please her she found fault with what I did. She constantly reminded me of the time my grandfather tried to teach me how to fish. We lived on a lake and had a small wooden skiff that I loved to take out and chase the ducks with. My grandfather thought this was very disruptive and decided that I needed to learn how to fish. I guess I was about ten at the time.

One morning we set out with rods, reels and a bucket of large night “crullers”. No matter how often we went out fishing and how much time grandfather spent teaching me the finer points of casting a lure; I didn’t get it and never did. During this one trip, I swung my rod to the rear in what I thought was a “smooth and perfect arc”, as I was told, only to have the hook get caught in a tree – or so I thought. I got frustrated and that frustration got the best of me. I yanked forward as hard as I could, determined to unsnag the lure. I’m not exactly sure what happened next but I remember my grandfather suddenly lifting the anchor, starting the motor and heading for shore. He didn’t speak. He had no expression on his face. He just docked the boat, walked to the garage and got in his car and drove off. An hour later he returned with a large bandage wrapped around his head. He just looked at me and said “It’s not your fault William; it was an accident. That wasn’t a branch you were trying to tug the lure out of; it was my ear.” For the next few years, until he died, I would apologize every time I saw his one ear without a lobe. He would just laugh and just "chuk” me on my arm. My grandmother never forgave me and she would constantly remind me of the time I tried to “kill old Gramps”. That constant barrage went on all summer. I think she was just very angry and missed him. I missed him too. He was my best friend.

As I stated before, my father could do no wrong in my Grandmother’s eyes. When my father drove through the garage door, in his haste to get to work one morning, it was somehow my fault for not putting it up all the way. I never touched the door. The only reason I entered the garage was to retrieve the “Sears Super Push Mower” This was just another chore that “was good for you.” I never knew why it was good for me. I guess it was helping to “build my character” as my father used to say.

My sisters could also do no wrong. Once they used Brillo pads to clean off road tar on their “kick ass” ten- year old Chevy. They scuffed the paint so badly that it removed all color down to the bare metal underneath. My grandmother thought that I should pay for this because I didn’t teach them how to clean a car properly. I refused; in fact, I took my life savings and purchased over a hundred used comic books at the local hobby shop just so she couldn’t get her hands on my money. My sisters never repainted that car. They decided to spend what money they had on a newly invented contraption that would straighten their hair. Over the course of the summer the car rusted and matched the color of their hair.

 My grandmother was raised on a farm and although my Grandfather ran a successful contracting business she never spent any money on clothing. She always wore light cotton dresses, nylons rolled half way up her calf and clunky shoes that were very similar to the ones my Dad wore. This was ok, I guess, looking back on it. What was not ok was that she never wore a bra – I don’t think they made one big enough for her. My puberescent friends who visited that summer followed her around hoping to get a glimpse of these humongous orbs. They would snicker and laugh as they tripped over each other. She would just shoo them away. To stop them from pursuing this embarrassing quest I usually pretended that there were some really important things we had to do- like skimming rocks or pestering the ducks on the lake.

Most of that summer was a blur. I spent most of my time sitting on the john, hiding in the coal bin and reading and rereading my comic books. My sisters also managed to find boyfriends – they were twerps. They spent most of their time driving around in their rusty Chevy and hanging around the A&W with all of the other twerps. I was stuck with one of their hand-me-down bikes for transportation. It was pink, until I painted it green with some leftover house paint. I also had to remove the frilly tassels hanging from the handle bars.

In late August, my Grandmother announced she was moving in with Mel “a gentleman of fine upbringing, exemplorary morals and a snappy dresser with only righteous intentions”. She had met him at church and spent most nights that summer sitting on the picnic bench in the backyard.  I never considered Oshkoshs fashionable but that’s what he wore – of course, he did iron them.  Any other thoughts I had about their relationship I preferred not to think about.

The day she moved out I got my obligatory hug and I smelled what I thought might be just a hint of Chanel No. 5. I also noticed that the top of her nylons now disappeared under the hemline of her dress.

“You’re a good boy Willie” she said as she pinched my cheek for what turned out to be the last time.

My grandmother died that following year. She was 76. Today, I remember that summer living with her. I look at my own three daughters with their curly red hair, their freckles and thin lips and I smile. To this day I only boil my eggs. I don’t touch canned cream corn or tuna fish and if my wife happens to cook liver, which for some bizarre reason she likes, I go for a long drive. I miss my grandmother.

back to Contest #2