Beard-Kraybill Studios Main > Back Issues > Issue IV > Living With Grandmother

Living with Grandmother

By Sam Russell


Greg rubbed his temples slowly and forcefully as he looked out the window with a face of turbulent despair. The rain outside poured down relentlessly, neither driving or gusting, simply failing down and down without end. Before Greg, the cement window ledge outside reflected greens and blues as the oils on it were wetted and made to run from the spray of the rain that reached them. The dirt on the window, despite the voluminous downpour, only dampened and smeared, no true rain drops striking it. A car passed by below, its headlights illuminating the water-swollen gutters and the thin sheets of runoff that came one after another down the slight slope of the black top. Trash floated in the run-off and Greg could see several homeless men huddled together under eaves that would not have protected even one of them from the rain.

How could he have come to this, thought Greg. His life had started out so seemingly well. A father who had been well respected in the community, and a mother who had been running for Congress. But it had all ended so suddenly at the age of fourteen. Greg winced again as he thought of the terrible incident. There had been a light fog in the air and enough precipitation to make the roads wet. Father had been driving and mother talking about the upcoming election. Greg sitting in the back seat had no interest in their conversation. Then ahead in the fog had loomed a flatbed semi truck. It had jack-knifed, leaving its trailer in their path. Father had slammed on the brakes but their speed was too great and the truck too near. Greg only remembered the screams and the horrible sound of rending metal and breaking glass. Waking had been the true moment when Greg's life had fallen apart around him. His body lay on its side in the middle of the road, and on the pavement before him, surrounded by glistening glass, was his mothers head. Its eyes stared horribly out at him with the mouth agape in its final cry of terror. Greg had screamed. And he had kept on screaming long after the fireman had rudely hurried the disembodied head away as if it were another piece of metal.

The whole incident had hit the papers and tabloids like a bombshell. All told of how the congressional hopeful and her husband had been decapitated on a foggy night, her head to fall near her son and his head to fly nearly a hundred feet away, landing in the bushes of a nearby restaurant. Greg bared his teeth at the memory of the tabloid he had seen, a falsely rendered photo of his mother's head as it would have looked with a torn and bloody neck.

"Greg," came the snapping, angry tone of an old woman, breaking him from his musings.

Greg looked to the side, not quite turning toward the voice as his expression turned to
worry.

"Greg," she snapped again. "Get over here, you idiot. If you can't smell that this roast is done then you ought to have your head beat against a wall, not that it would make any difference, you worthless little wretch."

Grandmother. Greg hated her. And she hated him. But she hated all things. She had hated him the day he arrived, two days after the accident. It became clear immediately to Greg why father had never taken him to visit her. Grandma was a bitch.

"Sit down," she snapped in her growling aged voice, full of acid.

Her brown eyes looked out from the wrinkled face like two piecing beady eyes of a bird, a bird of prey.

"I shouldn't even feed you, you stupid oaf," she said with a sneer. "You walk around here breaking things, knocking your knees into the table edges. You're a cursed piece of walking trash."

Greg looked down at his plate, at the still bleeding, waterlogged piece of meat and did not respond. Responding only made her spew more of her venomous words his way. Better to just remain quiet. Greg once again wondered how he would get away from her. He had thought that he would get away when he had turned eighteen, but his failures had mounted long before that. So many failures that getting a job seemed impossible. Only grandmothers welfare checks kept them alive. Too bad men could not collect welfare, grandmother had told him so. It would be her money or none at all. She had also assured him more times than he could remember that a man without skills like him, would never be employable. It had turned out to be true.

Greg took his first mouthful of the meat and began to chew. He never saw the cup coming. It struck his upper lip and glanced off, failing to the floor and breaking. He grabbed his lip quickly, feeling the burn of the pain in the soft flesh and the nauseating stab of the assaulted dental nerves. He looked up at grandmother to see her wicked eyes looking at him hostilely.

"Filthy little puke," she blasted hatefully. "Never think to thank me for a meal. Oh, how I hate you. You should have died with your parents. You are so unfit to live." Then after only a second of silence she snapped at him again. "Clean up that cup. And do it now. You won't eat another bite at this table until its done."

My life is a hell, thought Greg. This is truly hell. He stooped from his chair and began to pick up the pieces of what he now saw had been a coffee mug. The pain in his teeth throbbed as he considered its weight. His thoughts echoed again, Why can't I get away from here. I'm stuck. I'm stuck here forever.

Grandmothers feet were now shuffling on the floor. Greg sensed trouble. But she walked on the side of the table away from him, her cane too far away to reach him. But at thelast moment he heard the sound, the sound of his dinner plate being shoved from the table. The wet meat slapped across his back and the plate clattered to the floor, mercifully not breaking. Greg winced and felt the thickness of despair make his head feel swollen.

"Don't like it, do you boy," she sneered at him. 'Well, you're stuck here. Stuck here with me. You don't have to like it."

Greg slowed as he picked up the pieces, his despair making it hard to move at all. Soon he knew he would be in his cot, curled up, wishing to die. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her, he chanted inside his head. She should be the one to die. Ah, but then no money, no food. he would be huddled outside with the men standing in the rain.

But then a thought came to Greg. He pictured the men sitting near the alley on a sunny day. They never smiled, but no one was there to degrade them verbally or strike them with canes. Could it be better? The thought had never occurred to him before. Those men did not work, but they were free. They had no Grandmother to make their life worse than death itself.

No grandmother.
You are stuck here forever.
No grandmother.
You can never leave.
No grandmother.

Greg's hands stopped picking up the broken pieces of glass. Could it be possible? He had always hoped that she would die, but she would not. Perhaps even hell forebode her coming, both God and the devil agreeing that she was better off alive on earth. But the thought now filled Greg's mind. What if he were gone. It would not matter. The apartment would be lost. But it would not matter. She would be left behind. He thought of what a day would be like without her voice and a weight seemed to lift from his head.

Greg stood slowly and looked at his grandmother. She did not miss his movement, she missed nothing that he did.

"Get back on your knees you pathetic excuse for a man," she snapped with a gravely tone of voice. "I said pick it up."

Greg looked down and began to kneel. But he stopped himself suddenly and stood once again. He looked at grandmother and wondered what he would do. How could he get by her. How could he escape. Her cane seemed to be able to find him no matter where he ran within the apartment.

Greg ran for it. But before he reached the door, grandmothers cane smacked across his face. He stumbled back and grandmother came at him with a face like a rabid dog.

"I'm going to kill you," she raged with all the vehemence and energy her old body could produce.

The cone struck again and again as Greg found himself in a corner of the kitchen with his arms held up over his head, the prime target. And the blows did not end. Grandmother was in a rage, an unnatural rage. He had defied her.

The cane stuck again, landing across Greg's palm. His hand reacted and gripped the stick. In an impulsive reaction he jerked the stick away and took several steps to the side. Taking his hands away from his face, he saw grandmother stomping toward him wide eyes, bright with madness. She reached for the cane and Greg pushed her away, but the cane was in his grip and it smacked across her nose.

She stumbled back, blinking as she did.

Greg stood stunned. Grandmother looked helpless. For a fleeting moment she looked helpless. A fire burst to life within him. Energy he had never felt filled him. He cocked the cane back as a snarl came across his face. Disbelief came over grandmother's face, but there with it, thicker than ever, was the hate.

"Bitch," barked Greg and swung the cane.

Smack. Grandmother stumbled back.

Smack. Smack. Smack-smack-smack.

Grandmother fell into a chair. It tipped and she and it fell to the floor, her head striking the leg of the kitchen table.

Grandmother stopped moving.

Many months later Greg found himself sitting before the review board. He wore white clothes, much like pajamas and the men and women of the board sat behind a fold-out cafeteria table in white coats.

"Go ahead, Greg," said the chief doctor.

'Well, Dr. Welsh," began Greg. "I've been thinking over what you've all told me. I have been deluded. I see it now. No one could have been as evil as I thought my grandmother had been. It makes me laugh when I think about it. And the way that I thought I was, that's not me. I feel great now. I realize that I had a delusional breakdown like you said. I was actually quite insane when I came here."

Dr. Welsh nodded. "it pleases me to hear you say that, Greg. You've come a long way since you arrived here."

"You know," said Greg. 'What really tipped the scales for me was seeing grandma again. She smiles, she laughs. What was I thinking?"

"You had a delusional breakdown," reassured Dr. Welsh. "But Greg," he said, becoming more serious. "People prone to this, well, they can actually commit harmful acts. Are you sure you're ready for the world outside?"

"Yes, I am," assured Greg.

'Well, Greg," said Dr. Welsh. 'We need to observe you just a little bit more. But your time here is almost over. In six weeks the insurance your late parents set up for you runs out and we can no longer afford to treat you. So, we have decided that we will continue to treat you for those six more weeks and then allow you to go home."

"Six more weeks?" asked Greg with distress.

"I'm afraid so," said the doctor.

Greg sat back in his chair with a disappointed sigh.

But the six weeks passed, and the miraculously smiling grandma came to take him home. The clinic was only five blocks from home and she held his arm as they walked.

"It's good to have you back," she said in her weak voice as they walked away from the tall
white building.

"It's good to be back," he said to her.

At home grandma boiled chicken and cabbage, serving the steaming plate gently in front of Greg.

"There you are," she said and took a step back.

Greg took his fork and stabbed the thickest of the chicken legs, his mouth watering. Suddenly grandma's cane swung before his eyes, striking the fork from his hand and cracking the plate below in two. Greg looked up with startled eyes.

"You shouldn't have tried to kill me, Greg," she said with a hideous hissing growl.

Greg grabbed the end of the cane before him, gripping its wood so tightly that it creaked.

"And they never -never should have let me out of that hospital while you lived."

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Revised November 19, 2002
by David Kraybill
©2002 Beard-Kraybill Studios
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