Shark Week on Discovery Channel was my favorite. Maybe it was because it was Clay's favorite. Clay had only recently begun learning his times tables, and to make sure I would know them as well, I had my father print me off a matrix of all the tables that I could study. This was how life went, Clay would learn something and I knew that I had to learn it as well so I could catch up. That is how I learned to read, in this very room where I was watching television at grandma's house. Clay was being taught and was practicing with my aunt, and so she bought me little picture books to read as well. I couldn't read, but I could memorize and so as she read them to me I memorized the words and would repeat them back....but now I was reading far beyond that, I was into the Chronicles of Narnia and a host of books my mom was never unwillingly to buy for me. But, tonight was not for reading, my parents were in Georgia on a vacation and Clay and I got to stay up next door at grandma's. The taste of tuna fish patty is still in my mouth, and I feel something like the Great White Shark we are watching. Maybe that is how he feels and why he eats humans, this fish tastes AWFUL. Finally grandma lets us know that have to go back to our house to go to sleep and so she is taking us back. Home is all of 25 yrds to the west of grandma's, but its a dangerous journey. It's dark, with a full moon and we have over 20 aspens trees between our house....its dangerous to go home because there are werewolves in the aspens. There is always two routes back to the house.....route one requires me to go straight out of grandma's out the gate to the dirt road and then I can avoid the trees....but its a little longer and I am in the open in case something gets me. My second option is risky....I can leave grandma's house and run through the aspens following the few stones that line the way down the ever so slightly curving hill and past the sand box through the gate and out right in front of my house.....much faster, but the werewolves are there. Grandma keeps telling us to hurry and she walks out into the night and grabs a small stick she walks with and starts to take path one..........well I'm going to be brave and take the risky path. I rush through the trees, past the small area on the hill where from earlier that day we have left out the lawn chairs. I almost stumble on one as I run alone, Clay decided to walk with Grandma. I can still smell the watermelon left over from the pieces on the ground that I had left. Today had been a day of learning. I had my hands slapped by grandma for taking my stick and hitting her trees...she hit my hands to explain to me what the trees felt when I hit them. Finally, I break the cover of the trees, and what was about 10 seconds feels like an eternity. No werewolves got me today, but my heart is beating fast and I still need to make it inside my house and up the steps to the second floor because the 1st floor with all the tools and washing machine is haunted as well. I hear grandma behind me with her slight accent telling me to slow down. Why didn't I speak like grandma? Her accent is because she is nicara.....oh something dad said, but she was different. She was like the dark people like Pedro and Juan who always came to the house and who I couldn't understand. They spoke spanish, and I knew that I wanted to speak it to, but no one EVER offered to teach it to me. Still it didn't make sense, grandma was light skinned and spoke both languages....maybe that nicara...whatever, thing she was meant she could do both. I just knew she wasn't like everyone else, and I appreciated that. I love sitting at her house and having her tell me about conquistadors and how they conquered where she was from. I love the stories of her in boarding school slipping in a tortoise shell or when they were on a boat to Costa Rica and between her boat and another they had caught a marlin fish. I didn't understand what it all meant, but it sounded fascinating, and my grandma was my hero. (She still is today as well, in fact yesterday we had an argument on the phone about who loved each other more) Ahh, FINALLY, Clay and grandma catch up. Oh yes, I am being scolded for not walking with them, and as usual Clay, her favorite, is smiling, whatever...I would already be upstairs but I HAD TO WAIT for them so I could walk up the stairs without getting attacked, I already avoided disaster once tonight with the werewolves, I had better play it safe now.
Up the stairs we go....I love sliding down these stairs on my bum, it is much more efficient than walking...so why can't I slide UP the stairs? Okay, lights on and back to our room....is grandma going to tuck us in? Yes, she puts her stick against the wall and walks with us. She really doesn't need the stick (She is actually only 63 years old) but she always has it. Back in our rooms grandma tells us to get in bed. Her idea of tucking in isn't like mom...grandma isn't affectionate and huggy like our mom, instead she expects us to be responsible. We get in our beds and I do like always and wiggle myself and my blankets from the top of the bed to the very bottom so I can feel my feet on the bottom edge. Grandma scolds me for "being silly" and I just smile and pull the covers over my eyes. Grandma turns out the light, and in a wicker chair she puts in the middle of the room she sits.... I know this, she always does this, it is when she waits to think we are asleep and safe and then she will leave. I can see the moonlight peaking through the gap where our drapes come together. As the moon peaks through it catches her barely turned gray hair to a brilliant silver. I look at my grandma in the dark and feel so much love for her. I don't mind all the harsh words, or the occasional slap of my hands. I know she loves me back, she never says it, but I know it. She just gave me a patch of her OWN FLOWER BED. Clay had one a long time ago, but she finally gave me one early this summer where I got to plant poppies, and petunias, and violas, and these kinda cactus things she calls hen and chicks. I have to water it everyday, and that is how we spend our time together, in her yard digging up dandylions or planting flowers. She is so active, but now while we are suppose to sleep she is so still, I can trust her and know she will always be there. Ahh...but tonight she is going to go home when she thinks we are asleep, so if I stay up all night she won't leave. If I do that she will be mad...better to just quietly watch her and think. I don't have any other grandmothers, my other died and I don't remember her and my mother's father died a few years ago....grandma is special, she is my only one. So I watch her and at every move she does make I wince...I don't ever want her to leave. Finally I hear her make more movement than usual, and she gets up and walks out of the room, thinking we are asleep. If the lights were on she would see the tears staining my cheeks and know that in my heart I was screaming for her to stay.
The night is not over (and neither is this post...sorry but its my memory) Clay had stayed up as well that night. As soon as we hear grandma walk down the steps and out the front door, Clay is out of his bed and comes over to mine. GET UP! We are going to watch television......well that isn't such a bad idea, I love cartoons and I am not tired. Clay reminds me that if we get caught we are dead.........okay I can deal with dying for a little more Bugs Bunny. So we sneak into the living room, we are home alone and safe. Clay tells me to pull the drapes to the window that opens to grandma's house, we are not getting caught. We turn on the television, move the satellite dish and in a few moments we have Bugs Bunny. It's amazing, we are laughing and congratulating each other on a wonderful dupe of the adults. Its only midnight, and why should they be mad, as long as Dad doesn't find out we are safe. I have to use the restroom so I get up and head to the bathroom. I go through our empty parents room and turn on the bathroom light and sit on the toilet. Then I come back and we keep watching television. We are bolder now and turn up the volume, we are not getting caught, the drapes are pulled and they can't see the television on.
Was that a creek? No, our house moves all the time nothing to worry about. So it was as we were watching television the door to the second floor of our house flies open and in comes grandma.....she's pissed. GET BACK IN BED.....and so like quail we scatter. The television somehow gets shut off and we run back to our room. While we run I see that the bathroom light is still on....I'm an idiot, she must have seen the bathroom light through my parents window. So back in bed, we go, with grandma telling us how disobedient we are and how our father is going to spank us when he gets home. I settle back to the end of my bed, and safely nestled in listen as grandma continues to rave as she sits in the chair. While she sits and waits for us to sleep again I don't cry this time but smile.....I love her and I got to see her again and I know that she will be with me forever. I have a whole summer of planting flowers and eating watermelon with her, taking the nasty cod liver oil pills she makes me swallow and then eating kiwis together. My only concern and sleep enters my mind is what my father is going to do to me when he finds out what Clay and I did.
-Post script- When dad found out what Clay and I had done he surprisingly laughed. We come from a strict family, but I think my dad always enjoyed when we got the best of grandma and so we were not punished.
-Post-Post-Script- My grandma finally says I love you as you can tell from the parenthesis of present day thoughts. I almost did lose her when I was i college. We were not close then, she having been disappointed in my choices, but I still loved her. My mother called to tell me that grandma had been diagnose with skin cancer and the first procedure in Butte was botched and she wasn't looking likely to survive. I spent hours searching the internet to find something about cancer and learned about the treatment in of all places Billings. I remember calling Frances and crying with my aunt who hadn't talked to me in 2 years, the number of years I had been drinking and partying. She told me grandma would be fine and so when I called grandma afterwards, she acted as usual in her gruff manner till she broke down. We started saying I love you a lot after that day. Today, she is fine, with a scar across her cheek, more a hindrance to her vanity that to anything, but a lesson was learned to express our feelings. My grandma tells me she loves me every time we talk now, and I make sure I live my life in a manner so she knows I love her back. She is the third most important person in my life, after my parents, and she is my hero.
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