Tina hears the thumping noises of her grandmother's footsteps and she
begins to predict the
future. The footsteps mean that her grandmother is agitated again,
and Tina is about to get
yelled at. Tina's facial muscles twitch and she feels a churning in
her stomach. She hunches
her shoulders, sinks down in the sheets, and tries to hide, so to become
a tiny, little lump in the
bed, hoping to be invisible. She sucks in her breath as she hears the
footsteps in the hallway
out side the bedroom door. She fears that she can't - but knows she
must continue to stay in
her grandmother's house. But, how can she? She feels, she can't and
be afraid this way? She
skulks about the house, moves in every shadow she can find. She avoids
eye contact with her
grandmother and tries to avoid anyone who comes to her grandmother's
house. This is a fretfully
worrisome way to stay alive until her parents come for her. To her
young mind, it seems like
she has been living afraid forever. Already, she has spent three weeks
living in her grandmother's
house. She is convinced that everything in the house, including the
furniture, is determined to
subdue her. The ugly walls want to smother her.
When she goes to bed she can hear her grandmother moving about, and
she worries that
her grandmother's friends might come sneaking into her room. To hide
from them, she slides
down in the bed under the blanket and covers her head. She prefers
the darkness under the
covers. She dreads sleeping with her head uncovered, making herself
an easy target in the
glow of the night light her grandmother keeps on in the room, for her,
her grandmother
says. She thinks the light is there for her grand mother and her grandmother's
friends to spy
on her.
She worries: What if her parents never come back? What if they know
how hard their little
girl finds living in her grandmother's house, and they don't care?
She wonders. Certainly, they
will return. After all, she is their daughter. Their only child. They
know how horrible life is
with the grandmother. Her mommy called the woman "an old bag." Her
daddy called the
woman "an old busy body." They placed her in the woman's house because
there is no place
else for her to go. How could she survive if she didn't have her grandmother's
house as a
place to stay until her parents' return? The house is a roof. The house
is shelter, four-walls
from the cold outside. It is too frightful a thought to think, yet
she knows it could easily
happen. Any day, her grandmother could explode and kick her out before
her parents return.
She knows of her grandmother's terrible temper.
Her mommy told her of the time the woman exploded violently. When her
mommy was a
little girl, her mommy was a pretty girl with long bangs. Her mommy
was very proud of those
bangs, and spent hours admiring them and herself in the mirror. Well,
the woman asked her
mommy to do something that her mommy didn't do and so as punishment,
the woman sat
down in a chair, grabbed her mommy and using clippers cut off her mommy's
bangs. Her
mommy cried and screamed. Her mommy said the tears came like rain.
After her mommy told her that story, Tina disliked the old woman thoroughly.
Sleeping in the old woman's house is a particularly hard ordeal for
Tina. Tina has bangs like
her mommy had as a little girl. And, Tina has seen that gray straw-like
wire peeping from
under the old woman's wig, and feels that the old woman is probably
jealous of little girls'
bangs. She has seen her grandmother without the creams and preservatives
the old woman
puts on her face. She glimpsed that moldy face in all its horror going
into the bathroom early
one morning last week, and she trembled and sneaked away, quietly,
back into her room so
that the hag face old woman wouldn't know that Tina has seen the ugliness.
Tina just knows,
the old woman doesn't like her. The old woman gives Tina shelter, and
feeds her, but stares at
her while she eats like she is stealing food.
She trembles as she thinks further of her grandmother and her grandmother's
friends. She
heard them talking. The first week after she came, she heard her grandmother
talking about
her to another fat old lady, a friend of her grandmother's. Tina's
head aches at the thought
of being talked about. Her mind fills with the awful memory of her
of getting up in the middle
of the night to go to the bathroom to pee, and of hearing her grandmother
down stairs talking
about her like she is a thief.
"I can see, I'm going to have problems with that grand daughter," her
grandmother said. "When
she gets up to some size she's going to be a bitch ..."
A bitch, the old woman called her. Tina mumbled.
Her grandmother, calling her a nasty name in the middle of the night
hurt. Tina wondered
what names her grandmother must be calling her during the day. She
listened, feeling pain
and fear, but sort of,[ kind of], glad that she woke up to catch her
grandmother in the act of
disrespecting her. Tina felt that there was no reason why she should
try to be nice to the
old woman.
The two old bitties were telling one another of how hard it is now-a-days
to communicate
with grand children. Her grandmother said, "I do every thing for that
child I can: I cook
for her, I lay her clothes out, make sure she has clean socks and underwear,
I leave them
on the bed ..."
Tina was horrified. Her grandmother was discussing her underwear! Tina
felt as though
her grandmother was discussing executing her.
"That child's always winding and complaining," Tina's grandmother said.
"Saying, we don't
do it like that in my house, we don't cook like that, we don't make
it like that."
Tina listened. Her grandmother's fat friend made a snort like a pig.
It sounded to Tina as
if the old women were either snacking or drinking.
Tina's grandmother said, "The child's always winding about I don't do
this right, or that, in
my house. I felt like telling her to get the hell out of my house."
"You didn't?" the fat friend asked.
"I felt like it," Tina's grandmother replied, and both of the old women laughed.
Tina eyes began to tear. They were now laughing at her. She was angry,
so angry that
she turned around and knocked over a broom that her grandmother had
unintentionally
left in the hallway at the top of the stairs. She became terrified
that they would discover
her easedropping. She cowered for a moment, standing still in fear,
but they hadn't heard
the broom fall, they hadn't stopped their laughter and chatter. Tina
thought that there have
to be places where she could go where staying out of the way until
her parents returned
wasn't so difficult.
She wondered why her parents sent her to her grandmother. She was a
good child. She
didn't think that she could have done anything to merit this punishment.
She wondered why
her parents were being so mean to her by taking so long to return.
They weren't mean like
her grandmother. They wouldn't leave her unless something was to matter,
unless they had
no choice. She wondered: What were they supposed to do? They had to
leave her somewhere,
where she could sleep and eat. She doesn't blame her parents, and thinking
about them only
makes the wait longer. She has told herself often that she won't think
about them, that they
will come when they will come. She is a big girl and not a baby. She
won't cry. She will fend
for herself, with and against the old woman, until her parents
return. So far, she has managed
to get through three weeks.
She feels certain that soon it will be the day that her parents will
return. Her parents will be
with her like they always were, and it will be like it has been always
since she can remember.
She just knows that soon they will come for her and take her home,
and like last year, they
will take her out to a big lot where there is a happy, smiling man
with red hair and a green
coat. In his lot are all the Christmas trees in the world. They will
buy a big one, take it home
and set it up with sparking lights and bright ornaments. They will
sing together, spend plenty
of time together. She will watch her mommy cook. Her mommy will cook
and cook and she
will eat and eat. In the three weeks she has been at her grandmother's
house she hardly ate.
When she does, she eats very little. Her mommy will come home and Tina
will eat and eat
and get some meat on her bones. Her daddy will lift her up, and then
will ask her to show
him her strength. She will flex her muscles, showing him the good use
her body puts to her
mommy's cooking. Her daddy will hug her, and her mommy, while holding
her, and she will
squeeze, tight, against them both and feel safe and loved.
She hunches down to sleep, hopeful that there won't be too many more
nights before the
morning daylight will bring the return of her parents. She hears her
grandmother coming
into the room. She holds her breath and waits for the old woman to
leave. A long moment
passes, but not long enough. Tina's grandmother sits on the bed and
pulls the covers off
Tina's head. Before Tina can speak, she cringes. Her grandmother flips
on the room's light,
and the brightness of a hundred watt bulb floods into the child's eyes.
Her grandmother laughs, "Caught you by surprise?"
Tina decides to yawn.
"Sleepy, sleepy head?" her grandmother ask. "Didn't you hear somebody
rummaging
around downstairs?"
Tina jumps up out of the bed as if she doesn't have time to get up without jumping.
"Mommy and Daddy!" she screams.
Her grandmother's face freezes. She looks unable to speak. She holds
her breath, hoping
to find words to say to the child. Before the old woman finds a single
word, Tina is off
the bed and is running down the stairs, happily skipping steps as she
hurries.
Tina is downstairs scurrying around, through the whole downstairs, running
this way and
that, and calling to her parents to come out and get her. She runs
from one room to the
other for ever so long. She thinks that her parents are playing hide
and seek. Finally,
she stops. Her grandmother is now downstairs. She asks her grandmother,
"Where is my
mommy and daddy? You said they be here?"
Her grandmother tells her that she is mistaken. Her grandmother does
not try to stop
her when she inches away and huddles in a corner, behind the big Christmas
tree her
grandmother has set up. The tree is tall, almost as tall as Tina's
daddy. It has silver bulbs
that shine and many flashing bright, red and yellow and blue lights.
There are boxes under
the tree, wrapped in bright shiny paper and filled with many things.
On some of these
boxes is written Tina's name. Tina does not look at these boxes, nor
does she look at the
many other gifts her grandmother has sat unwrapped about the room.
Tina stares in the
direction of the floor as she inches herself even further into the
corner.
Her grandmother tells her, "I would wake up your mama, very early, on
Christmas morning
like this, while it was still dark outside, as soon as Santa Claus
was gone, and she would
come running down those steps, her face all lit up, her mouth squealing
... And she would
attack the stacks of boxes with her name on them, and seeing her my
face would fill with
light and joy. I would squeal too ..."
Tina says, "My daddy's gonna pick me up."
Her grandmother sighs, "We've explained this. You know where your parents are?"
Tina does not reply.
Her grandmother asks, "What did you tell me? That they were in church sleeping?"
"My daddy's going to get me, take me in his car, and we're going home."
"They are gone, but we're not alone, we're safe and alive."
Tina lifts her chin. She looks up at the Christmas tree at its tallest
point, at the lighted
angel at its very top.
"Yes," she hears her grandmother say, "Your mama and daddy are in Heaven with God."
Tina snaps, "They're going to pick me up, they're coming for me!"
Tina's grandmother's patience snaps. "If they are, you let me know,
because I don't want
to be here when they get here, because they're dead, " her grandmother
was frowning.
"They're dead and they aren't coming back."
Tina's eyes waters and her grandmother flinches as if struck by a piercing
pain, and then
another, as Tina began to cry, " You, ugly, old thing, I want to be
with my mommy."
"Damn, " the old woman fusses. "I've no business keeping you, I'm too
old to raise another
child."
Tina is about to poke her tongue at the old woman, then she sees something
that the old
woman has kept hidden from view: tears. Tina's old grandmother is crying.
"Baby, baby," the old woman bawls and holds out her arms toward the
child. Tina stops her
own crying and takes a cautious step toward the old woman. Suddenly,
Tina finds herself
pressed into the old woman's sagging chest. She feels the wet face
of the crying old woman
pressing next to hers. She smells the woman's perfume, all musty and
hard to take, unlike
her mommy's sweet, pleasant scent. She is about to pull away from this
foreign chest and
run back into a corner when she hears the old woman sob, "I loved your
mama and I love
you."
Copyright (c) 1993 by Franchot Lewis
