Grandma Johnson

My Grandma Johnson has in a comfortable house with an olden-days look to it. The back yard stretches out forever, to a workshed that hasn’t been touched since my Grandpa died. There used to be all kinds of interesting tools and plumbing fittings in there. Now, I think, there’s probably nothing left except dust and poisonous spiders. The front yard has a big carob tree, that’s good for climbing. It’s got an oak tree, with acorns underneath. You have to wear shoes when you go out there though, because the oak leaves are prickly.

Inside, the furniture is green plush and maple tables, and a bookcase full of Readers Digest Condensed Books from the 50’s in one corner. There’s a cage with no bird in it (but the parakeet’s memory is still there in the pecked places on the arm-covers), and a record player that no one’s used in the entire time I can remember. The smell is dust from the air conditioner in the window, and a faint whiff of gas from the stove.

I used to visit my Grandma for a week every summer. We sewed stuff together. I explored in her neighborhood, and played with Johnny and Julie, who lived on the other side of the back fence. At first, it was pretty fun, but after a while it started getting uncomfortable. My Grandma told me things over and over. She forgot to ask me things like whether I still wanted the box of dolls I’d left there, before she gave them away. She did things like asking me to wrap presents, instead of Linda, who actually liked doing it, that told me she wasn’t even trying to understand me. There was one last summer that my sisters and I visited. It was historically exciting, because a neighbor’s house burned to the ground one night while we were there. – We heard he’d done it himself by putting a pie pan into the microwave oven, because he wanted the insurance money. – After that, there were no more visits.

My Cousin Eric came and lived with my Grandma. He was studying to be a cosmetologist. He styled her white hair, which was fluffy like a thistle, and so thin you could see her scalp underneath. Grandma stopped saying anything worth listening to. She stayed in the kitchen all the time whenever we visited. My mom said it was because her memory was failing, and she didn’t think she could handle a conversation.

Then Eric left and Chris moved in. Chris likes to grow things. He grows mushrooms in the refrigerator. His tomato plants grow hydroponically, upside-down. He buys sheep to keep the grass short by grazing, and one memorable, disgusting Easter, he tries to roast a leg from one of them, and it comes to the table blue-red and cold in the middle.

Grandma gets worse. She has a stroke, then another one. Her mouth sags on one side, and she can’t walk and has to use a wheelchair. My mom helps her when she goes to the bathroom.

The family has to find a nursing home for her. I hear news stories about what happens in nursing homes. People lie in the same position for so long they get bedsores, and then maggots grow in the bedsores. When we go to pick up Grandma for visits, I smell the odor of urine in the hallways. I look at the old people, with their stick-thin legs and their washed-out old dresses. Is this one of those kind of nursing homes, I wonder? Would there be any way for us to know if it were?

We go to Grandma’s house for every major holiday. We take Grandma out of thr nursing home and back to her house. She sits in the wheelchair and barely does anything. Sometimes she tries to say something. It comes out blurred and mumbly, because of the stroke, and usually it doesn’t make much sense. Her head’s always over to one side, with her pink scalp showing even more, through the few strands of her fluffy hair. Mama and Daddy talk to her. They give her tastes of all the best food on the table. She eats the food kind of greedily, and smushes of it come out of her mouth and fall onto her chin.

My Grandma scares me. I look at her, and it’s like looking at a dead person. She drools, and she needs help going to the bathroom. And when my mom takes her, I can’t help picturing the withered, useless flesh that’s underneath her dress. I wonder how Mama can stand to touch her.

At the same time, I feel guilty. This is my Grandma, who loves me. – Or loved me? That’s the part that bothers me, is I don’t know how much of her is still left. Maybe she really is the sloppy vegetable she looks like, but maybe the real Grandma is still there inside her. Maybe she just can’t express herself any more, but she’s really cringing with shame about her incapable body. I sit in the living room when we visit with Grandma. I keep a frozen smile, and I don’t read, because that would be rude. I want to stay there the whole time, but I can’t manage it. Pretty soon I run away with my sister Karen and we go walking around the neighborhood until it's time to leave.

I read Piers Anthony’s Xanth series. A friend of mine who loves fantasy recommends them to me and, though I don’t usually care for fantasy, I like the humor in these. I also like the zombie-characters. They’re decomposing, and their minds don’t function well any more, but they’re still accepted members of the community. And they’re happy. I think of my Grandma when I read about the zombies. It gives me the good feeling that I get when a problem is pressing, and I have a dream where it’s fixed. But as with the dreams, it doesn’t feel real. I put the books down as I finish them, and my worries about Grandma start right back where they were before.