Introducing our guest, Rebecca Lacy!
The Challenge:
The Challenge:
In 3000 words or less, write about an
old woman who has a secret that she has kept from everyone. Now, as she
prepares for death, who does she tell her secret to? A granddaughter? A
nurse? What is her secret?
The Result:
Grandma’s Secret Life
Rebecca Lacy
It was the last day of school, and my friends and I were
ready to get the party started. I finally had my driver’s license, so it was
going to be the summer that I had been dreaming of since I was a little kid.
Then with one sentence, my mother totally destroyed all of my plans.
“Your grandmother is ill so you’ll have to go take care of
her,” Her tone left little room for argument. That didn’t stop me, though.
“Why should I go? Why don’t you go? Better yet, send Greg.
He’s the only one she really likes.”
“You’ll have to take a bus. There’s one that leaves tomorrow
afternoon,” she said, ignoring my suggestion.
“Hello! Did you hear anything that I just said? I don’t want
to go. I have plans.”
“It wasn’t a request, Jennifer. You better go do your
laundry so you can pack.”
“She’s your mother! Why don’t you go?” I demanded in my most
authoritative voice, but I knew that I was wasting my breath. Francis – I
always referred to my mother by her first name because it drove her crazy –
hated her mother. She would never go if there was any way to get out of it.
The only good thing about being shipped off to take care of
my sick grandmother was that I wouldn’t have to deal with my mother for a
while. The only problem was that dear, sweet Grandma was just like Francis,
only on steroids. This was going to be utter hell.
I knew that my fate was sealed, but figured that I would try
one more thing to get out of it. My brother actually liked the old bat. Maybe
he would go in my place.
“Yeah, I heard. It’s awful. The doctors don’t think she’ll
live much longer.”
“What the…Francis didn’t tell me that part. She just said
that Grandma’s sick. If she’s that bad, why isn’t she in the hospital?”
“Because she wants to die at home. She would hate being in
the hospital,” Greg said shaking his head. I could tell that he was really sad
about her dying, and I saw my chance.
“You should be the one to go to her. She won’t want me
around. That’ll be worse than going to the hospital. She hates me!” I held my
breath hoping that my ploy worked. It didn’t.
“I would go, but I have to work this summer or I won’t have
money for tuition next year. Mom can’t afford to pay it, so there’s no other
option. Besides, Grandma doesn’t hate you.” Yes she does.
I was desperate, so I said in my sweetest voice, “I’ll work
for you all summer, and save every penny that I earn.”
“It won’t work,” he responded, destroying my summer plans.
“It wouldn’t be fair to you…”
“Yes it would,” I interrupted. Greg gave me his best big
brother look, and I shut up.
“As I was saying, it wouldn’t be fair to you.” Seeing that I
was ready to butt in again, he held up his hand to stop me, and continued,
“Besides, you couldn’t make as much money as I can, and I need all I can get
for next fall. I’m sorry Jenny. I know you don’t want to go, but it’s the only
option.”
“It’s not fair!” Even to my own ears, it sounded juvenile,
and I didn’t want to sound like a kid. I wanted to sound grown up so that I
would be taken seriously. Feeling sulky I asked, “Then why can’t Francis go?
Grandma is her mother after all.”
Greg gave me a hug and told me what I already knew, “She has
to work, too. Besides I think Grandma would rather have you there than Mom.”
And so it was that the next afternoon I was on some crappy
bus headed to Arizona. It took me almost three days to get there. Francis had
lied about my age so I could travel by myself. I seriously thought about
telling them how old I really was and blowing the whole thing. She would have
been so pissed if I had done that! I decided not to because I thought it would
be kinda cool to be on my own for a few days.
When I arrived in Phoenix, a lady named Maxine picked me up at
the bus station and drove me out to Grandma’s house. It’s a weird place where all the houses look
alike and they all have yards of white rock instead of grass. Old ladies with
lavender hair drive around in golf carts stopping in the middle of the road to
chat with other old ladies with lavender hair.
My grandmother was asleep in her recliner when we got there.
Maxine woke her up, and Grandma looked at me like I was there to rob her or
something. It made me feel very uncomfortable and I silently swore at my mother
and Greg for making me come. I mean, she didn’t even say hello. She just
started right in: “So, Francis sent the girl to do this nasty job. I guess she is pretty busy. I wouldn’t want to
interrupt her to come take care of her dying mother.” For a second, I felt like
I should defend Francis, but really I had to agree with my grandmother, so I
didn’t say anything.
Over the next few days I fell into a routine that wasn’t as
bad as I had thought it would be. Grandma spent most of her time asleep in her
chair. She snored so loud that I just hung out in my bedroom and watched TV to
drown out the sound. My chores were easy: cleaning house, doing laundry,
watering her one plant, and fixing our meals. Sometimes I would help her to the
bathroom, and that kind of freaked me out at first, but after a while I got
used to it.
One day, when she was being particularly bitchy, I asked her
the question that I had wanted to since I was about six years old. “Grandma,
why do you hate me so much?”
You should have seen the look on her face! It was like I had
called her a whore or something. She was shocked and for once she didn’t have
anything to say – she just stared at me with her mouth hanging open looking
sorta dumb.
“It’s ok Grandma. I don’t mind, I guess. I mean it’s
something that I’ve always known just like you and Francis know that you don’t
like each other. I just want to know why.”
She swallowed hard and just kept staring at me. I was
starting to worry that she had had a stroke or something. Finally, she said in
a voice that sounded strange, “I don’t hate you or your mother. I love you
both. Why would you say such a thing?”
“Well, because of how you always have treated me. I mean,
with Greg, you hug him and laugh when he tells you a story even if it isn’t all
that funny. Mom told me that when he was little you took care of him and you
always gave him presents, but you never did that stuff for me. Then when she
got pregnant with me, you told her that it wasn’t fair to Greg, and you were
mad at her for a long time. She told me that you never forgave her for having
me. That sounds to me like you don’t like me.” When I had said my piece, I
stood with my arms folded, looking at her as if to say, “Well, what do you have
to say to that, old lady?”
“What nonsense!” she exclaimed, the anger evident in her
voice. “The only reason that I was close to Greg and not you was that Francis
made certain that I never had the chance. She wasn’t about to make the same
mistake that she had with Greg. She was jealous of the relationship that he and
I had, and frankly, I can’t say that I blame her.”
After several seconds she continued her voice calmer than
before, “It’s true that I told her that it was irresponsible for her to get
pregnant. That was because she and your father weren’t getting along, and I
figured that she would end up having to raise you kids alone. Having Greg would
have been difficult enough, but having a new baby as well was more than I
thought she could handle. When I told her that, she was so angry that thought
she would never speak to me again.”
“But you were right about her and dad. They broke up right
after I was born. I always thought it was because he didn’t want me.”
“Nope. They were on the ropes long before you entered the
picture. I shouldn’t say this since he’s your father, but he’s a worthless
SOB.” That was certainly no secret.
“When I told your
mother what I thought of him, she couldn’t say enough in his defense. I should
have kept my big mouth shut. If I had, she probably wouldn’t have married him.
‘Course, he did do one thing right – he fathered you kids.”
She closed her eyes and I thought she must have gone to
sleep, but then out of the blue she said, “I never liked for people to get too
close to me. Francis included. I thought that if people knew too much about me,
they wouldn’t like me. Francis tried to love me, but I didn’t make it easy for
her. Try to understand her, Jenny. She hasn’t had it easy.”
After that, she did go to sleep and I spent the afternoon
thinking about our conversation. It was hard for me to think of my mom as a kid
feeling unloved and unwanted. Up until then I had never considered that Francis
was raising me just like Grandma had raised her, doing the best that she knew
how. It made me feel a little sorry for her.
Over dinner that night, Grandma totally surprised me when
she said, “I’m sorry that I made you think that I don’t love you because I do.
Just don’t expect me to say it too often.” Then she started laughing so hard
that I thought she had lost it. “Oh, you poor child!” she said “How awful to
get shipped off to spend the summer helping some old woman to the bathroom who you
think hates you. You must have been so mad at your mother!” It sounded funny
when she said it and I started laughing too. It was the first time I remember laughing with
my grandmother.
After that, we began to build a relationship that should
have started when I was a kid. Don’t get me wrong: it wasn’t all ice cream and
cookies. We are both stubborn, and she could be a cantankerous bitch. At least,
I knew it wasn’t because she disliked me. Actually, we laughed way more than we
argued. She told me stories about Grandpa and showed me her old photo albums. I
told her about my friends and showed her the pictures on my phone.
The weeks went by fast, and I could see her getting sicker
every day. Hospice came in to help her, and Maxine was there often, but we were
alone at night. That was the hardest time for us both because neither of us
could sleep – Grandma said it was her memories that kept her awake at night. I couldn’t
sleep because I was afraid that if I did she might die all alone.
One night when I was reading to her, she stopped me and said
that she had a secret to tell me. I closed the book and bent forward so that I
could hear her better. Her voice had gotten much weaker in the previous few
days. She said it was God getting her ready to come to him.
“Jenny,” she began, “there’s something that I’ve never told
anyone, but I think you need to know so that you can tell your mother. Perhaps
it will help her to understand me, and then maybe she won’t hate me so much.” I
started to protest, but she just waved me off saying, “Don’t argue. I don’t
have the strength for it.”
“People are a lot
more open these days than they used to be,” she began, but I didn’t know what
she was talking about. Seeing this, she
added, “Folks now aren’t so quick to judge others for being different, but it
wasn’t always that way. When I was young, there were prohibitions against so
many things. A woman who had a child out of wedlock disgraced not only herself,
but her whole family. Now it’s commonplace. People even go on television and
argue about who the father is. Imagine that!” She paused for a bit, and I
expected her to reveal that she had been pregnant when she and Grandpa married.
I could just see how a secret like that would have been a real scandal back in
Grandma’s day even though it’s no big deal anymore.
However, she went on, “Did you know that it was illegal for
a black person and a white person to marry?” I nodded, and she continued, “What
was even worse was for two men or two women to love one another.” I held my
breath waiting for what she would say next. “Your grandfather was a fine man,
and we loved each other dearly – just not in the way that husbands and wives
are supposed to love one another. Both of us knew from the time that we were
kids that we were different, but we understood each other. So, we decided that
we would get married, and hide who we really were behind a curtain of respectability.
It was the only way we knew of back then. Our families would have disowned us
if we had been honest, and Gordon would never have been able to get a decent
job if people knew the truth.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! “Grandma, are you
telling me that you and Grandpa are gay?”
“That’s what I’m saying. Queer as a three dollar bill as
they used to say.” This tickled her and she laughed until she lost her breath.
After resting for a few minutes, she continued, “Your mother
will shit when you tell her this. Luckily I’ll be dead by then.”
“Grandma, how did you…?” I couldn’t quite find the words to
ask the question that I wanted to.
“There was so much pressure on us, and we thought some
people suspected the truth. So, we needed a kid to get everybody off our backs.
We did what we had to do, and your mother is the result.”
She paused, deep in thought, and then said. “Poor little
Francis! I didn't want a baby. That was never the plan for my life. She was
only a part of the cover I needed to hide who I really am. After she was born,
I loved her more than I could have thought possible. But she would look at me
with her big brown eyes, as though she could see into my soul, and I was afraid
she would learn the truth. So, I pushed her away, and she never knew why.”
“Why haven’t you told her?”
“I couldn’t. I lived the lie too long.”
I could see that she was sad, and I didn’t want her to spend
the last of her life feeling bad, so I suggested as cheerfully as I could,
“Let’s call her now and you can tell her.”
“No, please don’t tell her until I’m gone then you can tell
her everything, especially that I loved her and that I’m sorry that she never
knew it. Right now I need you to call Maxine. She has offered her love to me
for years and I was a foolish old woman and ignored her. I need to tell her
that I love her too before it’s too late.”
Maxine and I were by Grandma’s side every minute for the
remaining hours of her life, and we cried together as she slipped away. After
the mortuary people came and got Grandma, Maxine opened a bottle of champagne
and poured some for each of us to toast Grandma. It was my very first taste of
champagne.
“Here’s to Mattie Farber!” Maxine said. “You were a feisty
woman, but I loved you. Godspeed, Mattie.” I lifted my glass, but the lump in
my throat made it difficult to swallow the champagne.
My mom and Greg arrived the next day and Maxine took me to
the airport to meet them. When I saw my mother, I ran to her and threw my arms
around her and cried, “I miss her so much!”
“You miss your grandmother?” That news totally bewildered
her.
“Of course,” I replied, wiping my nose on the tissue she had
handed me. “We have a lot to talk about, Mom.”
My grandmother gave me a wonderful gift this summer. Mom and
I are learning to like each other, and I don’t think that would have happened
without Grandma sharing her secret. Then last night, I saw my mom smiling as
she sat on her bed looking at an old photo album. That’s something she never
used to do. I hope that means that she has forgiven Grandma.
I missed out on a lot of fun with my friends this summer,
but I’m not unhappy about it. We can do all that stuff next year, but I’ll
never have another opportunity to spend time with my grandmother, who taught me
a little something about love.
For More on Rebecca Lacy:
For More on Rebecca Lacy:
www.twitter.com/ralacy
No comments:
Post a Comment