Fight Night(13)

No! I said. That’s not even true. We had gills, said Grandma. Mom interrupted. Grandma and I smiled because we were so happy Mom was finally saying something. Why don’t you tell her about the time you stole a car, she said.

Ah! said Grandma. Now we’re talking turkey. I stole a car once accidentally from the Penner Foods parking lot and when I called Sobering the cop to report it, he asked me if I planned to return it. I said yeah and he said okay, good, not a problem. I told him that before I returned it I’d just quickly use it to run a few errands around town. Yeah, that should be fine, he said. Then I might drive to the city and catch a movie, I told him. Hmmmm, well, he said, that oughta be okay. And then, I said, it’ll be late so I might just drive home and return it in the morning, if that’s okay. Sure, said Sobering, sounds good. The real owner of the car will be asleep anyway. Oh, I said, I just remembered that tomorrow morning I’ve got a driving test. I had my driver’s license taken away six months ago for stunt driving and I have to re-do the test to get it back. Oh, said Sobering, right, you better do that first. You don’t want to be driving without a valid license.

Grandma was in fine fettle. She’d had a little bit of the Canadian rum from the Italian bottle but believe it or not for once she didn’t talk about the doctors murdering everyone. She got so carried away that she forgot to take her meds after dinner. Then she remembered. Her pill box was annoying her because the plastic lid of one of the days of the week was broken and pills kept falling out of it. Bombs away, Swiv! She yelled at me while I crawled around under the table looking for them. This one is tiny, white and round! This one is oblong and pink, with an indentation in the middle! This one is I don’t know what, it’s a pill! And don’t tell me it’s time for the blister packs! After her pills, Grandma made me go to her bedroom and get a box of photos. She showed me and Mom a photo of her old Russian ancestors. None of them were smiling. It looked like they were arranging themselves to be executed. Grandma said the names of each of them and how they were related to us. Mom was getting bored and texting with someone but also lifting her head quickly in between texts to look at the picture for one second. This one with his hand on the old woman’s shoulder is her son, said Grandma. He’s old, too. The old woman was the only person sitting in a chair. The rest of them all stood around her or behind her. This young girl with her hand on the old woman’s other shoulder became my grandmother, said Grandma. At the end of her life she was enormous. We used to float around together on Falcon Lake. I really loved her. This boy here had problems with his blood. And look at the old woman in the chair, said Grandma. I poked Mom so she’d stop texting and look. She’s dead, said Grandma. What do you mean? I said. Mom said, Let me see that, and she picked up the photo album and held it closely to her face. Well, she’s just dead! said Grandma. That’s how it was done then. Photos were forbidden but sometimes, especially after somebody had died, people regretted that they had no picture to remember them by, so they quickly got a photographer to come and take a picture before the person was buried.

Mom and Grandma got talking about other things and the whole time they were talking the photo album lay open on the table with the picture of the dead woman. I tried not to look at it but I couldn’t stop myself. Mom and Grandma didn’t care. They made jokes about it. They didn’t look at it while they talked. I tried to make the times I didn’t look at the picture longer and longer. I counted seconds. But I kept having to look. I looked at the young girl who was Grandma’s grandma! Her hand was on a dead person.





4.

This morning I went downstairs and found Grandma lying on the kitchen floor. She was singing. Grandma! I shouted it. Oh! said Grandma. Good morning, sunshine! What are you doing! I said. Just resting, she said. No! I yelled again. Grandma! What are you doing? She laughed. She said hooooooo. I was helping her up. What happened! I said. She said, na oba, jeepers creepers, where’d you get them peepers. I was mad. Cool your jets! said Grandma. Nothing happened! Nuscht! I just fell. Oba! Not a problem, not a problem. I helped Grandma walk to her chair and sit down properly. She was trying to breathe and laugh and talk.

What happened is that the wheel on her walker came off, and so she fell. Usually she doesn’t need her walker but today she needed it because of her ridiculous foot business. She didn’t fall hard. She fell in slow motion, but she couldn’t get back up. She tried to but she couldn’t. She decided to pass the time by singing hymns in her secret language. She sang a hymn about the Lord. The translation was: I can’t take another step without you, Lord. Then she realized that was literally true and she started laughing and couldn’t stop. It was the funniest thing that had happened to her in years, since the time she got stuck between the pews in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and not counting being hazed at nursing school. She could see the clock on the stove. It was really early, and me and Mom were still sleeping. She decided to call out my name and Mom’s name every fifteen minutes. We didn’t hear her. She had no air to shout. She only had enough air to sing and laugh.

Today I was Grandma’s human walker. She stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders and we shuffled slowly from room to room. Conga line! said Grandma. It’s just one of those things. I called Mario and he’s going to come here and fix her wheel. He said he’s going to bring some of Joe’s fresh corn for us. After breakfast and dropping pills and showering and shuffling around Grandma was so tired she needed to lie down for a bit. I lay down beside her. I squeezed in between her and a bunch of her books and clothes that are always on her bed and never move an inch, even when she’s sleeping in bed next to them. Grandma uses an obituary of Auntie Momo as her bookmarker. It’s getting ragged. Grandma wants me to laminate it for her. We lay in bed and watched Call the Midwife. Grandma told me about different types of difficult births that she had scrubbed for when she was a nurse. We were quiet together, holding hands and breathing.