Fight Night(7)

2.

This morning the curtain to Mom’s bedroom, which is really a living room, which is why there isn’t a normal door, was torn off the curtain rod. The curtain rod was torn off the wall, the remote control was smashed and the battery was gone, the hairbrush handle was broken from being thrown at the cutlery thing in the kitchen, the cutlery thing in the kitchen was chipped from having the hairbrush thrown at it and the necklace that you gave her with our initials on it was ripped into a million pieces which in addition to hearing aid batteries, Grandma’s pills, Amish farm puzzle pieces and conchigliettes I now have to crawl around and pick up. It’s a good thing I can’t go to school anymore so I have all day for picking up everybody’s shit.

Before Mom went to rehearsal she grabbed me and pinned my head to her rib cage. I couldn’t escape. She said I’m sorry! I’m sorry! It was about her rampage. I made a joke but she wanted me to take it all seriously. It was too disturbing to take seriously. You’re up the stump, Mom, I said, you’re on an emotional rollercoaster! Were you talking to dad? I asked. Something like that, she said. Something like dad or something like talking, I said. She said, Something like all of that.

Mom told me and Grandma that she was going to a Russian spa and teahouse with someone in the cast after rehearsal today where she would be whipped with branches to get her blood flowing. Jack? I said. No, not Jack, she said. Jack is a character, Swiv! Be careful, Gord, I said silently. Mom said she wouldn’t sit in the hot tub because of Gord. Grandma said it was funny that a hundred years ago we—which doesn’t mean we—had narrowly escaped getting whipped and murdered by Russians and now Mom was voluntarily paying big bucks to get whipped and murdered by Russians. But she gets tea afterwards, I said. Mom said she’d prefer hot vodka although not this time because of Gord, who gets blamed for preventing Mom from doing every fun thing in life. Don’t smoke! I yelled at her. Then Mom opened the door and said what the hell is this? Grandma and I yelled RAIN at the same time. Mom stomped around looking for an umbrella that wasn’t broke to shit and Grandma called out, Bye! See you in the funny papers!

Today Grandma is feeling dizzy when she bends over. So don’t bend over! I said. She said she finally had an excellent bowel movement. It’s been six days. It’s not a record. What’s your record, Grandma? Ecuador in ’74 was a record. She asked me if I’d heard anything about the divine feminine. She said she should bring her crossword puzzle into the washroom with her more often. She couldn’t find her glasses or her address book. I held them up to her face. They were on the table in front of her. Well, of all things! I’m not with it today!

Then Grandma got talking for about one and a half hours, which took up all of Editorial Meeting, about her old life in that town of escaped Russians. She can’t believe she lived there for sixty-two years except for the few months she squatted in Berlin accidentally when she went to Germany to visit her older sister who was living in the Black Forest, which is the home of the cuckoo clock, she said. Mom should go there, I said. To the Black Forest? said Grandma. To the home of the cuckoo clock, I said. It makes me shudder! said Grandma. I was a maverick! She was talking about her town. It worked against us, she said. When she was a kid her father protected her from Willit Braun Senior, the uber-schultz of the village who was a classic tyrant, pompous, authoritarian, insecure, frustrated, self-pitying, resentful, envious, vain and vindictive, and with a mighty chip on his shoulder and dumb. Also, he embodied the fascist notion of a superior group, which he thought was us. Well, not all of us. The men among us. What a wingnut. You can write those things down, Swiv, she said. Just make a little note of that.

Well, I’m recording it, I told her. I held up my phone and she shook her head. Oh right, I always forget about your camera. Make sure it has juice. Was it a cult? I said. No, said Grandma. Well, yes, possibly. It was!

Grandma divides the people from her town into MB or EMC. She is EMC. She says the MBs think they’re the only ones going to heaven. They were also the first ones in town to sing in four-part harmony. For the EMCs that was a mortal sin until Sid Reimer’s dad brought it in to the church. And he brought a pump organ which was also a sin. He was very instrumental in moving the church forward.

When Grandma grew up, she protected herself from Willit Braun. And she protected Mom from him too, and everyone in her family, even Grandpa, who really liked that about her. He was all for it! He couldn’t fight for himself. He couldn’t do it. He would get very quiet and go for long, long walks. Very long walks. Sometimes until his feet bled. Talking about fighting and escaping reminded her of a friend of hers from that town who she and their other friend helped to escape from her violent husband. The woman’s daughter and her friends got together and hatched a plan to whisk her away to Montreal where the daughter lived in a loft apartment. But the friend felt so guilty she returned to the town and to her husband six months later. Then all the women prayed that he would die. What else could they do? And he did, eventually. It took five years. This can be today’s math class, said Grandma. If it takes five years to kill a guy with prayer, and it takes six people a day to pray, then how many prayers of pissed off women praying every day for five years does it take to pray a guy to death?

Grandma sorted her meds on the table with the edge of her credit card while she waited for my answer. Ten thousand, nine hundred and fifty prayers, I said. Whoa, she said. Am I right? I asked. Who knows, she said, I believe you!