Grandma Rae didn’t care much about the cleanliness of the house. It wasn’t discouraged, but it certainly wasn’t encouraged either. In the summer time she kept all of the windows closed and turned up the air conditioning because she didn’t like to sweat. It made her feel slimy. If she owned a pair of shorts, she never wore them. Most of her clothes were cotton with stitched on flowers or little yellow ducks. All of them were at least two sizes too big because she didn’t want anyone else to see the evidence and sag of old age. Grandma kept her house stocked with lamps, she liked to buy ugly and tacky lamps. Going to the flea market was a permanent weekend event for Grandma. Shortly after I moved in with her, I woke up to find a lamp with a multi colored stain glass base and a saran wrap looking shade in the shape of an umbrella residing on the coffee table next to the lemons. Grandma liked lemons.
My Mama dropped me off at Grandma Rae’s before she went to work on the days when I was sick. I was sick a lot as a child due to a weak immune system. I had infections galore. But that time Mama put me in the car with a suitcase, and I didn’t feel sick, just tired. The sun hadn’t even come up yet. In my memory I fell asleep against the car window wearing the pajamas with jungles animals on them.
Mama had wanted to put me to bed early that night. It was a few weeks after the men in the uniforms had left the house. They were already at the kitchen table with Mama when the baby-sitter had brought me home.
It was the same uniform that my Daddy wore sometimes when he went to work. There were two of the men, and they held their hats in their hands as they spoke to my Mama. Mama sounded angry. She told me to go to my room when I got home, but I could hear her yelling at them through the walls. They apologized over and over, but I wasn’t sure what they had done wrong.
I always did what I was told. So I worked on a puzzle in my room. It was a real stumper too. It was a picture of a seaside home. Most of the actual photograph was sand and beach, all one color. It was a trial and error sort of process. The sole on the bottom of their shoes squeaked when they walked over the tile floor and out of the screen door. When the screen slammed shut against the door frame the entire house rumbled. I heard her go into her own room and turn on the shower, and I heard her sniffle and blow her nose. But when she came into my room an hour or two later she was wearing the same clothes and her hair wasn’t wet.
“Hey kiddo, how’s the puzzle coming?”
“It’s hard.” I was hunched over the puzzle pieces on the floor under the window, and Mama sat down on the edge of my bed. She pressed her knees together hard, so hard that her knee caps were turning red. “Ben,” when I turned to look at her she patted her hand on the bed, motioning for me to sit down next to her.
The skin around her eyes was red and puffy, and underneath her eyes here were black flecks from her make-up. Mama kept sniffling, and the tip of her nose was red and raw from tissues. When I sat down next to her she put one hand on the top of my head gently ruffling my hair and the other rubbed a small circular pattern into my back.
“Are you hungry?”
“Yeah, what are we eating?”
“I think I’ll order a pizza. Does that sound ok with you?” Mama ordered a pizza over the phone from the kitchen. She changed into sweat pants and an oversized t-shirt, but Mama always wore nice clothes. Mama didn’t wear t-shirts and sweatpants except for when she was sick or going to bed.
Even though I was always supposed to eat my dinner at the table, Mama said we could eat our pizza on the couch that night. She set the pizza box on the coffee table in front of us, and we ate the pizza from the couch using just our hands, not even plates. I sat on the edge of the couch with my pizza in hand watching the television, even though I didn’t know what was on or what was going on. But mama stayed further back in the corner of the couch with her legs pulled up close and tight to her body. Mama was quiet too, she hardly said a word. She put the pizza to her lips without looking at it, and stared at the television without a word. Mama was quiet and different, I was afraid to ask her for a glass of water.
I always thought Mama was a little bit magic. In the evenings we always made a mess. She made her mess in the kitchen making dinner, and I reciprocated by making a mess while eating. Daddy used to yell at me because I was always getting food all over the table. And she never made me take my plate into the kitchen. “I’ll take care of it later, go play in the living room.” But when I went to the living room, Mama went with me. Sometimes we played board games, but usually we just watched television. When I lay down on the couch I’d grab the neatly folded blanket from the back of the couch and tangle it around my limbs. When Mama told me to go and get ready for bed, I did. When I got my pajamas from the bottom dresser drawer, I left clothes I’d worn that day on the ground. I pulled down the folded bedding and coiled into the soft bedding.
But when I got up in the mornings, everything was different. My dishes from the night before were gone. Not in the dishwasher, but clean and back in their place in the cabinet. Our table was spotless, as was the stove and kitchen counters. The board games were back in their place in the closet, and the blankets had been refolded and draped across the couch. It was truly impressive. And on top of all of that, when I came out of my room in the morning, not only was everything put back in its place, but Mama also had breakfast on the table waiting for me. Every single time. And better yet, when I finished breakfast and went to my room to change out of my pajamas, the bed was remade, and all of my clothes had been hung up.
I never caught her doing any of it. Only one time did I ever see her hanging up some clothes in my bedroom. Sometimes I tried to listen for it. After she put me to bed, I’d stay up listening to hear her putting away dishes or running the dishwasher, but I never did. And, still it was immaculate by morning. Until the men in the uniforms came to our house. The morning after that, everything was the same. Everything seemed a strew. And by the evening the dinner dishes from the night before had only moved from the table to the kitchen sink. A week later, most of our dishes were sitting in the kitchen sink. My clothes had begun to pile up on the floor. And in the evenings Mama sat on the couch alone watching television.
