Fight Night, page 2
Grandma said in Editorial Meeting that I should say “plug your piehole” silently to myself, if I have to, so I don’t get Mom riled up because Mom is city now and with Gord and everything. Grandma says that when Mom goes scorched earth our only hope for survival is to take cover in a different room and wait for it to blow over. For Pythia to stop ranting at Delphi. Grandma says I should try to turn Mom’s oracling into elegant hexameters like the Greeks did. She said a hexameter is a poem with a curse built into it.
Grandma has known Mom since Mom was born on the hottest day in history before the invention of fans and AC. The room was a furnace! said Grandma. Blood and fire! She said when Mom was born the doctor was so useless at removing babies from women that Grandma had to say to him would you please get your hands out of me and let me do this myself. Mom finally popped out angry and crimson-red, like a tiny Satan. When Mom goes scorched earth she swishes oregano oil around in her mouth to prevent her from saying horrible things she’ll regret and to boost her immunity even though there’s no scientific evidence that it does. Grandma told Mom today, before Mom went to rehearsal, that I hold it in when I’m doing the Sudoku in the morning and then I miss the boat. Mom said, What are you talking about, boat, and Grandma told her I have a fixation about finishing the Sudoku before I do anything, including Editorial Meeting and having a bowel movement, and then my stool retreats back inside me and colours my outlook for the whole day and is probably the thing that causes the Nike swooshes under my eyes. Swiv is sponsored by Nike? said Mom. Slay me. Mom stared hard at me like she was trying to see right through my skin to the piles and piles of built-up stool inside me. Then she said, Hmmm, just keep trying, Swiv. Just try to relax, sweetheart. She slid her thumbs along my Nike swooshes. She hugged me and then she left.
I don’t know why saying bowel movement and stool is better than vag and piehole. It doesn’t matter what words you use in life, it’s not gonna prevent you from suffering.
* * *
Two weeks ago Grandma gave her Winnipeg Jets sweatpants to a guy who came to the door and today when Mom and I were walking home from therapy we saw that guy sitting on the curb outside the 7-Eleven wearing them and singing “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” Then we looked even closer and we saw that Grandma was sitting on the curb too and also singing “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” Grandma wasn’t wearing her track suit or cargoes, she was wearing a short skirt and sitting with her legs apart because it was hard for her to sit on a curb and I could see her underwear, which gave me my nervous tic of coughing. Grandma loves to be naked. She proudly tells the same story to every new person about how she inadvertently did a strip tease for a guy in Mexico City and he really, really enjoyed it. Grandma and Mom argue about Grandma giving things away, but Grandma says after the doctors killed almost everyone she loved she had to ask herself how she would survive grief and her answer was Who can I help? Grandma says doctors killed her family. Doctors killed my husband. Doctors killed my sister. Doctors killed my daughter. When she says that, Mom quietly tells me not to say anything except yeah, it’s true. Or, I agree with you, Grandma. You’re right. If Mom or I say anything else, like how can that be or that’s an exaggeration or anything like that, Grandma will erupt and probably have a heart attack because she already has so much obsolete hardware in her chest and a long scar that runs down almost her entire torso like a zipper. Grandma says doctors killed everyone when she’s mad or when she’s drinking Mom’s special rum from Italy, which is just ordinary Canadian rum that Mom poured into a special Italian bottle. Sometimes Grandma cries. She feels guilty. Then Mom has to sit down and hold Grandma’s hands and run through every scenario with her to make her see that she’s not. Grandma only loves Dr. De Sica. He’s young and handsome and Italian. He’s keeping her alive. He checks in on her. When the phone rings Grandma says oh, is that my De Sica? When she goes to his office she acts tough. She lies. So De Sica has to guess what’s wrong with her.
When I help Grandma get undressed for her shower I run my finger down her scar and go zzzzzzzzip! Step out of your skin, ma’am! She sits on a plastic shower chair that Mom found in someone’s garbage—when Mom brought it home Grandma said ha ha, obviously someone around here bought the farm—laughing and laughing and I lather her up with lavender French soap her friend William gave her for helping him fight his landlord and write a letter to his arrogant brother. I have to lift up her rolls of fat to get in the creases and even wash her giant butt and boobs and the bottoms of her hard, crispy feet and her toes which twist around each other. Then I have to soak up the three inches of water on the bathroom floor so she doesn’t slip and fall because that would be the end, my friend, she says. Then I dry her off and brush her soft white baby hair and put the bobby pins back in to pull it away from her face because Mom gave her a ridiculous fashionable haircut called a Wispy Silver Bob that goes in her eyes, and put her hearing aids back into her ears which I hate doing because you really have to push them in there hard and I think I’m hurting her even though she says I’m not. And I have to help her get dressed in clean cotton underwear—I always have to tell her to put her hand on my back for balance so she doesn’t tip over when I’m scrunched around her feet trying to get them to go into the holes of her panties—and her track suit or her cargo pants which she likes because they can carry all her painkillers and her nitro spray and her whodunnit, which this week is called FOE, and extra hearing aid batteries around with her. Then I find her red felt slippers and her glasses which I clean with my breath and the bottom of my t-shirt and put a fresh nitro patch on her arm which blasts dynamite into her veins and I hold her hand all the way to her bed taking slow, slow steps because she’s dizzy from the heat of the shower and the exertion of laughing so hard.
When she starts snoring I sometimes smoke a Marlie from Mom’s pack that she stores in the top drawer of her dresser for the goddamn glorious day she’s not pregnant with Gord and not so exhausted. I go out on the back deck and take just a couple of puffs and I look at the sky. Or I throw clothespins into a pail and try not to miss. If I miss, you’re not coming back. If I get them all in, you’re coming back. I started with the pail in my lap so it was really easy not to miss but then it seemed too easy a way to make you come back and then you didn’t come back anyway, so now I keep moving the pail further and further away.
Grandma is supposed to sleep with this machine on her face that has a tube and a box filled with water so she doesn’t stop breathing, but she hates it. Grandma doesn’t move when she’s sleeping but Mom flings her arms and legs around and talks and yells in her sleep. Grandma says Mom has a tiny bit of PTSD still, plus she’s searching. I asked Grandma what Mom’s searching for and she said, Oh, you name it. PTSD and searching don’t end when we’re asleep. Mom and Grandma know things about each other that they just have to contend with because that’s how it is. They don’t mind. They know each other. I found a letter that Mom wrote you six hundred years ago about the way she likes to sleep but obviously you never got it or maybe you got it but left it behind because you’re travelling light.
In case you want to know about how Mom likes to sleep I’ll copy it out for you. (Mom doesn’t know how to spell so I fixed the mistakes.)
I don’t want to talk about this or argue about this cuz time is too short, but there were a bunch of things leading up to this…First of all you were so annoyed that I was up so late texting. I was texting with Carol about the very exciting news of Frankie’s new baby! The details. That’s Lidia’s granddaughter! Then you pretended that you weren’t annoyed but I could tell you still were cuz you yanked things around on the bed angrily. You said that I was rejecting your “tender” gesture of making the bed into something I hate. You making the bed was not tender! You know I don’t like to sleep stuck rigidly in an envelope unable to move around and the air pockets make me cold! Is it tender to force a person to sleep the way you want to sleep even when she hates it like that? Is that “tender”??? No, it’s not. You know it’s not. Then you stomp upstairs to sulk and sleep alone in your freezing cold envelope. Okay, hope you’re over it. I’m gonna sleep the way I want to sleep. It’s really not too much to ask to have my blanket and sheet a certain way. Have yours tucked in who the fuck cares! xox
Even when Grandma is fast asleep and snoring, if I put one finger gently on her shoulder she’ll burst to life and stretch her arms out to me and smile and say, Sweetheartchen! I ask her every time, Did you detect my presence? But she never hears me because she takes her hearing aids out to sleep and she just laughs and holds on to my wrists like they’re reins on a horse. She can’t believe she keeps waking up alive and is really amazed and grateful about it which is what all the pamphlets at therapy say we’re supposed to be feeling about every new day.
Naturally there’s a fucking conchigliette in my shoe! Those were the last words of Mom this morning before she slammed the door on her way to rehearsal. Grandma said, That’s a family classic, Swiv, write that down. Then Grandma shouted, Good luck! Have fun! Don’t work too hard! She says that every single time a person leaves. She says that where she’s from it’s the most subversive thing you can say because they didn’t believe in luck and fun was a sin and work was the only thing you were supposed to do. Almost every day Mom finds a conchigliette in her shoe or stuck to her script or somewhere else. It’s Grandma’s favourite food but when her arthritis is bad it’s hard for her to open the box and then when she finally gets it open the conchigliettes fly everywhere and I sweep them up but not very well because Mom always finds them in her stuff. The conchigliettes go into everybody’s stuff but Mom is the one who freaks out about it. Grandma loves them because they’re small and if she’s having one of her trigeminal neuralgia days she doesn’t even have to chew them, they just slither down her throat. Grandma is trying to find someone who will drill a hole in her head because she’s heard that’s the most effective way of getting rid of trigeminal neuralgia, which is nicknamed the suicide disease because it’s the most painful physical experience a human being can have and you just want to kill yourself. But nobody wants to drill a hole into Grandma’s head because of her age. They stop drilling holes into people at around age sixty. Remember that, Swiv! Grandma said.
After Mom left, Grandma asked me to write a list of her medications. Not in cursive, she said, print it out. None of those young ambulance drivers can read cursive, they think it’s Arabic, they’re just tap tap tap all day on their cameras. She means phones. I can’t read your old cursive either, I told her. She read the medications out loud to me so I could print them out.
Amlodipine 7.5 mg OD
Lisinopril 10 mg OD
Furosemide 20 mg OD
Pravastatin 20 mg OD
Colchicine .6 mg OD
Omeprazole 20 mg OD
Metoprolol 50 mg b.i.d.
Oxcarbazepine 300 mg OD
It’s funny that it says “OD” after every drug, I said.
That’s my back-up plan, she said. Just pulling your leg. She said it means One a Day.
What’s b.i.d.?
Bis in Die, she said. It’s Latin for twice a day. Grandma used to be a nurse. She got hazed by the older nurses in her first week of being a nurse. They threw her into a stainless steel tub and poured ether all over her until she began to pass out and freeze to death. She begged them to stop. She thinks this is one of the funniest things that’s ever happened to her. She organizes her pills into little groups, one of each, and puts them into the days of the week in her plastic pill box. Grandma says she has to keep doing this and not ever get so confused that she has to go to the bubble pack system, which costs money, so forget it. When she drops pills on the floor accidentally, if she notices she drops them, she says, Bombs away, Swiv! When I hear her say that, I come running and drop down onto the floor and scramble around by her feet picking them up and also picking up hearing aid batteries and conchigliettes and pieces from her Amish farm puzzle.
Today Grandma finally remembered I was supposed to be in school even though I’d already been home for fifty-nine days. Why aren’t you in school? she asked. I didn’t say anything because she sounded like a cop and she never answers their questions so why should I. Fighting? said Grandma. I didn’t move. Then I did what Grandma does when the cops come, which is she holds up an imaginary cellphone like she’s recording them. She said she already knew it must be about fighting because I kept coming home with dried blood on my face and bruises on my neck and tufts of hair ripped out of my head and my jacket missing an arm. Then we were quiet for a long, long time, just sitting there making small noises, not words. I put my fake phone on the table with a big swooping gesture like I was doing her a favour by not recording her anymore. I smashed breadcrumbs on the tablecloth with my thumb. Grandma shook her pill case a few times and lined up her mouse and pad and laptop in a straight row. I watched her fingers moving around on the table. Her nails needed clipping again. I couldn’t remember where I’d left the nail clipper. I looked at her face. She was smiling.
I’m glad you’re here with me, she said.
Madame said I had one too many fights, which if I knew the exact number of fights I was supposed to have then there wouldn’t be this bullshit, I said.
Hmmmmmmmm, said Grandma.
They said we’re communists which is why dad is being tortured somewhere.
He’s not being tortured anywhere, said Grandma. Who said that?
The kids I fought, I said. How do you know he’s not being tortured? I picked up my cellphone again and aimed it at her.
Grandma asked me if I wanted to continue our Editorial Meeting but I didn’t answer. Then she asked me if I knew what bioluminescence was. I smashed breadcrumbs with my thumb and kept my piehole shut. It’s one’s ability to create light from within, said Grandma. Like a firefly. I think you have that, Swivchen. You have a fire inside you and your job is to not let it go out. I’m too young to have a job, I said. There are fish that have it too, said Grandma. Ostracods. I clamped my mouth shut and folded my arms. First try, mister, she said. Okay, second try, mister: let’s go onto the roof instead. She said she wanted to go onto the flat part of our roof, the roof that’s over the kitchen and dining room upstairs and spell out the words REBEL STRONGHOLD with rocks or whatever we could find that wouldn’t blow away. She said Jay Gatsby will be able to see it. I had to go behind Grandma and push her up the stairs and remind her to keep breathing. She stopped on every stair and turned around to look at me and made big exaggerated breathing sounds to prove to me she was still alive. We don’t have rocks, I said. When we made it to the roof she said, How about we use those clothespins lying all over the back yard? I need them for other stuff, I said. Plus it would take a million of them. How about we use books instead?
That was not a good idea, holy shit.
Mom came home from rehearsal and noticed that her books from the special shelf on the third floor—which are supposed to be tight, no breathing room, and perfectly upright—were not on the shelf at all and she went into full-on scorched earth. What the holy hell! she yelled from up there. I hadn’t expected her to go to the third floor at all because of Gord and her exhaustion but she’d heard some beeping coming from a smoke detector and said for fuck’s sake, guess this is on me, because she knows I can’t reach it even if I stand on a chair, and then went stomping up there with a new battery. Now she was yelling that if I had pawned books from the special shelf she’d fucking lose her mind! Which I wanted to tell her was too late. She said this because one time I had pawned six of her reject books—not ones that came from her special shelf, but ones that were already in a fucking box to go to the diabetes foundation—so I could buy one goddamn Archie Digest which she disapproved of because of female stereotypes and would never give me money for! I yelled back from the bottom of the stairs. She yelled from upstairs, Those are books that help me to live! Those books are my life!
Get down here! I yelled back. I’m your goddamn life!
When she came downstairs I held out her oregano oil. Take it, take it, I said, so she could calm down but she threw it at the living room wall and the bottle broke and oil trickled down over that Diego Rivera print I got her in Detroit for her birthday with money from Grandma. Then she started to cry and told me she was so sorry, so sorry. I hugged her and said it was okay because the dripping oil added character to the print which is what she always says about things that get damaged. Like if I scrape an entire layer of skin off my face from falling on the ice in King of the Castle, which I am the champion of, she tells me having one less layer of skin adds character, and also her books weren’t gone, they were just out on the roof.
When Mom climbed the stairs and looked at the words on the roof spelled with her books, she put her hand on her mouth. She told me quietly from behind her hand that she would be downstairs and that I could gather up all of the books and put them back alphabetically on her special shelf, tight and perfectly upright. She was so eerily quiet. I wondered if Gord was afraid inside her. Right then I wanted to tell her that it was Grandma’s idea to spell out words on the roof but you don’t rat on a comrade. It was dark by the time I got all the books back into the house and alphabetical and tight and upright on her shelf. I went downstairs and Mom was making dinner and laughing with Grandma. I don’t understand adults. I hate them. I don’t know if Grandma took responsibility for her actions and confessed to Mom. Probably not. Grandma was the one who got me kicked out of school in the first place because she was the one who told me that people sometimes have to be punched in the face to get the message to leave you alone and not bully you, but only after double-digit times of trying to use words to no avail and only up to the age of ten or eleven. Don’t tell Mom I said any of that, she said. Because she’s a Quaker now or something. But you have to defend yourself.
