234
BOB HAU&EN
The first time I helped her, I held her hand. She asked me
to.
Every hunch back and jump two inches more she crabbed her nails
hard into my palm and by the time we got to her chair I was bleeding.
Now I carry her wrist. A bundle of wheatstalks moves under
it
where my thumb and finger touch. Her fingers keep moving, moving
the bundle under my finger.
"Here, Grandma." I help her scratch her fingers around the
chair arm. She cramps forward snuffling, sucking in the smell of
Grandma dying. She looks at me. I
try
to breathe easily through
my nose.
Grandma's face has aged mostly in its shape.
Her face skin
is
pale, yes, but tight on her bones and almnt
unwrinkled except around the shiny bulges we call Grandma's eyes.
Her face skin was put on by a careful embalmer. He didn't add color.
All he changed was the shape.
He pulled her chin out and pushed it up so the middle of the
crack that's her mouth (she has no lips left) pushes up and in, and
the edges of her mouth, because her lips were straight when she had.
them, bend down into the sides of her jaw.
Grandma sits down by herself, swiveling, buckling, rolling her
shiny bulges at me. Piss
is
rotting
th~ngs
in both our nostrils. Her
jaw moves. She rakes her arm up.
I give her my hand. "Grandma." I have nothing to say. I hold
my breath.
The flaps of burnt skin around them close off Grandma's eyes.
-
Her jaw hinges roll down a hole in the middle of her mouth. She
saps herself back into her chair, the eyeshutters roll back into her
head, her eyes point out the ceiling. She snakes her poker into the
cleft between the cushion smelling and the chair arm. The hands
droop.
"Grandma pissed her pants again!" I shout it.
Mother, setting the table, tips a glass of milk.
Father tramples the rug. "Haven't you got any sense, boy? She's
not that deaf."
"What should I say?"
"Oh, get out of the way if you can't be some help." He
bump'
me trampling to Grandma.
Mother has reached Grandma already, breathing through her
mouth, her arm stretching to touch Grandma's hand. Mother
makes
