MY GRANDMA
235
soft noises. "I hope I've got some dry underthings to put on her."
"Get out of the way. You've done enough trouble." Father
moves Grandma's fingers around her cane and lifts her out of her
chair.
"He was talking to me."
Mother stops her mouth wobbling. "I know."
The
~ds
are wiping the milk
all
over the table with their hands.
Father carries Grandma toward her bedroom, cane dragging,
and Grandma rolls her eyes at me. Mother putters behind carrying
Grandma's shirt sleeve.
Grandma makes lipless gaps in the edges of her mouth. Only in
the edges. Mother said once, she's trying to smile when she does that.
Grandma keeps facing me until it bends her neck too much.
, "Well, don't just stand th!!re staring at me. Damn you. Get that
stuff cleaned up." The kids are still standing there, staring at me.
"Damn you.
If
you can't do anything around here I'll have to do
it myself."
I am Father. I trample into the kitchen and rip half a dozen
paper towels from a pink dispenser, then snort to the table and soak
the towels
'in
milk.
Lloydie brings more towels when the first batch
is
soaked and dumps the wet ones in the garbage like a good boy.
"Thanks, Lloydie. Thank God somebody can work around here."
Mother putters from Grandma's bedroom into hers and leaves
Grandma's bedroom door swung open.
The room's walls
e-e
brown and the light, white in the ceiling,
hangs
green blotches in the air. The flimsy dress and brown stockings
and some yellowed things are pasted, where they are wet, to the bed.
Father collects them and walks down the hall out of sight.
Grandma is alone in the room, and she has no clothes on.
Grandma is reaching over the sacks of breast floating in her
belly, wiping her fingers into the slags of her groin, pokering one
snarled finger, two, three, four, into the wetness of the prune under
the grey matted hairs under the white grey blue pink poached bag
of her body. She is whimpering.
She
is
looking at me.
The soaked towels. "Lloydie dump inna garbage!"
Mother putters back with dry underthings to put on Grandma
(Shut the door, Mother!) and shuts the door.
