There is the sound of continuous screaming coming out of Grandma’s bedroom from women having babies or from the babies themselves being forced to be born or from people being murdered or from people discovering the bodies of the murdered people. Grandma says British women sure scream a lot when they discover dead bodies. I would too, I told her. No, no, she said. It’s a body. It’s nuscht! Grandma rides her Gazelle for fifteen minutes while she’s watching her shows. She says hoooooo in between strides and afterwards, Goot, goot, goot. Gownz yenook. Only her dying and dead friends know her secret language. She takes lines from her shows and practices them on me all day with a British accent. Swiv, darling, we must make a dash for the continent!
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.