I pushed her down a ramp. She sped up and I had to run to hang on. Her red purse strap fell off my shoulder and I took one hand off the wheelchair for a second to put it back onto my shoulder. Then I lost control of the wheelchair and Grandma went shooting off down the ramp. Wow! she was shouting. She said things in her secret language. Na oba heat ex sigh! She was picking up speed. I ran to catch up with her but that stupid red purse strap got tangled around my waist and then Grandma hit a fucking Body Shop stand with her wheelchair. The stand fell over and creams and soap bombs flew everywhere. A man tried to grab the handles on her wheelchair but he missed and she went flying past him. It looked like she might tip over onto two wheels. I was running. I heard Mom calling my cellphone. I knew it was Mom from the ring tone. It was a song called “Fever.” Finally Grandma stopped beside a water fountain that was just the right height for a person in a wheelchair to have a drink. Grandma leaned over and had a long drink of water, then she sat there smiling calmly as if this had been her final destination all along.
The Body Shop lady came out of her store and said, What’s going on here? I ran over to her and told her my Grandma had hit her stand. I helped her pick up some creams and tubes and shoved them back on the stand. When I finally reached Grandma she looked so happy. She was very proud of herself. What took you so long? she said. I was huffing and puffing. Maybe you should use some of my nitro spray! she said. Here, have a drink! She pointed at the water fountain.
I threw her red purse into her lap. Why can’t we just do things normally! I said. I didn’t know what I meant. Grandma made her face small and I knew she didn’t know what I meant either. I sat down on top of Grandma and her purse and cracked the knuckles on both of my hands. I heard “Fever” ringing on my cellphone again. Grandma rubbed my back.
An airport person came up to us and asked us if we needed help. No! I said. Well, said Grandma, we do need to get to our gate quickly. The woman put her pinkies in her mouth and whistled, and a cart that was zooming along slammed on its brakes and stopped right beside us. So far in my life that whistle was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. We piled the suitcases and my backpack and Grandma and her red purse and me onto the cart and took off for our gate. Grandma was still talking. “Fever” was still playing on my cell. I switched it off. Stop talking, Grandma! Just catch your breath! She pretended to obey me. She clamped her mouth shut and opened her eyes wide. She reached out her hand into mid-air and grabbed some pretend breath. Okay, I caught it! she said. She held it in her hand. I got it right here! I didn’t laugh. I thought about how I could learn to whistle like that woman, with her pinkies in the corners of her mouth. I thought if I could just learn to do that I would survive life.
To be honest, telling you all this is making me so tired because I already lived through it and that was tiring enough and Grandma thinks everything is a joke. So just believe me, we finally made it to Fresno. A woman on the plane sitting next to me had a baby on her lap who was one and a half years old. She said the baby was eighteen months old, but I did the math. The woman asked me how old I was and I said around a hundred months. The baby and I had to wave at each other the whole time. I couldn’t stop or the baby would look sad and bored and that made me feel guilty. I decided I wasn’t ever going to start this bullshit waving business with Gord or we’d never stop. Grandma snored and snored. It took one hour and five minutes of continuous waving and snoring to get to the raisin capital of the world.
Lou and Ken are old hippies! Grandma hadn’t told me that her nephews are ancient men. One of them was wearing short shorts and knee-high socks with pictures of bulldogs on them. That one turned out to be Lou. He had a ponytail. Ken was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt. He had a white square of hair under his lip the size of one of Grandma’s Scrabble tiles. They both had white hair! How could nephews be so old? They smiled the way Grandma smiles, as if they think everything is funny and the smiles stay on their faces for a long time and they peer at things closely and keep smiling and seem so amazed at everything.
Wow! said Lou. You’re Swiv!!!!! Man! Goddamn! I’ve been wanting to meet you forever!
Lou and Ken hugged Grandma a long, long time. They hugged me quickly. They were smart and knew things about hugging kids fast which is different from hugging your aunt. Lou did a lot of the talking but Ken talked too. They didn’t ask me stupid questions. I liked the sounds of their voices and the way they talked.
Grandma sat in the front of Ken’s car with Ken, and I sat in the back with Lou. Grandma was gleaming with happiness. She smacked Ken’s dashboard with her giant welding glasses. She did her sitting victory dance. Her head was bobbing away out of control. See the palm trees, Swiv? Obviously! I said. You know these palm trees don’t really grow here naturally, said Lou. A lot of them were transported in from elsewhere, you know. Really this is a desert climate, inat right, Kenny? That’s right, said Ken. And sometimes late at night, said Lou, or in the very early morning hours you can hear them crying … they’re not happy being here, you know, they’re homesick. Yeah, said Ken, you know I’ve even heard them screaming. That one time … remember that, Lou? We were towing John Friesen on his motorcycle. Oh YEAH! said Lou. That tree really was screaming, man. It sure was, said Ken. It sure was. Lou rolled a cigarette with tobacco and papers on his bare knee in the car while it was moving. He rolled it up and put it behind his ear for later because Ken wasn’t a big fan of Lou smoking in his car. Lou said one time when Ken’s kids were little Lou was sitting in the front seat smoking away and when he was finished he threw the cigarette out the window, but it was so windy and the cigarette got sucked back into the car and flew into the back seat and landed on Ken’s youngest son’s carseat. Man, said Ken, it wasn’t ’til ’bout five, ten minutes later we saw smoke coming off that thing. Luckily, said Lou, the kid was out, man! Slept through the whole thing and didn’t ignite. He wunt hurt a bit, said Lou. I threw my soda on him for good measure. Oh yeah, said Ken, he was absolutely fine, didn’t even know his chair was burning, but after that Lou stopped smoking in the car. Inat right, Lou? Yeah, said Lou, fair enough, fair enough, after that I stopped smoking everywhere, though, cuz I coont afford it.