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.