They said we’re communists which is why dad is being tortured somewhere.
He’s not being tortured anywhere, said Grandma. Who said that?
The kids I fought, I said. How do you know he’s not being tortured? I picked up my cellphone again and aimed it at her.
Grandma asked me if I wanted to continue our Editorial Meeting but I didn’t answer. Then she asked me if I knew what bioluminescence was. I smashed breadcrumbs with my thumb and kept my piehole shut. It’s one’s ability to create light from within, said Grandma. Like a firefly. I think you have that, Swivchen. You have a fire inside you and your job is to not let it go out. I’m too young to have a job, I said. There are fish that have it too, said Grandma. Ostracods. I clamped my mouth shut and folded my arms. First try, mister, she said. Okay, second try, mister: let’s go onto the roof instead. She said she wanted to go onto the flat part of our roof, the roof that’s over the kitchen and dining room upstairs and spell out the words REBEL STRONGHOLD with rocks or whatever we could find that wouldn’t blow away. She said Jay Gatsby will be able to see it. I had to go behind Grandma and push her up the stairs and remind her to keep breathing. She stopped on every stair and turned around to look at me and made big exaggerated breathing sounds to prove to me she was still alive. We don’t have rocks, I said. When we made it to the roof she said, How about we use those clothespins lying all over the back yard? I need them for other stuff, I said. Plus it would take a million of them. How about we use books instead?
That was not a good idea, holy shit.
Mom came home from rehearsal and noticed that her books from the special shelf on the third floor—which are supposed to be tight, no breathing room, and perfectly upright—were not on the shelf at all and she went into full-on scorched earth. What the holy hell! she yelled from up there. I hadn’t expected her to go to the third floor at all because of Gord and her exhaustion but she’d heard some beeping coming from a smoke detector and said for fuck’s sake, guess this is on me, because she knows I can’t reach it even if I stand on a chair, and then went stomping up there with a new battery. Now she was yelling that if I had pawned books from the special shelf she’d fucking lose her mind! Which I wanted to tell her was too late. She said this because one time I had pawned six of her reject books—not ones that came from her special shelf, but ones that were already in a fucking box to go to the diabetes foundation—so I could buy one goddamn Archie Digest which she disapproved of because of female stereotypes and would never give me money for! I yelled back from the bottom of the stairs. She yelled from upstairs, Those are books that help me to live! Those books are my life!
Get down here! I yelled back. I’m your goddamn life!
When she came downstairs I held out her oregano oil. Take it, take it, I said, so she could calm down but she threw it at the living room wall and the bottle broke and oil trickled down over that Diego Rivera print I got her in Detroit for her birthday with money from Grandma. Then she started to cry and told me she was so sorry, so sorry. I hugged her and said it was okay because the dripping oil added character to the print which is what she always says about things that get damaged. Like if I scrape an entire layer of skin off my face from falling on the ice in King of the Castle, which I am the champion of, she tells me having one less layer of skin adds character, and also her books weren’t gone, they were just out on the roof.
When Mom climbed the stairs and looked at the words on the roof spelled with her books, she put her hand on her mouth. She told me quietly from behind her hand that she would be downstairs and that I could gather up all of the books and put them back alphabetically on her special shelf, tight and perfectly upright. She was so eerily quiet. I wondered if Gord was afraid inside her. Right then I wanted to tell her that it was Grandma’s idea to spell out words on the roof but you don’t rat on a comrade. It was dark by the time I got all the books back into the house and alphabetical and tight and upright on her shelf. I went downstairs and Mom was making dinner and laughing with Grandma. I don’t understand adults. I hate them. I don’t know if Grandma took responsibility for her actions and confessed to Mom. Probably not. Grandma was the one who got me kicked out of school in the first place because she was the one who told me that people sometimes have to be punched in the face to get the message to leave you alone and not bully you, but only after double-digit times of trying to use words to no avail and only up to the age of ten or eleven. Don’t tell Mom I said any of that, she said. Because she’s a Quaker now or something. But you have to defend yourself.