by Mary Hogan
“He’ll be here soon,” Mom answered without looking up. “He had a few, um, errands to run.”
The old woman’s face fell. “Oh, well.” She sighed. “I’ve waited twenty years to see him. What’s twenty minutes more?” Then she turned to us and said, “No sense waiting for him in the heat. Come inside, my darlings. I’ve waited a whole lifetime to meet you.”
Rif rejoined us in front of the trailer, popping a Smint into his mouth. As he passed me, I could smell that he hadn’t quit smoking after all. He followed “Nana” and Dirk through the metal door of her trailer. Mom stood in the street looking for Dad’s U-Move. I didn’t budge. I mean, the woman was a complete stranger. My grandmother? Living in the same state all these years? If it was true, my parents were either heartless or psychotic. I didn’t know whether to feel furious or turn myself in to Social Services.
“Come on in, Libby!” the old lady said at her trailer door. “I won’t bite.”
I just stared at her.
“I swear. No biting whatsoever.”
I had to believe her. What other choice did I have?
THIRTEEN
“Let me get this straight. My grandmother isn’t dead?”
Mom and I were alone in the searing heat outside my newly discovered nana’s trailer. No way was I going inside until I knew the truth.
“Not exactly,” Mom said, her yellow patent leather handbag dangling on her forearm.
“Not exactly? Is she a clone? A robot? A mirage?”
The hotter it got outside, the more heated I felt inside. A line of sweat made its way down my flushed cheek, stopping at my gritted teeth. Glaring at my mother, I added, “Is the lady in that trailer Nana’s long-lost twin?”
“Shhh! She’ll hear you.”
“Hear what? That you were just kidding when you told us she died before I was born?”
Mom draped one fleshy arm around my shoulder and led me down Nana’s dusty street. Each passing second made me madder and hotter.
“The truth is,” Mom said in a low voice, “your father and his mother never got along.”
Wriggling out from under her sweaty arm, I snapped, “So?”
“So, it was easier for him to pretend that his mother had passed away.”
“Easier?”
“You know, because he didn’t want to talk to her.”
Stunned into silence, I felt the trickle of sweat drip off my chin.
Seriously, I could not believe what I was hearing. Though I should have. It was so . so typical. How many years had we lived with my dad’s bad behaviour? How often had we all pretended he wasn’t drunk when we knew he was? Of course my parents would rather deprive us of a grandparent than deal with reality! Avoiding the truth is what they do best. Our family is one big fake out. Even our last name: Madrigal. A madrigal is a musical love poem. Get out. Our family is so not a musical love poem. We’re more like a CD that was left out on the pavement in a Barstow summer.
“When your grandfather died,” Mom continued, “your dad had sort of, um, a big fight with his mom.”
Hands on my hips, I asked, “What kind of a fight?”
“A family sort of fight.”
“What does that mean? The silent treatment for twenty years.”
“Exactly my point! Your father didn’t want the anger to simmer for years, so he decided it was better for the whole family if he pretended his mom had passed on.”
I gaped at her. “Better for who?”
“Whom,” Mom corrected me.
“Better for whom?” The word “whom” hurtled out of my mouth like an angry dust storm. “Better for us to grow up without a grandmother? Wouldn’t it have been better for Dad to get over it? Apologise? Do what he had to do to bring the family together ? Isn’t that what parents are supposed to do?”
Mom resumed looking for Dad’s rental truck.
Images of childhood birthday parties, Christmas mornings, Thanksgiving dinners – all the times it would have been cool having a grandmother – flashed through my mind. Was she someone I could have talked to without violating the family’s shhh-don’t-tell policy?
The trailer door opened with a loud creak and my grandmother – not a twin nor a clone but the real deal – poked her head out and chirped, “Lunch is almost ready!” Then she popped back in and shut the metal door.
Emotionally overloaded, my head felt like a wasps’ nest. I could almost feel the synapses in my brain misfiring. I wanted to either scream or crumple into a heap. I wanted to go home. I missed Nadine and staring at the back of Zack Nash’s creamy neck in class. I even missed Ostensia and her stinky nachos. What was going on? Why me? Just as my life had finally begun to feel normal, I’m kidnapped to a hot, sandy street in the middle of nowhere, about to eat Spam or Primula or whatever else they call “food” in a trailer park with a woman I’ve never met, who gave birth to my father and just may have made my life easier if I’d been allowed to know she existed.
Life more than sucks.
Suddenly, a new image flashed through my brain. Panic radiated from the centre of my chest, down my arms, and out my fingertips. I wheeled around to face my mother, grabbed both of her flabby upper arms, and gasped, “We’re not moving into Nana’s trailer, are we, Mom?”
Mom laughed out loud. “Don’t be silly. Do you think we would do that to you?”
Without waiting for an answer, Mom waddled toward my grandmother’s trailer, saying, “Let’s go in. I’m starved.”
Entering my new nana’s trailer was an out-of-body experience. It was like passing through the flames of hell into air-conditioned heaven. It was gorgeous. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“Isn’t this the biggest trailer you’ve ever seen?!” Dirk rushed toward us as Mom and I walked through Nana’s front door.
“We call them mobile homes,” Nana said. “Though the only thing that’s mobile around here is the garden gnome in my front yard, and technically, he just fell over.”
Dirk was right. It was huge. My family stood in the centre of a modern, sleek, stainless steel kitchen. Polished copper pots hung from the ceiling; a huge butcher’s-block island sat beneath them.
“Is that one of those Sub-Zero refrigerators?” Mom sputtered.
“Yes! Food never goes bad!”
I didn’t have a clue what a Sub-Zero was, but Nana was beaming. My brothers and I clung to one another like a chain gang. We gaped open-mouthed at my grandmother like she was an archaeological find. Which, of course, she kind of was.
The smell was unbelievable – garlic, roasted meat, melted butter. My stomach erupted in gurgles and growls. Mouthwatering concoctions were simmering on the eight-burner stove. Nothing even close to Spam and Primula. In the centre of the surprisingly large, open space, an oval pine table was set with gold-rimmed porcelain and glistening crystal glasses. I’d never seen anything as classy before. The kitchen belonged in a magazine. The rest of the trailer must be awesome. Already, it was much nicer than our crummy Chatsworth house.
“My goodness,” Mom said, as flabbergasted as I was. “Can we have the grand tour?” Her bag still dangled on her arm.
“Absolutely.” Drying off her hands, Nana turned away from the sink to face her four relatives. Standing still, she swept her arms through the air. “Voilà! This is it.”
“This is it?” Rif asked.
“Lovely!” Mom swallowed.
“You live in a kitchen?”
“Rif!” Mom pinched the back of his arm. “It’s lovely !”
It was lovely, but it was also true. Nana’s trailer was one big, gleaming, air-conditioned kitchen.
“I’ve always wanted a gourmet kitchen,” she explained, “so I gave myself one. I tore down the walls and said what the heck! You only live once. Why not live near the refrigerator?”
Nobody said a word. Was she joking?
“You sleep in the dishwasher ?” Rif asked, chuckling. Mom smacked the back of his head, and we all gasped when a cigarette butt shot out.
“Rif!” Mom snapped, snatching the butt off the floor and shooting him an angry look.
“It’s quite all right,” Nana said, oblivious to the fact that my brother had just been busted for smoking. “My bed is over here.” She led our huddle around the wall-mounted TV/VCR to a large oak armoire behind the dining room table. Opening the doors, she showed us her pull-down bed, tucked neatly inside, flat up against the wall.
“Cool,” said Dirk.
“The bed is on springs. It comes right down when I’m ready to go to bed, and pops back up in the morning.”
“You never have to make it?” Dirk asked.
“Never.”
“Awesome.”
“And I can lie in bed and eat off the dining room table if I want to!”
“Lovely,” Mom said again. Her handbag slid down her arm. “Is there a . uh, restroom?”
“I use the sink.”
We froze in horror. “Just kidding,” Nana said. She flung her head back and howled. “That always scares ’em. The bathroom is over there.” Nana walked over to another oak armoire across the room and opened the door. Inside was a tiny shower stall, a toilet, and a small basin. “It was featured in Trailer Life ! A friend of mind designed this for me. Isn’t it fabulous?”
“Just lovel—” Mom’s handbag hit the floor with a thunk. She left it there while she stuffed herself into the armoire and closed the door.
Suddenly, we heard a scratching sound at the front door.
“Juan!” I screeched.
“The neighbour’s grandson? Invite him in,” said Nana.
Diving for the door, I swung it open and saw Juan Dog looking up at me pathetically, trembling on the welcome mat, his huge eyes misty.
“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry I forgot you!” A trio of poops sat a few feet away like three big Hershey’s Kisses. I scooped Juan into my arms and kissed his head. “Nana, do you have a plastic bag?”
Nana spotted Juan. “My, what do we have here?” she asked, stroking his elephantine ears.
“This is our chihuahua, Juan Dog,” I said.
“He’s adorable! But you don’t have to keep him in a plastic bag, Libby. I have a vacuum cleaner.”
I gaped at her. Then, I sighed. Of course my grandmother was a nut job! Why would it be any other way?
Suddenly, I envisioned the “big fight” my dad had with his mom:
Dad: “I don’t wanna sleep in a kitchen!”
Nana: “Then sleep in an armoire!”
Dad: “Why can’t we be normal?”
Nana: “We are normal! Now, put the dog back in the bag!”
Swallowing hard, I held Juan and tore off a sheet of paper towel.
“I’ll be right back.”
Outside Nana’s trailer – mobile schmobile, no matter how beautiful it was, it was still a trailer – I cleaned up after Juan, threw it in the nearest trash can, and decided to skip lunch. Food smelling that good was too dangerous. It had an obese aroma. Better to not know what I was missing. Even if it was only one lunch, I couldn’t risk it. Especially now that I had the genetic threat of becoming a woman who lived in a kitchen!
I decided to walk off my hunger. After all, we were moving into a new house that night. Which, of course, meant only one thing in our family – extra large, extra cheese, pepperoni pizza.
The Barstow heat was almost unbearable. It fried the inside of my nostrils each time I inhaled. The asphalt was squishy beneath my feet. Juan lay draped over my arm, either dead asleep or passed out. Briefly, I wondered if my family even noticed I was gone. Probably not.
The whole trailer park looked like a bizarre metal cult. Lined up next to one another, on the diagonal, each trailer was pretty much a copy of its rectangular neighbour. They were separated by bulbous septic tanks and boxy air-conditioning units. I could hear television sets blaring and the unmistakable violins of daytime TV. Someone peeked at me from behind a lace curtain, but snapped it shut as soon as I peeked back.
Except for the curtain peeker, Nana’s street, Paradise Way, was deserted. The lack of life was eerie, like I really was on Mars. Apparently, all the kids were still in school.
Just as I was about to give up and run back to Nana’s air conditioner, something amazing happened. My body began to feel light. My stomach stopped growling. The scalding air felt good, like a cedar-lined sauna. Purification via perspiration. It baked my insides and quieted the anxiety hum in my brain. I felt relaxed, released. Oddly, the hideous turn my life had taken was now a fuzzy ping in the back of my brain instead of a throbbing ping pong from the left side of my head to the right. My lungs acclimated to the desert heat and felt soothed instead of scorched. I inhaled deeply and enjoyed the crackle of my nose hairs as they fried. In spite of myself, I began to feel lighthearted. Hopeful, even. Miraculously, I found myself thinking, Maybe everything will be okay.
“Probably sunstroke,” I joked to myself. Then I stopped, took a deep breath, and felt my chest expand with warmth. Yeah, I could handle visiting my grandmother here once or twice a year. It wouldn’t be so bad. Even if she was bonkers.
In the distance, I heard voices and splashing in the pool. Hey, there was life on Mars!
“Myrna looks like a Siamese cat.”
As I snuck up to the chain-link fence surrounding the pool area, I heard female voices and the blap, blap of gentle swimming.
“Her ears wiggle when she blinks, he pulled so tight.”
Juan Dog and I crouched behind a prickly, dry bush. The voices woke him. His ears were sticking straight up.
“She told me she wanted to look younger than her ex’s new wife.”
An old lady on a sagging Lilo in the shallow end of the pool had a thatched hut on top of her head. I’d never seen such a huge hat. Her geriatric friend was painting her toenails under an umbrella near the diving board. They shouted sentences at each other across the pool.
“Her mouth looks like the joker in that movie. What was it? Batman?”
Both women wore brightly flowered, skirted swimsuits. Their legs resembled blue cheese, and it was obvious they had to bend way over to pour their pendulous breasts into their suits’ pointed double-D cups.
“Myrna’s eyebrows are over her ears! Little earmuffs!” One of the antique bathing beauties laughed so hard she erupted in a coughing fit.
Yip! Yip!
“Shhh,” I whispered into Juan’s big ear.
Licking his tiny lips, he leaped out of my arms and wiggled his little body through the gate. Apparently, Juan now associated old women with delicious food.
Yip! Yip!
“Juan! Get over here!”
“What on earth?” The lady with the red toenails hoisted herself out of the chaise longue and waddled over to the fence on her heels.
“Juan Dog! Come!” I said through gritted teeth, still huddled behind the bush.
Yippy. Yip.
“What a darling puppy!” The woman with the toenails bent down to pick Juan Dog up. “Look, Charlotte,” she called to the old lady on the raft, “remember the Taco Bell puppy!”
Juan hated being called a puppy, especially the Taco Bell puppy. I emerged from behind the bush and entered through the gate. “You little rascal,” I said reprimandingly, reaching up to save him. But the lady held on.
“He doesn’t like strangers,” I said. Mocking me, Juan gently licked the lady’s cheek and tucked his little head into her triple chins.
“There, there,” she cooed. “I’m not a stranger.”
“I’m just visiting,” I stammered. “I should get back.”
Charlotte and the old lady exchanged a look. “Oh, we know who you are.”
“You know me?” I blinked.
“We’ve been expecting you! Elizabeth’s granddaughter, right?”
Elizabeth? Was it possible I was named after my grandmother and no one bothered to mention it?
“You’re one of the Madrigal kids, right?”
Of course it was possible. Anything was possible with my family’s don�
�t-ask-don’t-tell policy. Geez, I’d only learned my very own grandmother was alive and kicking an hour ago.
“Um, right,” I said.
Charlotte, the Lilo lady, shouted, “Do you have a swimsuit on under those shorts, hon?”
Charlotte slid off her raft and plopped on to the pool stairs. Clutching the railing, she heaved herself up, padding along the hot cement to fetch her towel. Her feet looked like dried starfish. Suddenly, the ping-pong game in my head resumed. I wanted to go home. I longed for Geometry class and our dirt backyard. What was Nadine doing now? Had she forgotten me already?
Annoyed at my parents all over again for ruining my life, I reached for Juan. The old woman held him closer.
“Could you please give me my dog back?”
“He’s so comfy!” The woman holding Juan turned and lowered herself on to her chaise with Juan still lost in the folds of her skin. The other one hobbled closer to me, leaned forward almost touching my nose with her nose. “Yep. I see the resemblance,” she said. “You’ve got a lot of Elizabeth in you. Let me get you a bathing suit. I have an extra one in my locker.”
Still dripping, she turned and hobbled off.
“I can’t stay,” I called after her. “As soon as I get my dog, I’m leaving.”
Scoffing, she said over her shoulder, “Don’t worry. I just had the bathing suit cleaned.” Then she added, “By the way, I’m Charlotte and Dr Doolittle over there is Mim.”
Mim was busy tickling Juan under the chin. I’d never seen him so happy.
“Nice to meet you both,” I said stiffly. “But, uh, my family is probably looking for me.”
Mim said, “Leave the Taco Bell puppy with us. He’s falling asleep.”
Juan Dog’s eyes were droopy and I could swear I saw his lips curved upward in a sappy grin. Traitor.
“I can’t. We’re moving into a new house and—”
“It’s okay. I’ll bring him over later, when he wakes up.” Mim was now rocking Juan back and forth. Was that snoring I heard?
“We’re neighbours,” Mim added. “I live on Eden Way and Charlotte’s on Nirvana.” She kissed the top of Juan’s head. “You’re on Valhalla Drive, right?”
“No. My grandmother lives on Paradise Way.”