by Youers, Rio
See, my dad, he died when I was really young. An explosion at the munitions plant took him before I could even talk, blew his guts six ways from Sunday, and for his funeral they had to stitch him together like some kind of torn up rag doll. There ain’t no military honors for a stateside soldier who dies like that, just in case you’re wondering. So Ma, she moved us off that Indian Town army base into the house we’re in now, and she thought maybe Gran’ma might help with raising me ’cause Dad was in the ground before I really got to know him. From what Ma tells me he weren’t never much help around the house anyways, but that’s a whole other story.
During my growing up years Gran’ma and me was best friends, and she acted a whole lot better towards me than any of the kids in this neighborhood, that’s damned certain. She wouldn’t like me swearing like that, though, so out of respect I won’t be doing much more of that here. ’Less I’m quoting Gram, of course. That old woman had a mouth on her could turn a sailor’s face crimson.
I can remember the fun we had, back when she was… well, when she was still with us. Like, there’d be times the two of us, we’d be sitting in the McDonald’s, and Gran’ma, she’d turn to me and say loud enough for somebody close by to hear, “Gilbert, is this some kind of bug in my burger?” And I’d look down at the slab of meat inside her bun pretending to see a bug that weren’t there. I’d scrunch up my face, then talk just as loud, “Hell, Gran’ma, I think that’s a cock’roach sharing your lunch, sure as I’m sitting here myself. You want me to squash it?” And she’d go “Eeek! Eeeeek! Damn, oh damn! A cock’roach, you say? Kill it! Kill that bastard now, Gilbert!” And I’d start poking her burger with my fork as if trying to spear the little sucker, while folks all around us would suddenly go searching like mad through their kids’ Happy Meals. And when we left that place it was all we two could do not to bust a gut laughing.
That’s the kind of woman my Gram was. She weren’t no stuffy old lady like you might think, though she weren’t no spring chicken neither, as I’ve heard people use the term. But that didn’t bother me not one bit. She was my favorite person in the whole world, and I didn’t mind that sometimes she took her teeth out at the dinner table or occasionally peed her pants.
Two weeks past my eleventh birthday was when it happened, and I remember the moment like it was yesterday. Ma turns to me and says, “Gilbert, go tell your Grandmother dinner’s on the table. She must be takin’ one of her afternoon naps again.” So I went up to her bedroom to get her, ’cept she weren’t in there, and I noticed the bathroom door was closed. Gram always acted modest like that, and though often forgetful she always kept that door shut when she sat inside her library doing her business. So I knocked, yelled “Gram, dinner’s ready!” Yelled again really loud ’count of her being hard of hearing, but there weren’t no answer. So I pushed the door open expecting to find her asleep on the john like sometimes I would find her at bedtime. Sure enough, there she was, just settin’ there on the pot like that statue in Lawrenceville Park of the man thinking ’bout the nature of the universe with his hand on his chin and all bent over. ’Cept Gran’ma’s arms, they was just laying there limp at her side, and her face looked like all the color had bled out of it. A long strip of toilet paper was clinging to her hand still attached to the roll, and I think that spooked me the most.
“Gran’ma?”
Nothing.
I didn’t feel much like coming closer while she was in that position, but I figured I had no choice. Touching her face I hoped maybe this was another Gran’ma joke she was pulling on me, that she would jump up and laugh, “Damn! I got you good this time, didn’t I, boy!” But something inside told me that weren’t about to happen, and the minute I touched her I knew it for sure. Her skin felt cold. Not icy cold like a dead fish ’cause she hadn’t been gone so very long, but not warm neither because Gran’ma was gone, all right. Even a kid who’s eleven recognizes ‘dead’ when he sees it, and I backed away not knowing what else to do ’cept stare at her just settin’ there on the can. I figured her heart must’ve just stopped, having itself a pretty good run all those years, and that if she had her preference how to leave this world, passing on while relieving herself was as good a choice as any. Still I had to sniff back some sudden tears.
After a couple minutes some clear thinking returned. I knew that telling Ma what had happened to Gram promised to be the most difficult task I’d ever have to pull off. So I went to my room, tugged the sheet from my bed, and threw it over Gram. I figured maybe that might make it a little easier for Ma when I told her. But I was wrong. Ma peeked under the sheet, reached to touch Gram’s face. Her flesh must’ve gone a lot colder than when I touched it, but Ma, she just stood there with her hand under that sheet, and for several minutes she said nothing at all, just stood there shaking her head at life’s casual unfairness. She pulled the bed sheet off as if she needed to take a longer look to be sure. Then she tore loose the toilet paper Gram held.
“She’s gone, Gilbert. Gran’ma’s gone.”
There in our bathroom my mother cried for hours before she could manage another word. I just sat on the side of the tub watching her, neither of us muttering not one syllable. I’m fairly certain there ain’t no words in any language to cover a sorrowful moment like that proper. But finally Ma did speak, and when she did it turned my blood cold as Gran’ma’s flesh.
“Dinner’s prob’ly ruined,” she said.
“I’m not hungry, Ma.”
“Gilbert, what are we going to do?” I think she wasn’t really talking to me so much as to herself. “I just can’t believe this is happenin’…”
“We’ll be okay, Ma. But now we have to call someone. The police, I guess. They’ll know what to do with Gram. I mean, we just can’t leave her like this. I’ll make the call now.” I got to my feet, headed for the bathroom door, but she stopped me.
“No, Gilbert. No, we’re not goin’ to do that.” I just looked at her, having not a clue what she meant. But she must’ve already had the idea all sorted out in her head. “You ’member what Reverend Whitecastle said in church ’bout a month ago?”
My remembering anything that man preached weren’t too likely since I doubt I ever stayed awake for more than a few minutes during any of the Reverend’s Sunday sermons. I shook my head.
I guess I ought to tell you here about Ma’s particular relationship with God and Jesus. I mean, since my dad passed it seems she’s taken Jesus to her bed just about every damned night. Sorry about the cuss word, Gran’ma, but it really fits here. See, sometimes she practically fills the house with candles so this place looks like some kind of amusement park spook ride, and late at night I hear her speaking to Jesus because Ma, she don’t even try to keep the volume down on her evening prayers.
“Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of another day, and will you continue to watch over my loving son and elderly mother, amen . . .”
Guess on the day he took Gram, Jesus weren’t listening. Or maybe he just decided to say “Sorry, Hattie, but no, not today, but thanks for the amen anyway.” See, Ma, she takes her praying pretty serious. And she takes the words of any man who stands at the Sunday pulpit just as serious. So Reverend Whitecastle’s words bore considerable weight that day.
She ran to get her bible, read a passage to me with Gram still sitting there on her throne. “ ‘Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ That’s John 4:14, Gilbert, just like the Reverend said.”
“Ma, I don’t get what you’re trying toou’r%–”
“Her soul’s still in this room with us, Gilbert. You know that, don’t you? Reverend Whitecastle says the soul thrives near water, just like when someone is baptized. Water keeps the soul and its life force fresh, he says. It gives life––eternal life!”
The thought seemed more than a little ridiculous to me.
“Ma, that’s toilet water you’re talking about! I doubt Gram’s soul would want anything to do with it.”
&nb
sp; But Ma wasn’t listening. She’d already set her mind to a plan.
“We have to keep your Gram’s soul here, Gilbert. We do that, and it’s like keepin’ Gran’ma alive. Do you understand what I’m tellin’ you?”
I sure didn’t, no m’am. But I weren’t about to tell Ma that. Instead I just smiled as best I could, nodded my head like some bobble doll as if she made perfect sense.
For weeks following Gram’s passing, the bathroom was off limits. Mom got us a bucket to do our daily business because Gran’ma now had exclusive rights to our porcelain appliance. The kitchen sink and some large sponges provided our showering needs. I thought it was kind of crazy myself, but I had no problem avoiding the bathroom considering what I knew was sitting on the pot. Ma made the proper excuses for Gram’s absence at church. An old woman gets sick and ornery, and no one much questions that sort of thing.
By the second week, though, there was an awful lot of stink coming from our bathroom. That liver and onions stench filled the whole house, though Ma just pretended there weren’t nothing to be concerned with. But I knew the candles she lit now had more to do with that reek than her conversations with Jesus. Both of us learned to keep visitors stalled on the other side of our front door, and I knew time wasn’t far off when a downwind whiff of Gran’ma would find its way into our neighbors’ nostrils.
But Ma, she kept acting like the world had set itself right, even spent time talking with Gram inside our bathroom, though for my part I wasn’t yet ready to share my day at school with her. That is, not until curiosity got the better of me. See, it weren’t as if I thought talking with Gram would mean much or would make me feel better. But after a couple of weeks some part of me—some dark part I’m not even sure I fully understand—but some part of me had to see how Gran’ma was holding up. I waited ’till late night when Ma was asleep to have my visit.
I’m sorry, Gran’ma, I don’t mean to shame you or anything like that. But your smell was so god awful I felt tears in my eyes. That liver stench had gone rancid, like someone had cooked your flesh inside a big oven then thrown in last week’s garbage for seasoning. But what I seen of you still perched on our crapper was even worse…
Gram’s tongue was hanging out like some overheated dog’s. Something was eating her from the inside, some filthy creatures that maybe started with her intestines then worked their way out to her flesh. Gram’s flesh weren’t all that attractive to begin with ’cause she was so old. But now her face resembled a wax candle already melted, and she had dozens of fresh wounds leaking this cheeze-like goo. Her nose an d ears was oozing that stuff, and something black hung from her nose too. Then it moved and I saw it was this huge fly. It disappeared inside her nostril, and at that same moment another one flew out of her ear. A whole bunch of them lighted in her hair too. How so many got into our bathroom and inside Gram I haven’t a clue. Maybe a whole nest of insects was crawling around inside her soul. Reverend Whitecastle never said a word to Ma about them flesh-eating flies. I started feeling a little sick.
“Jesus, Gran’ma…oh, Jesus….”
Then I vomited.
I managed to clean up my mess without Ma being the wiser, but I told myself this weren’t a real good situation and that Ma had best be made aware of that. I tried telling her it was just plain craziness to keep pretending Gram were still alive and kicking, when she must’ve knew that what sat inside our bathroom stopped being my Gran’ma weeks ago. I told her what she was doing weren’t anything the law would completely understand either, and if that smell got any worse pretty soon the whole neighborhood would be at our door. But Ma, she wouldn’t hear any of it.
“‘Water welling up to eternal life,’ Gilbert,” she kept saying as if this was all the explanation she needed. And then an idea occurred to me…
I don’t believe that toilet had been flushed even once since Gran’ma passed. Maybe Ma needed to watch that holy water gone down the bowl to realize it weren’t doing no good for anyone’s soul inside our house. Lately Ma had taken to surrounding Gran’ma with about a hundred candles as if our bathroom had transformed itself into some kind of shrine. I guess to Ma that’s exactly what it was, although I’ve been to outhouses that smelled better.
I didn’t much feel like reliving my experience of several weeks past, but I really had no choice. Ma was in the bathroom talking to Gram when I joined her, and let me tell you what I saw was something I don’t care to remember. Ma, she turns to me all smiles, and says, “I’m so happy you decided to join us, Gilbert. Don’t be afraid…”
That seemed easy for Ma to say, although Gran’ma’s smell now was downright gaseous, and it hung thick in the air as if some huge sick animal had broken wind inside our bathroom. It stank so much I covered my nose, but the insects crawlin’ all over Gran’ma clearly were loving that rotted egg stench. Them carrion flies now was joined by maggots, the kind I seen dining on roadkill near the Dairy Queen. There must have been dozens of the fat suckers, their mouth hooks having their fill of chunks of skin, their slime-drenched bodies all bloated with human flesh like it was fast food. There was beetles too, plus some wasps and other bugs I couldn’t name, and even more was coming up through the toilet’s exposed wall pipe as if someone had rang a damn dinner bell. But the way Gram looked…
In just another week’s time, she had changed, and it weren’t for the better. Parts of Gram seemed to have busted open and it made her look fatter than I’d ever seen her. Whatever foul liquid she’d had inside was leaking out so bad her cheeks seemed torn sacks, and her gums must’ve loosened because the few teeth she claimed as her own now littered the floor. I think a couple of her fingernails was down there too. Them bugs all around her skin, they must’ve laid eggs inside her or something, ’cause about a hundred crawling creatures was all over her, burrowing in and out through split flesh. Them maggots was all bunched together on her chin as if they was enjoying a family feast. Fat as Gran’ma now was, it seemed any moment she might bust open and deflate like some pus-drenched balloon. I could picture an army of about a million bugs crawling through her flesh to say howdy.
“Ma, this is too awful. Too awful…”
I didn’t even ask. Before Ma could protest I just went to the toilet bowl and flushed.
Nothing happened.
I shook the handle. Shook it again.
Still nothing. Ma spoke so calm it scared me worse than if she would have screamed her lungs out at me.
“I removed the chain inside the tank, Gilbert. I had to. You know I had to.”
“Jesus, Ma! Jesus!”
And then the most terrible thing happened. At first I felt certain I didn’t really hear anything, that somehow my mind was playing some nasty trick on me. But no, I heard it. Ma heard it too––this liquid sound of something hitting the water in the bowl under Gram. The sound was familiar and unmistakable. It was also impossible.
Gran’ma . . . she was peeing!
[I got you good this time, didn’t I, boy?]
Ma looked at Gram. Then she looked at me. I looked back at Ma.
“You hearing what I’m hearing?” I asked.
“A miracle, Gilbert! We’re witnessin’ a genuine miracle!”
I couldn’t believe it. Ma was on her knees screaming praises to Jesus because Gran’ma was having a piddle! This weren’t no miracle to me. Gran’ma’s corpse relieving itself was plain craziness. I couldn’t explain what I heard, not in a million years. But I’m certain Jesus played no part in it. No m’am, this seemed the work of something nobody sane would call holy. But when I looked back at Gran’ma the craziness reached a whole new level. Just like the day I found her, a long strip of toilet paper was again in Gran’ma’s hand!
I feared I may woof my dinner like the last time, but then we was interrupted by the sound of our front doorbell. Ma seemed in no condition to talk, so it was up to me to put on my most convincing happy face, and I knew that weren’t going to be easy ’cause I looked like death itself. But the last thing we needed was some p
esky neighbor asking questions, so I splashed water on my face and headed to answer the bell that now was ringing like mad.
“Hello, Mrs. Winfried,” I managed to greet our neighbor. Standing in our doorway was only the most nosy old woman on the planet.
“Gilbert, is your mother home?”
“She’s not feelin’ well, Mrs. Winfried. She’s in bed.”
That woman sniffed the air like some forest animal picking up a scent. Then she scrunched her face so she resembled a human prune. “That odor is awful, Gilbert. I can smell it clear across the yard in my kitchen. What is it smells so unpleasant here?”
“Septic tank. I think its busted. Burst open the other night and just stinks to high heaven, like Ma says. We got a man coming to fix it in the morning. Ma was going to apologize to you, but she’s --”
“––not feeling well. Yes, you told me.” Mrs. Winfried’s eyebrow shot up and she looked at me hard. “That’s one powerful stink for a septic tank, Gilbert.” Poking her head through the door she sniffed some more. “That smell is coming from inside your house. ’Less you have your septic tank in your parlor I doubt that’s what’s causing this smell, Gilbert.” She gave me that look again.
I stood firm, not letting her set one foot further. “Ma’s been pretty sick and I think I may have caught something too, Mrs. Winfried. Some kind of flu. I just whoopsed my dinner not ten minutes ago.”
“Your grandmother. She’s sick too?”
“Just awful, both Ma and Gram. But I’ll tell them you was here.” I managed to shut the door, but I didn’t hear Mrs. Winfried’s footsteps on our path for another two minutes. I knew that woman weren’t buying a thing I told her, that when she visited again she would be bringing some friends. I had to tell Ma we hadn’t much time to decide ’bout what to do with Gram. But Ma, she had one more surprise waiting for me when I found her still in our bathroom with Gram’s remains.
“I told you we’d seen a miracle today, Gilbert. And that’s just what’s here.”