Shad and I went after him. Mom got out of the car first. Dad hugged her. Then he reached into the car and brought out a folded wheelchair. For a moment, I looked at it and I thought, What is this? What’s that for? Then Mom helped Grandma out of the car, and I knew that all the things I’d been thinking were wrong. All the things about going places with Grandma, and how she was just coming to live with us, and only had to recuperate from an illness.
I had never thought of Grandma as small. She wasn’t a huge woman, but she was substantial. She was solid. I could hug her and lean against her and even knock into her playfully and it would be okay. Now she was different.
She looked like someone else. Someone tiny and frail. Someone almost—disposable. She had shrunk. A terrible joke came into my mind. Somebody put her in the dryer and shrank her.
I remembered how, when I read Alice in Wonderland, I especially liked the part where she drank from the bottle that said, DRINK ME. She did. And she got smaller and smaller and smaller. And smaller. That was how Grandma looked. Except that Alice was tiny and still looked just like herself in every detail.
But Grandma was tiny and didn’t look like herself at all. She looked like a little, old person, a little tiny, frail, bent someone. A person I sort of recognized, but not really. What I recognized were her clothes. But even they looked different, like she was wearing someone else’s clothes, the clothes of someone much bigger.
Dad unfolded the wheelchair, and Mom helped Grandma into it. Her left arm hung by her side. Mom put the arm in Grandma’s lap. She put it in Grandma’s lap like it was a thing. It didn’t look like a real arm. It didn’t look alive. It was just there, not doing anything. Compared to the rest of Grandma, it seemed big, heavy. It seemed to drag her whole side down. She was tipped over to one side, to that left side.
Shad ran up to her and kissed her, but I couldn’t. I just stood in the doorway. I didn’t know if I should hug her or what. “How was your trip?” I said. I could hear how polite my voice sounded, as if she were someone I was just meeting. Or someone I didn’t really care about.
One side of Grandma’s face was twitching. But the other side of her face didn’t do anything at all. “Hello, Bunny,” she said. She talked sort of slurred and stumbling. It made me feel sick.
“Grandma’s tired from the trip,” Mom said. “Come on, Mommy, let’s get you to your room.”
Dad had bought a big pot of yellow and gold daffodils. They were on the windowsill. Beautiful flowers. Just the sort of thing Grandma loved. She didn’t notice them. She didn’t say anything about all the work we’d done. She sat in her wheelchair, her head drooping. “I’m … tired,” she said. “I’m … tired.”
Mom opened Grandma’s suitcase and took out a nightgown. “You guys better go.” Dad and Shad went out. Mom lifted Grandma’s arms to take off her dress. She undressed her like a baby. First one arm out, then the other, then the dress over her head. She had to do everything for Grandma. She put Grandma’s nightgown on her, she took off Grandma’s shoes, and she washed Grandma’s hands and face and tucked her into bed.
“Bunny … darling,” Grandma said, from the bed. She lifted her good arm and held out her hand to me.
I didn’t go to her. I stood in the doorway. I waved to her. “Good-night, Grandma.”
Later, in my room, I shut the door and cried. I couldn’t stop crying. I lay down on my bed and put the pillow over my head. After a while, I fell asleep.
In the morning, I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to see Grandma the way she was now. I never wanted to see her that way.
Mom came by and knocked on the door. “Bunny? You’ll be late if you don’t get up right now.”
I didn’t move. Mom came back two more times, and finally I got up and dressed. I didn’t eat breakfast, I just left the house with my books and ran all the way to school.
Chapter 19
Suddenly, everything in our house was for Grandma. Day and night, we had to be quiet because Grandma was resting, or Grandma was sleeping, or Grandma had had a difficult day. Or a hard night. Shad and I couldn’t argue, couldn’t disagree with each other, couldn’t even raise our voices, because it might upset Grandma.
Even something like having a snack changed. You couldn’t go in the refrigerator and take anything you wanted to eat, because certain foods were reserved for Grandma. “We have to coax her appetite,” Mom said. She bought expensive, special tropical fruits, mangoes and papayas, and the first California strawberries.
Mom had missed two weeks of work before she came home from Toronto. She took off another week, until Grandma got rested from the trip and used to things in our house. Those three weeks were all Mom’s vacation time, plus her sick days, which meant that this year our family wouldn’t go anyplace together, the way we always did.
The house sounded different. Quieter. Everyone tiptoeing around. UPS delivered boxes of Grandma’s things that Mom had sent from Toronto. They were piled up in the hall. And the house smelled of medicines and rubbing alcohol. It didn’t seem like our house. I didn’t want to go in when I came home from school. And when I did go in, I just went to my room.
Mom came into my room after supper one night. “Beginning next week, Grandma’s going to therapy every day,” Mom said. She rubbed the back of her neck. “I’ll be driving her to the center—St. Camillus—in the mornings, and Dad will leave his office early in the afternoon and bring her home.”
I sat at my desk and fidgeted with a ballpoint pen. “Okay.”
“And you, Bunny,” Mom said, “I want you to come home right after school every day and be in the house with Grandma, until either Dad or I come home.”
“I thought you just said Dad was leaving his office early.”
“Right. But he has to go back. And Grandma really shouldn’t be in the house alone.” Mom went to the window and pulled down the shade.
“So I have to baby-sit Grandma.”
“You’re not baby-sitting her,” Mom said. “Where do you get that idea?”
“That’s what it seems like to me.” I got up and pulled the shade up again.
Mom gave me a look, but she didn’t say anything else.
Every day that week, I didn’t feel good. I didn’t have any energy. Sometimes my head ached. It really hurt. One day I didn’t eat anything all day. Emily was the only one who noticed anything.
“You’re in such a bad mood,” she said.
I shrugged. I didn’t want to talk about it.
Friday, after school, I went home with Emily. She was talking about a letter her father wrote her. Happy talk. She couldn’t stop talking about that letter. We got to her house and went into the kitchen to make a snack for the twins. “You know how many letters I’ve gotten from my father in my whole life?” she said. She handed me a can of apple juice to open.
“How many?” I’d stopped listening. I was thinking that this was my last weekend of freedom.
“I counted them. The first one he wrote me when I was four and he was—” She stopped. “Bunny, look what you did. You just spilled juice all over the counter.”
I looked down. I’d been pouring the apple juice, and I’d missed the glasses entirely. “So what!” I said. “Don’t make such a big fuss over nothing!”
“I’m not making a big fuss,” Emily said. “If I hadn’t said anything, you would have spilled the whole can.” She got a rag and wiped it up.
I stared at her. I hated her. I thought, She’s wiping up the spill just to make me feel bad, to make me feel even worse. It was a stupid thought, but it seemed true to me at the moment. I felt so bad. I felt like I’d just lived through the worst week of my life, and no one understood and no one cared.
Emily wrung out the rag. “What’s the matter, Bunny?”
“Nothing. Leave me alone.” I started crying.
“Who’s crying?” Wilma said, from the other room.
Emily shut the kitchen door. “Bunny.…” She rubbed my arm. “Come on, sit down.” It was s
o weird. It was role reversal. It was like all the times I’d rubbed her arm or her back and told her to sit down and given her a tissue and said, “Blow your nose.” All the times I’d “rescued” her. And now she was rescuing me. She made me sit down, she gave me a tissue, and I blew my nose.
“Is it your grandma?” Emily said.
“It’s not fair.”
“Who said everything’s got to be fair? I don’t think it’s fair that my parents got divorced, either, but they did.”
“I don’t want to talk about your problems! Why did it happen to Grandma? Why me? Why us? I hate it, Emily. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.” I started crying again.
Wilma came in and Emily got up. “No, Wilma. Go out. Stay out of here now.”
“Why’s Bunny crying? Bunny.” She came and stood by me and petted my hair.
Emily gave Wilma the juice and crackers on a tray and she went back into the living room to watch tv with Chris.
“Emily. All I want to do when I’m home is stay in my room. I don’t want to see Grandma. I don’t want to talk to her. I can’t tell Mom or Dad that! I can’t tell anybody how I feel. They would hate me if they knew.”
“I don’t hate you,” Emily said.
“You don’t count.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“You know what I mean. I mean my family. I wish I could leave home.”
“Come live with us.”
“Maybe I will.” I blew my nose again.
“We’ll put another bed in my room.”
“A cot would be okay. I don’t need much.”
“It would be fun.”
“I’d help you with Wilma and Chris. Your mother would hardly even know I was here.”
Emily got up and started washing dishes. “I’m listening,” she said. “I just have to do these.”
I stared at the wall. “Grandma can’t do anything anymore for herself.… This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me.” I put my head down on my arms.
I heard the water running out of the sink. Emily sat down next to me again and put her hand on my back. “Bunny. It didn’t happen to you.”
I sat there for a long time with my head down on my arms. I was hearing what Emily said. It didn’t happen to you. I didn’t want to hear it, but the words kept repeating themselves in my head. It didn’t happen to you. At first, I didn’t even know what they meant. They were just words. It was like hearing something in another language. It didn’t happen to you. It didn’t happen to you. I knew I should understand, but I didn’t. My head felt thick. I think I fell asleep for a moment. And I still heard those words. Then I knew what they meant.
“I’ve hardly even gone in to see her,” I said. “Grandma’s been here a whole week.” I lifted my head. “Emily, I’m an awful person.”
“No, you’re not. If you were, you wouldn’t care. You wouldn’t be crying.”
“You never cry, except when you’re sick, and that doesn’t count.”
“I do,” Emily said. “You just don’t see me. I cry in my room and then, when I come out, I just try to smile, because … you know. Here, drink this juice.”
I drank the juice. I ate some toast. Then I ate a cupcake. I felt suddenly so hungry, as if I hadn’t eaten for a week. I opened a box of crackers and buttered a whole bunch and ate them, with another glass of juice. “Do you really cry in your room, Emily?”
She nodded.
“I don’t like that. I don’t like that you cry alone. You’re my friend and if you’re crying, I don’t want you to cry alone.”
“Bunny, suppose it’s eleven o’clock at night. I’m in my house. You’re in your house. I feel sad. I feel like crying. What am I supposed to do?”
“Call me up. Send me a telegram. Say, CRYING. NEED HELP IMMEDIATELY. Then I’ll cry, too. We’ll be crying together.”
As soon as I got home, I went into Grandma’s room. She was lying on the bed, covered with a blanket. I stood in the doorway. She looked at me with big, big eyes. The stroke had made everything about her smaller, except her eyes. There were tears leaking out of them.
“Why are you crying?” It wasn’t what I meant to say. Or the way I meant to say it. It came out hard and rough. I thought she was crying because she knew all the mean and terrible things that had been in my head.
The tears kept coming out of her eyes.
I wanted to scream or howl or hit my head against the wall. I went to the window and looked out at our backyard. “Did you see the trees, Grandma? They’re all getting green.” I didn’t know what I was saying. Just talking. “Shad wants to build bigger cages for his animals. I think if Mom would let him, he’d give them a whole room to themselves.”
“He’s sweet,” she said.
“Yes.” After a moment: “I’m not.”
“My Bunny,” she said.
I leaned my head against the glass. I was remembering how unhappy my name had made me, how terrible I thought it was to have big front teeth and be taller than anybody. Oh, Bunny, I thought, now you would be happy if you could see Grandma the way she used to be.
After a while, I sat down on the bed.
Those tears. They kept leaking out of her eyes.
I tried to think of a joke. Something funny. “Grandma, there’s a slogan the Swiss have. Every little bit Alps.”
“What?”
She didn’t get it. I tried again. “I saw a sign over a dairy today, Grandma. YOU CAN’T BEAT OUR MILK. BUT YOU CAN WHIP OUR CREAM.
“Eh?”
I began to feel desperate. I wanted those tears to stop. “Listen, Grandma, I heard that the Jays are three games down.” I sat close to her and talked right to her. “Now my theory is that you stopped rooting for them. Grandma, you just can’t do that. You know how it is, you root for them and they win. You lie down on the job, and they lose. My idea is that you and I better start spending a little time every day concentrating on the Jays.”
She nodded.
I jumped up and pranced like a cheerleader. “Blue Jays! Blue Jays!” I threw out my arms. Sank to my knees. “We love ya, Blue Jays!”
One side of Grandma’s face lifted. A smile, I think. I picked up her hand and kissed it.
Chapter 20
Every day, now, Grandma goes to therapy. I come home directly after school, usually a few minutes before Dad comes back with Grandma. As soon as I hear our car, I go outside.
“Go back to work, dear,” Grandma says to Dad, in her new slow voice. “Bunny’s here.” Everything she does is very slow. She doesn’t need the wheelchair anymore. She has a cane now, but I carry it, and she holds my arm as we go into the house.
“Grandma, do you want some juice or something?”
“I’m tired. I’ll rest first.” She leans on her cane. Her left leg drags. We go into her room. “You could just pull the shades, darling.” I cover her with a blanket.
Sometimes, she’s not so tired. She comes into the kitchen and talks to me and Shad. She likes to sit in a chair by the window, looking out. Sometimes she’s very quiet, you don’t hear anything, but when you look over at her, you see tears running down her cheeks.
It’s better when she does her exercises. She sits at the table and, with her good right hand, she lifts her left arm and puts it on the table in front of her. She still moves her left arm as if it’s a thing. Then, with her right hand, she moves each separate finger of her left hand back and forth twenty times. She’s working up to fifty. And she tries to make a fist.
Star came home for one weekend to see Grandma. Everybody made a big fuss over her. Me, too. I was so glad to see her I forgot to be mad at her. But I was mad again by the time she went back to school, because all the time she could spare for me was five minutes. Excuse me. I mean four minutes and twelve seconds. I timed it. She poked her head in my room Saturday night. “So, how’s it going, Bunny?”
I decided to be just as cool as she was. “Oh, fine.”
“So, okay,” she said.
“Okay what?”
> “Just—okay.” She smiled.
I hate to say it, she has a beautiful smile. She has teeth just like me, but on her they don’t look funny at all. When she smiled, I almost decided I would never be mad at her again, no matter what. “What about you, Star?”
“What about me?”
“All those phone calls to Mom—”
“Oh, that.” She waved her hand. “Nothing.”
That was it. That was my big conversation with my sister, Star. She went back to school Sunday night.
“Look, Bunny.” Grandma had just come home from therapy. She sat down at the kitchen table and without any help from her good hand, she moved her left thumb back and forth.
“Grandma! Do it again.”
She did it again.
I sat down next to her and we both watched as she wriggled her thumb.
“Give you another week,” I said, “and you’ll be hand-wrestling me.” And then I burst into tears.
“Well, Bunny,” she said.
“No … I’m sorry … don’t mind me.”
“My little Bunny.”
I tried to laugh at the idea of me being little Bunny. But, instead, I leaned against Grandma, as if she were well and strong again. “Grandma, I love you. I love you so much.”
She stroked my hair with her good hand.
“How’s your grandma doing?” Emily said. It was Saturday and we were in the mall shopping.
“Better. Don’t you want to come over and see her?”
“Is it okay?”
“Naturally, it’s okay. She’d like to see you.”
“I’ll come over next week on Thursday, when the twins take swimming. Do you have to get home early today?”
“Do you?”
“No. Mom’s with the twins.”
“Good. Me, either. Mom’s with Grandma. She said take my time and have fun.”
Emily linked her arm with mine. “Want to go to a movie?”
“Sure. But let’s go buy my sneakers first.” We walked over to The Sport Shop. I tried on three different pairs of sneakers before I found what I wanted. Then I decided to buy socks, and that took a little longer.
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