Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [126]
“Yeah, they can give you a good peck,” said Karen’s grandmother. “You just have to stand up to them! Show some willpower!” She reached in for Karen, but Karen said, “I can get down by myself,” and her grandmother said, “That’s the ticket.” Karen’s mother had gone ahead, carrying her overnight case in one hand and waving her purse at the flies, picking her way across the yard through the clumps of poo in her high heels, and the grandmother took this opportunity to say, “Your mother’s weak-minded. Hysterical. Always has been. I hope you’re not.”
“What’s that thing?” said Karen, finding some courage because she saw that it was required of her.
“What thing?” said her grandmother. Leaning against her grandmother’s legs was a medium-sized pig. It snuffled at Karen’s socks with its alarming snout, wet and tender as an eyeball, drooly as a mouth. “This here’s Pinky. She’s a pig.”
“No,” said Karen. She could tell it was a pig, she’d seen pictures. “The big thing, at the front.”
“Old cultivator,” said her grandmother, leaving Karen to wonder what a cultivator was. “Come on!” She strode off towards the door with Karen’s suitcase under one arm, and Karen trotted along behind. In the distance there was more barking and cackling. The pig followed as far as the house, and then, to Karen’s surprise, came right in. It knew how to nose open the screen door.
They were in the kitchen, which was a lot less like a rubbish heap than Karen had thought it would be. There was an oval table covered with oilcloth – light green with a design of strawberries – with a huge teapot and some used plates on it. There were some chairs painted apple green, and a wood range and a saggy maroon velvet sofa piled with newspapers. On the floor there were more newspapers, with a ravelled afghan thrown on top of them.
Karen’s mother was sitting in a rocking chair beside the window, looking exhausted. Her linen outfit was all creased. She had her shoes off and was fanning herself with her hat, but when the pig came into the room she gave a slight scream.
“It’s okay, she’s house-broken,” said the grandmother.
“That is the limit,” said Karen’s mother, in a tight, furious voice.
“Cleaner than most people,” said the grandmother. “Smarter, too. Anyways, this is my house. You can do what you like in yours. I didn’t ask you to come here and I won’t ask you to leave, but while you’re here you can take things as you find them.”
She scratched the pig behind the ears and gave it a slap on the rump, and it grunted gently and squinted up at her and then went over and flopped down sideways on the afghan. Karen’s mother burst into tears and scrambled out of her chair, and headed out of the room in her stocking feet, with her white gloves crushed to her eyes. Karen’s grandmother laughed. “It’s okay, Gloria,” she called. “Pinky can’t climb stairs!”
“Why not?” said Karen. Her voice was almost a whisper. She’d never heard anyone talk to her mother like that.
“Legs’re too short,” said her grandmother. “Now, you can take off that dress, if you’ve got any other kind of clothes, and help me wash the potatoes.” She sighed. “I should’ve had sons.”
Karen opened her suitcase and found her long cotton pants, and changed into them in a room her grandmother called the back parlour. She didn’t want to put on shorts because of the backs of her legs. They were a secret between her and her mother. She wasn’t supposed to tell, about the broom handle or the pancake flipper, or there would be trouble, the way there was when her mother punched one of the Grade Two boys in the face and almost lost her job, and then what would