The Bullpen Gospels - Dirk Hayhurst [10]
She threatened to call the cops on the dogs. Then she threatened to call the cops on the neighbors. Next, she threatened to kill the dogs. Then she threatened to kill the neighbors. It wouldn’t be long until there was freezer-burned dog in the fridge.
She provided a roof over my head, and for that I’m thankful, but my life with her is far from fantasy. She’ll tell you she treats me like a prince. She’ll tell you a lot of things. Like how she saved Einstein from the Nazis or the stretch of Underground Railroad beneath the house. What she won’t tell you is how she keeps me in the sewing room, on an air mattress, with nothing but a card table and a suitcase.
My princely suite is filled with her precious treasures: heirlooms; boxes and boxes of worthless, bought-on-sale heirlooms she plans to pass on to us when she dies. I asked her if I could move a few of her artifacts out of “my” room in the meantime, and she told me no. I said I’d do all the work and she wouldn’t have to lift a finger, but it was still a no. One day I decided to move one single thing: a broken exercise bike about ten years older than me. She called a lawyer when she found it was missing. She was going to sue me for the cost of one dilapidated early 1970s exercise bike. She said she was going to use it, and I had no right to throw away her things. I asked her how much long-distance biking she planned on doing at ninety-one years of age, and she told me to go to hell.
There is a real bed in the house, in one of the other junk-stuffed rooms. It’s wedged in next to an old flannelgraph and books on how Stalin is the Antichrist. The bed is brand new, but I can’t sleep on it. Not that she won’t let me; rather, I can’t because she won’t let me take the plastic off the mattress or the pillows. Ever sleep on Saran wrap? Try it sometime—really opens the pores. I told her princes didn’t sleep on plastic, and she told me to go to hell.
She said taking the plastic off was how things wore out and got dirty. I told her everything eventually wore out and got dirty. She said her things were still around because she took care of them. I told her some things had life expectancies on them, like people, hint, hint.
She told me to go to hell.
“All those things you do for me….” I said, being sure to look her straight in the eyes as I spoke. I learned long ago that you can’t show weakness when you speak to her or she’ll attack. I recounted the list of her services, including, but not limited to, bacon fat, lye soap, the Antichrist, lack of sleep, exercise bikes, and bullet holes. “Chocolate cakes are supposed to make it all better?”
Her face flushed red, and I thought her head would spin around like something from The Exorcist. Anger didn’t help her looks much. Permanently hunched over like some evil scientist’s assistant, if she wore a hood, she could get a job haunting bell towers.
She grabbed my door’s handle and just before slamming it screamed, “If you’ve got it so bad, you can just move out!”
“Good luck with those squirrels.”
“You can go to hell!” came her retort. See, I told you she could hear me through the door.
“Pretty sure I’m already there….” I sighed, and flopped back onto my makeshift bed.
Five minutes later, I reluctantly got up and chased the squirrels out of her feeder in my underwear and pair of snow boots. She asked me what I wanted for breakfast as reward for my good deed. I told her I could really go for some chocolate cake.
We fight about the bedding, the food, the clothes, the neighbors, the squirrels, Harriet Tubman, and whatever else she can think up—every day, one futile battle after the next, always ending the same way. You know, Grandma’s house, Grandma’s law. If I don’t like something she does, she tells me I can just move out, and, of course, she knows I can’t.
This is my life