Living

On Tuesday, my mom and I drove from Austin down to the coast to see my grandmother. I'm rarely in Texas anymore, and when I am, I always try to visit her, even if it's just an overnight trip. When I arranged the trip, my mom and I agreed it was best to go after the weekend, so we'd be there for July 4th. I knew what this meant, the irony of it. That instead of looking at explosions in the sky, I'd be in that cave of a house, in near darkness. But I was fine with that.

My grandmother moved into the house four or five years ago. She was past 80 and struggling to get around. She's had a bum knee since she was 3, and moving things up and down the stairs whenever there was the threat of a hurricane had gotten too much. Not that she was doing the moving. But last time it happened, all the furniture stayed upstairs for weeks until family was able to get off work and move everything back downstairs. Grandpa was no longer alive to do it. And so she moved. From a house that was surrounded on three sides by water, a pool, palm trees, seagulls, a ship's anchor in the yard down by the dock and water, to a ranch-style closer to her grandson, the only one around who could really take care of her. She had storm shutters installed, like the old house. Except now she kept them closed all the time, was afraid someone would break into the house. Eventually it got to where no one was allowed to come in the front door. You had to have a garage door opener, call ahead. A lock installed at the front opens only from the inside. With a key.

When she moved, she started to have more problems. The falls that once could be counted on one hand: now innumerable. Her doctor noted the irony: turns out that flight of stairs was the only thing keeping her hip and leg strong. Yeah it hurt, but it was exercise, worked the muscles. First a cane, then a walker. Not long after she moved, Ike took out the bottom floor of the old house. Lucky, everyone said. Lucky she didn't have to deal with it, that she moved in time. She started having trouble, forgetting things. Mini strokes, it turns out. Until this last visit, I thought her paranoia was just part of getting old. I heard my mom yell and ask if she could get my grandmother anything, and when she said No, my mom opened the garage door and grabbed a 24-pack of toilet paper and then quickly tiptoed across the living room to the guest bedroom, where she dug through the closet and hid the package. Carefully placing clothes and blankets on top of it, rearranging so that nothing could be seen when you opened the accordion doors. My grandma will only keep a couple of rolls in the house. Someone could steal it. No one knows who this someone is, since only family sets foot inside.

Tuesday night, I sat at the table eating pizza with my mom, grandmother, and aunt. Grandma made a derogatory comment as usual about black people, and I sighed and looked down at my plate. My mom said we were likely related to African Americans, and my aunt added that some scientists say all people originated in Africa. To which my grandmother responded that it makes sense that God wouldn't want to just use his power to create white people. And then a beat later, she started talking about when the aliens came from outer space to populate the earth. To make humans.

The next day, I pulled the curtains away from the windows in the office area where I sleep. I moved a chair, put one knee on the sill and struggled to pull the stuck window up and twist the knob to open the metal shutters. Suddenly it was daytime, a real house, in the real world. I didn't know there were clouds in the sky until that moment, hardly knew it was day at all.

Mom makes gumbo and Grandma says she doesn't like gumbo. But it's her recipe, her mother's recipe, Mom says. The recipe she cooked for Mom and her children for 20 plus years. She blinks in response. Later we play Scrabble. I make "quilting" on a triple-word score, use all my letters. Maybe the second time in my life. My mom and Grandma want a rematch. I need to take care of a headache first so mom grabs a bottle of Aleve and doles out two pills. Aren't they usually blue? she says, to no one in particular. I swallow them anyway and gag. My chest burns, they're dissolving before they get all the way down. Something is off but I don't understand. Now I have a headache, and I'm nauseous. Mom starts to get worried, I put my head down on the table. She tells me to make myself throw up. I can't focus on the game like this anyhow, so I go sit on the bathmat by the toilet. I look at the seashell shower curtain, the seashell cross stitch. The seashell soaps and towels. I can't do it. When I come back out, my mom is in the other bathroom looking through the pills. Grandma says she has some Tylenol I can take instead, but I can't imagine putting anything else in my body, having to swallow. We go back to the table where the Scrabble game is waiting. Mom looks on her phone for info about the pills. Motion sickness medicine, which I never take because it makes me sick. But why were they in the Aleve bottle? My head is swimming as I try to form words for the board. 7 points, 10 points. I don't care. We finish the game and I go to the office. Try to sleep. It's the 4th of July. I can't hear any fireworks.

Later on, I get up, give up on sleeping. I'm not nauseous anymore, but I am hungry. Missed dinner. Mom and I watch home shows on TV. House Hunters International. Property Brothers, and then I get ready to go back to bed. I pull the window up a couple of inches, and suddenly the whole house is filled with sirens and a voice repeating INTRUDER ALERT. I push the window back down, but it doesn't stop. My mom rushes out of her room in her nightgown. Grandma wheels up with her walker. Her hearing aid isn't in and she doesn't realize the alarm is going off. What's happening? I was up because I had to pee and I thought I heard something. We can't figure out how to reset the alarm. The phone rings, and my mom answers in Grandma's bedroom and says everyone's OK, no one broke in. It was just my daughter trying to close the blinds. What's the password, the woman asks. I'm afraid to lift the window again to close the shutters. I don't believe it won't happen again. I cringe as I pull and hurriedly turn the wheel and breathe when they click into place, 180 degrees of metal over glass. Then I close the white wood blinds and pull the sage curtain sheers over that. Four layers between me and open air.

I get under the sheet, covered with seashells. Pull up the seashell quilt. Turn the lamp off. The motto where my grandmother used to live: Bayou Vista, Texas: Where living on the water is a way of life.