Chapter 1 - Back in Town

My grandmother, my Bitsy, was the kind of woman who held her past in her eyes. Whether she crinkled them in delight, cast them down in disappointment, or widened them with the naiveté of an older adult entering a realm of new traditions, deep inside of her soft brown eyes her past weighed heavily on their color and radiance. This evidence sufficed as the testament to her trials in life. Even in her older years, her hands were calm and her voice steady, but her eyes glazed over.

I saw her cry once. It was the unabashedly grief-stricken sobbing that creates a wall between two companions. As a young woman, I was very uncomfortable by this pure display of emotion by someone whom I admired so deeply. I felt helpless as I reached out and gingerly touched her frail hand. Even in the heat of a southern May afternoon, her hand had fallen cool to the touch.
Our Saturday had started normally enough. I was home from college after my freshman year, and I relished my new advances at independence. Sleeping in was certainly one of them, and I casually strolled into the kitchen and poured some orange juice around 10 am, which was absurdly late to my parents. The breakfast dishes were already dry on the dish rack, and the aroma of sausage and eggs was faint. The day’s heat had already encouraged my mother to turn the kitchen fan onto the highest level, and its breeze had sent a stack of napkins sprawling across the table top.

I had missed this. This comfort of my childhood. The sound of the fan, the smell of a tasty, albeit unhealthy breakfast. I peered out the kitchen window to see my dad getting out of his truck with a sack of groceries. My mother had already put the man to work, and it wasn’t even noon. I sincerely doubt he had objected, he loved getting out of the house and taking Baker, our German Shorthaired Pointer, with him to town. From the back of the house I could hear my mother gabbing away on the phone, probably about some political matter at church.

“Some things never change…” I muttered aloud.

“Darn right they don’t. How about you get that other bag of groceries from the truck instead of standing like a zombie,” my dad announced.

There was a time when I might have rolled my eyes and heaved a giant sigh. But I was an adult now, and I found it appropriate to behave as such. I simply smiled and walked out to get the groceries and corral Baker into the house. When I came in, I found my mother exasperatedly talking to Dad.

“Well Donnie, it looks like your mother is gonna head down here in a bit. She claims to be going stir crazy, but I think she just doesn’t want to waste her money on her air conditioning bill,” Mom looked at me and said, “Well you’ve arisen. Go shower and be decent for Bitsy. I have planned for two weeks to work in my garden on this very day, and no woman, not even Bitsy Sutter, is going to stop me.”

I sort of froze with that irreverent displeasure one feels about spending their Saturday with their grandmother. One on hand, I wanted to maybe go shopping, read a book or scrounge up some high school friends to catch up with. However on the other, much heavier hand, I loved Bitsy and knew I was supposed to cherish my moments with her. At this mandate from my mother, I did heave a sigh.

“Well I was fixin’ to head over to Harry’s and help him out in the shop.” My dad was even trying to escape his own mother. At the mention of him helping in Harry’s shop, my mother and I exchanged knowing glances. We both knew this meant sipping on coffee while lounging in Harry’s garage participating in mantalk, and maybe every so often Harry would request Dad’s help in holding the saw-horse in place.

“Fine,” said Mom, “Deedy, looks like you better hurry it up. Bitsy will be here soon, and I know she’s gonna want company while she reads our newspaper.” That was another thing about Bitsy. In addition to not wanting to pay for air conditioning, she saw no point in having the paper delivered.

“If anything is newsworthy, I’ll hear about it at the hair salon,” she always said, and for what it was worth, she was usually right.

When I was younger, I adored Bitsy. I was her baking assistant, copilot around town (when she drove), yarn holder, and doting granddaughter. I still adored her, but I had a significantly less amount of patience to her well-versed and well-rehearsed stories and “life lessons.” At the same time, I had some uproarious tales to share from my first year at Tech, and I was sure she’d enjoy hearing them. I had just gotten in town a week before, and I had been so exhausted from not sleeping and studying for exams, I slept for two days straight. Then I hit the town in search of my friends. I hadn’t even seen Bitsy yet, I realized. The heavier hand won, and I began looking forward to the day. I set my half-full glass of juice down and started off for the shower.

“Deedy.” My mother’s low tone meant I had done something wrong. “I am not your maid. I don’t know WHO cleaned your dishes in the dorm, bless their heart, but I spent an hour cleaning this kitchen earlier, and I will not have you making a wreck of it.”

The weight of oppression began bearing down on me as I clenched my teeth, washed my glass, and then left to get ready for a day with Bitsy.