Pleasantly Demented

March 13, 2011

Locked out again.
“You can come back when it's lunch time. Now GO.” she’d say, in the most unaffected voice she could muster.
And then she’d turn the deadbolt.
Click.
Self-righteous cunt.

No doubt she spent those afternoons piled up on her side of the sofa with her nose stuck in the middle of her trashy romance novel. Something just ain’t right about a little girl’s first experience with porn coming from sneaking a peek at her grandma’s choice of light afternoon reading.

And I’d be lying if I said quips like, “heaving breasts” and “throbbing manhood” didn’t make my girly parts tingle back then.

While living in what amounts to my grandmother's basement between the ages of 6 and 10, my girly parts tingled from reading her soft-core porn novels.

Really let the utter ridiculousness of that reality wash over you for a second.  Feel it?  

This is supposed to be funny.
Feel free to laugh. 

She was a wretch of a thing- an almost implausibly pitiful creature.
She was more caricature than human, really. A stereotype within a stereotype.
At one time, she was a 1940s southern belle- curly dark hair cut just below the ears, ruffled skirts, tea gloves, porcelain skin, proper, catholic, conservative in every definition of the word.

Petite but not too tiny. Insatiably consumed with her size and her skin.  Dainty was her measure of a woman.  And the number of skin creams she owned was her record of self worth.

With age, her squared jaw would grow tired, begging for release from the years of holding her face in place.
There are pictures of her at an age when her jowls had not yet been set free, and her face was kinder in youth. Her face was kinder. And that was all.

I remember my back against a wall.  Screamin' in my face with her shrill, twangy voice.  My cousin accused me of stealing her bracelet.  That Cousin O' Mine.  Momma walked in just in time to get her off me.  And then she walked in my cousin's bedroom and found the bracelet under her mattress.

That there cousin was her favorite.  She told me so. 

She was a wretch of a mother, too. On the universal yardstick of maternity, her mothering would be nothing less than abuse. Physical. Emotional. Verbal. She’d calmed a touch by the time the grandkids came along. And by calmed, I mean she knew better than to lay a hand on my mother’s children.

It’s scary to think that she is what some parents refer to when they wax nostalgic about their stolen freedom to beat their kid’s ass without society sticking its nose in their business.

“I got my ass tow up when I was a youngin’ and I turned out jess fine!”
The fact that anyone can say that with straight face is proof they didn’t.

As an adult, my mother refused to put up with her bullshit. One of the greatest lessons she ever taught me was that it doesn’t matter how much of a person’s blood is in your veins, a piece of shit is a piece of shit. You owe them nothing.

But on days like this, I didn’t have much of a choice. Mom was at work.

Summertime.
Hot as a son of a bitch.
Sticky. Thick. Skeeters nippin at my sweet, chubby legs.
Her back yard was a wonderland by today’s standards.
Tract McNeighborhood housing for the sake of the almighty dollar hadn’t been conceived quite yet.

Hers was a comfortably white neighborhood- as much a priority as the number of bedrooms- and with her words, she made no bones about her feelings in that regard.  Front yards puking up screamin-pink azaleas onto every available square inch of soil. Unassuming brick façades. Screen doors- just a little bent on the edge where they’d been kicked shut so the dog wouldn’t get out.

But the back yard is where the magic happened.
The trees were tight around the periphery, but inside was a good acre or more of wild, untamed yard.
Wee trickle of a creek through the middle.
Just enough pines and bushes to outline a natural 4-wheeler trail.

Honeysuckle vines taught the fence line who was boss decades ago. Damn things aren’t nearly as romantic as second rate storytellers would have you believe. Bit of a choking hazard, not to put too fine a point on it. Especially when they marry up with the kudzu.

But they kept me safely away from Mrs. Scroggins’ yard, for the most part. I’d already gotten in trouble one year for climbing that fence and hollerin, “You’re just a mean old bitch and nobody likes you!”

Momma walked me over there and made me apologize.
I had my fingers crossed.

My Uncle Andy put a tire swing back there.
The rope must have been tied at least 500 feet up in that tree.
I’d sit inside the tire with my head thrown back while he pushed me. Hard.
That man never knew a shred of ‘fragile little girl’ inhibition.
He used to gut his deer in that back yard.
I’d stand just far enough away to get a head start and just close enough so I could see.
And he’d take a handful of deer guts and fling ‘em at me.
I’d run screaming and giggling.
And then come back for more.

I’d eventually name my kid after him.

I don’t think my sister ever really liked the deer guts.
She was more into Barbies and tea parties than the viscera of her future stew meat.

And I think she got a little gun shy of hangin’ out in the back yard if there was even the slightest chance a stray arrow might be on the ground. I stabbed her in the face with one of them suckers once. By accident.

She still has the scar.

Funny what people remember, isn’t it?
Southern memoirs are often carefully-spun yarns about dogwoods and magnolias, sweet tea, hot nights, listening to grandparents tell tales of the old days of courtin’ and first cars and churchin’ it up.

That’s not what I remember.
I remember the twisted undercurrent of scandal and hypocrisy. The fun stuff.
The way it felt to hear the church-goin’ folk say, “I saw your grandma at the beauty shop today! Ain’t she jess the sweetest thang?” and know better.

And then I’d go back to that back yard.
Picking wild blackberries off the bushes, dropping them in the little pocket I made with the bottom of my shirt. Sitting on the ground and picking out the blackest and juiciest. That was my way of stickin’ it to the man. Or the cunt, as it were.

She wasn’t gonna make me wait for lunch. I’ll eat her goddamn blackberries.

Momma would finally get home from work, and we’d be allowed back in the house.
And then I’d go back to the basement.
And I’d go back to my bedroom in the basement.
My Jackson Five album and my record player.

Dank.
That’s the word I’m looking for.
So thick I can almost hold it in my hand.
The smell of old people, old houses, old things, rotting things.
Mildew.
Things that have seen too many Alabama summers.
People who have seen too many of those hot and humid nights on their back porches with their tea and rocking chairs and mosquitos and stories.

These people, these things, all reeking, dank mementos of the days of being told,
“You can’t go upstairs while Pop’s asleep. He sleeps with a gun under his pilla and he’ll shoot yer face off!”

The days of tossing my dirty panties on the antlers of the mounted deer head on the wall.
Stealing pudding pops from the freezer when no one was looking.

The days of living with the shrew that could not be tamed.

In retrospect, the hilarity of it simply makes for a great story. A story with no purpose, really.

If you’re looking for a comfortable plot twist, happy ending, or lesson learned, you’ve come to the wrong place, my friend.

Just tangential vignettes of a different time.

A time when I used to sit in the dirt eating blackberries and playing with rollie pollies.
A time when I already knew something was fucked up about a woman who said things like, “Sex is for havin’ babies and I done had all the babies I’m gonna have!”

A time when I’d wait for her to leave the room so I could snatch up her trashy soft-core porn and flip straight to the middle.

A time when the irony of those last two statements was not lost on me.

What a wretch of a woman.