I was only as high as the coffee-ringed
formica kitchen table, standing,
and sitting in the chair that could have fit 2 of me
I squirmed like a bound-and-gagged Houdini.
My grandmother sat as still
as the air before an August thunderstorm
and as sullen.
Periodically she would shake loose a cigarette,
perch it on her bottom lip with resentful hunger,
eye the powder blue Bic with hatred
when it resisted her tiny flailing attempts to strike a light
with shivering fingers.
My grandmother had the DTs.
The TV buzzed and shimmered in her peripheral vision
as she took frail gulps
of cranberry juice heavily scented with vodka.
She avoided looking at me
but when I slouched, she never failed
to correct me with the point of her pencil in the small of my back.
I glared at my coloring and broke the tip of my crayon.
My grandmother said she used to speak to Winston Churchill,
and she was sure she'd talked to Stalin
or at least someone with a strong accent
(before she'd washed too many shirts with her husband's name written on the pocket
and made too many dinners on a shoestring,
before my grandmother took to wearing rhinestones
like a glinting mockery of wealth
pathetic because she took them seriously,
before she dried up into a smelly, rattling husk.)
I stared through the scattered sprawl of crayons and crumpled paper,
Suddenly picturing this old woman
As young and pretty,
straight-backed while supervisors prowled like polyester vultures,
answering phones for the President of the United States in World War II.
I guessed Winston Churchill must have been somebody important too
For her to smirk and brush his name off her lips
like a precarious finger of ash.
I asked her what they were like, these important friends of hers.
"They were very nice,"
she told me, seeming to shrink back down to her normal, vague dimensions.
"Always polite to me. The President used to thank me for holding the line."
This page copyright to Sarah Morehouse, January 15, 2000.