Between Sisters

She didn’t understand. I told her that it was alright, that I didn’t expect her too. And that I was glad she didn’t.

I don’t remember much about my grandpa.  I remember his voice"raspy and nasally, like someone with a bubble of air stuck in his throat would sound.   I remember that he had no hair on the top of his head, just a white band of it around the back of his head from ear to ear, but that’s it.  Standing at the side of the blue box, I could see that he had a big nose, and not very many eyelashes.  I didn’t like seeing him. Most people’s tummy moved up and down when they slept, or their eyes would move beneath their lids, but Grandpa didn’t move at all.

            A lot of us were crammed into that little room.  Grandma was standing by Grandpa’s head with a tissue in her hands and her lips shut tight. Uncle Tim and Uncle Steve were standing with Mom over by the flowers.  Dad had gone out to the car to lie down again and Aunt Amy and Aunt Kara were out in the big room with the other little kids.  Mom was crying and Steve and Tim were just looking at their toes.  Joan was looking straight at Grandpa though.  She had her head tilted to the side, and she had a very sad smile on her face.  I tugged on her arm and as quietly as I could, asked if I could go out to play with Riley and Jason.

            “No. Grandpa loved us both very much and we’re going to tell him how much we love him right now.”

            So I stood there, holding Joan’s hand and waiting.  Mom was the first one to leave, then Tim and Steve.  Finally, it was just Grandma, Joan, and me.  Joan walked over to Grandma and didn’t say anything.  After a minute she told her that it was time to go, that they had work to do.

            After we left, Joan told me that we got to ride in Grandma’s car to get to her house, which means a big kid seat for me!  Joan got me all buckled down in the back seat and she sat in the front next to Grandma.  Normally she turns the radio on, but I guess she didn’t know how to work the one in Grandma’s car.  The seatbelt was hurting my neck, so I stuck it behind my shoulder.  “Jackie, I’ll put your car seat in here if you can’t keep your seat belt on.”  I fixed the seatbelt and looked at the shapes the rain made on my window.

            When we got to Grandma’s house, Mom and Dad were already there talking with everyone else.  I noticed that Joan didn’t go over to talk with the other grownups like she normally did, she just stayed around Grandma and helped her cook; I figured that I should stick with Joan.

            I didn’t really remember when Grandpa got sick.  I think that it happened about the same time that Dad did.  I know that the doctors made Dad sick, but Joan told me that smoking is what messed up grandpa.  Joan wasn’t upset about Dad being sick, whenever he said that he had to go lay down, she just told him to go ahead, and whenever he tried to say sorry that he couldn’t help with the dishes, she just told him that it was fine.  But whenever Grandpa had help hooking up to his oxygen tank, Joan got so sad that she had to go to the bathroom.  I heard her once, crying in the bathroom.  She never told anyone and made me promise not to tell anyone either.  She said that it would just make everyone else sad.  I didn’t get that either, whenever Joan caught me crying, she just made me feel better, it never made her sad.

            A little while after dinner the uncles and aunts took the little kids home and Mom and Dad went to bed.  Grandma poured herself more coffee, and Joan went to go talk with her.  It was twelve o’clock and I never got to stay up that late, so I tried to stay quiet and hope that they would forget about me so I could spend a little more time with Spongebob Squarepants.  After a few minutes, Joan went to the computer with Grandma by the couch I was sitting on.  They looked at a couple of papers then Joan started typing like crazy and then printed huge stack of blue papers.  After a few minutes of printing, Grandma picked up one of the pages and burst out laughing.  I asked what was so funny and Grandma showed me the papers they were printing had two sides, and Joan was so tired that she printed the back upside down.  We all laughed for a little while, almost like nothing sad had happened. 

“Thank you, Joany, for your help with the programs, I’m really no good at this formatting stuff.”

“Apparently neither am I.  But really, Grandma, it was nothing.”

            I asked what the papers were for, and Joan explained to me that they were little books that people could take home to remember Grandpa.  I asked if I could have one and she chuckled, pushed some hair behind my ear and said that she’d already saved a couple for the two of us.

            After pjs and teeth, Joan tucked me in on the fold-out couch in the living room.  She told me that I could watch TV if I waited for Grandma to fall asleep.  She told me to get at least a little sleep, tomorrow as a big day.  I didn’t want to watch TV, I was tired, but I couldn’t sleep.  I crawled out from beneath my Dora blanket and Grandma’s fuzzy sheets and walked down the dark hall to Joan’s room.  She wasn’t asleep yet either.  She chuckled and told me to hop on in.

            I hadn’t slept alone in a long time.  When I was little, I had my own bed, but Joan didn’t like having a whole room to herself.  I remember the night she decided she wanted to move in too; she had put me to bed before Mom got home but I woke up a little while later when I heard her and Dad outside my door.  I think they were fighting over who got to share a room with me.  Joan said a lot of bad words and apparently won because she came right in and told me that we were going to share a room from now on.  She taught me all of her tricks to sleep well; to sleep with a light on in the hall, but always with the door shut, and locked if you had a lock, and to always make sure you’re wearing PJs with a zipper.

            The next morning was the funeral.  Joan woke up early and tried to be quiet and not wake me up, but it didn’t work.  I watched her put on her black pants and her high-heeled clicky shoes, then pin her long dark hair up in a pair of chop sticks.  Then I woke up again to her sitting over me; I had missed her put on all of her makeup.  She sat me up and gave me a green and white sundress to wear, with some lacey tights and white clicky shoes.  My dress wasn’t as pretty as her outfit, but she says that it’s what she packed for me so it’s what I was wearing.  After I was dressed we went into the bathroom where she began the daily time-sucking task of combing through my blonde curls.  After she was finished, she looked at us both in the mirror and brushed my hair behind my ears then told me that it was time for breakfast.

            Dad was already up eating his fruit salad.  He ate one every day.  He would wake up at 6:30, throw up in the bathroom, then eat his fruit salad.  Joan sat me down at the table with Grandma’s Cheerios and a bowl of sugar, because Cheerios are gross without it.  Dad stood up and walked over to Joan in the kitchen.  He put his arm on her shoulder and she twitched and walked away.  Joan never liked Dad touching her.  Even at church, she always made sure that Mom was in between Dad and us so that when the priest told us all to greet each other, he could never reach her for a hug.

            Joan said that we had to go to the funeral early to help Grandma set up the Grandpa books they made.  We left Mom and Dad at Grandma’s house and rode with Grandma to her church.  We all carried a box of the cards from the trunk of the car to the doughnut and coffee building.  We walked through the two doors, through the lobby with the bulletin board covered in every color papers, past the corner of the big room with all of the toys, and to the big long food table where one of Grandma’s friends was setting up something with flowers.  The lady had short, yellow and silver hair that looked like a bowl on top of her head and a lot of black makeup outlining her eyes, like somebody tried to draw her eyes with a marker that was too big.  She gave Grandma a hug and Joan introduced herself.  Joan took a handful of the papers and went to go put them by the two front doors.

            “Mary, these programs look wonderful, did you make them yourself?”

            “No, Joan did most of the work actually.”

            “Well.  Does she have to do this sort of thing for her career?”

            I laughed out loud when grandma’s friend asked that then I quickly covered my mouth"you’re not supposed to laugh at grownups, it’s disrespectful.  She asked me what was so funny and I told her that Joan didn’t have a job, she was just in high school.  We did our homework together.  The old lady looked surprised and told Grandma that Joan looked like she was in her twenties.  Grandma said that she acts like it too.

            I didn’t know that the funeral was going to actually be at church.  I didn’t really like church but Joan would always try to teach me how to read the music in the books.  After mass was over whoever was sitting in front of us always told her that she had a beautiful voice and that she should sing in the choir.  I always tried really hard to read like she did because I wanted the women in front of me to offer me a spot in the choir every Sunday.  But this mass Joan didn’t sing at all.  She told me before mass that Grandpa never liked any of the music in mass and that we were going to prove him wrong and show him how much fun it is.  But she didn’t sing a word.  Every now and then she would try to sing a line, but her voice got all shaky and she stopped.  Even when we weren’t singing, I caught Joan crying.  Every few minutes she would turn her head to the side and look at the bricks on the wall and just stay with her head all sideways.

            On the way home after the funeral Joan and I got to ride home with Grandma again.  They didn’t say anything and the radio stayed turned off again.  When we got back to Grandma’s house again Grandma poured another cup of coffee and went to go talk with Uncle Tim, Uncle Steve, and Mom.  As I went off with Riley and Jason to play with the train set, I saw Joan walk away from the grownups again.  She walked downstairs and into her bedroom.  She had been crying a lot lately and I was worried.  I followed her down the stairs and saw her sitting on the bed looking at the dresser.  I liked the dresser, it was just wood like mine at home, but it had red and yellow trains painted on each of the drawers.

            I spoke up and asked her, “Why are you so upset?  We didn’t even see Grandpa very much.”

            Joan sat me down on the bed next to her and tucked some of my hair behind my ear.

“Well Missy, I knew Grandpa a lot longer than you did.  And one summer, when I was younger, very little, only five or six, I was wearing my favorite dress, one with a green skirt white top.  Grandma was pouring water from the hose into the cat bowl I was holding for MammaKitty when I decided to splash her with it.  When she refilled the bowl I splashed her with it again, but this time, instead of refilling the bowl, she squirted me with the hose and got my dress all wet.  I didn’t think it was nearly as funny as she did, so I ran inside crying.  I ran down into this room and just sat on this bed sad because I was all wet.  After a few minutes, Grandpa heard me crying.  Now, you know how we feel about boys, well Grandpa was no exception.  So I was a little scared.  But instead of doing anything bad, Grandpa sat down next to me and asked what was wrong.  I told him that Grandma squirted me with the hose and ruined my dress.  He laughed at me a little then helped me go through that dresser over there to look for some new clothes.”

            I didn’t understand.  She told me that it was alright, that she didn’t expect me too.  And that she was glad I didn’t.  She brushed more hair behind my ear and told me that she just really liked Grandpa a lot.  I just sat next to her and traced the green zig-zags on my dress.  I didn’t really know what else to do.  After a little while, she got up and stood me up on my feet.  She pushed her own hair behind her ears, just like mine.  Then I followed her out to go talk to the grownups, just like her.

Author's Note

This is a short story written about the death of a grandfather from the point of view of a young girl, through her observations of her family around her, particularly her older sister. I'm struggling on the ending though, I can't seem to get it right. Any notes would be helpful