Steve

Mama’s lost a lot of ground since her accident. She’s been talking to all her dead relatives and planning their birthday parties and such. We keep tellin’ her "we’ll see" whenever she asks us something like…

"Reckon we’ll have butter mints and lemon drops on the table in the hallway. I’ll bake a ham and we’ll have ambrosia in Aunt Zora’s cut glass bowl, and English peas, sweet potatoes and Irish potatoes. You never know which people might prefer. We’ll press Grannies linen table cloth and put both leaves in the table, bring in the extra chairs and the piano bench."

"We set up two card tables for the Kiddo’s to eat at. Of course I make two lemon meringue pies, one chocolate, and a Lady Baltimore cake with a pink layer ‘cause that’s Grandma’s favorite." It doesn’t do any good to tell her Grandma’s dead or any of the other company she’s planning for.

She was cookin’ for herself and keepin’ up her house and her own appearance pretty well ‘till Marva and Timmy Ray had her come stay with them in San Antonio for a month. She had to sleep on a folded out LazyBoy in their utility room. She forgot her heart pills and was without ‘em the whole time she was there. They expected her to cook meals and baby sit the kids. Mabel and Sugar Babe said they never would have let her go if they’d knowed what Timmy Rae and Marva had in mind.

Then they all went to Fiesta Texas on Mama’s American Express Card and that hateful little Rena and Starla, them mean little girls, told Mama that this one ride was real gentle and she should come on it with them. Turns out it was the wildest one in the park and they couldn’t get on it without a adult is why they tricked her.

About the third loop to loop on that thing mama’s blood pressure dropped plain to zero and she blacked out. She let go of the hand rail and fell out of the little car of a thing they was in. The belt of her light blue slacks caught on the wheel and she dangled by it 35 feet or so in the air, like a worm on a hook, ‘til the Fiesta Texas people was able to rescue her with a Cherry Picker that they use to change light bulbs away high up.

They said it was a wonder she wasn’t flung off the thing completely. When the operator saw her tump out, the ride almost made another complete go around before he could slow it to a stop.

She was in what they called a catatonic shock the first couple of days and even though she come to and snapped out of that, she still idn’t right. She has no sense of any of her people havin’ died and thinks they’re all still alive. And she thinks that there’s thirteen months. She said she read it in a book that there’s supposed to be thirteen months, but the government changed it and the month they got rid of was Septober or Octember. She wouldn’t have minded so much but she says her Birthday was the fourteenth day of that month.

You can see how bad off she is. We go along with her pretty well on the planning birthday parties for dead people ‘til it gets to the point that she wants us to go to the store or get somethin’ out of the attic. We have to tell her, "Oh mama we not havin’ no party for Uncle Ed, he’s been dead goin’ on thirty years." I know that she says she’s so afraid of goin’ to the Nursin’’ home and wind up like her sisters, Aunt Ledra and Aunt Enid.

We went to see Ledra one time and she was sittin’ up in her bed in a night gown with her hair in long braids and she was screamin’ get me a spatula, get me a spatula. I’ve got a skillet full of bacon on the fire and it’s gonna burn up if you don’t give me a spatula right now. Well Mama looked at me and we didn’t know what to do so Mama opened her purse and pulled out that big ol’ green comb she was always carryin’ and handed it to her.

She looked at Mama and snarled at her in a hateful tone, Don’t you think I know the difference between a comb and a spatula? But before Mama could take her comb back, Aunt Led started turnin’ the imaginary bacon with it. She was still cooking her breakfast when we tippy-toed out of her room.

At the funeral when we were viewing the body, Mama reminded me about her cooking bacon in her Nursin’ Home bed. We both started laughin’ and had to make it sound like we were coughing and clearing our throats ‘cause we were in Church. Mama said if I ever get that bad off, just smother me in my sleep or drown me in my bath. I’ll be too loony to know any how. I wonder if we can get her to put that in writing.

You be good,