Sister Margaret Anne moved through the room, checking their work. "Pretty, Kathleen," she said. "Finish now, time is almost up." Kathleen peeled the paper from the side of her yellow crayon to get a broader edge. She thought about Grandma, wondering if her time was up. Last night Mom had come into Kathleen's room with an extra blanket for her bed, a blanket of soft creamy stripes alternating with red, blue and green. Her mother thought it matched none of Kathleen's bedspreads and only brought it out on the coldest nights of winter. Kathleen set her transistor radio on the bed table. "Mom," she asked, "is Grandma going to be all right?" "Grandma's medicine isn't working very well," Mom said, "and if she gets much worse, she'll have to go to the hospital." Kathleen didn't need to ask which hospital.

Last summer Grandma had left her iron face-down on the ironing board. The hot iron plate first scorched the muslin pinned to the padded top of the board. By the time Dad smelled smoke and raced across the cement alley separating Grandma's backyard from theirs the wooden ironing board was in flames. Grandma was safe, moving the peony beds in front of the house even though it was two months too soon for that kind of job. Grandma came to live with them the next day.

There were mornings before the fire when Mom watched Grandma's house through the sunporch windows. If Grandma's satin tasseled shades weren't up by 9 o'clock, Mom sent Kathleen over to check on Grandma. Kathleen would bang hard on the closed door, could hear Grandma's radio blaring and see the lights on behind the shades. She smelled food cooking and knew Grandma had a great kettle going on her stove; maybe two, from the smell of spices she knew belonged in Grandma's spaghetti sauce or white beans with garlic and bacon and big chunks of white bread thrown in when the beans were tender.

Grandma Josephina wore yesterday's dress and her hair was uncombed when she heard Kathleen's pounding and came to the door. She knew Grandma had not slept, had been up all night cooking. Grandma fixed Kathleen rye toast and jam and poured coffee and milk in one of her yellow pottery cups, for dunking. Kathleen sat at the kitchen table until Grandma began to close her eyes and nod her head. Only then would she call Mom to come and help get Grandma to bed.

When Mom and Dad had argued with Grandma, trying to convince her to move in with them, Grandma waved their thoughts back to them with one quick movement of her arm and hand. "Matto, pazzo," she called them. "Crazy." "Pazzo," Grandma called out to the Draeger kids when they picked her ripe raspberries and pelted her garage window with the soft fruit. When Kathleen was small, she translated "pazzo" to a word she knew, "pots". The Draeger kids ruined perfectly good fruit, while Grandma canned the berries in sweet syrup or cooked them into jam. The Draeger's pot was empty; Grandma's pot was full of rich and good things.

"Crazy Lady," the neighborhood kids called Grandma when she dug her garden beds each year with shovel and pitchfork, her wide hips covered by a pair of men's khaki pants, strands of gray hair escaping the scarf she wrapped around her head as a turban. The garden was a maze of uprights, posts, wires, string, trellises, tripods, bare against the blue sky of spring, a humid mass of greenery and hanging ripe fruit and berries at summer's end. No other yard in the neighborhood looked like Grandma's except maybe old Mr. Anderson's, whose big-boned crab apple tree dropped its sour green fruit into an overgrown tangle of gooseberries. But his was a garden of neglect; Grandma's green marvel was a result of strong-armed effort.

"Crazy Lady" the neighborhood kids called Grandma when she carried a bowl of coffee grounds and egg shells to her squash plants each morning. It mattered little to Kathleen what they thought; they never tasted the shiny green cuccuzze cooked in Grandma's steamy summer kitchen, the big chunks of squash simmering in paste and herbs. Grandma ladled the fragrant stew into a pottery serving bowl and covered it with a heavy plate for Kathleen to carry home to her family. "Watch out!" Kathleen told the Draeger boys when they bothered Grandma's garden and she swore at them in Italian, "Her curses are powerful."

Kathleen walked home from school in the same ice-cold air that had met her in the morning. The frozen ground was locked away from the sun by a bitter white haze. There was no wind; the air was solid with cold, sharp, impossible to breathe. Kathleen cut through Grandma's yard. Dad kept the walk shoveled and Grandma's shades raised exactly halfway up each window to make the house look lived-in. For those who knew Grandma, it was a dead giveaway that Grandma was not living there. She yanked up her shades haphazardly, no window ever matching another. Kathleen worried about Grandma in Mom's orderly house. One of Grandma's lady friends brought her Italian Christmas bread, baked shiny with egg wash. The bread was gone now and Mom had swept the last of the crumbs from the breadbox. Grandma's Christmas crèche, the stable built into a stony hillside, covered with moss, tiny wax cheese and sausage hanging from the stable rafters, was packed away. Mary wore a paisley shawl, and Kathleen was sure that as soon as the Babe slept, Mary would cook up a good meal for her little family. Mom's clean house seemed wrapped in its own dull white light; Grandma was turning into a ghost there. Kathleen wondered if the people Grandma imagined were stealing from her were invisible but real and, bit by bit, were stealing Grandma's soul away. Grandma was in a "high" or a "low", Mom and Dad would whisper to the aunts on the phone. When she talked to the people no on else could see, that was called "raving".

Kathleen saw Dad's car parked in front of the house though he shouldn't have been home this early in the day. She hung her coat in the hallway inside the front door, the small room hot with the winter radiators on, bringing out the smell of wool and boot polish. Grandma lay on the living room couch, holding one strong hand over her eyes, the other hand propelling her words into the room, creating more heat. "You dirty son-of-a-'b'," she shouted, "you'll get caught, they'll find you, don't you steal from me, I know you!" "We called the doctor," Mom said. "He and Dad are taking her to the hospital." Mom packed Grandma's suitcase with nightgowns, underwear and robe, her glasses and pills. She did not pack Grandma's jewelry, and Kathleen worried that she would miss them. Her good wool coat lay over the back of a chair, ready for when the doctor came. Her mink stole hung alone on the coat hanger, the slim mouth of one mink biting the tail of another, racing in a circle with nothing in the middle. Kathleen thought of Grandma's kitchen and the brightly colored pottery bowls sitting empty in the cupboards, the dead light of the winter's day seeping into the house, holding the bowls in its cold white light. Matto, pazzo. Empty.

Copyright © Laurie Lalish 2003