Gramma Read online

  Gramma had been a witch, just like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz. And now she was dead. That gargling sound, George thought with increasing horror. That gargling, snoring sound had been a... a... a "death rattle."

  "Gramma?" he whispered, and crazily he thought: Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead.

  No response. He held his cupped hand in front of Gramma's mouth. There was no breeze stirring around inside Gramma. It was dead calm and slack sails and no wake widening behind the keel. Some of his fright began to recede now, and George tried to think. He remembered Uncle Fred showing him how to wet a finger and test the wind, and now he licked his entire palm and held it in front of Gramma's mouth.

  Still nothing.

  He started for the phone to call Dr. Arlinder, and then stopped. Suppose he called the doctor and she really wasn't dead at all? He'd be in dutch for sure.

  Take her pulse.

  He stopped in the doorway, looking doubtfully back at that dangling hand. The sleeve of Gramma's nightie had pulled up, exposing her wrist. But that was no good. Once, after a visit to the doctor when the nurse had pressed her finger to his wrist to take his pulse, George had tried it and hadn't been able to find anything. As far as his own unskilled fingers could tell, he was dead.

  Besides, he didn't really want to... well... to touch Gramma. Even if she was dead. Especially if she was dead.

  George stood in the entryway, looking from Gramma's still, bedridden form to the phone on the wall beside Dr. Arlinder's number, and back to Gramma again. He would just have to call. He would --

  -- get a mirror!

  Sure! When you breathed on a mirror, it got cloudy. He had seen a doctor check an unconscious person that way once in a movie. There was a bathroom connecting with Gramma's room and now George hurried in and got Gramma's vanity mirror. One side of it was regular, the other side magnified, so you could see to pluck out hairs and do stuff like that.

  George took it back to Gramma's bed and held one side of the mirror until it was almost touching Gramma's open, gaping mouth. He held it there while he counted to sixty, watching Gramma the whole time. Nothing changed. He was sure she was dead even before he took the mirror away from her mouth and observed its surface, which was perfectly clear and unclouded.

  Gramma was dead.

  George realized with relief and some surprise that he could feel sorry for her now. Maybe she had been a witch. Maybe not. Maybe she had only thought she was a witch. However it had been, she was gone now. He realized with an adult's comprehension that questions of concrete reality became not unimportant but less vital when they were examined in the mute bland face of mortal remains. He realized this with an adult's comprehension and accepted with an adult's relief. This was a passing footprint, the shape of a shoe, in his mind. So are all the child's adult impressions; it is only in later years that the child realizes that he was being made; formed; shaped by random experiences; all that remains in the instant beyond the footprint is that bitter gunpowder smell which is the ignition of an idea beyond a child's given years.

  He returned the mirror to the bathroom, then went back through her room, glancing at the body on his way by. The setting sun had painted the old dead face with barbaric, orange-red colors, and George looked away quickly.

  He went through the entry and crossed the kitchen to the telephone, determined to do everything right. Already in his mind he saw a certain advantage over Buddy; whenever Buddy started to tease him, he would simply say: I was all by myself in the house when Gramma died, and I did everything right.

  Call Dr. Arlinder, that was first. Call him and say, "My Gramma just died. Can you tell me what I should do? Cover her up or something?''

  No.

  "I think my Gramma just died."

  Yes. Yes, that was better. Nobody thought a little kid knew anything anyway, so that was better.

  Or how about:

  "I'm pretty sure my Gramma just died -- "

  Sure! That was best of all.

  And tell about the mirror and the death rattle and all. And the doctor would come right away, and when he was done examining Gramma he would say, "I pronounce you dead, Gramma," and then say to George, "You laid extremely chilly in a tough situation, George. I want to congratulate you.'' And George would say something appropriately modest.

  George looked at Dr. Arlinder's number and took a couple of slow deep breaths before grabbing the phone. His heart was beating fast, but that painful spike-iron thud was gone now. Gramma had died. The worst had happened, and somehow it wasn't as bad as waiting for her to start bellowing for Mom to bring her tea.

  The phone was dead.

  He listened to the blankness, his mouth still formed around the words I'm sorry, Missus Dodd, but this is George Bruckner and I have to call the doctor for my Gramma. No voices. No dial tone. Just dead blankness. Like the dead blankness in the bed in there.

  Gramma is --

  -- -- IS --

  (oh she is)

  Gramma is laying chilly.

  Gooseflesh again, painful and marbling. His eyes fixed on the Pyrex teakettle on the stove, the cup on the counter with the herbal tea bag in it. No more tea for Gramma. Not ever.

  (laying so chiflyj

  George shuddered.

  He stuttered his finger up and down on the Princess phone's cutoff button, but the phone was dead. Just as dead as --

  (just as chilly as)

  He slammed the handset down hard and the bell tinged faintly inside and he picked it up in a hurry to see if that meant it had magically gone right again. But there was nothing, and this time he put it back slowly.

  His heart was thudding harder again.

  I'm alone in this house with her dead body.

  He crossed the kitchen slowly, stood by the table for a minute, and then turned on the light. It was getting dark in the house. Soon the sun would be gone; night would be here.

  Wait. That's all I got to do. Just wait until Mom gets back. This is better, really. If the phone went out, it's better that she just died instead of maybe having a fit or something, foaming at the mouth, maybe falling out of bed --

  Ah, that was bad. He could have done very nicely without that horse-pucky.

  Like being alone in the dark and thinking of dead things that were still lively -- seeing shapes in the shadows on the walls and thinking of death, thinking of the dead, those things, the way they would stink and the way they would move toward you in the black: thinking this: thinking that: thinking of bugs turning in flesh: burrowing in flesh: eyes that moved in the dark. Yeah. That most of all. Thinking of eyes that moved in the dark and the creak of floorboards as something came across the room through the zebra-stripes of shadows from the light outside. Yeah.

  In the dark your thoughts had a perfect circularity, and no matter what you tried to think of -- flowers or Jesus or baseball or winning the gold in the 440 at the Olympics -- it somehow led back to the form in the shadows with the claws and the unblinking eyes.

  "Shittabrick!" he hissed, and suddenly slapped his own face. And hard. He was giving himself the whim-whams, it was time to stop it. He wasn't six anymore. She was dead, that was all, dead. There was no more thought inside her now than there was in a marble or a floorboard or a doorknob or a radio dial or --

  And a strong alien unprepared-for voice, perhaps only the unforgiving unbidden voice of simple survival, inside him cried: Shut up Georgie and get about your goddam business!

  Yeah, okay. Okay, but --

  He went back to the door of her bedroom to make sure.

  There lay Gramma, one hand out of bed and touching the floor, her mouth hinged agape. Gramma was part of the furniture now. You could put her hand back in bed or pull her hair or pop a water glass into her mouth or put earphones on her head and play Chuck Berry into them full-tilt boogie and it would be all the same to her. Gramma was, as Buddy sometimes said, out of it. Gramma had had the course.

  A sudden low and rhythmic thudding noise began, not far to George's left,
and he started, a little yipping cry escaping him. It was the storm door, which Buddy had put on just last week. Just the storm door, unlatched and thudding back and forth in the freshening breeze.

  George opened the inside door, leaned out, and caught the storm door as it swung back. The wind -- it wasn't a breeze but a wind -- caught his hair and riffled it. He latched the door firmly and wondered where the wind had come from all of a sudden. When Mom left it had been almost dead calm. But when Mom had left it had been bright daylight and now it was dusk.

  George glanced in at Gramma again and then went back and tried the phone again. Still dead. He sat down, got up, and began to walk back and forth through the kitchen, pacing, trying to think.

  An hour later it was full dark.

  The phone was still out. George supposed the wind, which had now risen to a near-gale, had knocked down some of the lines, probably out by the Beaver Bog, where the trees grew everywhere in a helter-skelter of deadfalls and swamp water. The phone dinged occasionally, ghostly and far, but the line remained blank. Outside the wind moaned along the eaves of the small house and George reckoned he would have a story to tell at the next Boy Scout Camporee, all right... just sitting in the house alone with his dead Gramma and the phone out and the wind pushing rafts of clouds fast across the sky, clouds that were black on top and the color of dead tallow, the color of Gramma's claw-hands, underneath.

  It was, as Buddy also sometimes said, a Classic.

  He wished he was telling it now, with the actuality of the thing safely behind him. He sat at the kitchen table, his history book open in front of him, jumping at every sound... and now that the wind was up, there were a lot of sounds as the house creaked in all its unoiled secret forgotten joints.

  She'll be home pretty quick. She'll be home and then everything will be okay. Everything

  (you never covered her)

  will be all r

  (never covered her face)

  George jerked as if someone had spoken aloud and stared wide-eyed across the kitchen at the useless telephone. You were supposed to pull the sheet up over the dead person's face. It was in all the movies.

  Hell with that! I'm not going in there!

  No! And no reason why he should! Mom could cover her face when she got home! Or Dr. Minder when he came! Or the undertaker!

  Someone, anyone, but him.

  No reason why he should.

  It was nothing to him, and nothing to Gramma.

  Buddy's voice in his head:

  If you weren't scared, how come you didn't dare to cover her face?

  It was nothing to me.

  Fraidy cat!

  Nothing to Gramma, either.

  CHICKEN-GUTS fraidy cat!

  Sitting at the table in front of his unread history book, considering it, George began to see that if he didn't pull the counterpane up over Gramma's face, he couldn't claim to have done everything right, and thus Buddy would have a leg (no matter how shaky) to stand on.

  Now he saw himself telling the spooky story of Gramma's death at the Camporee fire before taps, just getting to the comforting conclusion where Mom's headlights swept into the driveway -- the reappearance of the grown-up, both reestablishing and reconfirming the concept of Order -- and suddenly, from the shadows, a dark figure arises, and a pine-knot in the fire explodes and George can see it's Buddy there in the shadows, saying: If you was so brave, chicken guts, how come you didn't dare to cover up HER FACE?

  George stood up, reminding himself that Gramma was out of it, that Gramma was wasted, that Gramma was laying chilly. He could put her hand back in bed, stuff a tea bag up her nose, put on earphones playing Chuck Berry full blast, etc., etc., and none of it would put a buzz under Gramma, because that was what being dead was about, nobody could put a buzz under a dead person, a dead person was the ultimate laid-back cool, and the rest of it was just dreams, ineluctable and apocalyptic and feverish dreams about closet doors swinging open in the dead mouth of midnight, just dreams about moonlight skating a delirious blue on the bones of disinterred skeletons, just --

  He whispered, "Stop it, can't you? Stop being so -- "

  (gross)

  He steeled himself. He was going to go in there and pull the coverlet up over her face, and take away Buddy's last leg to stand on. He would administer the few simple rituals of Gramma's death perfectly. He would cover her face and then -- his face lit at the symbolism of this -- he would put away her unused tea bag and her unused cup. Yes.

  He went in, each step a conscious act. Gramma's room was dark, her body a vague hump in the bed, and he fumbled madly for the light switch, not finding it for what seemed to be an eternity. At last it clicked up, flooding the room with low yellow light from the cut-glass fixture overhead.

  Gramma lay there, hand dangling, mouth open. George regarded her, dimly aware that little pearls of sweat now clung to his forehead, and wondered if his responsibility in the matter could possibly extend to picking up that cooling hand and putting it back in bed with the rest of Gramma. He decided it did not. Her hand could have fallen out of bed any old time. That was too much. He couldn't touch her. Everything else, but not that.

  Slowly, as if moving through some thick fluid instead of air, George approached Gramma. He stood over her, looking down. Gramma was yellow. Part of it was the light, filtered through the old fixture, but not all.

  Breathing through his mouth, his breath rasping audibly, George grasped the coverlet and pulled it up over Gramma's face. He let go of it and it slipped just a little, revealing her hairline and the yellow creased parchment of her brow. Steeling himself, he grasped it again, keeping his hands far to one side and the other of her head So he wouldn't have to touch her, even through the cloth, and pulled it up again. This time it stayed. It was satisfactory. Some of the fear went out of George. He had buried her. Yes, that was why you covered the dead person up, and why it was right: it was like burying them. It was a statement.

  He looked at the hand dangling down, unburied, and discovered now that he could touch it, he could tuck it under and bury it with the rest of Gramma.

  He bent, grasped the cool hand, and lifted it.

  The hand twisted in his and clutched his wrist.

  George screamed. He staggered backward, screaming in the empty house, screaming against the sound of the wind reaving the eaves, screaming against the sound of the house's creaking joints. He backed away, pulling Gramma's body askew under the coverlet, and the hand thudded back down, twisting, turning, snatching at the air... and then relaxing to limpness again.

  I'm all right, it was nothing, it was nothing but a reflex.

  George nodded in perfect understanding, and then he remembered again how her hand had turned, clutching his, and he shrieked. His eyes bulged in their sockets. His hair stood out, perfectly on end, in a cone. His heart was a runaway stamping-press in his chest. The world tilted crazily, came back to the level, and then just went on moving until it was tilted the other way. Every time rational thought started to come back, panic goosed him again. He whirled, wanting only to get out of the room to some other room -- or even three or four miles down the road, if that was what it took -- where he could get all of this under control. So he whirled and ran full tilt into the wall, missing the open doorway by a good two feet.

  He rebounded and fell to the floor, his head singing with a sharp, cutting pain that sliced keenly through the panic He touched his nose and his hand came back bloody. Fresh drops spotted his shirt. He scrambled to his feet and looked around wildly.

  The hand dangled against the floor as it had before, hut Gramma's body was not askew; it also was as it had been

  He had imagined the whole thing. He had come into the room, and all the rest of it had been no more than a mind-movie.

  No

  But the pain had cleared his head. Dead people didn't grab your wrist. Dead was dead. When you were dead they could use you for a hat rack or stuff you in a tractor tire and roll you downhill or et cetera, et cetera, et cet
era. When you were dead you might be acted upon (by, say, little boys trying to put dead dangling hands back into bed), but your days of acting upon -- so to speak -- were over.

  Unless you're a witch. Unless you pick your time to die when no one's around but one little kid, because it's best that way, you can... can...

  Can what?

  Nothing. It was stupid. He had imagined the whole thing because he had been scared and that was all there was to it He wiped his nose with his forearm and winced at the pain There was a bloody smear on the skin of his inner forearm

  He wasn't going to go near her again, that was all. Reality or hallucination, he wasn't going to mess with Gramma. The bright flare of panic was gone, but he was still miserably scared, near tears, shaky at the sight of his own blood, only wanting his mother to come home and take charge.

  George backed out of the room, through the entry, and into the kitchen. He drew a long, shuddery breath and let it out. He wanted a wet rag for his nose, and suddenly he felt like he was going to vomit. He went over to the sink and ran cold water. He bent and got a rag from the basin under the sink -- a piece of one of Gramma's old diapers -- and ran it under the cold tap, snuffling up blood as he did so. He soaked the old soft cotton diaper-square until his hand was numb, then turned off the tap and wrung it out.

  He was putting it to his nose when her voice spoke from the other room.